Sharply speaking to the moment, this entertaining debut from Burke (a cultural commentator on the political podcast Diabolical Lies) deconstructs the performative nature of the online world through the travails of an Ivy Leaguer turned #Tradwife social media phenomenon. While her inept husband succumbs to the manosphere, Natalie presides over five kids at picture-perfect Yesteryear Ranch, a throwback 1800s-style homestead (not pictured: the workers, producers and nannies behind the scenes). Unforeseen circumstances expose the hypocrisy of their façade in this scathing exploration of influencer culture, modern motherhood and the price children pay for being part of the image. (Apr. 7)

Call it a comeback – years in the making – of the New Orleans writer whose voice-driven fiction and nonfiction (including her 1985 debut Lives of the Saints, which she published at 28; The Fiery Pantheon, Malaise, The Ritz of the Bayou) was championed by the literati in the 1980s and 1990s. Lemann’s first novel in 20 years takes the form of a journal written in 2021, after our heroine is called home to care for her father during his health crisis. Droll, digressive diary entries lay hilariously bare an engaging observer of life caught between the demands of a failing elderly parent, a daughter entering adulthood and her own mid-life crisis. (Apr. 7)

Nineties nostalgia feels ever present these days – and it’s certainly infused into this second-chance romance. Reid and Lili meet in the summer of 1993 during a Jeff Buckley show at Sin-é (the legendary East Village indie music café). After a whirlwind week – and despite their undeniable connection – Reid heads to California for a new job. Thirty years later, divorced and widowed in their 50s, they bump into one another at a tribute to the late singer, with their respective teen daughters in tow. The writing aptly renders both the 1990s time and place and offers a realistic depiction of mid-life reconnection – tentatively risking heartbreak (while menopausal!) – with an amusing side of Parent Trap teenager intervention. (Apr. 7)  

“I can hardly remember the last time I read anything that brought me such pure joy,” bestselling Bel Canto writer Ann Patchett enthuses about this big-hearted novel about three people at a crossroads on a ’90s boy band reunion cruise. Talent coordinator Sarah, skeptic Annie (recently divorced, as her sister’s plus-one) and Keith, a member of Boy Talk, are each contending with transition. The larger-than-life chaos and emotion of fandom affect them in different ways. In this fun, uplifting novel, Straub probes the emotionally fraught landscape of what it means to be aging including letting go of the bittersweet teenage nostalgia of our younger selves. (Apr. 7)

In the early 1980s, friends from a college improv troupe are cast in a new late-night TV sketch show (big “Live from New York” energy). For two seasons, breakout star Lillian Martin lives the high life – then vanishes. Forty years later, a Rolling Stone writer interviews surviving cast members about her disappearance, which also serves as a lens on the male-dominated world of improv. Presented in a dynamic oral history style offering multiple perspectives on the era – complete with a suggested read-along playlist – the fictional reconstruction is so fully realized it feels like a true story. It’s 30 Rock meets Only Murders in the Building, doing for sketch comedy what author Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones & the Six) did for ’70s rock. (Apr. 7)

Honour Earth Day in April with this climate-change-themed family drama, which weaves in evocative descriptions of the dramatic B.C. interior landscape. Starting in the 1980s, protagonist Lynne is stifled by motherhood and compromise in her B.C. logging town, and leaves her young family behind to pursue a life of environmental activism. Following in her idealistic footsteps after Y2K, her 19-year-old daughter Fern commits her own radical act of protest and disappears to avoid arrest. Nearly 20 years later, old and new members of the estranged family are thrown together in a lockdown during forest fire season, with no choice but to hash out their differences. (Apr. 21)

Hope and heartbreak come together in French’s sophomore novel (after The Good Women of Safe Harbour), pitched for readers of Canada’s Miriam Toews and Ireland’s Claire Keegan. Set in wintry 1990s St. John’s, recently widowed Ruby is preparing for her husband’s funeral and feeling guilt over how relieved she is to be free. While caring for her mother (who lives with Alzheimer’s), she befriends a pregnant woman who reminds her of her younger self; the subject of domestic violence is handled with sensitivity in this resonant novel about the bonds between women. (Apr. 21)

Centered around tragedy at a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighbourhood, this multinational narrative follows Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century. Through four generations, this author of American, Jewish and Chinese descent charts political upheaval, transformation and gentrification. Reminiscent of Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn, Booklist calls it an “ardently researched, many-faceted saga of immigration, race, desperation and aspiration” – and it’s tipped to be an awards contender. (Apr. 21)

As with her deeply researched Vanessa & Her Sister (about siblings Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell), Parmar immerses us in the early life of another modern icon: Katharine Hepburn. Charting Kate’s rise, fall, fame and reinvention in early Hollywood of the 1930s (when a movie flop dubbed her “box office poison”). The captivating biographical (albeit fictionalized) novel offers insight into her creative ambition, sexuality and unconventional romantic life, and decades-spanning career (she still holds the record with four Best Actress Academy Awards) and bringing to life the outspoken iconoclast determined to live on her own terms. (Apr. 28)

The past haunts the present as Jimmy, now in his 50s, looks back on the complicated summer before high school in 1973 New Jersey. Like the oft-adapted author himself (Election, Little Children), Jimmy’s the son of a small-town firefighter who becomes a celebrated novelist, now remembering himself at 13, moving forward through grief for his deceased mother and awkward adolescence while being drawn to pot and the supernatural. The flashback themes and format deliberately echo Stephen King’s The Body (the source material for Stand By Me), while exploring the shadow of the Vietnam War and the diversification of a very white small-town neighbourhood. No wonder Perrotta earned the moniker “the Steinbeck of suburbia.”  (Apr. 28)