Upcoming 2023 Releases I Can’t Wait To Read (Woe To My NetGalley Ratio)

It’s a new year and you know what that means. New book releases! Which means, despite my best intentions, I will inevitably fall into the same old NetGalley trap.

I did really well with cutting back on requesting books on NetGalley in 2022, but let’s be honest . . . there’s only so many new, shiny releases you can wave in front of my face before I cave and inevitably must consume all the new releases. I’m a terribly weak bookwyrm, okay?

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is most anticipated books releasing in the first half of 2023. Because nothing says a new year like the same old problem of having too many books, so little time, and an angry TBR beast!

Listen. I couldn’t help myself. My finger slipped and before I knew it, I had collected . . . several . . . 2023 releases on NetGalley. I don’t know what happened. I blinked just for a split second. I’m fairly certain NetGalley has taken on a life of its own and is adding books when I’m not looking. But you know what? I’m not mad about it. Because LOOK at these gorgeous early 2023 releases! Good luck getting through this post without adding one or two to your TBR, too. 😉 Books are sneaky like that.

Also, fair warning, there maaaay be more than 10 books here. (Read: There definitely are.) But honestly, how could anyone expect me to narrow down six months’ worth of releases to only 10 books?! *flails* Entirely unreasonable.

How to Sell A Haunted House

January 17, 2023

Your past and your family can haunt you like nothing else… A hilarious and terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group.

Every childhood home is haunted, and each of us are possessed by our parents.

When their parents die at the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic, Louise and Mark Joyner are devastated but nothing can prepare them for how bad things are about to get. The two siblings are almost totally estranged, and couldn’t be more different. Now, however, they don’t have a choice but to get along. The virus has passed, and both of them are facing bank accounts ravaged by the economic meltdown. Their one asset? Their childhood home. They need to get it on the market as soon as possible because they need the money. Yet before her parents died they taped newspaper over the mirrors and nailed shut the attic door.

Sometimes we feel like puppets, controlled by our upbringing and our genes. Sometimes we feel like our parents treat us like toys, or playthings, or even dolls. The past can ground us, teach us, and keep us safe. It can also trap us, and bind us, and suffocate the life out of us. As disturbing events stack up in the house, Louise and Mark have to learn that sometimes the only way to break away from the past, sometimes the only way to sell a haunted house, is to burn it all down.

First Lines:

Louise thought it might not go well, so she told her parents she was pregnant over the phone, from three thousand miles away, in San Francisco. It wasn't that she had a single doubt about her decision. When those two parallel pink lines had ghosted into view, all her panic dissolved and she heard a clear, certain voice inside her head say:

I am a mother now.

Winston Chu vs. the Whimsies

February 7, 2023

Twelve-year-old Winston Chu is supposed to learn impulse control at the cooking academy his mom enrolled him in. But learning to think before he acts won’t happen overnight.

While skateboarding home with a pie in hand, Winston inadvertently stops a robbery at Mr. Pang’s Whimsies, an oddities shop in Chinatown. As a reward, Mr. Pang invites Winston to choose any item in the store. But the strange old man warns Winston to browse carefully, for the first thing Winston touches will be the thing he gets. Before Winston can decide, a magpie flies under a shelf, and he impulsively grabs an old broom to sweep it out.

Mr. Pang hands him the broom, along with a dustpan. “Two for one. Congratulations.”

Deflated, Winston returns home, determined to put the broom incident behind him. Or at least in the closet. But when some of his most beloved possessions go missing, all Winston can think about are the broom and dustpan. Did they somehow take his stuff? And what—or who—will they dispose of next?

It’s time to break into Mr. Pang’s Whimsies, where clearly there’s more going on than meets the far-seeing eyeball. It’s time to fight magic with magic. And this time, Winston better have a plan.

First Lines:

Life is full of unfairness.

For instance, Winston Chu lost his father to a friendly fire accident in Iraq. Now it's just Winston, his mom, and his two sisters, muddling through life as best they can in their tiny San Francisco apartment.

The Wicked Bargain

February 28, 2023

El Diablo is in the details in this Latinx pirate fantasy starring a transmasculine nonbinary teen with a mission of revenge, redemption, and revolution.

On Mar León-de la Rosa’s 16th birthday, el Diablo comes calling. Mar is a transmasculine nonbinary teen pirate hiding a magical ability to manipulate fire and ice. But their magic isn’t enough to reverse a wicked bargain made by their father and now el Diablo has come to collect his payment: the soul of Mar’s father and the entire crew of their ship.

When Mar is miraculously rescued by the sole remaining pirate crew in the Caribbean, el Diablo returns to give them a choice: give up your soul to save your father by the Harvest Moon or never see him again. The task is impossible–Mar refuses to make a bargain and there’s no way their magic is any match for el Diablo. Then, Mar finds the most unlikely allies: Bas, an infuriatingly arrogant and handsome pirate — and the captain’s son; and Dami, a genderfluid demonio whose motives are never quite clear. For the first time in their life, Mar may have the courage to use their magic. It could be their only redemption — or it could mean certain death.

First Lines:

Papa says water speaks to those willing to listen.

On the night Mar arrived silently in the world, the ocean danced and clapped in time with the roaring thunder and unrelenting rain. Mar's parents named them after the sea because the water had celebrated so fiercely, it nearly sank La Catalina when Mar took their first breath.

The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency

March 2, 2023

London, 1868. The streets are haunted by thieves, murderers… and demons from beyond the Aether.

Spencer and Bart are the city’s most incompetent crooks, and they are in deep trouble. Hunted by both police and their fellow criminals, they are forced to consider the unthinkable —going straight.

Forming The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency, they thought their troubles were behind them, but they soon find themselves caught up in a web far more dangerous than they could ever imagine, pitched against demons, criminals and evil magicians.

Why are there so many demons roaming the London streets, and can Spencer and Bart stop them before it’s too late?

Who are the mysterious Tappers, and what are they doing with the women they abduct from the streets?

Can Spencer and Bart change the habits of a lifetime and not only stay on the right side of the law, but also save the day?

The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency is the new novel from Peter Oxley, the author of the Infernal Aether series. If you like dark gothic adventures with a light-hearted twist, then you’ll love The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency.

First Lines:

London, 1868

Tap-tap, tap-tap.

Mist plucked at the woman's heels as she made her way down the darkened street, the houses to either side leaning in on her like bent-backed old crones.

Dead Country

March 7, 2023

Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city, twice. She thought she’d left her dusty little hometown forever. But that was before her father died.

As she makes her way home to bury him, she finds a girl, as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was. Saving her from the raiders that haunt the area, twisted by a remnant of the God Wars, Tara changes the course of the world.

Max Gladstone’s world of the Craft is a fantasy setting like no other. When Craftspeople rose up to kill the gods, they built corporate Concerns from their corpses and ushered in a world of rapacious capital. Those who work the Craft wield laws like knives and weave chains from starlight and soulstuff. Dead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Trilogy, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point for this incomparable world.

First Lines:

Tara walked out of the Badlands to her father's funeral, trailing memories and dust.

The last stars failed and the sky hung blue above her and the ground cracked underfoot.

The Curator

March 7, 2023

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”, it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability.

Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire—to find where her brother went after he died, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, where citizens like Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, are now in positions of authority, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. Robert offers her one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be. Set against the backdrop of a nation on the verge of collapse, Dora’s search for the truth behind the mystery she’s long concealed will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the edge of worlds.

First Lines:

The city—nicknamed "the Fairest" by poets and municipal advocates for its river, the mighty Fair—jutted from the body of the country like a hangnail from its thumb.

Folklore told that it was founded by a stonecutter who built a castle there and kept it empty in tribute to God, and was granted eternal youth as a reward; until, after a few hundred years, a family of beggars sneaked inside and their sudden appearance shocked the stonecutter such that he fell dead.

Silver in the Bone

April 4, 2023

Tamsin Lark didn’t ask to be a Hollower. As a mortal with no magical talent, she was never meant to break into ancient crypts, or compete with sorceresses and Cunningfolk for the treasures inside. But after her thieving foster father disappeared without so much as a goodbye, it was the only way to keep herself—and her brother, Cabell—alive.

Ten years later, rumors are swirling that her guardian vanished with a powerful ring from Arthurian legend. A run-in with her rival Emrys ignites Tamsin’s hope that the ring could free Cabell from a curse that threatens both of them. But they aren’t the only ones who covet the ring.

As word spreads, greedy Hollowers start circling, and many would kill to have it for themselves. While Emrys is the last person Tamsin would choose to partner with, she needs all the help she can get to edge out her competitors in the race for the ring. Together, they dive headfirst into a vipers’ nest of dark magic, exposing a deadly secret with the power to awaken ghosts of the past and shatter her last hope of saving her brother. . . .

First Lines:

Lancaster, England

The first thing you learned on the job as a Hollower was to never trust your eyes.

Nash, of course, had a different way of saying it: All sorcery is half illusion. The other half, unfortunately, was blood-soaked terror.

Spell Bound

April 4, 2023

Edison Rooker isn’t sure what to expect when he enters the office of Antonia Hex, the powerful sorceress who runs a call center for magical emergencies. He doesn’t have much experience with hexes or curses. Heck, he doesn’t even have magic. But he does have a plan—to regain the access to the magical world he lost when his grandmother passed.

Antonia is…intimidating, but she gives him a job and a new name—Rook—both of which he’s happy to accept. Now all Rook has to do is keep his Spell Binder, an illegal magical detection device, hidden from the Magical Consortium. And contend with Sun, the grumpy and annoyingly cute apprentice to Antonia’s rival colleague, Fable. But dealing with competition isn’t so bad; as Sun seems to pop up more and more, and Rook minds less and less.

But when the Consortium gets wind of Rook’s Spell Binder, they come for Antonia. All alone, Rook runs to the only other magical person he knows: Sun. Except Fable has also been attacked, and now Rook and Sun have no choice but to work together to get their mentors back…or face losing their magic forever.

First Lines:

Hex-A-Gone.

The name didn't quite inspire visions of magical greatness. It was a pun. A bad one but funnily apt for a local emergency on-call curse-breaker.

Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy

April 4, 2023

It’s not easy being a Remarkable in the Unremarkable world. Some things are cool—like getting a pet hellhound for your twelfth birthday. Others, not so much—like not being trusted to learn magic because you might use it to take revenge on an annoying neighbor.

All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her the gift, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she’s never heard of…to save her father from imprisonment for a crime she refuses to believe he committed.

First Lines:

When my best friend JP turned twelve, his parents bought him a phone. It was a super big deal, 'cause one, JP loses everything, and two, his parents think phones are "quick access to the devil." (I didn't know the devil had a phone.)

In the Lives of Puppets

April 25, 2023

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots–fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?

First Lines:

In an old and lonely forest, far away from almost everything, sat a curious dwelling.

At the base of a grove of massive trees was a small, square building made of brick, overtaken by ivy and moss. Who it belonged to was anyone's guess, but from the looks of it, it had been abandoned long ago.

Ghosts, Toast, and Other Hazards

April 25, 2023

Moving to a new town is never easy, but it’s even harder when you’re dealing with a stepdad who just left and a mom who can’t get out of bed long enough to find a new a job.

But Mo doesn’t have time to dwell on these things. Because it’s her job to keep her family together. To keep them safe.

So when an elephant starts to haunt her dreams—and a mysterious spirit attacks her home—Mo knows it’s up to her to intervene before things get too dangerous.

With her new friend, Nathaniel, she embarks on an investigation, searching for the truth about the town, its people, and their history. But things are much more complicated and tangled than she thought.

To find out what’s really going on, Mo might have to live a little dangerously after all.

First Lines:

I'm not afraid of toast.

Just to be clear.

I am afraid of fires, though. Which can be caused by everyday appliances, like toasters.

So toast isn't the problem, but you could say it's the start of a slippery slope.

The Notorious Scarlett and Browne

March 7, 2023

The now notorious outlaws Scarlett and Browne are back in their second death-defying adventure—and this time it’s not just their own lives on the line. . . .

Albert and Scarlett are a formidable pair. With his ability to read minds, and her way with a weapon, no bank can keep them out and no jail can keep them in.

But their notoriety may have spread a bit too far. Now old enemies from Scarlett’s past and a sinister new threat from Albert’s world are boxing them in—and holding their friends hostage.

To win their freedom, the outlaws Scarlett and Browne are charged with pulling off an impossible mission. And the clock is ticking . . .

First Lines:

That evening, with the sun setting over the ash fields and the curfew bells ringing out above the cities of the plains, three murderers gathered at a crossroads. They wasted no words in greeting.

Spring’s Arcana

May 2, 2023

Natasha Drozdova is desperate to save a life. Doctors can do little for her cancer-ridden mother, who insists there is only one cure—and that Nat must visit a skyscraper in Manhattan to get it.

Amid a snow-locked city, inside a sleek glass-walled office, Nat makes her plea and is whisked into a terrifying new world. For the skyscraper holds a hungry winter goddess who has the power to cure her mother…if Nat finds a stolen object of great power.

Now Nat must travel with a razor-wielding assassin across an American continent brimming with terror, wonder, and hungry divinities with every reason to consume a young woman. For her ailing mother is indeed suffering no ordinary illness, and Nat Drozdova is no ordinary girl. Blood calls to blood, magic to magic, and a daughter may indeed save what she loves…

…if it doesn’t consume her first.

This is the way to the Dead God’s Heart.

First Lines:

The entire city was full of dirty ice-whipped slush after the first hard freeze; it had only reluctantly warmed enough for snow. A whistling, iron-cold wind poured down both the Hudson and East rivers, slicing between feathery falling flakes.

Witch King

May 30, 2023

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

First Lines:

Waking was floating to the surface of a soft world of water, not what Kai had expected. Reaching out in that darkness, he found a cold, black sea ebbing and flowing, dropping away like a tide rolling out.. Something was wrong with his body, everything was impossibly distant.

Theo Tan and the Iron Fan

May 30, 2023

Theo Tan and his fox spirit, Kai, are willing to go to hell and back for their family. Literally.

After exposing the corruption at Reapling Corporation and trapping the demon king Niu Mo Wang, they learn that Jamie (Theo’s beloved brother and Kai’s first human master) was not allowed to move on after death, and is now trapped in a waiting room in Diyu.

If they can reach his soul before it faces judgement on the solstice, they might be able to convince King Qingguang to send his soul back to earth! Still, a trip to Diyu is no easy matter, and Theo and Kai can’t do it alone. Fortunately, they have good friends who are happy to help.

But even with Namita’s knowledge and Danny’s powerful dragon familiar, the odds are stacked against them. Can Theo and Kai’s new bond hold up against lying demons with grudges, impatient Kings of Hell, and the wrath of the demon king’s powerful wife, Princess Iron Fan?

First Lines:

The shopkeeper yawns. I yawn as well. I wish I could nod at the pimply kid and say, "Yeah, it's mind-numbing stuff, innit, watching over a shop like this?" But alas, I'm here undercover, so I am unable to say anything to him for fear of giving myself away.

What new releases are you most looking forward to in the first half of 2023? Do we have any in common?

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