The Brooklyn author of the hit debut The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. charts the fortunes and intrigue among the Movement Team, the group of hourly workers charged with restocking big-box store Town Square as they contend with the precarity of unpredictable (and scarce) hours. Waldman worked a similar job for six months as research, and combines perceptive firsthand insight with timely commentary on the way employers exploit low-wage workers to tell a compelling underdog story. (March 5)

Best known as the translator of Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk (Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead), the American writer’s witty novel looks at the creative act of translation. Croft’s tale follows a colourful group gathered at the Warsaw home of renowned outspoken writer Irena Rey for a “translation summit” – a.k.a. to work on her magnum opus. Rey goes missing in the nearby ancient forest and their search for her uncovers unsettling secrets.The novel probes the cult of celebrity and challenges assumptions about authorship. (March 5)

The New Yorker staff writer and theatre critic makes his fiction debut with the story of David, a young Black man working on the presidential campaign of an idealistic Illinois senator. David’s encounters during his 18 months on the campaign trail cause him to come to terms with his identity as a Black man and father in America. In a U.S. election year, that already promises to be engrossing reading, but the fictional candidate also bears an uncanny resemblance to Barack Obama because the author previously served as a staff assistant at the Obama White House. (March 12)

This new novel by the influential Colombian author (100 Years of Solitude) and Nobel Prize-winning literary giant, who died in 2014 at 87, is a global event. The 150-page story is about a married middle-aged woman named Ana who has a tryst with a different man every August. When the author’s sons announced the publication of the manuscript, they said that, after re-reading the story, they decided it should be enjoyed by the public. Although unfinished, it reflects “his capacity for invention, the poetry of language, the captivating narrative, his understanding of the human being and his affection for his experiences and misadventures, especially in love, possibly the main theme of all his work.” (March 12)

This historical novel explores the secret courtship and elopement of Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, who first fell in love through their words. The story orbits the Barrett household, where Elizabeth has long been confined to her room due to poor health, and their relationship shocks her conservative family (as does the intriguing subplot of her brother’s illicit dalliance with a housekeeper). Their romance is set against the backdrop of slavery and racism (the Barrett family owed its fortune to its Jamaican sugar plantation) and doesn’t shy from societal injustices and exploitative aspects of the British Empire, exploring colonial privilege alongside a realistic portrait of the legendary couple. (March 12)

Translated for the first time into English since its 1995 publication, this novel – considered the crowning achievement of the Austrian 2004 Nobel Laureate – imagines an Austrian resort where Holocaust victims return from the dead. Examining the memory and suppression of the Holocaust, the unsettling postmodern horror takes place in an eerily idyllic setting (think: Jonathan Glaser’s Oscar-nominated adaptation of The Zone of Interest) and has been described as a genre- and mind-bending zombie odyssey with surreal Joycean wordplay. (March 12)

The adult debut novel from a Toronto-based writer of contemporary teen novels, told from different points of view, is funny and heartfelt. Three generations of a Nigerian Canadian family have various reactions when their matriarch, Mama Mary, unexpectedly dies during her 70th birthday celebration, which happens to be on Good Friday. When their Auntie insists her sister will rise again on Easter Sunday, the premonition draws the local Nigerian community to their home for the weekend. Titular Joy, who is the dutiful daughter and a recently divorced life coach, must contend with grief and boundaries as chaos and soul-searching ensues in this vibrant story. (March 12)

Styled like a fictional memoir and set in part in the writer’s home state of New Hampshire, this dark character study is told from the point of view of teenage Lacey, whose hippie parents are accused of sexually abusing the children at their home daycare. The setup is inspired by the controversial (and inconclusive) McMartin preschool trial, the so-called Satanic Panic and cult conspiracy hysteria of the 1980s that traumatized many lives. The second half focuses on Lacey 20 years later – who, having embraced her identity as a queer person, fled to Canada to reinvent herself as an activist – as she reconsiders the defining events of her past during a similar hysteria. (March 19)

Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure forms the basis of Oscar Best Picture nominee American Fiction, but that’s not why the USC English professor’s latest is among my personal “most anticipated” of the year. The acclaimed author is endlessly inventive, subverting familiar forms (heist, Western, murder mystery) to extract new meaning. Here, Everett reworks the harrowing and ferociously funny journey by raft down the Mississippi River of Mark Twain’s American classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim. I can’t wait. (March 19)

The three seasoned detectives in this new collaborative series from the prolific crime author have adopted the names of familiar literary sleuths (and have the brainy, observant and violently thuggish character traits of their namesakes). They form an investigative firm and work to solve a murder that took place in their own historic New York building. Complications ensue when an NYPD detective notices the enigmatic trio have no traceable backstory, for a fun mystery that balances homage with fast-paced entertainment. (March 26)