Intemperance (2025) Sonora Jha "Oh, what fun I had reading this wild romp of a novel. But Intemperance - narrated by one of the funniest and most charming fictional characters I've met in my life - is more than a good time. It's a disarmingly honest and urgent book about the human search for love in all corners of existence: in the divine; in our fellow beings, human and not; and ultimately, within ourselves."
Bog Queen (2025) Anna North "I can't remember the last time a novel so moved and transfixed me. Bog Queen is infused with a profound wisdom about human ambition across the millennia-how enormous it has been, and also how insignificant-that seems to transcend human understanding, as if delivered by the old gods themselves. An absolute astonishment."
Metallic Realms (2025) Lincoln Michel "A wild, playful, mind-bending ride, Metallic Realms is an homage in equal parts to Nabokov and to online indie writing communities. A novel ultimately about the sacred communing that takes place when the writer's imagination meets that of the reader. It is a one-of-a-kind novel that only Lincoln Michel could have written."
Circular Motion (2025) Alex Foster "Circular Motion is a deep investigation of how time is valued in contemporary society, while also being a deftly plotted page-turner. I read it in just a couple of sittings; time flew."
Goddess Complex (2025) Sanjena Sathian "Buckle up, readers: Goddess Complex, an heir to the best of Kafka or Roth in both its savage comic brilliance and its depth of meaning, is the wildest of rides. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was simultaneously so serious in its ambition - this is a novel, ultimately, about female power and agency - and such a perfectly plotted page-turner. I could not put it down."
Save Me, Stranger (2025) Erika Krouse "The protagonists at the heart of this collection seem to hang, fingers clinging, on a high precipice, while the reader stands above in judgment and care, both at once. In our lonesome, suspicious times, Save Me, Stranger made me feel that there's hope yet for our wretched souls. I'll be thinking about these stories for a long time."
Rejection (2024) Tony Tulathimutte "I could compare Rejection to the work of Nabokov, in its stylish and blazingly original skewering of convention; or to that of Roth, in the daring with which it plumbs the darkest depths of the human psyche to excavate what is most vulnerable about us; or to the worst (by which I mean best) Am I the Asshole post you've ever read on Reddit, in its commitment to embodying its characters at their neediest and most candid and therefore most delectable. But to do so would be to sell it short. I finished Rejection breathless with admiration. It is - Tulathimutte is - that rare thing in American literature: truly original."
I Love You So Much it's Killing Us Both (2024) Mariah Stovall "Mariah Stovall's prose sounds like driving in a car with your best friend, volume up high on your favorite song. I Love You So Much . . . resurrected feelings I had almost forgotten about what it means to be young in a hard, and nonetheless beautiful, world."
Wine People (2023) Michelle Wildgen "I blazed through this novel-a complicated, authentic examination of female ambition and friendship that also happens to be such fun to read."
Brother Alive (2022) Zain Khalid "This genre-defying novel, and the intelligence, originality, and awareness of the mind that produced it, astonished me. I was reminded of Gunter Grass, of Viet Thanh Nguyen. Through the consciousness of an unforgettable narrator, Youssef, Khalid begins by subtly illuminating the contours of a globalized world in which the personal is geopolitical; he ends by turning up the light and refusing to let us look away."
