My job is about looking ahead—always anticipating the next season, the next big book. But even for a professional fiction enthusiast, the next few months are looking particularly exciting, with a slew of books I can’t wait to read and share. Below are a few of them; you’ll find the full list here.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Knopf, Jan. 13): I loved Mueenuddin’s first book, the story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (2009), and it’s been worth the 17-year wait for his follow-up, a sweeping tale of Pakistan from the 1950s to the early 21st century. “Mueenuddin explores how the wealthy classes, gangsters, and corrupt police intertwine, and how a sense of entitlement powers all of them,” according to our starred review. “Mueenuddin reveals all this in a graceful style that dignifies the lower-caste characters and intensifies the unjustness of their treatment.”

This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman (Dial Press, Feb. 10): Goodman was a Kirkus Prize finalist last year for Isola, her stunning historical novel, and this perceptive new book about several generations of the Rubenstein family couldn’t be more different. When 74-year-old Jeanne dies in the first chapter, her sisters, sons, daughters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and various grandchildren go on with their lives, some speaking to each other, some not, over the course of decades, as Goodman “finds within milestone events and quotidian moments the meaning—madness—of family,” according to our starred review.

On the Calculation of Volume: Book IV  by Solvej Balle; trans. by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (New Directions, April 14): If you haven’t begun Balle’s seven-part novel about Tara Selter, a woman who keeps repeating Nov. 18th, the publication of this hinge volume would be a good time to start. But do pick up the first three books first—they’re short. Balle does a brilliant job of growing Tara’s world in each installment; you’ll never feel like you’re stuck in place. Our starred review calls this “a speculative novel that, with each new volume, feels ever more intensely about the present.”

Livonia Chow Mein by Abigail Savitch-Lew (Simon & Schuster, April 21): I don’t usually pay much attention to blurbs, but when a book is set in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, where my father grew up, and comes with a blurb from James McBride, it’s going to be a must-read. Savitch-Lew follows the area from the 1980s to the turn of the 21^st century through the lens of a family-owned Chinese restaurant that was destroyed by fire—possibly arson. Our starred review calls it “a vivid, savory blend of family saga, cultural history, and detective story, rich with urban life and lore.”

John of John by Douglas Stuart (Grove, May 5): Stuart has been a favorite with the Kirkus team since his debut novel, Shuggie Bain (2020). His third book follows a closeted gay man home from art school in Edinburgh to the Hebrides islands, where he works with his father weaving traditional tweed and cares for his sick grandmother while also taking ecstasy and trying to find a hookup. “With his gift for creating vibrantly specific characters and settings, Stuart again taps profound human truth,” according to our starred review.

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.