My Last Innocent Year (2023) Daisy Alpert Florin "My Last Innocent Year is one of the best novels about life on a college campus I've ever read, and Isabel Rosen is a distinctive, necessary addition to the Jewish canon; Daisy Florin excavates her characters' journey through the end of innocence with great honesty, insight, and a singular voice."
Out of Esau (2022) Michelle Webster-Hein "With gorgeous, glittering prose, Michelle Webster Hein explores a community in rural Michigan, looking at family, marriage, and faith with a precise, compassionate eye. A novel of rare honesty and beauty."
She Is Haunted (2022) Paige Clark "Paige Clark's stories in She is Haunted illuminate all of the corners of the heart -- she examines her characters' journeys through grief, envy, connection, and love, across nations, identity and trauma. Her work has the deep honesty and precision of writers like Amy Hempel, Yoko Ogawa, and Alice Munro. A stunning collection."
Quint (2021) Dionne Irving "Quint is an expansive novel of multiple births, motherhood, siblings, celebrity, exploitation, loss and connection; this story truly contains the world. Dionne Irving is a fantastic writer; she tells this unique story with honesty and precision and playfulness, and this novel compels with her vision, which is original and vast."
Dear Miss Metropolitan (2021) Carolyn Ferrell "The 'victim girls' in Carolyn Ferrell's novel Dear Miss Metropolitan are some of the most original, rich, memorable characters I've read. Dear Miss Metropolitan is an astonishing, innovative novel of trauma and connection and survival, and Carolyn Ferrell is a brilliant writer."
Call It Horses (2021) Jessie van Eerden "Call It Horses is a spectacular novel. With the gorgeous language of Jayne Anne Phillips and the compassion of Carson McCullers, Jessie van Eerden follows an unforgettable cast of women through their lives and longing in West Virginia with precision and insight. An original, beautifully structured, and deeply moving book."
Copy Boy (2020) (Jane Benjamin, book 1) Shelley Blanton-Stroud "Copy Boy is a fantastic story of a young woman's survival and re-invention, set in Northern California during the Depression. Blanton-Stroud's prose sings and crackles and brings us into the world of Jane with so much compassion and beauty and wisdom. An engaging, wonderfully original book."
