Anticipated Books 2024

It’s that time of year again – where I look ahead to the books I can’t wait to read in 2024 – which also could be know as “What Verity has got on Pre-Order”. And not gonna lie, I’ve got form for some of these ending up on my end of year lists as well. I’m trying not to do too many “Latest in x series” books, because if you’re not already reading the series you shouldn’t start with them, but also I’ll probably remind you about them later too. I am going to shamelessly break that a few times in this post too. Because of course I am. OK, enough of the rules that aren’t really rules and on to the books. Today’s picture is the list as it stood in my last journal at the end of last year – hence the mini-bookcase above for the overflow from the big Beat the to Read Pile bookcase.

First up: At First Spite by Olivia Dade. It has been more than a year since Dade’s last book and this is the first in a new series. The Spite of the title is a spite house – a term I hadn’t come across before this was announced, but is apparently a very thin house built to irritate neighbours – which our heroine Athena bought as a wedding gift for her now ex-fiancé and is now going to live in herself. Only trouble is it’s next door to the aforementioned ex. This is out on February 20th and I can’t wait.

Next up is Fake Flame by Adele Buck which comes out in early April. Adele Buck was one of the authors I discovered two years ago now and this is also a first in a new series. The blurb for this is promising a fake-dating romance with a hero who knows his Jane Austen, and I am all in for that – I love Austen and fake relationships are a trope that I love.

I said I was trying to avoid series, but I can’t help myself with this – there’s a new Tales of the City novel coming out this year. I thought that Armistead Maupin was done after The Days of Anna Madrigal, but a decade on he’s back with Mona of the Manor, which is filling in a gap in the timeline – of what Mona did in England in the 1990s. It’s out on March 7th and I haven’t actually preordered it (yet) but’s because I have a ticket for and in conversation event with Maupin a few days before release, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to buy it there.

And the other sequel I want to mention is Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde which comes out on February 6th and is the long awaited sequel to Shades of Grey. I love the way Fforde’s brain works, although I’m not going to lie I was hoping that the next sequel he did would be the long-awaited eighth Thursday Next book. But I guess it’s only been twelve years and it’s been fifteen since Shades of Grey so I can’t really complain too much. The Thursday is listed for 2025, but that release date has been moving for years so I’ll believe it when I see it. In the mean time it’s just nice to have our first Fforde in four years.

I’ve just this week put my pre-order in for RuPaul’s memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, which is about growing up poor, black and broke in San Diego and then forging his identity in the Atlanta and New York drag scenes.

Also on the list of things I can’t wait to read this year is the new Emily Henry, Funny Story, which has a heroine with her dream job – but stuck in the town where her ex-fiance and his childhood best friend are starting their happily ever after. She’s sharing a house with the ex-fiance of the aforementioned childhood best friend of her ex. What could possibly go wrong?

Annabel Monaghan’s Nora Goes of Script was one of my favourite books of last year, and she also has a new one coming out in 2024 – it’s called Summer Romance and is out in June. My other favourite new-to-me author last year was Elissa Sussman and her next novel is due in September and looks like it’s called Totally and Completely Fine, which would be in keeping with her other titles!

And that’s where I’m at with books I’m looking forward, if we’re not counting the new Lady Sherlock, Rivers of London Novella, the Vinyl Detective (back after a year off and tacking house music) and a tenth in Susan Elizabeth Philips’ Chicago Stars series. But I wasn’t going to talk about those. Whoops.

Happy reading everyone.