From a romantic tale set in the Scottish Highlands to an exploration of Ian Fleming’s years creating James Bond, the books hitting shelves this month represent a thrilling range of genres. We’ve rounded up the 10 books we’re most excited to read, including seven novels, two nonfiction titles and a short story collection.
Check out our reading picks below, then leave a comment describing the books you’re dying to read this month!
1. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Release Date: March 3rd from Knopf
Why You’ll Love it: Saxons and pixies and dragons, oh my! Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade immerses you in a dreamlike world where you’ll walk the tightrope between reality and fantasy.
Description: The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, decide that now is the time for them to set off across this troubled land of mist and rain to find the son they have not seen for years, the son they can scarcely remember. They know they will face many hazards—some strange and otherworldly—but they cannot foresee how their journey will reveal to them the dark and forgotten corners of their love for each other. Nor can they foresee that they will be joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge and a knight—each of them lost to his own past, but drawn inexorably toward the comfort and the burden of the fullness of a life’s memories.
2. Old Venus edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois
Release Date: March 3rd from Bantam
Why You’ll Love it: Martin and Dozois are legendary for compiling thrilling short story collections. They’ll enamor you with 16 original tales from sci-fi’s top writers, including Elizabeth Bear, Garth Nix and Joe Haldeman.
Description: From classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels like C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Join a cast of award-winning writers as they send you back in time to a young, rain-drenched world of fabulous monsters and seductive mysteries.
3. I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son by Kent Russell
Release Date: March 10th from Knopf
Why You’ll Love it: Russell’s essays will introduce you to the wildly eclectic individuals he’s met, from an aging hockey enforcer to a modern-day Robinson Crusoe to a group of Juggalos.
Description: Blistering and deeply personal, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son records Russell’s quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his persistent alienation and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father. In a narrative that can be read as both a magnificent act of literary myth-making and a howl of filial despair, Russell gives us a haunting and unforgettable portrait of an America—and a paradigm of American malehood—we have never before seen.
4. Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born by Matthew Parker
Release Date: March 11th from Pegasus
Why You’ll Love it: You’ll understand the magnetic James Bond like you never have before against the backdrop of Jamaica’s independence from British Rule.
Description: For two months every year, from 1946 to his death 18 years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica’s stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here.
Goldeneye explores the huge influence of Jamaica on the creation of Fleming’s iconic post-war hero. It also examines his Jamaican friendships—his extraordinary circle included Errol Flynn, the Oliviers, international politicians and British royalty, as well as his close neighbor Noel Coward—and traces his changing relationship with Ann Charteris and the emergence of Blanche Blackwell as his Jamaican soulmate.
5. Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale
Release Date: March 17th from Del Rey
Why You’ll Love it: Romans invading North America—how are you not intrigued? This alternate history blends the ferocity of Roman culture with the ingenuity of Native American life into an entertaining read.
Description: Imagine a world in which the Roman Empire has not fallen and the North American continent has just been discovered. In 1218 AD, Praetor Gaius Marcellinus and the 33rd Roman Legion are sent to the newly discovered lands of North America. Marcellinus and his men expect easy victory over the native inhabitants, but the Legion clashes with a civilization armed with weapons and strategies no Roman has ever imagined.
Forced to watch his vaunted force massacred by a surprisingly tenacious enemy, Marcellinus is spared by his captors and kept alive for his military knowledge. As he recovers and learns more about these proud people, he can’t help but be drawn into their society, forming an uneasy friendship with the denizens of the city-state of Cahokia. But threats—both Roman and Native—promise to assail his newfound kin, and Marcellinus will struggle to keep the peace while the rest of the continent surges toward certain conflict.
6. Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Release Date: March 24th from Random House
Why You’ll Love it: Pitched as “Madame Bovary meets Fifty Shades of Grey,” Essbaum’s novel gives you a sensual read with literary merit. As an added bonus, you’ll feel significantly better about your life after watching the protagonist’s world unravel.
Description: Anna Benz, an American in her late 30’s, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno, and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, she tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.
But Anna can’t easily extract herself from these affairs. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.
7. Half Wild by Sally Green
Release Date: March 24th from Viking
Why You’ll Love it: The second novel in Sally Green’s bestselling trilogy will plunge you back into a dangerous world populated by witches. Forget the charm of Hogwarts and Harry Potter; these witches are out for blood.
Description: In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, 17-year-old Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most powerful and violent witch. Nathan is hunted from all sides: nowhere is safe and no one can be trusted. Now, Nathan has come into his own unique magical Gift, and he’s on the run—but the Hunters are close behind, and they will stop at nothing until they’ve captured him and destroyed his father.
8. At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen
Release Date: March 31st from Spiegel & Grau
Why You’ll Love it: Water for Elephants’ Gruen gives you yet another poignant love story, this time set in the harshly beautiful Scottish Highlands.
Description: After disgracing themselves at a high society New Year’s Eve party in 1944, Madeline and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a former army colonel who is already ashamed of his son’s inability to serve in the war. When Ellis and his best friend, Hank, decide that the only way to regain the Colonel’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster—Maddie reluctantly follows them across the Atlantic, leaving her sheltered world behind.
9. The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle
Release Date: March 31st from Ecco
Why You’ll Love it: Inspired by two true stories, Boyle’s novel will drown you in a darkly realistic story exploring paranoia and violence.
Description: On a vacation cruise to Central America with his wife, 70-year-old Sten Stensen unflinchingly kills a gun-wielding robber menacing a busload of senior tourists. The reluctant hero is relieved to return home to Fort Bragg, California, after the ordeal—only to find that his delusional son, Adam, has spiraled out of control.
Adam has become involved with Sara Hovarty Jennings, a hardened member of the Sovereign Citizens’ Movement, right-wing anarchists who refuse to acknowledge the laws and regulations of the state. As Adam’s mental state fractures, he becomes increasingly schizophrenic—a breakdown that leads him to shoot two people in separate instances. On the run, he takes to the woods, spurring the biggest manhunt in California history.
10. The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter
Release Date: March 31st from Hogarth
Why You’ll Love it: You’ll be captivated as Hunter weaves a narrative possessing both beauty and pain. But be warned: this novel will haunt you long after the last page.
Description: Deep in the woods of northern England, somewhere between a dilapidated estate and an abandoned Victorian asylum, 15-year-old Jane Standen lived through a nightmare. She was babysitting a sweet young girl named Lily, and in one fleeting moment, lost her. The little girl was never found, leaving her family and Jane devastated.
Twenty years later, Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As a final research project—an endeavor inspired in part by her painful past—Jane surveys the archives for information related to another missing person: a woman who disappeared over 100 years ago in the same woods where Lily was lost. As Jane pieces moments in history together, a portrait of a fascinating group of people starts to unfurl. Inexplicably tied to the mysterious disappearance of long ago, Jane finds tender details of their lives at the country estate and in the asylum that are linked to her own heartbroken world.