Okay, it’s a new year and you’ve decided that you’re finally going to learn how to read. Excellent choice. 2024 promises to be a pretty stacked year for new literary releases but don’t worry, we’re here to help. We have your next few months covered. From the latest literary fiction to essays, memoirs, and even gender theory, the HERO Reading List is back for ’24.

The History of My Sexuality by Tobi Lakmaker (18/01)

Tobi Lakmaker’s debut novel follows Sofie, a young woman living in Amsterdam who feels unfeminine and is more attracted to women than to men. This history of her sexuality begins with the loss of her virginity and ends right before she starts to visit the hospital where you can become ‘less of a girl and more of a boy’. A sensation when it was published in Europe, The History of My Sexuality comes courtesy of a translation from Dutch by Kristen Gehrman.

The Promised Party: Kahlo, Basquiat and Me by Jennifer Clement (18/01)

The author of the brilliant Widow Basquiat, Jennifer Clement is back. Growing up in 60s Mexico City, Clement lived next door to Frida Kahlo’s house. It was an unorthodox and bohemian childhood, living alongside artists, communists, revolutionaries and poets.

Leaving behind the revolutions in Latin America for the burgeoning counter-culture scene in ’80s New York, Clement quickly became a fixture on the art scene, inhabiting the world of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Colette Lumiere and William Burroughs. This memoir recreates the fury, ecstasy and danger that made ’70s Mexico City and ’80s New York two of the greatest places to be young, free and alive.

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (25/01)

The long-awaited debut novel from one of Ireland’s most acclaimed short story writers, Wild Houses is the story of a small-town kidnapping, but at its heart its the story of two outsiders forced to find and save themselves as they are each drawn into the craziest weekend of their lives. It takes the gritty conventions of the crime novel and explodes them into a beautiful, funny, totally compelling literary evocation of what it means to stand up and apart in small town Ireland.

My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld (01/02)

From the author of the International Booker winning The Discomfort of Evening, Lucas Rijneveld returns with another novel of uncomfortable brilliance. In the tempestuous summer of 2005, a fourteen-year-old farmer’s daughter makes friends with the local veterinarian who looks after her father’s cows. He has reached ‘the biblical age of seven times seven’ and is trying to escape trauma, while she is trying to escape into a world of fantasy. Their obsessive reliance on each other’s stories builds into a terrifying trap, with a confession at the heart of it that threatens to rip their small community apart. As with Discomfort, My Heavenly Favourite come to English-reading audiences through a translation by Michele Hutchison.

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti (06/02)

The cult writer behind works such as Pure Colour, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries is a very literal title. The book is a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, which she has rearranged into alphabetical, instead of chronological, order. The result is a diary blasted apart and pasted back together, drawing profundity from a new way of looking.

Change: A Method by Édouard Louis (08/02)

Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination and violence in his working-class hometown – so he sets out for school in Amiens, and, later, university in Paris. He sheds the provincial ‘Eddy’ for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug-dealers alike.

A follow-up to Louis’ already-classic The End of Eddy, Change is not just a personal odyssey, a story of dreams and of ‘the beautiful violence of being torn away’, but a profound portrait of a society divided by class, power and inequality, brought to life through a translation by John Lambert.

Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain by Jason Okundaye (07/03)

In this landmark work, Jason Okundaye meets an elder generation of Black gay men and finds a spirited community full of courage, charisma and good humour, hungry to tell its past – of nightlife, resistance, political fights, loss, gossip, sex, romance and vulgarity. Through their conversations he seeks to reconcile the Black and gay narratives of Britain, narratives frequently cleaved as distinct and unrelated.

Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler (19/03)

Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today, from emerging authoritarian and fascist regimes to trans-exclusionary feminists.

Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a galvanising call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice. Imagining new possibilities for freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us an essentially hopeful work that is both timely and timeless.

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (28/03)

Headshot is the story of the eight best teenage girl boxers in the United States, told over the two days of a championship tournament and structured as a series of face-offs. As the girls’ pasts and futures collide, the specific joy and violence of the sport comes to scorching life, and a portrait emerges of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness and sheer physical pleasure that motivates each of these young women to fight.

The Gentleman from Peru by André Aciman (04/04)

The author of Call Me by Your Name is back with a new novel set on the Amalfi Coast. While their yacht is being repaired, a group of college friends find themselves marooned at a luxurious hotel. Over long, languid dinners, they can’t help but observe the daily routine of a fellow hotel guest – a mysterious, white-bearded stranger who sits on the veranda each night and smokes one cigarette, sometimes two. When the group decides to invite the elegant traveller to lunch with them, they cannot begin to imagine the miraculous abilities, strange wisdom, and life-changing story he is about to impart to one of the friends in particular.

England is Mine by Nicolas Padamsee (11/04)

Nicolas Padamsee’s debut novel is a frightening journey into online radicalisation. David hates school, where he has been bullied, and has reached sixth form without any friends. Compelled by conversations he has while playing Call of Duty, he becomes fascinated by far-right narratives. Living in the same East London borough as David, Hassan has his own problems. He is drifting apart from childhood friends who drink, get high and mock him for hanging out at the Muslim youth centre, where he is older than everyone else. 

As both second-generation immigrants struggle for a sense of identity and belonging – amid a wave of online radicalisation and extremism – their fates become inextricably, catastrophically entwined.

Some Strange Music Draws Me In by Griffin Hansbury (25/04)

Summer, 1984, in blue-collar Swaffham, Massachusetts. Mel is thirteen, drinking a Slush Puppie at the drugstore, when she hears a voice, ‘deep and movie-star dramatic’: Sylvia. What follows is a story of transgender awakening. Sylvia’s tough-girl trans femininity is an affront to the Swaffham locals, and her presence triggers hatred and violence. But it is also a catalyst for Mel. Through their friendship, Mel comes to realise that there is both a world beyond Swaffham, and other ways of being: free from the class and gender roles embodied by her cruel, vulnerable mother Irene and her best friend, the troubled Jules.

Henry Henry by Allen Bratton(02/05)

A comic and biting retelling of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays, Henry Henry takes place in London in 2014 and follows Hal Lancaster, the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.

When a grouse-shooting accident makes a romance out of Hal’s rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own.

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna(09/05)

A stunning debut that follows three young adults through a London heatwave as their simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over a feverish, life-changing weekend. Maggie is 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with a future in the home town she once fought to escape. Ed, a bike courier, can’t wait to settle down with Maggie. But she doesn’t know that he has a secret history with Maggie’s best friend Phil. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, whilst falling for his housemate, Keith. Evenings and Weekends is McKenna’s debut and is guaranteed to be one of the books of the summer.

All Fours by Miranda July (16/05)

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom.