Hachette Library – Starred Reviews

★ The HEIR APPARENT

By: Rebecca Armitage

Tiaras, titles, and titillating royals abound in this engrossing debut from Armitage. Lexi Villiers, 29, suddenly becomes the heir apparent to her grandmother, the Queen of England, after a tragic skiing accident kills her father and her twin brother, along with a longtime family friend. Lexi, also known as Princess Alexandrina, walked away from the royal family several years earlier and is in her second year of medical residency. But duty calls her back. The Queen gives her one year to decide whether to accept her destiny, or the crown will go to Lexi’s smarmy Uncle Richard. She’s forced leave behind her student life with her two best friends, Finn and Jack, and the budding romance with Jack she had just started to enjoy. The Heir Apparent is filled with secrets, scandals, and a few unexpected twists, including a forbidden and beautiful love story. Anglophiles will enjoy this intriguing and expressive story of self-introspection that takes place in the thinly veiled world of the British royal family. Armitage’s writing is spectacular, with rich dialogue and descriptions, a vibrant depiction of the burden of duty versus personal freedom, and unique insights into royal life.

Cardinal: December 2, 2025; ISBN: 9781538776308 Hardcover

★ HEMLOCK

By: Melissa Faliveno

Sam returns to her family’s cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with a plan to restore it to sell. Her father built the cabin himself but hasn’t been back since Sam’s mother  disappeared in the woods years before. Sam tells herself she’ll stay for a few weeks before returning to New York and her boyfriend, Stephen, but the woods draw her in, and time slips away. Several nights, Sam wakes up deep in the woods, unsure of how she got there. A doe speaks to her as it eats corn in her yard. Though she’s been sober for ten months, Sam starts drinking again. Her grandmother and mother both struggled with alcoholism, and Sam feels the pull within herself towards oblivion. In her first novel, Faliveno’s prose shines as Sam deals with solitude and isolation, desire and fear. Her body strengthened by the work on the house, Sam’s gender feels increasingly fluid. Hemlock is a propulsive, atmospheric story of ghosts, monsters, and transformation, with a sharp eye for gender dynamics and the queer experience in rural places. This tension-filled exploration of an inescapable haunting is a nuanced story of addiction and inheritance.

Little, Brown: January 20, 2025; ISBN: 9780316588195 Hardcover

★ Missing Sam

By: Thrity Umrigar

Ali’s wife Sam disappears the morning after they have a bitter late-night argument, and she veers from concern to fear that Sam has left her. Restrained by humiliation and her erroneous belief that the police require a 48-hour waiting period, Ali kicks off a series of damaging mistakes by delaying reporting Sam’s disappearance. She reluctantly tells detectives about their fight but deletes their heated texts and fumbles media interviews. Meanwhile, Sam’s disappearance stretches into weeks as the leads dry up, and public speculation about Ali’s suspicious behavior swells. When Ali is shunned and abused in the artsy Cleveland Heights neighborhood she’d considered a cocoon, her estranged father provides unexpected comfort. Months later, Ali’s prayers are answered when Sam, battered and blindfolded, is dumped near their home. But Sam’s abductor remains at large. Umrigar explores the ripple effect of violent crime in gut-wrenching detail, capturing the callous intrusions Ali and Sam suffered, the space for redemption it created in their family relationships, and their determined devotion to each other. Healing from the abduction and lifelong patterns of abuse and discrimination, Sam and Ali find strength in corners of their lives that they’d written off. Gritty hope and redemption glimmer throughout this must-read literary crime story

Algonquin Books: January 27, 2025; ISBN: 9781643757629 Hardcover

★ NIGHTSHADE AND OAK

By: Molly O’Neill

Mallt y Nos wanders Roman-occupied Britain with her pack of loyal dogs, guiding souls out of their bodies and towards the afterlife. But when she’s caught up in a wayward spell by Belis, the desperate daughter of Boudicca who is trying to save her sister, she finds herself forced into a mortal body, a body that frustratingly can’t run a hundred miles in a day or slip between worlds. Together, the two women head towards the afterlife, Belis with the hopes of retrieving her sister’s spirit, and Mallt needing to get back her magic so that the souls of the undead won’t all come to haunt the British isles forever. O’Neill’s specialty, as she proved in Greenteeth (2025), is mildly inhuman creatures being forced to deal with mortals and their nonsense. Mallt is an exciting main character, and Belis provides readers with flashbacks of real British history and legend. O’Neill has delivered yet another excellent story rooted in the folklore of the British isles, this one charged with a slow-burn queer love story and two characters who have to confront their deepest selves to help save the world of the dead and those they care for most. — Leah von Essen

YA: YA readers will enjoy the folklore inspiration and bold, queer female protagonists.

Orbit: February 3rd, 2025; ISBN: 9780316584272 Paperback