7 Books I Can’t Wait to Read in January

Kauffman’s (The Gunners) latest chronicles intersecting lives over the course of one year—1995. These overlapping narratives involve a couple struggling to get pregnant, a woman whose husband of 40 years has left her for reasons he's unwilling to share, a couple in denial about a looming health crisis and their son who is fumbling toward middle age and can't stop lying. Full of heart and wit, I'll Come to You investigates themes of intimacy, memory, loss, grief and reconciliation.

Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. She is disabled, disinclined to marry and more interested in writing than a career in medicine or law. Her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s wedding, she’s fired from her university job and her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed, she decides to write something just for herself—a futuristic epic called Rusted Robots. When she finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, from Chicago to Lagos and the far reaches of space. Okorafor’s (Who Fears Death) Death of the Author is a book-within-a-book that’s a poignant ode to the power of storytelling.

In this first comprehensive user guide to GLP-1s (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc.), Alexandra Sowa, MD, a leading obesity medicine specialist, shares her expertise on this much-discussed but largely misunderstood class of medica­tions. Expect insight into what the GLP-1 experience really feels like, how to know if you’re a candidate for these medications, how to manage and reduce unwanted side effects and more.

In this sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking memoir, Grammy-nominated musician Neko Case (most famously the lead singer for The New Pornographers) writes about her poverty-stricken childhood, obsessive desires and indispensable friendships. From feeling like an invisible girl being “raised by two dogs and a space heater” in rural Washington state to her emergence as an acclaimed talent, Case shows readers what it’s like to channel the monotony, loneliness and joy that comes from music and camaraderie, in this candid meditation on identity and how to make space for ourselves in this world, despite the obstacles we face.

Pico Iyer (The Art of Stillness) has been on more than 100 retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California. He’s not a member of any religious group, but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change. Profoundly, he shows the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love and, ultimately, how to die.

Ethan and Gabe have been together for years. They have successful careers, an adorable daughter and a house in the New Jersey suburbs. And though they’ve drifted to different ends of the political spectrum, their marriage still has its spark. Then one night, Ethan announces that he wants to run for Congress as a Republican—only if he has progressive Gabe’s blessing. For weeks, Gabe struggles between supporting his husband and maintaining his own left-leaning ideals. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, suburban mom Nicole wonders what happened to her younger self. She feels like an accessory in her husband’s life, until an old flame—Ethan’s sister Kate—re-enters her life unexpectedly. A political reporter surprised by her brother’s controversial congressional run, Kate’s life is thrown into a tailspin that threatens to derail the success she’s worked so hard to achieve. Harris’s debut novel is about love, marriage and family ties stretched thin by ambition.

This upcoming historical novel by Lois Cahall (Plan C: Just in Case) centers on real-life socialite Hazel Lavery. In the Victorian era through the roaring ‘20s, Boston-born Lavery ascended from her Irish roots to become the quintessential society queen of Chicago, and later London, where she lived between two worlds: one with her husband, Sir John Lavery, a portrait artist to royalty, and the other with Michael Collins, a daring Irish rebel. Together, the three formed a love triangle that echoed through the corridors at 10 Downing Street, London. The Many Lives & Loves of Hazel Lavery centers on Lavery as an artist and muse who charmed the who's-who of England, including Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Evelyn Waugh.