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Here Are the 21 Books We're Most Excited to Read in 2018

Pile 'em up.

By Estelle Tang
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Zadie Smith, Meg Wolitzer, Sloane Crosley: 2018's notable books read like a who's who of the bookshelf. Whether you're thrilled to encounter these favorites again or be enthralled by a totally new literary love, the best way to get into gear is with this guide to the books that will most excite and excel.

Brass by Xhenet Aliu (January 23)

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This debut novel about immigrants drawn to a Connecticut brass town is garnering buzz. Four generations on, a teenager faces a future in the town that's gripped her family for years, and searches the past for clues about how to change her fate.

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This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins (January 30)

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Start your year off with this collection of essays by Morgan Jerkins focused on "living at the intersection of black, female, and feminist in (white) America." Jerkins tackles topics from Rachel Dolezal to Sailor Moon and black female sexuality.

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The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory (January 30)

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I need to read this rom-com immediately. The meet-cute? A guy gets stuck in an elevator with a woman (naturally) and asks her to come to a wedding as his date (amazing). Also, he's a pediatric surgeon and she's a mayor's chief of staff. Do you need more details? Didn't think so.

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Feel Free by Zadie Smith (February 6)

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New writing by Zadie Smith is always a cause for celebration. In this collection of essays, she considers what it means to be a global, literary, and digital citizen, with her typical unassuming candor and seemingly casual brilliance.

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An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (February 6)

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Tayari Jones explores the human impact of ugly injustices in her fourth novel. Celestial and Roy, a married couple ostensibly facing a bright future, are cruelly sundered when he is sentenced to a long jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit.

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All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva (February 20)

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Ever feel completely beholden to forces greater than your will? Such is the common lot of Anjali Sachdeva's protagonists and, I suspect, many of us on any given day. This debut collection of stories delves into no smaller subjects than power, science, loss, and love.

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The Merry Spinster by Mallory Ortberg (March 13)

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Feminist fairy tales? Just what the doctor ordered. Texts From Jane Eyre and Dear Prudence agony aunt Mallory Ortberg conjures up the kinds of stories that will hopefully scary the bogeymen—with the emphasis on "men"—away.

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The Emissary by Yoko Tawada (March 19)

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In a kind of Benjamin Button take on Japan's demographic predicament, an aging population, Yoko Tawada's short forthcoming novel imagines a post-disaster world in which children are born wizened and wise, so it's the elderly who must carry the day.

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The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer (April 3)

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Meg Wolitzer could be considered a grande dame of the literary world, but at the center of her new novel is Greer Kadetsky, a college student just beginning to formulate the shape of her future. When Greer meets the established figure Faith Frank, that vision becomes just that much sharper.

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The List by Amy Siskind (April 3)

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The new year is a great time to regroup; fuel your productive energies with this account of Trump's first year in office. Amy Siskind has been compiling the presidents misdeeds in The Weekly List, and here it is, all together in one book.

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Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley (April 3)

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Still thinking about that time Sloane Crosley gave her tyrannical boss a cookie illustrated with her own face? Same. (If you don't know the story, read I Was Told There'd Be Cake immediately.) You'll be pleased to know that there's more where that came from, in this forthcoming essay collection.

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The Recovering by Leslie Jamison (April 3)

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At once unflinchingly personal and yet situated within a broader human history, The Empathy Exams author Leslie Jamison's memoir about addiction draws upon the stories of other artists to illustrate its dark power.

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Sharp by Michelle Dean (April 10)

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For a study of great twentieth-century New York female thinkers, try Michelle Dean's Sharp. Women like Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag, and Nora Ephron have left gargantuan legacies, and their boundary-pushing contributions receive the spotlight here.

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And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O'Connell (April 10)

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For every What to Expect When You're Expecting (and its ilk), there should be a What to Expect When You Weren't Expecting. But, strangely, there isn't, so Meaghan O'Connell has committed her experience of accidental pregnancy and motherhood to the page.

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Basic Black With Pearls by Helen Weinzweig (April 17)

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Billed as a "lost feminist classic," this 1980 Canadian novel—the second from an author who published her first at 58—boasts a clandestine love affair, dazzling locations, and reflections on class mobility.

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You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld (April 24)

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For those who crave portraits of the upper middle class that are as pointillist as they are pointed, here are ten new stories likely to satisfy. It's Curtis Sittenfeld's first collection of short fiction, but the author of Eligible and Prep has shown time and again she knows just what to, well, say.

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Not That Bad edited by Roxane Gay (May 1)

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There's no end in sight to the difficult work of examining rape, assault, and harassment. With contributions from Gabrielle Union and Ally Sheedy, and edited by Roxane Gay, this collection of essays will take that conversation even further.

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The Pisces by Melissa Broder (May 1)

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If The Shape of Water didn't have enough fish-man sex for you, come May you'll have more than you can deal with. Melissa Broder (a.k.a. @sosadtoday)'s protagonist Lucy falls for a gorgeous swimmer on Venice Beach; it just so happens that only part of him is human.

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Motherhood by Sheila Heti (May 1)

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The author of cult literary hit How Should a Person Be? returns with a fictional meditation on motherhood. The thirty-something narrator, surrounded by friends contemplating children, grapples with whether she wants to do the same.

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Florida by Lauren Groff (June 5)

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If your last book was Barack Obama's favorite read in 2015, there's no pressure with your next book, right? Readers who also loved Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies will be thrilled to get their paws on this collection of stories, inspired by the author's home state.

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From: ELLE US
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