New Book Releases: January 25, 2022

Each week, I’ll catalog the biggest and most exciting adult and YA fiction — and the occasional nonfiction — coming out that Tuesday.

NOTES ON AN EXECUTION, Danya Kukafka. In Kukafka’s second novel, a serial killer on death row reflects on his past, while the stories of the women in his life — his mother, his wife’s twin sister, an obsessed detective — offer counterpoints to his own skewed perspective of his life.
This is an extraordinary novel, one that deserves to win a legion of awards. The serial killer’s second person chapters are masterfully written and deeply unsettling — no small feat for a POV structure few authors attempt. The ending is heartbreaking, surprising, and fearless. It’s only January, but surely this will end up as one of the year’s best novels. “A career-defining novel — powerful, important, intensely human, and filled with a unique examination of tragedy, one where the reader is left with a curious emotion: hope,” writes USA Today. Bookshop.

A PREVIOUS LIFE, Edmund White. A Sicilian aristocrat and his younger American wife decide to break their silence about their scandalous relationship. “A dizzyingly enticing and kaleidoscopic take on the spectrum of sexual experiences,” writes Publisher’s Weekly in a starred review…