11 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in March

What does it mean to be single, what does it means to find love and how do we define each of them for ourselves? Rebecca Serle’s (In Five Years) latest novel explores these questions through a compelling story with a supernatural twist: Every time Daphne meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it. The number isn’t his phone number, but the exact amount of time they will be together. She’s been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake. But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful.

Kristine S. Ervin, a creative writing professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, was eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was violently murdered in an Oklahoma oil field. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin’s drive to know her mother only intensifies, and there’s only so much she can gather from her own memory, letters she uncovers and the stories of other family members. Touching on power, gender and justice, Rabbit Heart asks what a woman is allowed to be and what a “true” victim is supposed to look like.

Depending on who you ask, ‘housewife’ is either a callback to simpler times when men were breadwinners and women remained home with the kids, or it’s a sexist, oppressive stereotype. In Housewife, writer Lisa Selin Davis (Tomboy, Lost Stars) presents a complete social history of the housewife archetype, from colonial America to the 20th century. With thoroughly researched examples—from prehistoric female hunters to 21st century stay-at-home moms—she discovers that women have been sold a lie about what constitutes a family.

Besides the childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet is content with her life as an up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house. After all, she’s got a handsome fiancé, Kit, and great friends. But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before their wedding, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it gets closer, Piglet finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Piglet is a compelling debut novel about the things we want and the things we think we want.

Lauren Oyler (Fake Accounts) has established herself as an influential critic in pieces for the London Review of Books, The New Yorker and more. Her debut essay collection examines the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment. Covering the role of gossip in our exponentially communicative society, why we’re all so “vulnerable” these days and her own anxiety, she attempts to understand how we shape the world through culture.

The Nashville country music scene of the 1970s serves as the backdrop for this novel about a struggling musician implicated in a heinous crime. When aspiring singer Twyla Finch arrives in Nashville in 1977, the 19-year-old is dazzled. As she finds her way, she falls for Chet, another country music hopeful. But when a night out with Chet goes terribly wrong, Twyla finds herself involved in a shocking crime, eventually writing a haunting ballad to help her process what happened. Weeks later, she hears another woman singing her song on the radio, forcing her to decide whether she should claim her ballad and secure the fame she’s always wanted, or stay quiet and avoid calling attention to the crime itself.

An unusual self-help group takes center stage in this thrilling debut novel about a woman who, after killing her husband with a cast-iron skillet, becomes terrified of losing her kids. But luckily, she isn’t the only woman in town reaching the brink. Soon, she finds herself at the helm of a group of women who, among them, have four bodies to hide. Can they all figure out the perfect way to bury their husbands…and get away with it? Fueled by anger but tempered by a moral core, the group must help each other figure out how to get away with murder for good.

Eighteen-year-old camp counselor Cory is unsure about where her life is headed when Rolo, the CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company and the father of one of her campers, offers her a childcare job on his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by Rolo’s company, Cory continues to tell herself she’s in charge. But Corey’s mother, Emer, isn’t convinced, and embarks on a journey to heed a cry for help she’s convinced she hears. Alternating between Cory and Emer’s perspectives, Fruit of the Dead explores love, control and late-stage capitalism.

This debut novel opens in 2015, with museum employee Tatum Vega happily living in Chile with her partner. Tatum has all but forgotten the decade she spent in New York City orbiting the brilliant and famous author M. Domínguez when a reporter calls asking for an interview—Domínguez has been accused of assault, and the reporter is looking for corroboration. Tatum is forced to reexamine her all-consuming relationship with Dominguez while reckoning with the nuances of imbalanced relationships, gender, celebrity and Latinx identity.

Brooklyn-based writer Alexandra Tanner, whose work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker and more, has crafted a darkly funny story of sisterhood with Worry, which opens in March of 2019. 28-year-old Jules has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy—a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about—comes to crash indefinitely. As the year goes on and a new decade looms, a disastrous trip home to Florida forces Jules and Poppy to ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

New Yorker staff writer Vinson Cunningham draws on his work for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in his debut novel about an idealistic campaign worker. When protagonist David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he’s intrigued by the rhetoric and by the compromises it will take to become the United States’ first Black president.And during his18 months working for the Senator's presidential campaign, David meets people who raise questions—about history, art, race, religion and fatherhood—that force him to look at his own life and what it means to really bring about change.