Bloomsbury Turns 25!
With the support of the publisher, Shelf Awareness celebrates Bloomsbury's 25th anniversary of publishing in the US.
Also published on this date: Shelf Awareness for Thursday, November 9, 2023
November 9, 2023 Dedicated Issue: Bloomsbury's 25th Anniversary
Editors' Note
Books & Authors
Welcome from Bloomsbury
This year Bloomsbury US celebrates 25 years of building a proud-making list of groundbreaking, conversation-shaping literary fiction, epic fantasy, hard-hitting narrative nonfiction, genre-bending memoir, graphic narratives, and globally inspired cookbooks on the Adult side. (Our US Children's list began in 2002.) We're a relatively small division, publishing about 50 frontlist titles and 25 paperbacks a year. In the past two years alone, those books have been New York Times bestsellers, Indie Next Picks, Indies Introduce Selections, B&N Discover Picks, and Reese's Book Club picks, and our authors have taken home the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize.
One of our early major successes was Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000), which chronicled the funny, stomach-turning, hedonistic excursions of a chef named Anthony Bourdain. More than 20 years later, there's still been nothing like it. Bloomsbury published several of Bourdain's impressively rangy, always brilliant books, among them the perennial bestseller Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, which we'll re-release next year for its 20th anniversary.
Another highlight from our early years, this one fiction: Susanna Clarke's Hugo Award winner Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), an instant New York Times bestseller that set the tone for our soaring literary fantasy list, which, 16 years later, now includes Clarke's deeply surreal second novel, Piranesi, along with works by Alan Moore, Samantha Shannon, and Sarah J. Maas. We'll release a 20th anniversary edition of Jonathan Strange next year as well, timed to a new Susanna Clarke story from the Strange universe. These 20th anniversary reissues are especially meaningful for a young company like Bloomsbury; we have an amazing backlist!
Tom Standage's A History of the World in Six Glasses, which tells the story of human culture through its beverages, is a standout example of Bloomsbury's popular history list, where food narratives have an especially strong presence, from Mark Kurlansky's microhistories to Jessica B. Harris's classic history of African American cuisine, High on the Hog.
In 2015, Bloomsbury published journalist Sam Quinones' Dreamland, an on-the-ground view of the confluent forces that led to America's opioid epidemic. In a remarkable feat of storytelling, Quinones drew the connections among the medical establishment's overprescription of opiates, the emergence of a new class of addicts, and the influx of cheap black tar heroin. The following year another urgent and prescient work of social science, Carol Anderson's White Rage, named and contextualized a history of American policies—from the "war on drugs" to ID laws—that undermine Black political advancement. Both books won National Book Critics Circle Awards, and Quinones and Anderson have come to anchor Bloomsbury's issue-driven nonfiction list, which also includes journalists Rachel Louise Snyder, Nicole Perlroth, and many more.
Our stellar fiction list includes the transcendent talent of Miriam Toews, whose work is deadly serious and yet filled with so much humor and love as to become celebratory. Bloomsbury's release of Toews's novel Women Talking in 2019 was like nothing we've seen before or since: authors, booksellers, librarians—everyone seemed to recognize the universality of this singular work. Earlier this year, Sarah Polley's film adaptation of Women Talking won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. We'll publish Miriam's next project, A Truce That Is Not Peace, in the Fall of 2025.
Adrienne Vaughan, the late President of Bloomsbury US, flanked by Publishing Director Nancy Miller and Editorial Director Callie Garnett, honoring the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winner Chasing Me to My Grave by the late artist Winfred Rembert, as told to Erin I. Kelly.
This year was marked by the tragic loss of our beloved Bloomsbury U.S. President, Adrienne Vaughan. Adrienne was a beacon and a role model to all of us, a born leader whose vision for what was possible was informed by her brilliant business sense and drive to achieve, but also by her warmth and kindness and her trust and belief in all of us, motivating us to work beyond our best and accomplish so much for Bloomsbury, our books, our authors, our sense of what's possible. In celebrating Bloomsbury's new and upcoming releases, we celebrate her wisdom and her leadership. This issue is dedicated to Adrienne. We strive every day to honor her memory and continue her legacy into the next 25 years of continued growth, success, and publishing of the highest quality.
.
New Releases from Three Classic Bloomsbury Authors
Samantha Shannon
Bloomsbury has been Samantha Shannon's publisher for a decade now, working with her across both The Bone Season and Roots of Chaos series. "In those years," writes Senior Editor Grace McNamee, "Samantha has gone from 21-year-old writer-to-watch to the New York Times bestselling author of two incredible series, whose books have sold millions of copies and become TikTok sensations. Samantha's artistic development is especially reflected in her revisions for this new, anniversary edition of her very first book, The Bone Season."
The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Samantha Shannon
A lavishly reimagined and revised tenth anniversary edition of the New York Times bestselling first novel in the sensational Bone Season series.
Samantha's fans have flocked to the Author's Preferred Text, making it a USA Today bestseller a decade on from its initial publication. We're so excited to bring Samantha's fans additional revised, Preferred Text versions of Samantha's later Bone Season books, The Mime Order, The Song Rising, and The Mask Falling in 2024. And we're thrilled to announce, coming in 2025, the exciting release of Samantha's fifth Bone Season book.
Other titles by Samantha Shannon include the two-book Roots of Chaos series: The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night.
Roz Chast
"Roz is a national treasure!" writes Publishing Director Nancy Miller. "Bloomsbury has been publishing Roz since 2006, and it's been a sheer joy to watch the depth and breadth of her readership grow with each book. Her imaginative leaps in I Must Be Dreaming and her ability to translate her fun, fantastical, wacky vision into living color results in a book that is both hilarious and deep, and feels universal. And we're already looking forward to Roz's next book: her fans will be thrilled to hear that we've recently acquired her new graphic narrative, in collaboration with her fellow New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein, called The Two Saddest Kitchens."
I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast
From the beloved New Yorker cartoonist and #1 New York Times bestselling author Roz Chast—her hilarious new full-color graphic narrative, exploring the surreal nighttime world inside her mind.
Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans—humanity has never ceased trying to decipher one of the strangest unexplained phenomena we all experience: dreaming. Now in her new book, Roz Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always uproarious and often profound—accompanied by an illustrated tour through "Dream-Theory Land" guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast's newest subject of fascination—and promises to make it yours, too.
Other titles by Roz Chast include Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir and Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York.
Mark Kurlansky
"Bloomsbury has been publishing Mark Kurlansky for more than two decades, beginning with his now-classic, James Beard Award winning, genre-defining Cod," writes his long-time editor Nancy Miller. "Over the course of those years, his readers and I have had the pleasure of learning about everything imaginable in the world—not only with each book, but with each illuminating, delightful paragraph. What's special about The Core of an Onion is that it happens to be Mark's most delicious book yet, with recipes meant to be cooked and savored and swooned over, not just viewed as historical artifacts. And because it's Mark, each recipe has a story to tell. And our long collaboration continues: Bloomsbury has just signed up Mark's next book, Lobsters!"
The Core of an Onion by Mark Kurlansky
"Kurlansky manages to make the cultivation and culinary use of the onion feel like an epic tale as he follows the beloved allium across history, across the globe, and of course, across our plates."—Eater, Best Food Books of Fall 2023
As Julia Child once said, "It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions." Historically she's been right—and not just in the kitchen. Flourishing in just about every climate and culture around the world, onions have provided the essential basis not only for sautés, stews, and sauces, but for medicines, metaphors, and folklore. Featuring historical images throughout, and celebrating the raw, roasted, creamed, marinated, and pickled, The Core of an Onion shares the secrets to celebrated Parisian chef Alain Senderen's onion soup eaten to cure late-night drunkenness; Hemingway's raw onion and peanut butter sandwich; and the Gibson, a debonaire gin martini garnished with a pickled onion—exploring, delectably, how and why onions reign from Italy to India and everywhere in between.
Other books by Mark Kurlansky include The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing and Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas.
.
Fall 2023: Bloomsbury Has Four Indie Next Picks!
Bloomsbury's four Indie Next Picks this fall are:
Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto (September Indie Next Pick)
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (November Indie Next Pick)
I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast (November Indie Next Pick)
Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald (November Indie Next "Now in Paperback" Pick)
.
New in Paperback
The Method by Isaac Butler
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Nonfiction
The acclaimed cultural history of Method acting--an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood.
Senior Editor Ben Hyman writes, "Beneath its storytelling verve and rigorous research, The Method is grounded in a conviction that what artists make, what artists do—that these things can matter in a very real, political, material sense. This belief is a unifying thread throughout author Isaac Butler's work, including his forthcoming book with Bloomsbury about art, the religious right, and American government in the 1980s and 90s. It's one of the things that inspires me every time I get to engage with Isaac's writing. To see booksellers, readers, and critics identify and celebrate this same energy in The Method: we couldn't have asked for a better or more gratifying reception to the book."
Chasing Me to My Grave by Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize
"A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear." —Bryan Stevenson
Chasing Me to My Grave presents the late artist Winfred Rembert's breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly.
Editorial Director Callie Garnett writes, "We lost a monumental artist and storyteller when we lost Winfred Rembert in 2021. Every time I see this book, I find his etched and dyed leather paintings flashing and glaring differently, now joyfully and now defiantly, and always against forgetting. Thanks to Erin I. Kelly's diligence and devotion, his voice reaches through these pages and lives on. I'll be returning to this book forever."
Preview: 2024 Fiction Highlights
Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclare
Agnes is a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients. Emily lives in London and works as a model... and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.
Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for—extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. Kicked out of her religious family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But there's one thing they have that she does not: a safety net.
Senior Editor Amber Oliver writes, "I haven't stopped thinking about this sensuous, mesmerizing novel since I first read it. Debut author Celine Saintclare's intimate, wry voice shines as she offers social commentary on the glitzy, glamorous, troubling world of sugaring. And it's exciting to see the novel tackle pressing issues of consent and beauty, class, and control. I can't get enough of this page-turning tale and I'm so excited for readers to fall in love with it too."
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
Jennifer Croft is a miracle. She's an award-winning translator, a game-changing advocate for literary translators, and her own writing is just as extraordinary. In her debut novel, 12 translators gather at the forest-surrounded villa of their renowned, reclusive author Irena Rey to translate her magnum opus when, suddenly, she disappears. Left on their own over the next six weeks, they must work together—and more often against each other—to figure out where she may be and just simply survive in this creepy, madness-inducing primeval forest. It's a terrifically propulsive, immersive, intellectually stimulating read, one that somehow manages to merge the joy of a book world thriller with linguistic play.
Senior Editor Daniel Loedel writes, "I had long been a fan of Jenny's work when I received The Extinction of Irena Rey on submission so my hopes were high, but the read immediately surpassed them. Not only was the language at once brilliant and playful, but so was the story. It's an adventure truly like no other, full of twists and turns and everything from family secrets and affairs to psychedelic mushrooms to duels to climate protests and catastrophes. And hilarious and wild though it is, it still poses incredibly profound questions about creativity and the nature of individuality. I honestly still don't know how she pulled it off."
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Bryce's world is brought to the brink of collapse—with its future resting on hers and her mate Hunt's shoulders.
Executive Editor Noa Wheeler writes, "I can't wait for Sarah's fans to read this next installment in the Crescent City series. I expect they will be as blown away as I was with this epic page-turner. Sarah continues to reimagine a fantasy world with modern technology while maintaining her signature romance, heart-stopping action, and characters fans truly love. It's a stunner!"
Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson
Days after the dawn of Y2K, beautiful, charismatic 20-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, her freshman year roommate Joy stumbles upon a 20-year-old letter from Karlie that convinces her the man convicted of the crime is wrongfully imprisoned. Jumping between 2019 and 1999, Bright and Tender Dark is a compulsively readable, prismatic literary mystery that brilliantly mines the mythology of murder, the power of urban legend, and the psychological urge to both protect and exploit what you love but cannot have.
Senior Editor Daniel Loedel writes, "Joanna Pearson's debut Bright and Tender Dark is literary suspense of truly the highest order. It portrays our era of online obsession and late 90s campus culture with equal insight and exhilaration, and brilliantly unpacks the thrills and dangers of coming of age as a young woman. You will read it deep into the night."
---
Follow Bloomsbury on social media!
Instagram: @bloomsburybooksus
TikTok: @bloomsburybooks
X: @bloomsburypub
Facebook: @bloomsburyusa
.
Editors' Note
Books & Authors
Welcome from Bloomsbury
This year Bloomsbury US celebrates 25 years of building a proud-making list of groundbreaking, conversation-shaping literary fiction, epic fantasy, hard-hitting narrative nonfiction, genre-bending memoir, graphic narratives, and globally inspired cookbooks on the Adult side. (Our US Children's list began in 2002.) We're a relatively small division, publishing about 50 frontlist titles and 25 paperbacks a year. In the past two years alone, those books have been New York Times bestsellers, Indie Next Picks, Indies Introduce Selections, B&N Discover Picks, and Reese's Book Club picks, and our authors have taken home the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize.
One of our early major successes was Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000), which chronicled the funny, stomach-turning, hedonistic excursions of a chef named Anthony Bourdain. More than 20 years later, there's still been nothing like it. Bloomsbury published several of Bourdain's impressively rangy, always brilliant books, among them the perennial bestseller Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, which we'll re-release next year for its 20th anniversary.
Another highlight from our early years, this one fiction: Susanna Clarke's Hugo Award winner Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), an instant New York Times bestseller that set the tone for our soaring literary fantasy list, which, 16 years later, now includes Clarke's deeply surreal second novel, Piranesi, along with works by Alan Moore, Samantha Shannon, and Sarah J. Maas. We'll release a 20th anniversary edition of Jonathan Strange next year as well, timed to a new Susanna Clarke story from the Strange universe. These 20th anniversary reissues are especially meaningful for a young company like Bloomsbury; we have an amazing backlist!
Tom Standage's A History of the World in Six Glasses, which tells the story of human culture through its beverages, is a standout example of Bloomsbury's popular history list, where food narratives have an especially strong presence, from Mark Kurlansky's microhistories to Jessica B. Harris's classic history of African American cuisine, High on the Hog.
In 2015, Bloomsbury published journalist Sam Quinones' Dreamland, an on-the-ground view of the confluent forces that led to America's opioid epidemic. In a remarkable feat of storytelling, Quinones drew the connections among the medical establishment's overprescription of opiates, the emergence of a new class of addicts, and the influx of cheap black tar heroin. The following year another urgent and prescient work of social science, Carol Anderson's White Rage, named and contextualized a history of American policies—from the "war on drugs" to ID laws—that undermine Black political advancement. Both books won National Book Critics Circle Awards, and Quinones and Anderson have come to anchor Bloomsbury's issue-driven nonfiction list, which also includes journalists Rachel Louise Snyder, Nicole Perlroth, and many more.
Our stellar fiction list includes the transcendent talent of Miriam Toews, whose work is deadly serious and yet filled with so much humor and love as to become celebratory. Bloomsbury's release of Toews's novel Women Talking in 2019 was like nothing we've seen before or since: authors, booksellers, librarians—everyone seemed to recognize the universality of this singular work. Earlier this year, Sarah Polley's film adaptation of Women Talking won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. We'll publish Miriam's next project, A Truce That Is Not Peace, in the Fall of 2025.
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Adrienne Vaughan, the late President of Bloomsbury US, flanked by Publishing Director Nancy Miller and Editorial Director Callie Garnett, honoring the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winner Chasing Me to My Grave by the late artist Winfred Rembert, as told to Erin I. Kelly. |
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This year was marked by the tragic loss of our beloved Bloomsbury U.S. President, Adrienne Vaughan. Adrienne was a beacon and a role model to all of us, a born leader whose vision for what was possible was informed by her brilliant business sense and drive to achieve, but also by her warmth and kindness and her trust and belief in all of us, motivating us to work beyond our best and accomplish so much for Bloomsbury, our books, our authors, our sense of what's possible. In celebrating Bloomsbury's new and upcoming releases, we celebrate her wisdom and her leadership. This issue is dedicated to Adrienne. We strive every day to honor her memory and continue her legacy into the next 25 years of continued growth, success, and publishing of the highest quality.
.
New Releases from Three Classic Bloomsbury Authors
Samantha Shannon
Bloomsbury has been Samantha Shannon's publisher for a decade now, working with her across both The Bone Season and Roots of Chaos series. "In those years," writes Senior Editor Grace McNamee, "Samantha has gone from 21-year-old writer-to-watch to the New York Times bestselling author of two incredible series, whose books have sold millions of copies and become TikTok sensations. Samantha's artistic development is especially reflected in her revisions for this new, anniversary edition of her very first book, The Bone Season."
The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Samantha Shannon
A lavishly reimagined and revised tenth anniversary edition of the New York Times bestselling first novel in the sensational Bone Season series.
Samantha's fans have flocked to the Author's Preferred Text, making it a USA Today bestseller a decade on from its initial publication. We're so excited to bring Samantha's fans additional revised, Preferred Text versions of Samantha's later Bone Season books, The Mime Order, The Song Rising, and The Mask Falling in 2024. And we're thrilled to announce, coming in 2025, the exciting release of Samantha's fifth Bone Season book.
Other titles by Samantha Shannon include the two-book Roots of Chaos series: The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night.
Roz Chast
"Roz is a national treasure!" writes Publishing Director Nancy Miller. "Bloomsbury has been publishing Roz since 2006, and it's been a sheer joy to watch the depth and breadth of her readership grow with each book. Her imaginative leaps in I Must Be Dreaming and her ability to translate her fun, fantastical, wacky vision into living color results in a book that is both hilarious and deep, and feels universal. And we're already looking forward to Roz's next book: her fans will be thrilled to hear that we've recently acquired her new graphic narrative, in collaboration with her fellow New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein, called The Two Saddest Kitchens."
I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast
From the beloved New Yorker cartoonist and #1 New York Times bestselling author Roz Chast—her hilarious new full-color graphic narrative, exploring the surreal nighttime world inside her mind.
Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans—humanity has never ceased trying to decipher one of the strangest unexplained phenomena we all experience: dreaming. Now in her new book, Roz Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always uproarious and often profound—accompanied by an illustrated tour through "Dream-Theory Land" guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast's newest subject of fascination—and promises to make it yours, too.
Other titles by Roz Chast include Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir and Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York.
Mark Kurlansky
"Bloomsbury has been publishing Mark Kurlansky for more than two decades, beginning with his now-classic, James Beard Award winning, genre-defining Cod," writes his long-time editor Nancy Miller. "Over the course of those years, his readers and I have had the pleasure of learning about everything imaginable in the world—not only with each book, but with each illuminating, delightful paragraph. What's special about The Core of an Onion is that it happens to be Mark's most delicious book yet, with recipes meant to be cooked and savored and swooned over, not just viewed as historical artifacts. And because it's Mark, each recipe has a story to tell. And our long collaboration continues: Bloomsbury has just signed up Mark's next book, Lobsters!"
The Core of an Onion by Mark Kurlansky
"Kurlansky manages to make the cultivation and culinary use of the onion feel like an epic tale as he follows the beloved allium across history, across the globe, and of course, across our plates."—Eater, Best Food Books of Fall 2023
As Julia Child once said, "It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions." Historically she's been right—and not just in the kitchen. Flourishing in just about every climate and culture around the world, onions have provided the essential basis not only for sautés, stews, and sauces, but for medicines, metaphors, and folklore. Featuring historical images throughout, and celebrating the raw, roasted, creamed, marinated, and pickled, The Core of an Onion shares the secrets to celebrated Parisian chef Alain Senderen's onion soup eaten to cure late-night drunkenness; Hemingway's raw onion and peanut butter sandwich; and the Gibson, a debonaire gin martini garnished with a pickled onion—exploring, delectably, how and why onions reign from Italy to India and everywhere in between.
Other books by Mark Kurlansky include The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing and Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas.
.
Fall 2023: Bloomsbury Has Four Indie Next Picks!
Bloomsbury's four Indie Next Picks this fall are:
Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto (September Indie Next Pick)
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (November Indie Next Pick)
I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast (November Indie Next Pick)
Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald (November Indie Next "Now in Paperback" Pick)
.
New in Paperback
The Method by Isaac Butler
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Nonfiction
The acclaimed cultural history of Method acting--an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood.
Senior Editor Ben Hyman writes, "Beneath its storytelling verve and rigorous research, The Method is grounded in a conviction that what artists make, what artists do—that these things can matter in a very real, political, material sense. This belief is a unifying thread throughout author Isaac Butler's work, including his forthcoming book with Bloomsbury about art, the religious right, and American government in the 1980s and 90s. It's one of the things that inspires me every time I get to engage with Isaac's writing. To see booksellers, readers, and critics identify and celebrate this same energy in The Method: we couldn't have asked for a better or more gratifying reception to the book."
Chasing Me to My Grave by Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize
"A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear." —Bryan Stevenson
Chasing Me to My Grave presents the late artist Winfred Rembert's breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly.
Editorial Director Callie Garnett writes, "We lost a monumental artist and storyteller when we lost Winfred Rembert in 2021. Every time I see this book, I find his etched and dyed leather paintings flashing and glaring differently, now joyfully and now defiantly, and always against forgetting. Thanks to Erin I. Kelly's diligence and devotion, his voice reaches through these pages and lives on. I'll be returning to this book forever."
Preview: 2024 Fiction Highlights
Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclare
Agnes is a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients. Emily lives in London and works as a model... and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.
Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for—extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. Kicked out of her religious family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But there's one thing they have that she does not: a safety net.
Senior Editor Amber Oliver writes, "I haven't stopped thinking about this sensuous, mesmerizing novel since I first read it. Debut author Celine Saintclare's intimate, wry voice shines as she offers social commentary on the glitzy, glamorous, troubling world of sugaring. And it's exciting to see the novel tackle pressing issues of consent and beauty, class, and control. I can't get enough of this page-turning tale and I'm so excited for readers to fall in love with it too."
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
Jennifer Croft is a miracle. She's an award-winning translator, a game-changing advocate for literary translators, and her own writing is just as extraordinary. In her debut novel, 12 translators gather at the forest-surrounded villa of their renowned, reclusive author Irena Rey to translate her magnum opus when, suddenly, she disappears. Left on their own over the next six weeks, they must work together—and more often against each other—to figure out where she may be and just simply survive in this creepy, madness-inducing primeval forest. It's a terrifically propulsive, immersive, intellectually stimulating read, one that somehow manages to merge the joy of a book world thriller with linguistic play.
Senior Editor Daniel Loedel writes, "I had long been a fan of Jenny's work when I received The Extinction of Irena Rey on submission so my hopes were high, but the read immediately surpassed them. Not only was the language at once brilliant and playful, but so was the story. It's an adventure truly like no other, full of twists and turns and everything from family secrets and affairs to psychedelic mushrooms to duels to climate protests and catastrophes. And hilarious and wild though it is, it still poses incredibly profound questions about creativity and the nature of individuality. I honestly still don't know how she pulled it off."
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Bryce's world is brought to the brink of collapse—with its future resting on hers and her mate Hunt's shoulders.
Executive Editor Noa Wheeler writes, "I can't wait for Sarah's fans to read this next installment in the Crescent City series. I expect they will be as blown away as I was with this epic page-turner. Sarah continues to reimagine a fantasy world with modern technology while maintaining her signature romance, heart-stopping action, and characters fans truly love. It's a stunner!"
Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson
Days after the dawn of Y2K, beautiful, charismatic 20-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, her freshman year roommate Joy stumbles upon a 20-year-old letter from Karlie that convinces her the man convicted of the crime is wrongfully imprisoned. Jumping between 2019 and 1999, Bright and Tender Dark is a compulsively readable, prismatic literary mystery that brilliantly mines the mythology of murder, the power of urban legend, and the psychological urge to both protect and exploit what you love but cannot have.
Senior Editor Daniel Loedel writes, "Joanna Pearson's debut Bright and Tender Dark is literary suspense of truly the highest order. It portrays our era of online obsession and late 90s campus culture with equal insight and exhilaration, and brilliantly unpacks the thrills and dangers of coming of age as a young woman. You will read it deep into the night."
---
Follow Bloomsbury on social media!
Instagram: @bloomsburybooksus
TikTok: @bloomsburybooks
X: @bloomsburypub
Facebook: @bloomsburyusa
.