The noted Buenos Aires-born American playwright (Death and the Maiden), human rights activist, critic and professor emeritus of literature, 82, pens a historical mystery in a musical milieu. Our amateur sleuth is prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, drawn into questions of malpractice, occultist practitioners and charlatan healers involved in the blindness and death of Johann Sebastian Bach and, later, possibly, George Friedrich Handel. From London and Paris to Leipzig, Mozart’s investigations play out against the richly described backdrop of 18th-century Europe in the gathering momentum of political revolution in France and the United States. (Mar. 4)

A writer from New Mexico who lives in New York, Murphy’s previous novel was Talking Animals, a fable for our times. Her latest is a faux memoir of the 20th century: We meet Barbara in a hotel room circa 1975, reflecting on her life, fame and career as an actress. She’s the daughter of a Manhattan Project engineer, who came of age in the Cold War and became a studio-era bombshell type. The novel thrives as a character study – a portrait of an era that examines one woman’s parental relationship, complicated by tragedy, grief and psychological scars, set against the nuclear trauma that haunted a generation. (Mar. 25)

Art dealer Addie and her husband Leo are happily married and only in their early 50s when he is beset by hallucinations and shows signs of mental decline. Together they confront his descent into early-onset Lewy body dementia. When the absurd scenes Leo imagines outside his window escalate, the couple are forced to live apart. Kirshenbaum, longtime fiction professor at Columbia University and the author of acclaimed Rabbits for Food, is a practitioner of delectable, witty sentences and, in a mix of Addie’s journal entries and a structure that follows the disease’s seven stages, captures both the grim humour and devastating heartbreak of the situation. (Mar. 25)

More than a decade in the making, the new book from the Nigerian postcolonial feminist author (Americanah, We Should All Be Feminists), who lives outside Baltimore, is the major publication milestone of the year –  already hailed as a triumphant return. The sweeping epic weaves together four interconnected stories of Nigerian women “striving to love and to live on [their] own terms,” according to Adichie’s literary agent. Told from the perspective of three Nigerian women living in the U.S. and one, alone in their homeland on the other side of the Atlantic, it takes place during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. (Mar. 4)

Szalay, who was born in Canada, grew up in London and lives in Budapest, follows Hungarian István, from the age of 15 in the 1980s, when he falls into a relationship with an older married woman, through the course of his life. Like his breakthrough, Booker-shortlisted All That Man Is (2016), the novel has a linked story structure: each chapter chronicles a stage of István’s life, following him through Eastern Europe to London before coming full circle, in more ways than one. (Mar. 11)

Five Nebraskans rebuilding their lives in the storm-ravaged Dust Bowl in 1939 are the latest subjects of the Swamplandia! author and 2013 MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant recipient. Polish settlers, reckoning with having displaced the Pawnee people from the land, the local “prairie witch” occultist and a Black New Deal photographer join forces against local police corruption to prove the innocence of a local hobo accused of a crime, while dealing with farms rendered useless by prolonged drought.. It’s equal parts historical epic and true grit. (Mar. 11)

A French railway disaster of 1895 animates the Canadian-Irish writer’s (Room, The Wonder) new historical novel. The notorious and spectacular derailment at Gare de l’Ouest (now Montparnasse), which saw the locomotive crash into the station’s façade and onto the street below, threw passengers from the cars, and crew were later charged with negligent injury and manslaughter. In Donoghue’s reimagining, there’s as much intrigue among the diverse passengers as in its dramatic terminus: the story follows the personal journeys of those on board over the course of the single day. (Mar. 18)

This historical novel dramatizes the key role a young artist played during the Warsaw Uprising, a pivotal 60-day battle against Nazi occupation. It’s based on the true story of the Toronto author’s mother-in-law, Janina, a decorated intelligence officer later awarded the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest military honour. At the heart of the story is the inner conflict between heroism and sacrifice when faced with difficult decisions. (Mar. 25)

Retired spy Maggie and her fellow book-club cocktail aficionados are back, this time looking into a case in their quiet Maine seaside town, where the former CIA agents operate under the barely-tolerant eye of the local police chief. It’s the second in the “martini club” series (launched with 2023’s The Spy Coast) by the Maine-based creator of the Rizzoli & Isles procedurals. The search for a missing local teen turns up dead bodies possibly related to the agents’ past, and the only pauses for breath in this clever, fast-paced thriller come from self-deprecating asides about aging and reflections on retired life. (Mar. 18)

From the Irish writer of the National Book Award-winning novel Let the Great World Spin comes the lyrical story of a man in mid-life crisis. Irish narrator Anthony Fennell is a recovering alcoholic and journalist, assigned to profile the international crew repairing fiber-optic underwater cables that carry the world’s information. It’s set largely on a ship off the west coast of Africa, where free divers (including a fellow Irishman) work on the ocean floor. The premise allows McCann to tackle a niche subject, with evocative descriptions of underwater worlds (and pollution) as he explores paradoxical themes of cables that enable digital connectivity and emotional isolation. (Mar. 25)

Competition was heated among publishers for the second novel by Brown (Assembly, 2021), who was named to Granta’s influential, once-in-a-decade list of Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Where her debut novel was a modern Mrs. Dalloway – a day in a Black woman’s life, informed by racism – the follow-up tackles contemporary Britain, from the #BlackLivesMatter backlash to anti-woke pundits. It opens with a journalistic exposé about a Yorkshire farmer bludgeoned with a solid gold bar, and unpacks the hidden links between radical anarchists, bankers and alt-right columnists in a biting commentary on the culture wars. (Mar. 4)

Whenever anything absurd happens among the rich and powerful (so, every day), I look to humorist Rudnick’ socials for smart comic relief, because the American playwright and screenwriter (Sister Act, The Stepford Wives) is great at political commentary in humorous one-liners. This cynical, chatty novel likewise marries the acerbic and hilarious, following a disparate group of flawed people at a flight attendant’s destination wedding to a tech billionaire. (Mar. 25)

The unlikely friendship between a 35-year-old closeted transgender high school teacher and her openly trans 17-year-old student, in a conservative South Dakota community, shapes this engaging novel. Set on the eve of the 2016 American presidential election, it’s a sort of dual queer coming-of-age and coming-out story, where the younger, seemingly tough and fearless generation has things to teach its elders about defiance and survival, though the pair find support in one another’s situations. It’s a debut with a lot of heart for St. James, a culture editor and staff writer on Season 3 of Yellowjackets, and stands as a testament to the importance of community.