Chelsea G Summers recommends
The Red Sacrament (2026)
Sara Hinkley
"Sara Hinkley's The Red Sacrament is bloody epic. Evoking the lushness of Anne Rice's best work, The Red Sacrament weaves a textured, rich brocade of theatrical vampires, unwitting victims, and one extremely cunning witch. This stunning debut plunges the reader in a decadent dreamscape of 1870s Paris, aswirl with gas lights, plunged in sepulchral darkness, and shot through with human emotion. Arnault lives, and I live for him."
The Adjunct (2026)
Maria Adelmann
"Maria Adelmann takes the campus novel to new, jittery, and visceral places with The Adjunct. This darkly comic novel is anxiety-provoking in the best of ways as it explodes the seamy guts of the academy, unravels the fabric of MeToo, and bursts the mystique of authorial intent. Adelmann's titular adjunct, Sam, feels so real that I bit my cheeks to shreds as her life implodes over and over until the jaw-dropping end. Beyond the visceral reading experience, I have to applaud the novel's craft, the cochlear structure that whirls in upon itself, only to finish in an open space. I loved the literary doubling, the mille-feuille of textual references, and the constant, inescapable thrum of late-stage capitalism."
Freakslaw (2024)
Jane Flett
"Holy hell, I loved this book. A carnivalesque tale spun in luscious, crackling prose, Freakslaw is the glittery punk offspring of Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. You know those books you want to roll around in, rub on your skin, and clasp to your heart? Freakslaw is one, and I can't wait to see what Jane Flett does next."
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