Hi.

Welcome to Hasty Book List, where I document and review the books I read. Hope you have a nice stay!

Books Coming Out in March

Books Coming Out in March

Book Roundup - Books Coming Out in March

I want to note that I do not get paid to do these posts, I just love authors and the book industry. However, they do take time and energy to create. If you want to donate a few dollars to my coffee fund, which keeps this blog going, you can do so here: https://venmo.com/AshleyHasty or here: http://paypal.me/hastybooklist.

Books Coming Out March 1:

A Brush with Love by Mazey Eddings

Neurodiverse debut author, Mazey Eddings, has created a stunning romance between Harper, an anxious studyholic dental student and the charming first year student hero, Dan. Their worlds collide after they literally crash into each other one fateful morning. Determined to be placed in a top oral surgery residency program Harper does everything in her power to ignore the delicious distraction that is Dan. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.... This book is filled with witty banter, a fat cat, cute dates that are definitely not dates, and a love connection that will have you yelling "just kiss already!"

Hasty Book List Monthly Newsletter

Join over 1,300 subscribers when you sign up with your email address to receive news, updates, and exclusive giveaways from Hasty Book List.

* indicates required

A Train to Moscow by Elena Gorokhova

In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition.

They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men

In THEY CALLED US GIRLS: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men by Kathleen Stone is a wonderful new collective biography of seven women who aspired to professional jobs in the mid-twentieth century. It was an era when women were expected to find fulfillment at home, in the mold of television’s June Cleaver. But these women broke the mold, defying expectations to succeed in jobs reserved almost exclusively for men – as doctor, lawyer, artist, physicist, executive director and intelligence officer. In insightful, personalized portraits that span a half-century, Stone weaves stories of female ambition, uncovering the families, teachers, mentors, and historical events that led to unexpected paths.

A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee

In the realm of Awara, where gods, monsters, and humans exist side by side, Miuko is an ordinary girl resigned to a safe, if uneventful, existence as an innkeeper’s daughter. But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again. But with her transformation comes power and freedom she never even dreamed of, and she’ll have to decide if saving her soul is worth trying to cram herself back into an ordinary life that no longer fits her… and perhaps never did.

The Wonders by Elena Medel, translated by Lizzie Davis and Thomas Bunstead

Through the vivid interior worlds of two unforgettable characters, Elena Medel brings a half century of the feminist movement to life, revealing how little has really changed for women who work the night shift.

Winner of the prestigious Francisco Umbral Prize for Book of the Year and already a sensation in Spain, The Wonders follows María and Alicia through the streets of Madrid, from job to job and apartment to apartment, as they search for meaning and stability, unknowingly tracing each other’s footfalls across time.

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

Karitas Untitled by Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir

A portrait of an artist trapped by convention and expectations but longing for the chaos that can set her free.

Growing up on a farm in early twentieth-century rural Iceland, Karitas Ólafsdóttir, one of six siblings, yearns for a new life. An artist, Karitas has a powerful calling and is determined to never let go of her true being, one unsuited for the conventional. But she is powerless against the fateful turns of real life and all its expectations of women. Pulled back time and again by design and by chance to the Icelandic countryside―as dutiful daughter, loving mother, and fisherman’s wife―she struggles to thrive, to be what she was meant to be.

Spanning decades and set against a breathtaking historical canvas, Karitas Untitled, an award-winning classic of Icelandic literature, is a complex and immersive portrait of an artist’s conflict with love, family, nature, and a country unaccustomed to an untraditional woman―but most of all, with herself and the creative instincts she has no choice but to follow.

The Book of Living Secrets by Madeleine Roux

No matter how different best friends Adelle and Connie are, one thing they’ve always had in common is their love of a little-known gothic romance novel called Moira. So when the girls are tempted by a mysterious man to enter the world of the book, they hardly suspect it will work. But suddenly they are in the world of Moira, living among characters they’ve obsessed about for years.

Except…all is not how they remembered it. The world has been turned upside down: The lavish balls and star-crossed love affairs are now interlaced with unspeakable horrors. The girls realize that something dark is lurking behind their foray into fiction—and they will have to rewrite their own arcs if they hope to escape this nightmare with their lives.

The Astronaut and the Star by Jen Comfort

Although astronaut Reggie and Hollywood star Jon are polar opposites, their mutual attraction is undeniable, and it only takes a few weeks in close quarters for them to give in to its magnetic force. Jon is set on convincing Reggie this is a match made in the heavens, but her future is in space, and his is among stars of the Hollywood kind. The odds of successfully launching a real relationship outside the confines of the training base are anything but optimal.

Like Me by Hayley Phelan

Though beautiful, cunning, and privileged, nineteen-year-old Mickey finds herself with a stalled modeling career, an escalating drinking problem, few friends, and next to nothing in the bank. To numb her growing despair, she spends her days frantically refreshing her Instagram feed, obsessively tracking the movements of Insta-famous model Gemma Anton.

Mickey sees Gemma as a perfected version of herself. Gemma is living a seemingly perfect life: a skyrocketing career, a famous boyfriend, and adoring followers. It’s the life Mickey wants more than anything. Mickey studies every detail Gemma offers through the window of her phone, trying to absorb, mimic, become the object of her growing fascination.

When a chance encounter thrusts Mickey into a world of opportunity, she is met with surprising―and immediate―success. But as her online persona begins to take over, the line between reality and illusion disappears. Then suddenly, so does Gemma.

Engrossing, sharp, and astute, Like Me is a shimmering portrait of infatuation, disconnection, and identity―and a dazzling introduction to a brilliant new voice in contemporary literature.

Until We Meet by Camille Di Maio

A young American woman’s letters, written to a soldier stationed in England, set her life on a course she could never have imagined in this heartbreaking and gripping WWII novel perfect for fans of Natasha Lester and Martha Hall Kelly.

Listening Still by Anne Griffin

John Banville called Anne Griffin's first novel, WHEN ALL IS SAID," a rare jewel." Her new book is LISTENING STILL, "A wonderfully unexpected tale of love, death and everything in between." (Graham Norton)

Jeanie Masterson can hear the dead give voice to their final wishes. This unusual ability enabled her family's funeral home to flourish in their Irish village, yet she's always been uneasy about voicing the dead's less kind messages to the living.

When Jeanie's parents announce their retirement, she is jolted out of her limbo. Griffin portrays a young woman torn between a comfortable marriage, a calling she both loves and hates, and her chance to break free.

Dry Heat by Len Joy

Dry Heat is a crime novel about a young man who loses everything but his heart. The day All-American Joey Blade turns 18, he learns his ex-girlfriend is pregnant, is betrayed by his new girlfriend, and is arrested for the attempted murder of two police officers. Then things get bad. Dry Heat will appeal to readers who enjoy suspense thrillers like Noah Hawley's Before the Fall or heartfelt sagas like Nickolas Butler's Hearts of Men.

Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir by Aileen Weintraub

Aileen Weintraub, the award-winning author, journalist, and editor whose essay, “This Is What No One Tells Women About What Happens to Your Body in Your 40s,” in HuffPost garnered over 2 million hits and was discussed on The View, will release KNOCKED DOWN: A High-Risk Memoir (March 1, 2022; University of Nebraska Press; paperback; 978-1-4962-3020-1) this March. This emotionally charged, laugh-out-loud roller-coaster ride of survival and growth tells the story of marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take. Aileen has been running away from commitment her entire life, hopping from one job and one relationship to the next. When her father suddenly dies, she flees her Jewish Brooklyn community for the wilds of the country, where she unexpectedly falls in love with a man who knows a lot about produce, tractors, and how to take a person down in one jiu-jitsu move. Within months of saying “I do” she’s pregnant, life is on track, and then wham! Her doctor slaps a high-risk label on her uterus and sends her to bed for five months.

La Vieja: A Journal of Fire by Deena Metzger

When the Writer began to receive “inexplicable communications” from La Vieja, she knew very little about her. Over time, it became clear that the old woman was a seer, seemingly real, but spirit-like, who had taken permanent residence in a fire lookout tower in the Sierras of California. Her watch there took on a great significance in this time of climate destruction, pandemic, and the possibility of the extinction of the natural world. There, La Vieja’s senses began to sharpen, turning toward a greater connection with the intelligence of the natural world, including the bears and the surrounding trees. Two other characters emerged from this contact: Lucas, a doctor who also loves to retreat to a little-used fire tower, and Léonie, a librarian/stonemason who has a lifelong dreaming connection to the Bears. The two meet and fall in love, and retreat to a similar forest world as their story becomes entwined with the world of La Vieja in an overlapping of realities. Part dream, part real, part memoir, La Vieja blurs the boundaries between human consciousness and animal consciousness, of imagination and reality, to create a “Journal of Fire,” a recording of the process of living with the constant threat of the destruction of the natural world. And yet, it finds hope by making new connections that lead us toward a liberation from human domination, toward renewal and a vision of the future where humans and the natural world are integral parts of a whole, intermingling and interdependent, where human nature and animal nature are inclusive of each other.

Books Coming Out on March 8:

The Lightning Rod by Brad Meltzer

What’s the one secret no one knows about you?

Archie Mint has a secret. He’s led a charmed life—he’s got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he’s killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered—and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint’s been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.

Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye

Fifteen-year-old Sloane is a Scion, a descendant of the ancient Orisha gods who can incinerate her enemies at will and an identity that means death and resulted in her mother’s disappearance. When she’s conscripted into the Lucis army, Sloane must hide her powers and overcome the brutal Lucis training… but if she can climb the ranks and infiltrate the Lucis, she could destroy her enemies and those responsible for her mother’s disappearance. In doing so, however, she risks losing herself and becoming the exact monster she’s fighting.

Campfire Confessions by Kristine Ochu

Three childhood friends–Annie, Sondra, and Jo–have grown apart as they got older, yet they still cherish the unique bond they share. They hadn’t meant to keep secrets from one another, but with time and distance separating them, it just sort of happened. So, when Annie’s secret finally catches up with her, Jo and Sondra rush to her side. Determined to find answers, they pry Annie away from her daily grind, escaping on a canoeing trip that turns into a death-defying adventure. Lost in the woods as one thing goes wrong after another, they find themselves sharing their deepest secrets around the campfire. But as each new revelation unfolds, one thing becomes clear: it will take more than a night of true confessions for the three of them to find their way back home.

The Epic Mentor Guide by Illana Raia

Imagine if you found the perfect mentor before you actually started work. Now imagine you could ask her anything. "The Epic Mentor Guide" matches questions from girls eyeing and entering the workforce with answers from 180 boss women already there.

Created by Illana Raia, founder of the mentorship platform Être, and featuring women who remember what it felt like to take that first step on their career path, this book is for every girl building a future.

Hear from . . .

Angela Duckworth … on Getting Your Grit Together
Anita Bhatia … on Applying UN Goals to Personal Goals
Blake Bolden … on Breaking Glass Ceilings With a Hockey Stick
Daisy Auger-Dominguez … on Asking About Inclusion in Interviews
Hoda Kotb … on Staying Resilient in the Face of Challenges
Kara Goldin … on Taking a Hint and Building an Empire
Lilly Ledbetter … on Negotiating a Strong Salary Raise
Rebecca Minkoff … on Finding Female-Focused Networks
Sudi Green … on Getting Your First Sketch on SNL

And many more!

Squire by Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh

Aiza has always dreamt of becoming a Knight. It’s the highest military honor in the once-great Bayt-Sajji Empire, and as a member of the subjugated Ornu people, Knighthood is her only path to full citizenship. Ravaged by famine and mounting tensions, Bayt-Sajji finds itself on the brink of war once again, so Aiza can finally enlist in the competitive Squire training program.

It’s not how she imagined it, though. Aiza must navigate new friendships, rivalries, and rigorous training under the unyielding General Hende, all while hiding her Ornu background. As the pressure mounts, Aiza realizes that the “greater good” that Bayt-Sajji’s military promises might not include her, and that the recruits might be in greater danger than she ever imagined.

In this breathtaking and timely story, Aiza will have to choose, once and for all: loyalty to her heart and heritage, or loyalty to the Empire.

If You Ask Me, Libby Hubscher

Violet Covington pens Dear Sweetie, the most popular advice column in the state of North Carolina. She has an answer for how to politely handle any difficult situation…until she discovers her husband, Sam, has been cheating on her. Furious and out of sensible solutions, Violet leaves her filter at the door and turns to her column to air her own frustrations. The new, brutally honest Dear Sweetie goes viral, sending more shock waves through Violet’s life. When she burns Sam’s belongings in a front-yard, late-night bonfire, a smoking-hot firefighter named Dez shows up to douse the flames, and an unexpected fling quickly shows potential to become something longer lasting.
A lot of people want to see the old polished Violet return—including her boss, who finds her unpredictability hard to manage, and Sam, who’s begging for another chance. But Dez appreciates Violet just the way she is—in fact, he can’t get enough of her. The right answers don’t come easily when Violet finds herself at her own personal crossroads. But maybe, by getting real, Violet can write her own happy ending.

The Corset Maker by Annette Libeskind Berkovits

“The Corset Maker” traces the remarkable life of Rifka, a courageous teen living in Warsaw in the late 1920s and early ‘30s. Raised in a Jewish Orthodox household, Rifka asks her father why girls don’t have Bar Mitzvahs. His response causes her to rebel against tradition, and she soon opens a corset shop with her closest friend, Bronka. What follows is an international odyssey that takes Rifka to Paris, Palestine, and eventually to Spain where the Spanish Civil War is heating up. Coming of age in a tumultuous time marked by the expansion of fascism, Rifka's early convictions of pacifism are called into question as her very identity hangs on the line.

Westside Lights by W.M. Akers

The Alienist meets the magical mystery of The Ninth House as W. M. Akers returns with the third book in his critically acclaimed Jazz Age fantasy series set in the dangerous Westside of New York City, following private detective Gilda Carr’s hunt for the truth—one tiny mystery at a time.

The Westside of Manhattan is desolate, overgrown, and dangerous—and Gilda Carr wouldn’t have it any other way. An eccentric detective whose pursuit of tiny mysteries has dragged her to the brink of madness, Gilda spends 1923 searching for something that’s eluded her for years: peace. On the revitalized waterfront of the Lower West, Gilda and the gregarious ex-gangster Cherub Stevens start a new life on a stolen yacht. But their old life isn’t done with them yet.

They dock their boat on the edge of the White Lights District, a new tenderloin where liquor, drugs, sex, and violence are shaken into a deadly cocktail. When her pet seagull vanishes into the District, Gilda throws herself into the search for the missing bird. Up late watching the river for her pet, Gilda has one drink too many and passes out in the cabin of her waterfront home.

She wakes to a massacre.

Eight people have been slaughtered on the deck of the Misery Queen, and Cherub is among the dead. Gilda, naturally, is the prime suspect. Hunted by the police, the mob, and everyone in between, she must stay free long enough to find the person who stained the Hudson with her beloved’s blood. She will discover that on her Westside, no lights are bright enough to drive away the darkness.

Books coming out on March 15:

Finding Grace by Gary Lee Miller

Grace Lee calls her granddaughter, Judith, with a dying wish…for Judith to travel from Los Angeles to Nashville to come visit her. But there’s a catch. Judith must make the journey by bus.

The award-winning novel Finding Grace shares Judith Lee’s transformative, cross-country journey, revealing what truly matters. Each day of Judith’s journey becomes a story on its own, as the people she meets and places she visits along the way challenge her to rethink her life. Finding Grace is about Judith’s transformation back into the real world during this journey as a result of the people she meets on the bus, how she deals with the imminent passing of her grandmother, and how all this changes her life’s future plans.

The Daddy Chronicles by Jayne Martin

In this emotionally-charged memoir written in cinematic vignettes, Jayne Martin fearlessly bares the parts of her that were broken when her father left the family upon her birth and, in doing so, leads the reader on their own journey toward wholeness and healing. Whether you are a fatherless daughter or are someone who loves one, “The Daddy Chronicles” will tear at your heart and open a world of understanding.

The Mozart Code by Rachel McMillan

Lady Sophia Huntington Villiers, code name “Starling,” is a woman more familiar with intrigue than most, and her wartime marriage of convenience to Simon Barrington, heir to one of Sussex’s oldest estates, granted her the independence she’s always craved while simultaneously saving his estate. Now, as part of his covert team, Sophie been tasked with the critical mission of infiltrating the world of relics in post-war Vienna to find and retrieve the Death Mask of Mozart, but a mission in Prague drives Sophie to make a life altering decision – one that brands her not only as a traitor to her country, but also to her husband. With her true allegiance in question, Simon, who has been secretly in love with Sophie since he first laid eyes on her, must uncover the truth and determine where his loyalties lie – with his duty or his heart.

Books Coming out March 22-25:

As You Look by Verónica Gutiérrez

Yolanda Ávila, a former LAPD cop-turned private investigator, blames herself for her mother’s death in a road rage accident. It was her fault. The perpetrator was a suspect she’d pursued in an unrelated case, someone she should’ve caught by tracking down a license plate number. Any good detective would’ve done that. But she got cocky, thought she’d catch him by following clues from a stupid dream instead. The only salve against the guilt eating at her now is Yolanda’s vow to reject that juju crap. But when her godson Joey is kidnapped, his parents are suspected of murder, and a stalker threatens her wife Sydney to warn Yolanda off the case, she must deal with more than just the facts. She must confront the juju to overcome her guilt and deal with pent-up grief―or risk losing yet another loved one.

The Nosferatu Conspiracy: The Sommelier by Brian James Gage

The Sommelier is the secret supernatural history of World War I, "revealing" how Kaiser Wilhelm secretly assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started the war, with the help of Elizabeth Bathory (a real-life sixteenth-century Hungarian ghoulish murderess, but an immortal demi-demon in this book) on a quest for supernatural power.

Love & Genetics by Mark MacDonald and Rachel Elliott

When a family secret comes to light, lives are changed forever in this honest, beautiful, and sometimes painful memoir. When Mark, adopted at birth, set out to find his genetic family as an adult, he found something he never expected—three full-blooded siblings, including a persistent sister (Rachel) who would alter the course of his life.

Proof of Me and Other Stories by Erica Plouffe Lazure

All things are delicately interconnected in these stories set in a small town in eastern North Carolina. From the rambunctious antics of an erstwhile Shad Queen to the guilt-throttled grief of a secret affair gone wrong, Proof of Me and Other Stories stitches together the lives and adventures of each of its characters, in unexpected and peculiar ways, from one story to the next.

songs we used to dance to by courtney marie

the world is on fire but everything is fine. you're invited to a party. there will be dancing. a poet falls in love with you. we want this to last forever. somewhere hidden, a garden blooms. a revolution overdue. illness and isolation. the misery of hope. the comfort of madness. a forest of contradictions. you're not sure what's real anymore. a ghost has gone missing. we haunt this place now. nothing will ever be the same.

Books coming out on March 29:

Honeybee Emeralds by Tector

Alice Ahmadi has never been certain of where she belongs. When she discovers a famed emerald necklace while interning at a struggling Parisian magazine, she is plunged into a glittering world of diamonds and emeralds, courtesans and spies, and the long-buried secrets surrounding the necklace and its glamorous former owners.

All The White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

Something deadly and mysterious stalks the members of an isolated polar expedition in this haunting and spellbinding historical horror novel, perfect for fans of Dan Simmons’s The Terror and Alma Katsu’s The Hunger. In the wake of the First World War, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Antarctic expedition, determined to find his rightful place in the world of men. When disaster strikes in Antarctica’s frozen Weddell Sea, the men must take to the land and overwinter somewhere which immediately seems both eerie and wrong; a place not marked on any of their part-drawn maps of the vast white continent. In the freezing darkness of the Polar night, where the aurora creeps across the sky, something terrible has been waiting to lure them out into its deadly landscape…

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using this link. Thank you for supporting this blog and the books I recommend! I may have received a book for free in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
Marriage and Moonshine

Marriage and Moonshine

Julia Brewer Daily

Julia Brewer Daily

0