Top Five Tuesday was originally created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, but is now hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads. To participate, link your post back to Meeghan’s blog or leave a comment on her weekly post.

This week, Meeghan asked us to tell us our favorite new authors of 2022!

It is hard to believe that 2022 is almost over. In fact, I’ve already prepared my “best of 2022” post, which wasn’t easy to do. But for this I will tell you about five authors I read for the first time this past year. Thanks to the Classics Club and Dean Street Press, I could have done one of these just for authors who are no longer living. However, I’ve decided to stick with contemporary authors, and except for one of them, they’re all authors who released new books this past year. (It just so happens that they’re all women! Not so surprising, I think.) So, without any further ado, I give you…

The top five authors new to The Chocolate Lady in 2022!

#5

Clare Pollard. According to her website: “Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and currently lives in South London with her husband and two children. She is a Doctor of Letters, having received an honorary doctorate for her services to literature from Bolton University. Her first collection of poetry, The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998) was written whilst she was still at school, and received an Eric Gregory Award.  It was followed by Bedtime (2002) and Look, Clare! Look! (2005), which was made a set text on the WJEC A-level syllabus. Her fourth collection Changeling (2011) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and her latest is Incarnation (Bloodaxe, 2017).  Her pamphlet The Lives of the Female Poets is published by Bad Betty Press (2019). Her poem ‘Pollen’ has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Individual Poem for 2022. … Clare has supported herself by working as an editor, journalist and teacher. … In 2019 Clare wrote an adult non-fiction title for Fig Tree, Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Children’s Picture Books. She was awarded a Society of Authors work-in-progress grant for her next book, a novel about prophecy entitled Delphi (link to my review), which has been published by Fig Tree in the UK and Avid Reader in the US in 2022, and is forthcoming in German, Dutch and Spanish.

#4

Melissa Harrison. According to her website: “Melissa Harrison is a novelist and nature writer. Melissa contributes a monthly Nature Notebook column to The Times and writes for the FT Weekend, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her most recent novel, All Among the Barley, was the UK winner of the European Union Prize for Literature. It was a Waterstones Paperback of the Year and a Book of the Year in the Observer, the New Statesman and the Irish Times. Her previous books have been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (At Hawthorn Time) and the Wainwright Prize (Rain). She lives in Suffolk.” The first of her books I read was “All Among the Barley,” which got 5/5 stars from me, but won’t appear on my “best of list” since this was published before 2022.

#3

Piper Huguley. From her website: “Piper G. Huguley will make her historical fiction debut in June 2022 with By Her Own Design: a novel of Ann Lowe, Fashion Designer to the Social Register (William Morrow Publishing) who was the Black fashion designer of Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress. She is also the author of Sweet Tea by Hallmark Publishing and the author of two historical romance series: “Migrations of the Heart”, about the Great Migration and “Home to Milford College.”

“Piper Huguley seeks to make new inroads in the publication of historical romance by featuring African American Christian characters.  The Lawyer’s Luck and The Preacher’s Promise, the first books in her “Home to Milford College” series, are Amazon best sellers.  The Mayor’s Mission, published in Winter 2014.  The next entry in the series, The Representative’s Revolt will publish in Spring 2015. She is a 2013 Golden Heart finalist for her novel, A Champion’s Heart—the fourth book in “Migrations of the Heart”. The first book in the series, A Virtuous Ruby, was the first-place winner in The Golden Rose Contest in 2013 and was a Golden Heart finalist in 2014. The first three books in the “Migrations of the Heart” series, which follows the loves and lives of African American sisters during America’s greatest internal migration in the first part of the twentieth century, will be published by Samhain Publishing in 2015. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son.” 

#2

Rebecca Connolly. According to her website: “I was born in California, but grew up in the Midwest, specifically in Ohio and Indiana. I consider myself a Midwest girl, with all of the wholesome sweetness and “girl next door” attributes that come along with that. According to home videos, I have always loved to make up stories. There was nothing simple about a game of House, and every game involving imagination had some sort of plot, whether it was fighting off dragons or being a school teacher. My elementary school had a little book press for stories by students, and I had so many little books printed [but very poorly illustrated!] that I could fill a box at home. I’ve always been a bookworm, and my grandma would send me more books almost every month so I would never run out. Book Fairs were like a carnival to me, and libraries my happy place. My creative writing professor in college once said, “In order to be a great writer, you must be a great reader.” That gave me hope, since I had been reading my entire life! I got my bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, which is where I completed my first novel, and started collecting the ideas for several others! I worked for a few years after that, dabbling in writing and reading and other activities, and then I went to get my master’s degree from West Virginia University. I came back to the Midwest after all of that, and I have no desire to leave it again!” The first of her books I’ve read was “A Brilliant Night of Stars and Ice.” I already have the ARC for her 2023 novel, “Under the Cover of Mercy,” which is another historical fiction novel about WWI.

#1

Yara Zgheib! According to the Macmillan website: “Yara is a reader, writer, traveler, yogi, lover of art, wine, black and white photographs, popcorn, and jazz. She was born in Lebanon and has pieces of her heart scattered over Paris, Beirut, London, Boston, and a few villages in Tuscany.

“She is the author of The Girls at 17 Swann Street and No Land to Light On (link to my review), and writes weekly on culture, art, travel, and philosophy on her blog: The non-Utilitarian. Her essays are prose, poetry, musings, on things neither practical nor useful, but true and beautiful. Essential.

“Her writing has also appeared in The Huffington Post, The Four Seasons Magazine, HOLIDAY Magazine, The European, Womanscape, HOME Magazine, The Idea List, France Forward, Espresso Economics, A Woman’s Paris, The Socio/Log, and others.”

In addition, Goodreads says that “Yara Zgheib is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in International Affairs in Diplomacy from Centre D’études Diplomatiques et Stratégiques in Paris. She is fluent in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish. … She writes on culture, art, travel, and philosophy on her blog, “Aristotle at Afternoon Tea“.”

How about you?

What authors were new to you in 2022?