Today in Bookish and Literary History, January 5

1886 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - UK

Stevenson's famous exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil

1953 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - Ireland ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

2021 Want to know a secret? by Freida McFadden - US

YouTube baking sensation April Masterson knows the secret to the perfect gooey brownies. Or how to make key lime squares that will melt in your mouth. But if you keep watching her offline, you may find out some other secrets about April. Secrets she’d rather you didn’t know.

2021 How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones - Barbados

In the tradition of Zadie Smith and Marlon James, a brilliant Caribbean writer delivers a powerful story about four people each desperate to escape their legacy of violence in a so-called "paradise.”

• Short-listed for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction

2021 The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin - Ireland

In this “delicate slow burn of a novel” (Jan Carson), a woman’s marriage and career are threatened by an old indiscretion just as she receives the opportunity of a lifetime—from the award–winning author of the “extraordinary” (Colum McCann) Dinosaurs on Other Planets.

2021 Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour - US

Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.

• Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize

2021 The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. - US

A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.

• Winner of The Publishing Triangle Award
• Finalist for the National Book Award

2021 White Feminism by Koa Beck - US

Written “with passion and insight about the knotted history of racism within women’s movements and feminist culture” (Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author), this whip-smart, timely, and impassioned call for change is perfect for fans of Good and Mad and Hood Feminism.

2021 In the Land of the Cyclops: Essays by Karl Ove Knausgård - Norway

From the New York Times bestselling author of the My Struggle series comes a collection of ambitious, remarkably erudite essays on art, literature, culture, and philosophy.

2022 Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran - UK/AUS

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to story-telling and how our stories shape who we are.

• Winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Award

2025 Maybe in this Lifetime by Asia Monique - US

When I woke from my induced coma asking for my wife, only to learn I’d never been married, I was devastated.

When my patient mistook me as his wife after waking from an induced coma, I was terrified.

2025 The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens by Barbara Sjoholm - US

Norwegian-born Dagny Bergland and her husband arrive in turn-of-the century Port Townsend, Washington after years of sailing their merchant ship around the globe. They’re just in time for the Yukon Gold Rush and the arrival of a group of Sámi reindeer herders from Lapland on their way to Alaska to supply the ill-prepared miners. Dagny’s journals, beginning in 1897, tell a fresh and riveting history of the Pacific Northwest and its immigrants. A novel of friendship, love, loss, and motherhood, The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens is the story of a remarkable woman who learns to steer a new course in a new country.

2026 The Invisible Woman by James Patterson and Susan DiLallo - US

An undercover FBI agent investigates a family with suspected ties to organized crime—by posing as their live-in nanny.

2026 SARA's SECRETS: A Mystery by Bernard Grisoni

For readers drawn to the mystery of The Red Tent, the spiritual depth of The Alchemist, and the historical soul of The Da Vinci Code, Sara’s Secrets offers a journey unlike any other - across time, faith, and the hidden map of the human heart.