2022 releases your HPL staff loved!

Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls—nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. But when Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all.

You can also request the sequel, “Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail” here.

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Former child actor Jennette McCurdy’s memoir recounts her tumultuous relationship with her abusive mother and her struggles with eating disorders and addiction. Told with dark humor, “I’m Glad My Died” will sure to enrapture audiences and go down as an iconic memoir.

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.

They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers’s new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

You can also request the first book in this series “A Psalm For the Wild-Built” here.

Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud—she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast.

In dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon a secret club within her condo complex: the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. Somehow, she convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life.

All Good People Here follows a young reporter, Margot Davies, who returns home to the small town of Wakarusa, Indiana, to care for her ailing uncle. In the process, Margot finds herself caught up in a present-day murder eerily similar to one that had taken place 20 years prior, right across the street from where her uncle still resides.

January Jacobs was five years old when she was found murdered just miles from her home, and her killer was never apprehended. Twenty years later, in the next town over, another little girl was found murdered just like January. 

Unable to stop herself, Margot begins to dig deeper into the murder and what she finds is even bigger, and more terrifying, than she could have ever imagined.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself–and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.

Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.

Before We Were Trans  illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures. 

With his shrewd eye for mundane absurdities and his hysterically astute drawings of animals, Will McPhail is the New Yorker’s most distinctive cartoonist. His cartoons delight in the everyday anxieties of modern life, skewer contemporary politics, and cut to the core of the most bizarre human behaviors.

In Love & Vermin, new cartoons mix with old favorites: mischievous mice and opportunistic pigeons offer portals into McPhails crackling curiosity, while Lady No-Kids adventures continue with high-flying glee. With chapters exploring everything from contemporary topics to universal truths, and a classic black-and-white interior that evokes the timelessness of the craft, Love & Vermin proves why Will McPhail is one of the most cherished cartoonists of his generation.

Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together, even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse, no matter how much she’d like to.

But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife’s edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie, with the quiet Valoff who’s been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she’s put her heart on the line

A Ten years ago, Chani Horowitz wrote a profile of Chase Parker on the eve of his becoming the first American actor to play James Bond. They hit it off, she went to a premiere with him, then a house party, and her article became the stuff of legend. Now she is working on a proposal for her next collection of essays, and Parker, divorced and fresh out of rehab, is in need of an image upgrade.

Ten years ago, the chemistry between the two was undeniable, but they are both different people now. Still, the opportunity is too good to pass up. They start to retrace their steps in L. A., but then Parker takes Chani home to small-town Montana, where he is restoring a theater. Alternating between past and present, YA writer Sussman’s first novel for adults slowly lays out the events of her characters’ first meeting and how much has changed in the decade since.

When Michael K. Williams died on September 6, 2021, he left behind a career as one of the most electrifying actors of his generation. At the time of his death, Williams had nearly finished a memoir that tells the story of his past while looking to the future, a book that merges his life and his life’s work.

Mike, as his friends knew him, was so much more than an actor. In Scenes from My Life, he traces his life in whole, from his childhood in East Flatbush and his early years as a dancer to his battles with addiction and the bar fight that left his face with his distinguishing scar. He was a committed Brooklyn resident and activist who dedicated his life to working with social justice organizations and his community, especially in helping at-risk youth find their voice and carve out their future. Imbued with poignance and raw honesty, Scenes from My Life is the story of a performer who gave his all to everything he did–in his own voice, in his own words, as only he could

An eco-wellness retreat has opened on an island off the English coast, promising rest and relaxation-but the island itself, once the playground of a serial killer, is rumored to be cursed. Detective Elin Warner is called to the retreat when a young woman’s body is found on the rocks below the yoga pavilion in what seems to be a tragic fall. But the victim wasn’t a guest-she wasn’t meant to be on the island at all. When a guest drowns in a diving incident the following day, Elin starts to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. Elin must find the killer-before the island’s history starts to repeat itself