I haven’t done a season preview in a while, but there are so many books coming out in the next few months that sound great. So I thought I’d share the books I’m especially looking forward to reading. You’re probably aware of a few of these, but I think some may be new to you.

Louise Erdrich has been one of my favorite writers for about 20 years. I keep saying that she should win the Nobel Prize because her body of work is so unique and impressive. Maybe one year I’ll be right. Python’s Kiss: Stories (Harper, March 24) collects her stories from the last 17 years (her previous story collection was 2009’s The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008). I’m looking forward to making my way through this collection, knowing it will be full of Erdrich’s trademark wisdom, compassion, and humor, as well as her evocative descriptions of the tribal lands in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

The synopsis of American Han by Lisa Lee (Algonquin, March 31) has piqued my interest. Stories of immigrant families pursuing the American Dream are right up my alley. The struggle to build a new life and the cultural conflict of children being pulled in two directions combine to create a compelling story. American Han is set in San Francisco during the 1980s and concerns siblings Jane and Kevin Kim. They’re raised to be the model minority but by their 20s things are starting to go awry: Jane is an unhappy law student and Kevin, a policeman, has disappeared. Not surprisingly, family secrets from their past in South Korea come back to force a reckoning with who they were and who they have become. Sign me up for this one!

I have a soft spot for fictional explorations of the story behind famous works of art. Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Camille de Peretti (Europa Editions, April 14) sheds light on Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady,” painted in 1910. Portrait imagines the lives of the painting’s unknown subject and her descendants, and follows the unusual journey of the painting, which was purchased by a collector in 1916 and placed in an Italian gallery in 1931. The painting was stolen in 1997 and eventually found in the gardens of the museum in 2019.

Elizabeth Strout’s novels stand out with their protagonists who possess an appealing combination of frank common sense and tenderness. The Things We Never Say (Random House, May 5) is the story of high school history teacher Artie Dam, who is living a seemingly contented existence when he discovers a secret that forces him to reconsider his life. Strout examines whether we can ever really know another person – we contain multitudes, after all — and the feeling of loneliness one can experience within a relationship and in the larger world.

I was impressed by Sarah Damoff’s 2025 debut, The Bright Years, so I was curious to see what she would do next. The Burning Side (Simon & Schuster, May 19) sounds surprisingly similar. Once again, we have a couple, Leo and April, facing daunting challenges (in this case, their house burns down). They move in with April’s parents and before long, the stress of their loss uncovers the fault lines in their marriage. April’s mother Deb is caring for her husband, who has dementia, so the living situation is fraught. And like The Bright Years, the narrative shifts among the characters, with lots of flashbacks revealing the story of April and Leo’s marriage. It looks like this may be the Sarah Damoff formula, so I’m a little skeptical. On the other hand, I hesitated to read The Bright Years for quite a while because it sounded melodramatic, but it turned out to be a rich character study of a family over four generations. So I’ll be reading The Burning Side with my fingers crossed, hoping my skepticism is unwarranted and that it’s another absorbing story.

Ann Patchett returns on June 2 with Whistler (Harper). I loved Bel Canto, State of Wonder, The Dutch House, and Tom Lake, so I’m curious to see what kind of storytelling magic she has created this time. Daphne Fuller, 53, is at the museum with her husband when she encounters the man who was married to her mother for a year when she was a child. She hasn’t seen him in a very long time, but they were close all those years ago and their reunion has a powerful effect on them. Whistler is described as a story about choices made by us and for us, the moments that shape our lives, and the losses that catch up with us eventually. It sounds like classic Ann Patchett territory, and I’m confident she travels it with her usual insight and compassion.

Finally, a book that is of great interest to me as a fan of Australian history and culture but might not be quite as intriguing to others. The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin by Alexandra Lapierre (Europa Editions, June 2) is a fictional biography of the early 20^th century Australian writer, feminist, and suffragist. Franklin grew up on a farm, published her first novel, My Brilliant Career, in 1901 at age 21, wrote a scathing indictment of the lives of working women in Sydney, and became an internationally known intellectual and activist. My Brilliant Career was made into a successful movie starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill in 1980. Her will left a bequest that became the Miles Franklin Award, now considered the most prestigious literary prize in Australia. The Stella Prize, begun in 2012, honors the best book by an Australian woman or non-binary writer.

Lapierre, educated at the Sorbonne and University of Southern California, is the author of Belle Greene (2022), a novel about the life of J. P. Morgan’s librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, a Black woman who passed as white and became a powerful presence in New York City. You may have heard of another novel about her, The Personal Librarian (2021) by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, which was a bestseller and a Good Morning America Book Club pick that overshadowed Belle Greene.