Happy New Year! Hope it’s a good one for everyone. After an interesting 2022, I am looking forward to seeing how 2023 goes. I will be taking an important exam in a few months, which I am oddly nervous about because it will be the first big exam I take in a language I don’t fluently speak. While the topics covered are things I have a good knowledge about, the language barrier could be a problem, so wish me luck.
I decided to start this year with a post mentioning a few upcoming releases that I want to read. As I said last year, I don’t really keep an eye on upcoming releases all that much, but I did hear of a couple that caught my attention for this year. While I am not sure I will definitely get to read them this year, I have added them to my To-Be-Read list.
Ascension by Nicholas Binge
An enormous snow-covered mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows when exactly it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore, a scientist of mysterious phenomena, is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he is getting into as he and his team set out for the mountain.
The higher Harold’s team ascends, the less things make sense. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days. Amid the whipping cold of higher elevation, the climbers’ limbs numb and memories of their lives before the mountain begin to fade. Paranoia quickly turns to violence among the crew, and slithering, ancient creatures pursue them in the snow. Still, as the dangers increase, the mystery of the mountain compels them to its peak, where they are certain they will find their answers. Have they stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery known to man or the seeds of their own demise?
Framed by the discovery of Harold Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.
This science fiction mystery thriller caught my attention immediately. I don’t want to get too excited on advance, but it sounds like the type of book I will love. This one I am really looking forward to and it is highly likely I will get this one as soon as it’s released.
Release date: April 25th.
The Wager by David Grann
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death–for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.
Admittedly, this one caught my eye with its cover. I then read the description and was surprised, since I hadn’t ever heard of this story. I was immediately intrigued, so this lead to me going down the rabbit hole reading about what happened. I can’t imagine what it would be like surviving a ship wreck in those times when you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere and the crew turns on their captain. I can’t wait to read more about this.
Release date: April 18th.
You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron
Charity Curtis has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business.
But the last weekend of the season, Charity’s co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity’s role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they’ll need figure out what this killer is after. Is there is more to the story of Mirror Lake and its dangerous past than Charity ever suspected?
Alright, let’s start by stating that this is an upcoming book with a pending cover reveal and I couldn’t find a lot of information about it, but that description was enough to draw me in. I am getting some Friday the 13th vibes mixed with some One By One by Ruth Ware. I haven’t read any other books by Kalynn Bayron, but this one sounds different to her previous works. I don’t know if this book will be anything like what I imagine based on that description, but it definitely has my attention.
Release date: June 20th.
This might not be a big list of upcoming releases, but I am happy with it. Since it’s just three books, I might be able to actually buy them and read them throughout this year. At this point I am also not planning to read more than one book a month, so keeping the number of new releases low improves the chances I will actually get to read these books rather sooner than later and they won’t be sitting on my TBR pile for years.
Have you heard of any upcoming releases that you can’t wait to read? How many books are you planning to read this year?
The Melody In Words 
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