20 Books I can't wait to read This year!

 

There are tons of books to be published in 2021 especially black literature!!!!  I can't wait to flip and read!

 I can smell the aromas of the tasty books, my tongue is salivating and my taste buds can't wait to taste the humor, romance, wit and fantasy. I have made a list of twenty books I am anticipating to read and anticipating to get published this year.

1.Concrete Rose: 

Expected date: January 12,2021.

Author: Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas writes a story set in Garden Heights again, seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give. 

If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.

Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.

Maverick finds out he’s a father.

Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.

When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can't just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

  The cover rings black excellence!! There is a black man with a durag on the cover! More representations are happening in the literary world!!!! I am mainly curious about why the title Concrete Rose was used, I know I will get to know that when I flip through those yummy pages. 

2. One of the Good Ones: 

Published:

Author: Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

The Hate U Give meets Get Out in this honest and powerful exploration of prejudice in the stunning novel from sister-writer duo Maika and Maritza Moulite, authors of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine.

ISN'T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH?

When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there's a twist to Kezi's story that no one could've ever expected—one that will change everything all over again.

  This cover is so beautiful!!!! This book has been published and I can't wait to lay my hands on it!

3. The Rose Code: 

Expected date: 9, March, 2021

Author: Kate Quinn

  

Books about Female empowerment are always top on my list. 

It is 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary code breaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter--the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger--and their true enemy--closer…

4. Happily Ever Afters: 

Published: 5th,January, 2021

Author: Elsie Bryant.

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She’s

rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place

she’s a true leading lady is in her own writing—in the swoony love stories she shares only

with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader.

When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she’s excited to finally let her stories shine. But when she goes to her first workshop, the words

are just...gone. Fortunately, Caroline has a solution: Tessa just needs to find some inspiration in a real-life love story of her own. And she’s ready with a list of romance novel-inspired steps to a happily ever after. Nico, the brooding artist who looks like he walked out of one of Tessa’s stories, is cast as the perfect Prince Charming.

But as Tessa checks off each item off Caroline’s list, she gets further and further away from herself. She risks losing everything she cares about—including the surprising bond she develops with sweet Sam, who lives across the street. She’s well on her way to having her

own real-life love story, but is it the one she wants, after all?

5. Just as I am:

Expected Date:26, January,2021

Author: Cicely Tyson with Michelle Burford

Cicely is an iconic actress, in this book she explores and tells the story of her rise through Hollywood and life. From a single teen mother to model and actress and her marriage to Miles Davis. Tyson's book illustrates how she again and again overcame obstacles that were in her way.

6.  Daughters of Kobani: 

Expected date: 16, February, 2021.

Author:Gayle Tzemach Lemmon.

In 2014, an all-female Kurdish militia took on ISIS, across Northern Syria, fighting alongside U.S. forces. Their aim was to make women’s equality a reality. This momentous work of reporting by the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana shows courage!

7. Let Me Tell You What I Mean:

Expected date: 26,January,2021

Author: Joan Didion

Didion’s remarkable, five decades-long career as a journalist, essayist, novelist, and screenwriter has earned her a prominent place in the American literary canon, and the twelve early pieces collected here underscore her singularity. Her writings are "Didionesque''. There will never be another quite like her.

8. Ida B The Queen: 

Expected date: January 26

Author: Michelle Duster

The Biography of an extraordinary woman, a suffragist, an abolitionist, an anti lynching crusader,and journalist. Cannot wait!

9. Remote Control: 

Expected date:Tor, January 19

Author: Nnedi Okorafor

An Alien artifact turns a little girl into Death's adopted daughter. Nnedi dishes out a thrilling SciFi about Femininity, Feminism and Female empowerment.

10. The Baby is mine:

Expected Date:Atlantic Books, May 27.

Author: Oyinkan Braithwaite

According to Brittle Paper:

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle's house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout, and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib. Who is lying and who is telling the truth? 

11 Sweet Hand: 

Expected Date: 30th,March, 2021

Author: N.G. Peltier

I mentioned earlier that I love beautiful covers? I mostly judge a book by its cover most of the time. I like pretty cute,beautiful covers. So that is why this book is on my list and also because I love, love- hate romances. In  this romantic tale, Cherisse, a pastry chef, decides to stop dating after a bad break up. But she is named her sister's maid of honor and she is forced to spend time with Keiran, the best man. A love- hate romance spews as they spend more time together.

12. Ace of Spades:

Expected Date: US: Feiwel and Friends, June 1/ UK: Usborne, June 10

Author: Faridah Abike Iremide

Don't you just love these realistic illustrations?! This is what caught my eye while scrolling through Brittle Paper one night while laying on my bed filling my mouth with chin-chin. Ha!

According to Brittle Paper: 

When two Niveus Private Academy students, Devon Richards and Chiamaka Adebayo, are elected as class prefects, it looks like their year is off to an amazing start. But someone named Aces begins using text messages to reveal secrets that threaten their carefully planned futures. Can Devon and Chiamaka stop Aces before things become deadly? 

13. The Gilded: 

Date Expected: UK: Usborne, February 4/ US: Delacorte, February 9

Author: Namina Forna

In this juvenile fiction, Black Panther meets Children of blood and bone.

Deka, a 16-year-old, lives in Otera, a patriarchal kingdom where a woman's worth is tied to her purity, and she must bleed to prove it. When Deka bleeds gold, the color of impurity, she faces a consequence worse than death. She is saved by a stranger who tells Deka that she is a near-immortal with exceptional gifts, and offers her a choice: fight for the Emperor or be destroyed. 

14. Girl A : 

Expected Date: 2nd February, 2021

Author: Abigail Dean

  In this debut novel, Lez, a girl who ran away from her parent's home where she was abused and tortured when she was 15, becomes a lawyer. She lives to forget all about her past. According to what I have heard, it isn't an easy read, but hell yeah! I loved the synopsis so I am definitely going to read it soon.

15. Dear Senthuran: 

Published: US: Riverhead, June 8/ UK: Faber & Faber, June 29

Author: Akwaeke Emezi

According to Good Reads,

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the grueling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself.

The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

16.  Under a White Sky:

Expected Date:9th,February, 2021

Author: Elizabeth Kolbert

 The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction investigates, for solutions in the acidic oceans, polluted atmosphere, and shrinking wildernesses. I think Climate Change is something we really need to be talking and reading about. The impending danger is looking ahead of us and we need to stop Global warming.

17. Peaces: 

Expected Date:Riverhead, April 6

Author: Helen Oyeyemi

When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment—and to get them out of her house. Otto and Xavier quickly deduce that The Lucky Day is no ordinary locomotive. As further clues and questions pile up, and the trip upends everything they thought they knew, they begin to see connections to their own pasts that now bind them together. 

18  Sunflower Girls:

Expected Date: March 30

Author: Martha Hall Kelly

According to Good Reads,

Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, she and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg and witness the unparalleled horrors of slavery as they become involved in the war effort.

In the South, Jemma is enslaved on the Peeler Plantation in Maryland, where she lives with her mother and father. Her sister, Patience, is enslaved on the plantation next door, and both live in fear of LeBaron, an abusive overseer who tracks their every move. When Jemma is sold by the cruel plantation mistress Anne-May at the same time the Union army comes through, she sees a chance to finally escape—but only by abandoning the family she loves.

Anne-May is left behind to run Peeler Plantation when her husband joins the Union army and her cherished brother enlists with the Confederates. In charge of the household, she uses the opportunity to follow her own ambitions and is drawn into a secret Southern network of spies, finally exposing herself to the fate she deserves.

Inspired by true accounts, Sunflower Sisters provides a vivid, detailed look at the Civil War experience, from the barbaric and inhumane plantations, to a war-torn New York City, to the horrors of the battlefield. It’s a sweeping story of women caught in a country on the brink of collapse, in a society grappling with nationalism and unthinkable racial cruelty, a story still so relevant today.

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres and I can't wait to read and review this!

19. Lore:

Expected Date:5th,January, 2021

Author: Alexandra Bracken

  Hunger games clashes with Greek Mythology in this fascinating, dark tale.  

According to Good reads: Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.

Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family's sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt's promises of eternal glory. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man--now a god--responsible for their deaths.

Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek out her help: Castor, a childhood friend of Lore believed long dead, and a gravely wounded Athena, among the last of the original gods.

The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and, at last, a way for Lore to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to bind her fate to Athena's and rejoin the hunt will come at a deadly cost--and still may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.

20. Professional Trouble Maker:

Expected Date:Penguin Life, March 2

 Author: Luvvie Ajayi Jones.

According to Brittle Paper: With humor and honesty, and guided by the influence of her professional troublemaking Nigerian grandmother, Funmilayo Faloyin, Luvvie Ajayi Jones walks us through what we must get right within ourselves before we can do the things that scare us; how to use our voice for a greater good; and how to put movement to the voice we've been silencing — because truth-telling is a muscle.