Ben Percy was raised in the High Desert of Central Oregon. He received his BA with Honors from Brown University and his MFA with a teaching fellowship from Southern Illinois University.
Children of the Wolf (2026) Abby Geni "Children of the Wolf succeeds as both a clenched-jaw thriller and a moving family saga. The cultlike, isolationist influence the father holds over his family will fascinate you, the Viking lore will thrill you, and the slowly unburied secrets will haunt you. There's maybe no greater compliment than saying, damn, do I wish I had written this novel."
Let Not Your Sorrow Die (2025) Bracken MacLeod "Are you ready? Take a deep breath. Sign the waiver. Enter the dark. The fearless and wildly talented Bracken Macleod is going to spike your adrenaline and hurt your heart. Let Not Your Sorrow Die is a haunting, beautiful collection that tours you the best and worst of the human condition and leaves a shadow in you like a bruise."
Ashes to Ashes (2025) Thomas Maltman "The story of a small town that reads like an epic. I don't know what impressed me most - the superbly crafted prose, the deeply felt characters, or the mythological and religious quest of the reading experience. I'm in awe."
Big Chief (2025) Jon Hickey "Big Chief features all the twisty chessmanship - the familial feuds, the financial games, the political maneuvering - of Succession and sets it against the backdrop of Indian country. Jon Hickey has written one hell of an addictive and important debut novel."
They All Fall the Same (2025) Wes Browne "Browne writes like the smart-talking, card-shuffling, bullet-dodging, bourbon-soaked loved child of Ron Rash, Elmore Leonard, and the Coen Brothers."
Bunyan and Henry (2024) Mark Cecil "This fresh, energizing, big-hearted take on the mythic past feels all too relevant to the right now. An American epic that will make you square your jaw, squint your eye, and take a swing at claiming the future."
Things We Found When the Water Went Down (2022) Tegan Nia Swanson "Is Tegan Nia Swanson a novelist, poet, collagist, puzzle-master, or sorceress? Is this book a northern noir or an eco-thriller or a mosaic colored by magical realism? These are the questions raised by a dazzlingly original talent and story. Things We Found When the Water Went Down is a cerebral, lyrical, beautiful, mysterious defiance."
The Flock (2022) J Todd Scott "We live in a world of bent truths, tribal divisions, and conspiring realities - and you'll find a dark, mesmerizing reflection of this in J. Todd Scott's latest thriller, The Flock. Scott writes with a terse poetry and builds a relentlessly paced plot, but it's the superbly drawn characters who will wreck you in the best possible way."
How High We Go in the Dark (2022) Sequoia Nagamatsu "You can try to compare Sequoia Nagamatsu to George Saunders or Charlie Kaufman or David Mitchell, but his is a singular voice and this is a book so original and wondrous and reality-shredding that it defies easy summary or categorization, like a dream that feels more vivid than life. Arctic plagues! Euthanasia theme parks! Hotels for the dead! Talking pigs! Interstellar starships! It's brave and prescient, completely bananas and yet absolutely moving, packed with humor and heart. I loved it."
The Rock Eaters (2021) Brenda Peynado "I love Brenda Peynado's big, beautiful imagination and the way her stories open up whole universes of possibility in only a few vivid pages. She is a magical mindbender--in conversation with Karen Russell and Margaret Atwood--who helps us understand the troubling issues of our world through a speculative lens. The Rock Eaters will put a spell on you."
The Ghost Variations (2021) Kevin Brockmeier "In Kevin Brockmeier's The Ghost Variations, the familiar poetry of life gives way to uncanny wonder and startling discoveries, leaving the reader constantly unsettled, as if we found a room in a house where none had been before or woke in the night to a figure standing at the bottom of the bed. There might be a hundred stories in this collection, but there are a million reasons to love Brockmeier, one of literature's greatest living talents, who writes sentences like spells and who elegantly phases between the walls of literary and genre fiction."
Winter Counts (2020) (Virgil Wounded Horse, book 1) David Heska Wanbli Weiden "WINTER COUNTS is a hell of a gripping debut, perfectly plotted, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden is a major new voice in crime fiction, indigenous fiction, and American literature."
The Ancestor (2020) Danielle Trussoni "This smart, suspenseful thriller is at once an age-old tale and a fresh, scarily relevant trapdoor into our current genealogical obsession. Danielle Trussoni has written a biological and narrative labyrinth that you will happily get lost in, even as you question everything you think you know about yourself."
Kawai Strong Washburn "Kawai Strong Washburn has written the great Hawaiian novel. This is the story of a family that becomes the story of the islands. A place that most people don't know outside of glossy postcards and beachside vacations . . . A volcanic powerhouse of a debut."
The Nobody People (2019) (Resonant Duology, book 1) Bob Proehl "The Nobody People is an expertly plotted, morally complex, brilliantly written, adrenaline-fueled adventure into a new dawn of heroes and villains. Hold on tight to this novel, because you're in for a hell of a ride."
The Municipalists (2019) Seth Fried "[Seth Fried] will make your heart stop and your jaw drop. You will suffer from bouts of thoughtful silence and seizures of hilarity and may even soil yourself with pleasure. Consider yourself warned."
Halcyon (2018) Rio Youers "I'm warning you: stay away from Halcyon if you have a pressing deadline, children that must be fed, dogs that need to be walked. Because it will own you completely and gobble up all your time and focus with its spellbinding sentences, vividly realized characters, furious pacing, and skin-crawling chills. Rio Youers is a master."
Tornado Weather (2017) Deborah E Kennedy "Dark and dangerous and strange and wonderful…Kennedy writes with the gritty poetry of Daniel Woodrell and misfit sensibility of Flannery O’Connor."
The Hatching (2016) (Hatching, book 1) Ezekiel Boone "The Hatching is scary as hell and addictively fun. Check your sheets, spray your basement and attic, flinch away from anything that scurries, because Ezekiel Boone has spun a globe-spanning web of terror that elevates everyone's favourite household baddie--the spider--to the level of supervillain."
Mongrels (2016) Stephen Graham Jones "Mongrels exists somewhere in the borderlands of literary and genre fiction, full of horror and humor and heart, at once a nightmarish road trip and a moving story about a broken family leashed together by their fierce love and loyalty. A bloody great read."
Scrapper (2015) Matt Bell "Matt Bell does not write sentences-he writes spells."
The Killing Kind (2015) (Michael Hendricks, book 1) Chris Holm "Chris Holm's 'The Killing Kind' is my favorite thriller of the fall lineup. Here's a solid gold premise: an assassin who only kills other assassins. . . . The cat-and-mouse game that follows is pure joy. . . . This novel is so fast-moving, so expertly arranged, every piece fitting together with a well-oiled snap, that it feels weaponized. Read it. Or else."
Hyde (2014) Daniel Levine "As dark and twisted and alluring as the night-cloaked streets of nineteenth-century London, this book is as mush a fascinating psychology query as it is a gripping narrative."
Caring Is Creepy (2012) David Zimmerman "As the danger steadily escalates, the sentences unspooling like a detonator line that sizzles toward an explosive, unforgettable ending."
(b.1979)
