Julia Phillips lives in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, Disappearing Earth, will be publishedby Knopf in the US and Scribner in the UK, as well as publishers in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and China. Her Pushcart-nominated fiction appears in literary journals including Glimmer Train and The Antioch Review. Her nonfiction appears in such publications as The Atlantic, Slate, and BuzzFeed News, and was named notable in Best American Travel Writing. She spent a year as a Fulbright fellow in Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, where Disappearing Earth is set.
Sheer (2026) Vanessa Lawrence "Vanessa Lawrence is a marvel. Biting, shocking, illuminating, and whip-smart, her sophomore novel, Sheer, exposes the brutality behind the beauty industry, as it gives us the confession of canceled makeup mogul Maxine Thomas. Maxine bares all, revealing the layered pressures of gender, sexuality, race, and class at play on a made-up face, all the while telling us a gorgeous and unforgettable story. Lawrence pulls it off perfectly: she shows the awful system behind the beautiful woman, then the woman at the heart of the system itself."
The Hounding (2025) Xenobe Purvis "The Hounding is a debut novel bound to be a cult classic. It's a tale set centuries ago that throbs with a bloody, living heart. It's a jewel dug from the depths of Xenobe Purvis's imagination. It's exquisite."
Aftertaste (2025) Daria Lavelle "Brilliantly constructed and wholly original, Aftertaste is like no novel you've ever tried before. It's much more than your usual dish - it's a whole literary tasting menu. Packed with ghosts, romance, fine dining, and the mob, it will leave you stunned, thrilled, and totally satiated."
Stag Dance (2025) Torrey Peters "Torrey Peters is a holy, dreadful storyteller, her words divine and her characters brutally real, her talent awe-inspiring, her vision immense. Her writing tears your guts out. It leaves you gasping. This is fiction that makes you drop to your knees - fiction at its very best."
The Witches of El Paso (2024) Luis Jaramillo "Spanning borders and centuries, The Witches of El Paso is a wild, wondrous novel about the magic that is singing all around us. With this story, Luis Jaramillo shows us how to catch the tune."
The Stone Home (2024) Crystal Hana Kim "Crystal Hana Kim is one of today's most exquisite writers. Her beautiful words tell a brutal story of family, state, and the history walled off during our lifetimes. It's a story we need to know, put on the page by the author we trust to tell it. Stunning, frightening, and awe-inspiring, The Stone Home is the book we have been waiting for."
The Garden (2024) Clare Beams "Clare Beams is a master of fiction - Born in the literary legacy of Angela Carter and Stephen King, THE GARDEN is, like every child, utterly itself in the end - miraculous and beautiful and strange."
Memory Piece (2024) Lisa Ko "Wild and wonderful, punk and propulsive, Memory Piece is about three friends growing from girlhood into a sinister new world. It is about authenticity, surveillance, capitalism, queerness, and the internet. It is about - it is - everything."
Fruit of the Dead (2024) Rachel Lyon "Opulent and unsettling, Fruit of the Dead explores the island where ancient myth meets the contemporary body. This story is vivid, shocking, evocative. It is both of this time and outside it. It is purely Rachel Lyon. It is wonderful."
Flores and Miss Paula (2023) Melissa Rivero "Melissa Rivero is magnificent. Her vision is clear, her characters are real, and her words are tender and true. In her newest novel, she writes about loyalty, money, loss, and love; she writes about home, the long path to finding it, and all the places we can go only when guided by an author so skilled."
The Leftover Woman (2023) Jean Kwok "Jean Kwok has done it again. Her newest novel will make your heart race as it follows two determined women: one whose choices have been limited, and one who has the world at her feet. Jean's heroines cross languages, borders, and cultures to collide in a confrontation that leaves blood on their hands. As gorgeous as it is thrilling, The Leftover Woman tells a story of identity, ambition, and love that makes us look again at who we are and who we're forced to be. It asks us: How far would you go to get what you want?"
Happiness Falls (2023) Angie Kim "Brilliant, immersive, and deeply moving . . . a book that will change the way you think--a book that will change your life."
Killingly (2023) Katharine Beutner "Killingly moves deliberately, achingly, through one young woman's disappearance in 1897. Out of the real-life facts of the case, Katharine Beutner makes extraordinary fiction, pushing against the limits of her characters' situations and propelling us to the heights of their ambitions. Beutner's novel is able to discover an answer to Bertha Mellish's mystery. Now, more than ever, we need to know the truth this story reveals."
The Daughter Ship (2023) Boo Trundle "Wild as stormy water, turbulent as a human heart, The Daughter Ship is a novel like none you've ever read before. It tracks the scattered parts of one woman as she fractures and finds herself over her lifetime. Boo Trundle is a deep, dark, far-seeing storyteller, who has written a wholly original and unforgettable debut."
The Weeds (2023) Katy Simpson Smith "Brilliant, poetic, unnerving, wholly original. What else would you expect from Katy Simpson Smith? With The Weeds, she has written another masterpiece."
A Flaw in the Design (2023) Nathan Oates "Get ready for a wild ride. Brutal and compelling, A Flaw in the Design is the story of a family driven toward destruction, as a father takes custody of the nephew he fears will wreck his life. This novel swerves and shocks before smashing into you, a T-bone collision you can hold in your hands."
The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number 3 (2023) Kira Yarmysh "Ten. Nine. Eight . . . The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number 3 counts down the ten-day detention of Anya, a Russian arrested after protesting her corrupt government. With every day that passes, our hearts pound faster, as the prisoners, their jailers, and Anya's nightmares collide. Kira Yarmysh shows us the whole world through a single cell: frightening and funny, absurd and all too real."
A Country You Can Leave (2023) Asale Angel-Ajani "Refined and raw, cosmopolitan and claustrophobic, A Country You Can Leave is a novel of contrasts, built around a mother and daughter who see themselves as nothing alike. Asale Angel-Ajani portrays the complexity of the whole world through this one core relationship. Her debut is as loving as it is demanding, as vulnerable as it is merciless, and its complications will break your heart."
All That's Left Unsaid (2022) Tracey Lien "This novel will make you travel through time: to an embattled Australia in 1996, to a youth shaped by your parents' pain, to the day after the biggest mistake of your life. Tracey Lien's story pulls you back twenty years, then pushes you, heartbroken and stunned, into today's bright light. All That's Left Unsaid is honest, aching, and filled with beauty. It will transport you."
A Map for the Missing (2022) Belinda Huijuan Tang "Exquisite and precise, A Map for the Missing tracks two lovers, pulled across years and nations, who never stop longing for each other. It is stunning. Belinda Huijuan Tang crafts her story with all the tenderness, specificity, and vision of a god making a planet. The world she builds in these pages is one you won't ever want to leave."
The Work Wife (2022) Alison B Hart "A page-turner, an eye-opener, a heartbreaker, a delight, The Work Wife is that rare book that illuminates a world we never knew existed while also making us feel so much less alone in everyday life."
The Caretakers (2022) Amanda Bestor-Siegal "Tender, brutal, frightening, captivating, The Caretakers is a novel about child care and abandonment that is as beautifully complicated as parenting itself. Amanda Bestor-Siegal opens for us the bloody heart of the contemporary family and exposes its darkest chambers - the loneliness, the longing, the love - to the light."
The School for Good Mothers (2021) Jessamine Chan "Gutting and terrifying. Vivid and exquisite. In The School for Good Mothers, you'll find not only your favorite novel of the year, but also a new cultural touchstone, a reference point for the everyday horrors all parents experience and take for granted. This book is sharp, shocking, anxiety-provoking, superb. It is exactly what you want, and need, to read."
Something Unbelievable (2021) Maria Kuznetsova "Something Unbelievable gives you things hilarious, things heartbreaking, things gorgeous and perfect and irresistible on every page. This novel crosses generations, oceans, and empires but never misses a step."
Ruthie Fear (2020) Maxim Loskutoff "Meet Ruthie Fear. Once you know her, you’ll never forget her. Maxim Loskutoff maps Ruthie’s Bitterroot Valley with clarity, wisdom, and tenderness, tracking the shifting relationships between those who originally inhabited the land and those who have colonized it, those who hunt and those who are hunted. This novel will seize you by the throat from its very first pages and leave you gasping for air by its end."
Bestiary (2020) K-Ming Chang "Epic and intimate at once, Bestiary brings myth to visceral life, showing what becomes of women and girls who carry tigers, birds, and fish within. K-Ming Chang’s talent exposes what is hidden inside us. She makes magic on the page."
The All-Night Sun (2020) Diane Zinna "This stunning debut novel explores the space between dreams and nightmares, life and death, the brilliance of the midnight sun and the darkness when you shut your eyes. Diane Zinna has given us a tender, aching, and unforgettable story."
Pizza Girl (2020) Jean Kyoung Frazier "Sharp and surprising, Pizza Girl shows us how obsession can fill the empty spaces in a young woman's life. Jean Kyoung Frazier will make you laugh with one sentence and break your heart with the next. A delicious debut."
Rules for Moving (2020) Nancy Star "A tender exploration of family, friendship, and what it means to be the black sheep."
Pretty Things (2020) Janelle Brown "Hungry, sexy, and packed with twists, this latest novel from Janelle Brown exposes what's hidden behind the stone walls of the elite's mansions and the slick facades of con artists' scams. Money, family, and Instagram collide to make a book you won't be able to put down."
The Marriage Clock (2019) Zara Raheem "So fresh and charming and fun! I adored being in Leila’s world, from her girls’ nights with her friends to her conversations with her loving, pressuring parents to her many first dates. What a joy to read."
