National Book Award finalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the author behind the acclaimed 2020 exposé The Undocumented Americans. Born in Ecuador and raised in New York, Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing career began while a senior at Harvard, where she was soon to be among the first undocumented students to graduate from the elite university. During the national debate around the DREAM Act, she penned an anonymous essay in The Daily Beast titled “DREAM Act: I’m an Illegal Immigrant at Harvard.” This vulnerable, vital, and ultimately viral piece directly inspired The Undocumented Americans. In this eye-opening book, described as a blend of memoir and reporting, Cornejo Villavicencio travels the nation to profile a diverse cross-section of her fellow undocumented Americans. The author’s anticipated follow-up, Catalina, is a work of fiction – at least in part. Catalina is an undocumented student from Queens who gains admittance to Harvard. With it comes entry into a new, complex world of prestigious internships, posh parties, and secret societies.

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Lisa See is best known for her poignant historical fiction, much of which spotlights the experiences of Chinese immigrants who are so often relegated to the margins. Book club favorites include Shanghai Girls and its sequel Dreams of Joy, which debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. USA Today praised the duology for “exploring the bonds of sisterhood while powerfully evoking the often nightmarish American immigrant experience.” See’s fictive scenarios in these and other novels are more than matched by the harrowing saga she recounts in her deeply personal memoir On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family. Lisa See’s latest novel, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, recreates the trailblazing career of Tan Yunxian, a 15th-century female physician who defied the odds – and societal norms – to become one of the Ming Dynasty’s foremost medical practitioners. Simon & Schuster re-released See’s latest chart-topper in paperback in June 2024.

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Stephen Graham Jones is one of speculative fiction’s bestselling authors and is beloved for his unique, potent blend of horror and cutting social commentary. His chart-topping novels to date include the modern classic The Only Good Indians, which tracks four childhood friends stalked by a sinister secret – and something else – on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana. (Jones is himself an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe.) Both The Only Good Indians and Jones’ novella Night of the Mannequins, released the same year, received the Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award in their respective categories. His latest novels include I Was A Teenage Slasher, an homage to horror tropes where the killer takes center stage, as well as the thrilling finale to his The Indian Lake Trilogy. The Angel of Indian Lake concludes the saga started with My Heart is a Chainsaw and continued in Don’t Fear the Reaper. Paste Magazine praises it as “a determinedly feminist reexamination of horror’s Final Girl.”

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Yangsze Choo is the author behind some of this decade’s most original historical fantasy. Her work is often inspired by folklore and infused with the paranormal. Such is the case with her 2013 debut, The Ghost Bride. Publishers Weekly praised: “Choo’s clear and charming style creates an alternate reality where the stakes are just as high as in the real world, combining grounded period storytelling with the supernatural.” The Ghost Bride is the basis for Netflix’s acclaimed Taiwanese-Malaysian drama of the same name. Choo’s follow-up, The Night Tiger, is set in 1930s colonial Malaysia. In it, apprentice dressmaker Ji Lin and orphan boy Ren become tangled in a mystery involving weretigers, terrifying beasts who wear the skin of humans. Reese Witherspoon selected The Night Tiger as the April 2019 pick for her popular Reese’s Book Club. Shapeshifters of a different kind loom large in Choo’s latest release, The Fox Wife. In a glowing review, Time recommended the book as “an enchanting tale of murder, revenge, and the power of a mother’s love.”

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Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jayne Anne Phillips has been a defining voice in American literature for nearly half a century. A recent review lauded her 1979 debut, Black Tickets, as “a short story collection that remains so compellingly singular that it ought to function as a handbook for short story writers.” It won the inaugural and prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Phillips’ later work cemented her legacy as a writer who uses fiction as a tool to give voice to the downtrodden, marginalized, and forgotten. Works of special note include first novel Machine Dreams (1984), Shelter (1994), National Book Award finalist Lark and Termite (2009), and Quiet Dell (2013). All are period pieces set in the author’s native West Virginia. Her latest novel, Night Watch, exhibits these and other trademarks of Phillips’ craft. Set in a backwoods asylum in the bleak, near-apocalyptic aftermath of the Civil War, Night Watch garnered a host of literary honors, including the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Mystery novelist Matt Goldman started his writing career as an Emmy Award winning screenwriter and producer. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld handpicked Goldman as a founding member of the creative team behind sitcom juggernaut Seinfeld. Goldman’s later television credits include work on Ellen and The New Adventures of Old Christine. Goldman published his first novel, Gone to Dust, in 2017. It launched the Minnesota-set and New York Times bestselling Nils Shapiro series. The fourth and latest installment, Dead West, shifts locales to Hollywood and makes gainful use of the author’s first-hand knowledge of the larger-than-life characters drawn to the limelight of show business. Goldman’s newest mystery, Still Waters, is a standalone story. In it, estranged siblings Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom return to their family-run resort on Leech Lake to investigate a relative’s suspicious death. Publishers Weekly notes: “Goldman’s fans will eat this up. Three-dimensional characters and authentic dialogue elevate the mystery premise.”

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Rom-com queen Jasmine Guillory burst onto the romance scene in 2018 with The Wedding Date, the first installment in her loosely connected book series of the same name. Reese Witherspoon selected Guillory’s follow-up, The Proposal, as the February 2019 read for Reese’s Book Club. After third book hit shelves, Cosmopolitan declared: “Everything Jasmine Guillory touches turns to gold, and The Wedding Party is no exception.” Guillory’s more recent releases include By the Book, part of Penguin Random House’s fairytale-inspired Meant to Be series, which features the talents of Guillory alongside fellow romance favorites like Christina Lauren and Zoraida Córdova. By the Book offers a modern spin on Beauty and the Beast. Her latest novel, Drunk on Love, is set in California wine country. This steamy story pairs work-to-live winery manager Margot with Luke, a Silicon Valley dropout who has just returned home to Napa. Booklist opines: “Suffused with tenderness and delight, this is Guillory’s best book yet.”

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Emiko Jean is an accomplished young adult writer, best known for the New York Times bestselling Tokyo Ever After and its sequel Tokyo Dreaming. Described as The Princess Diaries for a new generation, Jean’s series follows Japanese-American teenager Izumi Tanaka, a self-professed outsider who discovers that her long-absent father is the Crown Prince of Japan. Reese Witherspoon selected Tokyo Ever After as a Reese’s Book Club pick in 2021. Jean’s adult debut, Mika in Real Life, centers around a directionless, down-on-her-luck woman who is unexpectedly contacted by the daughter she gave up for adoption. Marie Claire calls it “a truly poignant coming-of-age story that deals with race, adoption, and bodily autonomy.” Mika in Real Life was a Good Morning America Book Club selection in August 2022. Jean’s follow-up is a psychological thriller, The Return of Ellie Black. Detective Chelsey Calhoun is often tasked with finding missing girls but is thunderstruck when young Ellie turns up mysteriously in the woods – a full two years after her sudden disappearance.

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Melanie Benjamin is an acknowledged master of historical fiction, not to mention one of the genre’s bestselling authors. Benjamin’s growing collection of work profiles topics ranging from the Nazi occupation of Paris, to silent movie starlet Mary Pickford, to the real-life inspiration behind Alice in Wonderland. Her most popular novels to date include The Aviator’s Wife (2012), the story of the aviatrix spouse of Charles Lindbergh; The Swans of Fifth Avenue (2016), about the headline-making relationship between famed author Truman Capote and a New York socialite; and The Children’s Blizzard (2021), which breathes new life into an infamous 1888 blizzard that still holds distinction as one of the most deadly natural disasters to ever hit the Great Plains. Her latest, California Golden, turns the spotlight to Malibu in the 1960s – and the formative but factious genesis of California surf culture. Booklist touts: “Benjamin’s novel shows what the sun-kissed highlight reels so often missed.”

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Alice Winn is the pen behind one of 2023’s most talked about literary debuts. In Memoriam is a moving story of first love set against the cataclysmic backdrop of World War I. When young Henry Gaunt enlists in the British Army to dispel rumors of his family’s pro-German leanings, boarding school classmate Sidney Ellwood is quick to follow him to the front line. Harrowing experiences in the trenches nurture a forbidden love. In a starred review, Booklist raves that: “Winn’s finely accomplished debut novel is a rare thing: an intoxicating romance and an impossible-to-put-down war story in one. She captures the war as it looked, sounded, and smelled; but the ultimate death-defying acts here are in literature, breathtaking bravery, and love.” Among other high honors, In Memoriam received the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize in 2022 and the Waterstones Novel of the Year Award in 2023.

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