- Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali – Eighteen-year-old Muslims Adam and Zayneb meet in Doha, Qatar, during spring break and fall in love as both struggle to find a way to live their own truths.
- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates – A Virginia slave narrowly escapes a drowning death through the intervention of a mysterious force that compels his escape and personal underground war against slavery.
- Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn – Receiving her long-coveted visa to America, Patsy leaves behind her family in Jamaica only to discover that life as an undocumented immigrant is not what her best friend had described.
- We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal – In a world inspired by ancient Arabia, seventeen-year-old huntress Zafira must disguise herself as a man to seek a lost artifact that could return magic to her cursed world.
- An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo – A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history (Muscogee (Creek) Nation) and connection to the land.
- The Bride Test by Helen Hoang – Believing he cannot experience big emotions–like love, or grief, Khai Diep avoids relationships, until his mother travels to Vietnam and returns with Esme Tran.
- Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias – In this mosaic horror/crime novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest. A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father. These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling, pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.
- Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa – Three siblings set aside their differences and risk their lives during the Syrian civil war to honor their late father’s final wishes.
- Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich trilogy, bk 1) by Kevin Kwan – Envisioning a quality-time summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that viciously competes against other wealthy families and strongly opposes their son’s relationship with an American girl.
- Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – A dark fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore is set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age in Mexico’s underworld, where a young dreamer is sent by the Mayan God of Death on a life-changing journey.
- The Deep by Rivers Solomon – The historian of the water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard by slavers keeps all the memories of her people both painful and miraculous, until she discovers that their future lies in returning to the past. Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.
- The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present by David Treuer – An anthropologist’s chronicle of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present traces the unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention of distinct tribe cultures that assimilated into mainstream life to preserve Native identity. Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.
- Cherokee America by Margaret Verble – In the Spring of 1875 in the Cherokee Nation, Check, a wealthy farmer and mother of five boys, must protect her mixed-race family and tight-knit community at all costs when violence erupts.
- The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante – After escaping a detention center at the U.S. border, seventeen-year-old Marisol agrees to participate in a medical experiment hoping to keep her and her younger sister, Gabi, from being deported to El Salvador.
- Mooncakes by Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker – When teen witch Nova Huang discovers that her childhood crush, Tam Lang, is a werewolf, they team together to face dark forces who are eager to claim the magic of wolves.
- Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon – Three children orphaned in 1960s Laos meet a dedicated doctor who enlists them as motorcycle couriers in his effort to rescue civilians and find medical supplies. (Releases in late January)