Top Ten Tuesday: Anticipated releases of 2016

I’ve been out of the game for a while, but we’re back with a brand-new Top Ten Tuesday hosted as ever by the Broke and the Bookish!

Literally – brand new. These books aren’t even out yet. But I’m excited for all of them. Buckle up, because 2016 is looking shiny and clever – CanLit, magic realism, short stories, translations, and so much more.

Click on a cover for the full Goodreads description and release dates!

What Is Not Yours is Not Yours / Helen Oyeyemi 

This collection of intertwined stories revolves around the theme of keys, and that’s really all I know – or need to know. There’s a new Oyeyemi on the horizon? I’m going to read the hell out of it. From Boy, Snow, Bird to Mr. Fox, her magic realism and uncanny fairy-tale retelling ability hooks me every time.

 The Fireman / Joe Hill

What happens when you cross a plague with self-immolation? This novel. With a terrifying and incurable virus spreading the nation, Harper’s only wish is to carry her unborn child to term before she reaches the final stages of the disease – which will set her ablaze.

 

The Vegetarian / Han Kang

After a series of carnivorous, violent dreams, Yeong-hye gives up eating meat altogether. This move towards a plant-based existence is interpreted as shocking subversion by those around her – with apparently monumental (and allegorical) consequences.

 

The High Mountains of Portugal / Yann Martel

Yann Martel could write a phone book and I’d read it. This novel follows a centuries-old quest, an ancient artifact, and a Canadian ambassador and his chimpanzee. I don’t know how those things go together but I can’t wait to find out?

The Unfinished World / Amber Sparks

I read a review that compared Sparks’ style to Karen Russell, which was honestly enough to sell me. What can I say? I’m a sucker for magic realism, this book has a beautiful cover, and I’m feeling strangely in the mood for some short stories.

All the Birds in the Sky / Charlie Jane Anders

Two kids invent a two-second time machine, develop magical powers, and thirty years later meet again in hipster San Francisco. Goodreads assures me it’s a novel about “the end of the world – and the beginning of our future.” I’m an apocalypse nerd. That’s all I need to hear.

 

Tuesday Nights in 1980 / Molly Prentiss

I have weirdly specific tastes when it comes to historical fiction, in that I apparently have strong preferences for books about the art world. Tuesday Nights follows a critic, an artist, and their shared muse – an oddly vague and intriguing phrase that could result in just about anything.

Mr. Splitfoot / Samantha Hunt

This novel starts with two kids in an orphanage who channel the dead to amuse their siblings. Years later (surprise, surprise) this past comes back to haunt them. Modern gothic! Yes, please!

 

Princess Bari / Hwang Sok-yong

I don’t know that I’ve ever read Korean fiction before, but here’s a second one on this list alone. This novel transplants the fable of of a princess who brings peace to the souls of the dead into the stark and sometimes cold reality of city life.

 
The Core of the Sun / Johanna Sinisalo

This novel apparently falls into the genre of “Finnish weird,” which is intriguing in and of itself. In a far, dystopian future where the state controls everything, do illegal hot chili pepppers signify the key to the future, or simply represent a new generation’s destructive addiction to a weird new substance?

 

What’s on your top new releases list for 2016? I’m always looking for the next book on the to-read pile, so send me a link!