The Most Anticipated Books of 2022

Our Oprah Daily books team predicts 2022 will be a great year for book nerds.

Notes on an Execution

$26 Bookshop The pre-pub reviews are calling this thriller by the author of Girl in Snow “masterly”—and we agree. The novel opens on Death Row as a serial killer is about to meet his fate, and then explores all the influences that combined to produce a murderer. Chilling and unexpected

You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

$28 Bookshop This definitive gathering of essays and reflections from the writer Toni Morrison deemed “one of the greatest writers of our time” spans 35 years of Hurston’s work, showcasing her great intellect, social and cultural insights, wisdom—and wit, too. Here the iconic author of Their Eyes Were Watching God shares thoughts regarding form, Black folk expression and self-possession, and her unique philosophy on politics, voting, and racism at the intersection of race, geography, and gender. With a compelling intro by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

$29 B&N $29 B&N Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation The best way to know and understand yourself is through the lens of the past—at least that’s literary blogger and journalist Newton’s theory. “If our lives have been circumscribed because of the way we’ve viewed our family,” she writes, “confronting our ancestors as complicated human beings rather than distant archetypes can suggest different ways of being ourselves.” Her interest in genealogy and its history for this powerful debut emerged out of a 2014 Harper’s magazine story.

To Paradise

$30 Bookshop In To Paradise, Yanagihara reimagines a divergent United States after the Civil War. In the aftermath, the country is divided into the North, Free States, the United Colonies, and the West. The Free States comprise a world in which same-sex marriages are the norm at the turn of the 20th century. As we read, the strangeness of this world confuses, but as the story develops, we accept and then forget as we immerse ourselves in the characters’ lives. That Yanagihara turns our expectations and changes our perceptions is what makes To Paradise a masterpiece.

Wahala: A Novel

$23 B&N Three Nigerian-British best friends—Simi, Ronke and Boo—met in university through their similar backgrounds. Now in their 30s and living in London, they are at various stages of success in their careers and love lives. A fourth, the wealthy Isobel who was a childhood friend of Simis, arrives and disrupts their predictable lives. And here’s something else to look forward to: The BBC is adapting this novel into a TV drama, adding to the growing list of shows about Black female friendships.

Wise Up: Irreverent Enlightenment from a Mother Who’s Been Through It

$28 B&N The bestselling author of Model Patient and self-taught expert on stoicism draws on her vast knowledge of the ancient Greeks—as well as on her own experience navigating a life-threatening neurological disease—to produce a road map to kindness and courage. These profound and inspiring life lessons are delivered as a series of letters to her son, and they are as erudite and as entertaining as the former MTV VJ herself.

Trust

$28 B&N A virtuoso performance by an emerging talent whose first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Trust is four books in one: a novel within a novel, a partial manuscript, a memoir, and a diary. Together they enlist the reader as an investigator, sorting through contradictory accounts and lacunae to get to the truth of just what happened to a patrician Manhattan couple during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. The disparate tensions that accrete with massive fortunes weave into a spellbinding tale that illuminates the impact of money on all our lives.

Fiona and Jane

$22 B&N This debut collection navigates the intimate contours of female friendship through the eponymous women, Fiona and Jane, who grow up together in Los Angeles and drift apart when Fiona moves to New York. Eventually, like the best of friendships, the women find their way back to one another, in these stories that alternate points of view, excavate the push and pull of home, and follow them throughout their 20s and 30s.

Pure Colour

$23 B&N Heti’s latest is an ambitious fable centered on the three kinds of “people” God has created: birds, fish, and bears, each with different traits. The world in which main characters Annie (fish) , Mira (bird), and Mira's father (bear) live is one God isn’t happy with; He’s determined to write a “second draft” to get it right. Love across species, reincarnation (in Mira’s case, into a leaf), the possible end of life as we know it—these are some of the themes on the table in Heti’s bold, philosophical tale.

French Braid (Signed Book)

$27 B&N In her 24th book, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author observes the Garretts from their first and last family vacation in the 1950s through the present day, examining the challenges and joys of our daily intimacies with those closest to us.

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