A Better World (2024) Sarah Langan "Suspenseful, scathing, simultaneously deeply disturbing and wildly funny. . . . A delicious skewering of the Anthropocene and our desperation for 'beautification' at whatever cost. I couldn't put it down."
The Fortune Seller (2024) Rachel Kapelke-Dale "Delicious and addicting, The Fortune Seller is the book of my occult horse-girl dreams. Ambition, excess, equestrians-all filtered through the tarot and the question of fate versus luck. Kapelke-Dale has constructed a glittering tale of sacrifice and privilege. I guarantee you will not be able to put it down."
Midnight on Beacon Street (2024) Emily Ruth Verona "A delightfully twisted, poignant shot of 90s nostalgia, Emily Ruth Verona's Midnight on Beacon Street is a treat for anyone who's been, or been babysat by, a scrappy teenager in a dark house at night."
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years (2024) Shubnum Khan "The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years is a cinematic spectacular, rife with doomed love and vengeful spirits and a lurking violence always waiting to pounce. Shubnum Khan has written a gorgeous gothic mystery, a fascinating meditation on the nature of forgiveness and time."
Cleaner (2023) Brandi Wells "Welcome to the office building at night, an eerie and yet totally mundane ship helmed by one woman desperate for connection and valiantly, perhaps delusionally, striving for meaning in her work. Brandi Wells' Cleaner is laugh out loud funny, but its project of validating unseen labor is totally serious. This is a book that celebrates humanity, even while tearing down the corporate culture that denies it in the drollest and wittiest of ways."
The Centre (2023) Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi "At once a twisting mystery and nuanced exploration of identity and assimilation, The Centre cuts deep. Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi has written a compelling, witty, sometimes gruesome tale of how we use language to connect and to sever, appropriate, and explore. I'll be mulling her brilliance for some time."
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (2023) Rita Chang-Eppig "A pirate queen's adventures in the South China Seas, based on the life of an actual early 19th-century icon--I'm sold a hundred times over on this debut."
A Manual for How to Love Us (2023) Erin Slaughter "The stories in A Manual for How to Love Us read like a cold ocean swim: salty and refreshing and sincere, each a bracing exploration of the particular blessings and burdens of womanhood in all its ugliness and glory. I couldn't ask for something stranger or more beautiful. Erin Slaughter is a masterful sentence writer in firm command of her craft, and this book is an inspiration and a gift."
Flux (2023) Jinwoo Chong "Provocative and propulsive, Flux is a delicious genre bender about the evolution of identity--the moments that bifurcate our lives and the ways in which we lose ourselves to trauma and time. A poignant, expertly constructed puzzle with an intellectual bite. I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time."
Things We Found When the Water Went Down (2022) Tegan Nia Swanson "Tegan Nia Swanson's debut is a multi-faceted excavation of inherited trauma in both the spiritual and physical world that asks if regrowth is possible after immolation and offers no easy answers. In shifting forms and propulsive language, she captures the impossibility of history, the fierce pride of so-called otherness, and the dream of a gentler world. Immersive, heartbreaking, and cathartic."
Strega (2022) Johanne Lykke Holm "Utterly immersive, Strega is a modern-day fairy tale in the primeval sense, a visceral, hallucinatory allegory of coming into womanhood. It's at once timeless and completely new, with surprising and evocative prose - a glittering translation of a masterful work."
More Than You'll Ever Know (2022) Katie Gutierrez "As addictive as a real-life who-dunnit, with thoughtful attention to the ethical implications of the true crime genre, More Than You'll Ever Know explores how we entangle ourselves one choice at a time, and what it costs to unravel the damage. Crystalline and multi-faceted, this is a page-turner brimming with empathy, a window into 1980s Mexico City and Laredo, and the ways community both bouys and pulls us under. Katie Gutierrez is a force, and she writes fabulously complicated, fully-realized characters who will linger with you long after the final page."
Sally Oliver "Intelligent, addictive, and unsettling. Sally Oliver is a thoughtful, gorgeous writer, and this layered exploration of trauma, family, and selfhood will linger."
We Can Only Save Ourselves (2021) Alison Wisdom "Alison Wisdom's clear-eyed debut lulls you into a tenuous comfort, only to jump out when least expected. The collective narration flawlessly juggles youthful idealism and hardened maturity, marking the decisions women make--both deliberate and coerced--and their struggle to break free from societies determined to stifle their freedom to choose. Insidiously haunting, subtly clever, and impossible to put down."
These Violent Delights (2020) Micah Nemerever "Visceral, intimate, and all-consuming, this gutsy debut is both intellectual and fiercely animal. A chilling exploration into desire and infatuation that questions how well we ever really know our lovers—or ourselves. Nemerever’s propulsive, crystalline language and gutting insights make the pages fly by, hurtling you toward the inevitable, astounding ending."
Migrations (2020) Charlotte McConaghy "An astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. With soulful prose and deep empathy, McConaghy weaves parallel stories of a woman and a world on the brink of devastation, but never without hope. This is a true force of a book that I read holding my breath from its start to its symphonic finish."
Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (2020) Kathleen Rooney "Kathleen Rooney’s immersive, immaculate new novel is both a memorial and an imperative, broadening our collective definition of humanity and courage. In bell-clear prose, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey paints a harrowing portrait of the callousness and deep compassion of those—both man and bird—involved in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Like Rooney’s rich and poignant characters, readers will emerge from the pocket irrevocably changed."
