Samantha Hunt was born in 1971 in Pound Ridge, New York. The Seas is her debut novel - it won the National Book Foundation's award for writers under 35 and was voted one of the Top 27 Books of 2004 by the Voice Literary Supplement. She is also the author of The Invention of Everything Else which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2009. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Esquire, A Public Space, Cabinet, Tin House, Seed Magazine, New York Magazine, Blind Spot, Harper's Bazaar, and The Believer. Her work has been translated into seven languages. Samantha Hunt teaches writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Queen Mab (2026) Emily McBride "Peering into the half-light between madness and sanity, motherhood and ancestry, birth and death, Queen Mab investigates the impossible strangeness of knowing ourselves. As gray cats and foxes watch from the hedge, the fairies make their mischief and a woman is transformed. Who are we? Who will we be? A brave and powerful guide, Emily McBride divines unexpected answers from old stories and new questions."
An Oral History of Atlantis (2025) Ed Park "What's the collective noun for a school of stories so bright and brilliant, they ripple with humor, compassion, and wonder? Call them an 'Ed Park.' An Oral History of Atlantis will continue to delight us, long after the flood."
Smothermoss (2024) Alisa Alering "This beautifully strange book of the mountains is alarming and inspiring."
Beautiful Days (2024) Zach Williams "Beautiful Days brings a reader though strange and grounded lands on just the other side of reality. You will come through changed, shaken, thoughtful, and totally amazed."
Thirst (2024) Marina Yuszczuk "The vampire is irresistible because the vampire is history, biology, desire, and death delivered in one stunning bite. Marina Yuszczuk's Thirst, set in a beautiful, blood red Buenos Aires, brings us the vampires we crave like no other writer has before."
Headshot (2024) Rita Bullwinkel "Brilliant Bullwinkel brings us inside the bodies of the best girl boxers in America. Here, in the head of a fighter, pasts and futures explode from fists to insist on the present. What is it to stand in opposition to another? What troubles and thoughts power each punch? Bullwinkel, like the finest of fighters, wields grace and vision, a most powerful hit."
Your Utopia (2024) Bora Chung "Bora Chung's stories glisten at the border of our weird world, and all our other weird worlds. A truly sublime book."
Dykette (2023) Jenny Fran Davis "Like a tightly rolled spliff passed around the room, you will inhale Dykette. This sexy, at times silly, and wonderfully searing romp through our masquerades of identity, love, art, entertaining, and social maneuvering is a deeply observed novel of manners for today. Davis's characters slink off the page, bewitching, seducing, snuggling up in your lap to whisper stories of our tender, bungled humanity."
Empty Theatre (2023) Jac Jemc "Jac Jemc's dreamscape of a novel weaves history and imagination into a wonder world. Empty Theater is an ingenious and totally absorbing gambol through beauty, decadence, and the bizarre absurdities of lives spent in the dizzying clouds of royalty and pomp. Jemc is a writer of enviable talent and soulful intelligence."
The Complicities (2022) Stacey D'Erasmo "The Complicities had me enthralled. This gripping, human tale of our crimes - financial, environmental, self-delusional - is impossible to put down. D'Erasmo weaves a thriller of a tale, exposing sticky webs of corruption that entangle our lives and fates, even those who fantasize about their innocence, redemption and escape."
The Vixen (2021) Francine Prose "Prose is a powerhouse. The Vixen will fascinate and complicate the histories that haunt our present moments. Like Coney Island's Cyclone, this story tumbles and tangles a reader's grip of reality. It's told with the heart, humor and daring of a true artist. Prose's Vixen is a triumph and a trip though the solid magic that books make real."
Yes, Daddy (2021) Jonathan Parks-Ramage "A dark and aching account, where the treachery of powerful men preys on the bodies and minds of the young. The excesses of a Hamptons summer cannot cover up the truth of how greed and need birth abuses so visceral as to touch the surreal. Parks-Ramage takes a reader into the fiery, unblinking sights of a tortured beast."
Abundance (2021) Jakob Guanzon "An unforgettable accounting of family, fever, and the fortunes of our strip mall society."
Leave the World Behind (2020) Rumaan Alam "Here in your hands, wrapped in the delicious cloth of suspense, Leave the World Behind begs us to ask the most important questions. How do we let the other in? Where do we draw the borders of home? A prescient book, built for these strange times, sure to entrance and electrify."
Severance (2018) Ling Ma "In a breathtaking mash-up of now and just a hair beyond now, Ling Ma’s apocalypse glistens with terror, humor, anger, and humanity. I promise, you will not be able to stop reading this ingeniously constructed and electrifyingly harrowing book."
Heart-Breaker (2018) Claudia Dey "Devoted as I am to the oddities of remote northern lands, I could not put this book down. By turns hilarious and harrowing, Heartbreaker’s icy exactitude is direct, disturbed, and entirely splendid."
A Little More Human (2017) Fiona Maazel "Maazel is a brilliant acrobat, leading a reader to unimagined sights with humor, wonder, and vibrant intelligence. Surefooted and powerful as DeLillo, Maazel lands it perfectly every time."
Spaceman of Bohemia (2017) Jaroslav Kalfař "Jaroslav Kalfar has spun an unforgettable tale, a poignant interplanetary work that collapses the distance between us with the beauty of its language and the unstoppable wonder of this universe he's created."
How Far Is the Ocean from Here (2008) Amy Shearn "How Far Is the Ocean From Here is a lyrical storm populated by runaway surrogate mothers, ghost boys, half-girls, haunted caves, desert motels, parents of all stripes, sacred lakes and swimming pools that swirl and collide until finally getting blown together across America's highways into an unforgettable conclusion."
(b.1971)
