48 new eBooks and audiobooks coming out January 10 - 16, 2023

By Kobo • January 10, 2023New eBooks and Audiobooks

New eBooks and audiobooks out this week

While coverage of the British royal family has never been in short supply, readers have seen very little in the way of first-hand accounts from the members of the family itself. The late Queen Elizabeth II was famously strict about keeping intimate family business out of the public eye, so the most curious among us gleaned what we could from loose-lipped and often anonymous Buckingham Palace staff. Aside from a book-length TED Talk and a recent children’s book we haven’t had many opportunities to engage with the words of the royals first-hand. With Prince Harry’s new memoir Spare, royal-curious readers finally get the kind of no-holds-barred insider account they’ve been waiting for. Harry speaks about his late mother Diana, his strained relationship with his brother Prince William, and the racism his wife Meghan Markle faced as she joined the family that once presided over the British Empire. What remains to be seen is whether Harry’s frankness represents a mere aberration from a long-standing tradition of confidentiality or the start of a more open royal family.

Aubrey Gordon’s 2020 book What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat was a ground-breaking and eye-opening essay on the cultural significance of fatness and how entrenched anti-fatness is in society. With “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People she distills anti-fatness into 19 discrete beliefs—which she grapples with individually, armed with the latest research and of course the trademark sense of humour she’s become known for as co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase. Gordon’s book joins “They Take Our Jobs!” and 20 Other Myths about Immigration and other books in the Myths Made In America series, which aims to advance social justice by identifying and debunking popular beliefs using facts and argument.

Kai Thomas’ debut novel In the Upper Country is a challenging work of historical fiction set in southern Ontario just a short time before the US Civil War broke out. Set in a fictional town at the end of the Underground Railroad, the story is set in motion by the arrival of a bounty hunter seeking several people fleeing slavery. What follows is an interwoven narrative told by two women, one was among those pursued by the bounty hunter, and the other writes for an abolitionist newspaper in pre-confederation Canada. Though it may sound like a book that readers have seen before, it’s unique for its focus on Black life in a world where legal slavery exists and is held back only by invisible borders and laws, and how interactions with Indigenous Peoples were vital to the development of Black communities.

More books coming out January 10 – 16, 2023