​Don't miss out on this exclusive preview of some of the most exciting books releasing this spring in a conversation with the editors who helped shape and publish them.

​Tertulia members: make sure to register with the special code in your email for complimentary tickets.

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​The Spring 2025 Edition of the First Dibs Editors Salon

​On March 26, Tertulia is presenting the Spring Edition of our First Dibs Editors Salon, offering the opportunity for readers to engage with the acquiring editors of four extraordinary forthcoming books. Sign up in advance to reserve tickets for this virtual gathering taking place from 7:00 to 8:00pm.

​The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien (May 6)

​In this philosophical exploration of time and displacement, Madeleine Thien constructs a narrative that defies conventional boundaries. The story follows Lina and her father arriving at an enigmatic waystation called The Sea, where time bends and historical periods converge. Lina forms connections with neighbors from vastly different eras—a 17th-century Jewish scholar, a philosopher fleeing Nazi Germany, and a Tang Dynasty poet—while confronting difficult truths about her father's past.

​Thien, whose previous novel "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" earned a Booker Prize shortlisting, creates a meditation on migration, guilt, and redemption. Author Claire Messud called it “rich, ambitious, and utterly engrossing…at once a Borgesian meditation on time’s overlapping folds, and a complex, moving feat of human storytelling. 

​The book, published by W.W. Norton,  will be presented by editor Jill Bialosky, whose own memoir The End is the Beginning comes out this May. 

​Yoko by David Sheff (March 25)

​From the author of the best-selling memoir “Beautiful Boy" comes this definitive biography reclaiming Yoko Ono from the margins of Beatles mythology and placing her squarely at the center of her own remarkable story. Sheff, who interviewed Ono and Lennon months before Lennon's murder in 1980, draws from decades of connection with his subject to construct this long-overdue portrait.

​The biography traces Ono's journey from privileged child in pre-war Tokyo through her harrowing wartime experiences, her emergence in avant-garde art circles, and her evolution into a groundbreaking artist, musician, and activist. Sheff confronts the misogyny and racism that reduced Ono to a caricature, offering instead a nuanced view of a woman whose artistic contributions and cultural significance have been consistently undermined by her proximity to rock-and-roll mythology.

​The book, published by Simon & Schuster, will be presented by editor Eamon Dolan, whose own book The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement, comes out in April. 

​Gulf by Mo Ogrodnik (May 6)

​Filmmaker and NYU professor Mo Ogrodnik delivers a debut novel of startling intimacy, following five women from divergent backgrounds whose lives intersect in the Arabian Gulf. Through multiple perspectives—a rebellious Saudi mother, a Filipina domestic worker haunted by tragedy, a Syrian woman joining the female morality police, an American curator confronting ethical limits, and an Ethiopian teenager with thwarted dreams—Ogrodnik examines the constraints and consequences of limited female agency.

​The novel's cinematic sensibility creates a vivid portrait of women navigating structures of power and control, each making choices that ripple through the lives of others. Jennifer Egan has called the work "instantly gripping: a hurtling, sensory plunge" that announces Ogrodnik as "a gifted, arresting newcomer to the literary landscape."

​Published by Summit Books, Gulf will be presented by editor Judy Clain.

​Zeal by Morgan Jerkins (April 22)

​The New York Times bestselling author of "This Will Be My Undoing" returns with an ambitious multi-generational epic that connects contemporary Harlem to post-Civil War Mississippi. The narrative begins in 2019 as Ardelia receives a mysterious, crumbling love letter at her engagement party, then shifts to 1865, where former Union soldier Harrison and freedwoman Tirzah pursue a thwarted love that will echo through generations.

​Jerkins weaves together the stories of their descendants through the Great Migration and into the present day, examining how ancestral choices reverberate through time. Praised by Jason Reynolds as "a beautiful tale" and by Kiese Laymon as "buoyant and absolutely sturdy work," this meticulously researched novel transforms historical fiction into a meditation on destiny, inheritance, and the enduring power of love despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

​The book, published by Harper Collins, will be presented by editor Adenike Olanrewaju.