Contemporary Fiction Books

Book Synopsis★ “DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story . . . of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.” — Booklist (starred review) In this playful and aching short novel, an unnamed trans woman is on an epic journey to find the place where she belongs. As she navigates her many realities, she must wrestle with anxieties and fears about the world. Her son and her ex live in another state. Environmental disasters are being outsourced to the Midwest. She can’t decide whether or not to unbox the companion automaton under her bed. And some of her friends may not just be ghosting her, they might not even be real.OKPsyche is a fever-pitched odyssey through the joys, fears, and weirdness of trans adulthood, parenthood, and selfhood in the contemporary world.Trade Review“An exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. . . . In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.” — Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe “The second-person telling lets the reader in on a conversation this character is having with herself as she creates within herself the understanding that she needs: a sort of literary camera obscura that offers glimpses of how she pieces her historically disparate selves together.” — E.C. Barrett, Strange Horizons “This story contains and covers multitudes. It ties its character to the sticking place, and we are bound as well, by a trans woman’s hopes, desires, losses, and visceral fears of the danger she faces every single day. Those dangers are indeed more real than imagined for a woman who doesn’t pass society’s purity test.” — The Novel Approach “DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story about what it means to try and find a place for yourself in the midst of a hurricane of climate disaster, violence, and fear. It’s a story told through weird, ghostly, haunting fantasy. Fans of enigmatic speculative fiction like Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (2022), will enjoy this tale of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.” — Booklist (starred review) “OKPsyche is a spectacular novel, like a shard of stained glass in brilliant reds and greens and purples. De Niro shows us the impossible and the possible with equal honesty. The book is a chronicle of hope and hurt and freedom, suffused with anxiety and grace, and told in prose that just won’t quit. It’s major. You’ll remember where you were when you read it.”— Isaac Fellman, author of Dead Collections“Tense and funny, heartfelt and uncanny, Anya Johanna DeNiro takes us on an hallucinogenic tour through the mind of a woman on the edge. Guided by strange angels or losing touch with reality — either way, it’s happening to you!”— Morgan M. Page, screenwriter of Framing Agnes"DeNiro has done something beautiful here, weaving a luminous lament for a ruined world with the simmering pain of a woman finally coming to life. Delicate, lovely, and ultimately full of the impossible hope that shines forth in trans lives."— Maya Deane, author of Wrath Goddess Sing“An allegorical and lyrical short novel about a transgender woman struggling to belong in a near future populated by emotional support robots and a ceaseless slew of environmental disasters. DeNiro writes with a complexity that reflects the internal emotional struggles of her unnamed protagonist as she fights for happiness and a better relationship with her young son. A uniquely told and refreshingly weird story of self-realization and the courage it takes to love.”— Sam Edge, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews, Chapel Hill, NC"DeNiro (City of a Thousand Feelings) offers a beguiling if somewhat opaque glimpse into a trans woman’s journey to find safety, acceptance, and love in a near-future Minnesota. . . . this is a fascinating and often lovely weird fiction character study."— Publishers WeeklyPraise for Anya DeNiro's writing:"That trust in emotional urgency over conventional logic to guide a story is, for me, a critical part of a queer aesthetic. Coming out is about obeying an interior, often inarticulable emotional push over majority logics. . . . DeNiro’s gorgeous and emotionally flawless navigation . . . is masterful, cerebral but full of complex feeling, and nothing short of word-magic.”— Theodore McCombs, Fiction Unbound"Surreal and lyrical.”— Publishers Weekly“What makes the story even more compelling, is that DeNiro gives you all this, allegory and action, without ever losing sight of the heart of the story: the fundamental bond and evolving relationship between two characters who choose different ways to survive, and yet find a greater power, and maybe even a new kind of salvation, when they come together.”— Maria Haskins“Strange, menacing worlds whose contours only gradually become clear (or, perhaps, more complexly mysterious).”—Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune“Minnesotan DeNiro gives us large hunks of riveting weirdness.”—Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press“Wildness, fierceness, and anarchic imagination are traits, then, to be prized in this book, above beauty, order, and sense—or, in classical terms, the Dionysian over the Apollonian—and process.”— Strange Horizons“Each story feels new, unique, and important.”—Leah Schnelbach, Tor.com

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Book Synopsis"Tanguy Viel's parody/pastiche of the American novel is subtle and experimental; it tells a story at the same time as it implicitly poses questions about the narrative structure it is deploying." —The French Review In The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan, disappearance is both a theme and a stylistic device. Indeed, this publication narrates the disappearance of Dwayne Koster, who, fascinated by the story of Jim Sullivan, commits suicide in the New Mexico desert which was the setting of the rocker’s disappearance in 1975. But this novel is for the most part set in the metanarrative tale of its own genesis, and, as a result, is partially eclipsed: its -fictitious- author doesn’t relate it in its entirety and keeps adding bits and pieces of first drafts and preliminary sketches to his text, thus blurring its boundaries. Tanguy Viel’s work can therefore be perceived as a double response, existential and aesthetic, to the question of the end.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR ARTICLE 353: A Novel: "[A] beguiling noir...Arresting metaphors enliven the spare prose... Viel should win new fans with elegant effort." —Publishers Weekly "Sharp and memorable…a dark fable that reads like one of Georges Simenon’s “romans durs” or psychological novels, which winningly fuse together lean prose, queasy atmospherics, raw emotion and moral conundrums…[Viel] satisfies with a potent concoction of mystery, complexity and tightly coiled tension." —Minneapolis Star Tribune "Fresh and absorbing…grippingly told." —Library Journal "Captivating and striking, Tanguy Viel's writing never lets us go." —Libération

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Book SynopsisAn Evening of Romantic Lovemaking is the tale of a would-be standup comedian/terrorist as he hilariously and heart-wrenchingly performs his last act in front of an audience who may or may not be there. Curtis White calls it “both the funniest and one of the saddest novels I’ve ever read” and “a work of comic genius. While comparisons to Gilbert Sorrentino, Mark Leyner, and Flann O’Brien will be made, Slotky’s voice is entirely his own and one you’ll not soon forget.”

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Book SynopsisFrom the author of The Memory Monster, a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, comes a gripping examination of the complexities of military service as experienced by Abigail, a psychologist who becomes implicated in the dilemmas soldiers encounter both on and off the battlefield.The tenacious narrator of Yishai Sarid’s Victorious is Abigail, a military psychologist and single mother who has spent her career in the Israeli Army. A leading expert in the psychology of combat, Abigail helps soldiers negotiate the trauma of war while instructing commanders on best practices for killing with resilience and efficacy. As her son Shauli approaches the age for military service, Abigail becomes increasingly involved in the lives of the army’s Chief of Staff and those of her patients, and the lines between her personal beliefs and her profession begin to blur. Meanwhile, Abigail’s deeply moral father, a clinical psychologist himself, openly condemns her choice to aid Israel''s military machine. Yet for Abigail, it’s a patriotic duty. Only when gentle-hearted Shauli enlists in the elite and dangerous paratroopers unit are Abigail’s own mental defenses finally breached.  As he did in his acclaimed novel The Memory Monster, Yishai Sarid unmasks the contradictions at the heart of patriotism, national identity, and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Victorious is a riveting, provocative inquiry into modern warfare that forces us to ask: what price are we willing to pay for victory?

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Book SynopsisCan killing be an act of love? Hypnotic, gruesome, and exultant, Joy Sorman's macabre ballet whirls from industrial slaughterhouses to the boutique butcher shops of Paris.Pim is a delicate youthstringy, solemn, and prone to bouts of unexplained weeping. When he enrolls in trade school as an apprentice butcher, his mentors have low expectations, but his lanky body conceals a peculiar flame: a passionate devotion to animals. In an industry that strives to distance the chopping block from the dinner plate, his ardor might seem like a handicap, but Pim rises through the knife-wielding ranks with a barely-tethered zeal. He scours blood from floor mats and stacks carcasses in the cold room by day. By night he tries to slake his appetites: at the table, over boudin sausage and steak tartare, and in bed, with women whose flanks, ribs, and haunches he maps as they undress each other.Pim's professional successes mount but his cravings gnaw. In the library he tea

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Book SynopsisUrban Creatures skirts the edge of reality, dexterously defying form and genre. Primal urges feed on the city, stalking its inhabitants. From a psychotherapist gorging on tragedy, to a predatory hair thief, and a grief-stricken father’s search for his lost daughter, humanity’s subterranean secrets and shames are unearthed. Urban survival makes creatures of us all. Sarah Gray's short stories shift from the unsettling to the surreal to the frightening, all cut through with her characteristic black humor.Trade ReviewSarah writes beautifully and he sense of foreboding and unease is brilliantly conveyed. It echoes Mary Shelly or Edgar Allen Poe. –Clare Balding, award-winning broadcaster, journalist. and authorBrilliant on so many levels. It can't fail to engage you! –Helena Frith Powell, international bestselling authorUrban Creatures contains finely wrought explorations of urban dread. Gods of Anxiety produce panic attacks while vampires work as palliative care therapists. The stories are all therapy, of a sort, with death a constant lingering presence. Comforting, in a way; the kind of private, personal work that looks right into your soul. Beautifully written and beautifully illustrated, Urban Creatures takes you to dark places while reassuring you that you’re not alone. –Zack Davisson, author of Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan & Yurei: The Japanese GhostTable of ContentsKilling RachelUrban CreaturesCrowning GlorySilencesHookedImmersionHalf LifeA Love StoryAll Together NowSucking the Life

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Book SynopsisWhen William Fox, a TV writer on location in Florida, is dragged by his show’s toxic producers to a “gentleman's club” that’s just appeared outside town, he meets Nicole, a mysterious dancer who claims to be an anthropologist searching for signs of rational life on Earth.Enchanted by her both playful and serious ideas exploring love, limerence, power, monkey behavior, paintball combat, creativity, and the dilemma of a rational mind compelled to serve an animal’s body by feeding it fantasies, Will falls in love—and his ever more troubled love-struck behavior and the acidly destructive battles among his producers and network executives during the production of his show soon begin to illustrate Nicole’s theories. Nicole is charmingly romantic on a cruise up the Space Coast, but nothing about her seems authentic. After she warns she’ll soon leave and his producers are humbled by an uncanny encounter with the police, Will begins to wonder, is Nicole staging real world events with him and the producers as her experimental subjects? And if so, can he discover her true identity, learn the lessons she’s trying to teach, and earn her love before he loses her forever?Trade ReviewEastlake has written a very intelligent, thought-provoking, mind-engaging work as his protagonist wrestles with feelings that conflict with the generally accepted norm. --Jim Alkon, Editorial Director of BookTrib

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Book SynopsisFormer best friends Scott and Errol meet unexpectedly at Oso Lake, a remote Canadian fly-fishing paradise where, five years before, fresh out of college, they had the time of their lives. Their situations, though, have changed, their high hopes quashed by workaday realities and, in Errol’s case, marriage to Claire, who has come with him trying to stave off divorce. But Oso Lake has changed. The fall before, a woman’s severed head was left in a campfire pit beside the lake. The shadow cast by her murder is darkened further by a fire-scarred white truck driver who claims to be a long-dead Native shaman and has plans to eradicate not only Scott, Errol, and Claire, but all of Western civilization. The beauty of the wilderness becomes, every day, more threatening and perverse. But the worst danger the vacationers face may be themselves.Trade Review“Ursula Lake is a rare novel that is equal parts lyrical and suspenseful. Charles Webb uses his poet’s voice to weave a haunting tale that marries the latent horrors of the natural world to the dark hearts of the humans who inhabit it.” —Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women“Nobody handles language like a poet. So whenever I see a novel written by a poet I admire, I know I’m in for a treat. Charles Harper Webb’s Ursula Lake is scary, emotionally wrenching, sexy, tender, and full of natural beauty. It’s also lively, fast-paced, and fun to read as it rips into the comforting lies that prop civilization up. In this novel, Webb shows why he’s won so many writing awards. Take my advice and plunge head-first into Ursula Lake.” —Ron Koertge, author of Olympusville"This thriller delivers a taut, captivating story, rich with its characters, settings and pace." —The Culture Buzz on 98.9 FM"Some authors just seem to have a natural flair for language and the kind of narrative driven storytelling that uplifts their fiction into the kind of novel that lingers on the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. With the publication of Ursula Lake, author Charles Harper Webb demonstrates that he himself is one of those impressive novelists. With a special blend of romance, friendship, and action/adventure, Ursula Lake is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and community, college, and university library Contemporary Fiction collections."—Midwest Review of Books

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Book SynopsisOn a chilly November morning, eighty-eight-year-old Iris Blum goes missing from Azalea Court, a six-bungalow development on the grounds of a long-closed state mental hospital. Her husband, Asher Blum, was the last head psychiatrist at the hospital and is writing a book about the treatment of mental illness. Their daughter Lexi, the neighbors, and police detective McPhee suspect Dr. Blum of being involved in Iris’s disappearance. When the searches and interviews come up empty, the neighbors dig into the past—Asher’s childhood experiences with anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Poland, unethical practices at the mental hospital, and Iris’s mysterious best friend, Harriet. The neighbors of Azalea Court, Lexi, Harriet, and Detective McPhee narrate this story together, uncovering ghosts, secrets, and lies.

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Book SynopsisA mother abandons her family in California to pursue a miracle cure in Munich. Once she gets there however, she wonders if she might have already died. Bedridden with a terminal diagnosis, memories, nurses, immoral doctors, foreign television broadcasts, and phone calls from children intrude upon her consciousness. An aloe plant called Madame Blavatsky is her primary companion.

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Book SynopsisJohn Proctor, about to turn seventy, spies a disconsolate young man eyeing him from outside his remote studio window. Invited inside from the bitter cold and fed dinner, the visitor, who calls himself Eli, implies that he is no stranger to the man, having been told by his grandmother that “you might take me in.” Astonished to learn that the woman was his wife who decades earlier had aborted their marriage, which lasted “but the length of a wedding candle,” the narrator ruefully explains he has since relished living alone by making no lasting connections to anybody or anything. Whereupon Eli confides, “She also said you had profaned my mother,” the daughter John Proctor never knew he had. Thus commences MacLeish Sq., a tale of awakened remorse and familial longing recounted by an aging recluse when his life is abruptly upturned by the young visitor—captive to a mythical past of his own creation—who intimates that he and the narrator are unlikely strangers. Their unresolved relationship ultimately challenges the reader to question if he and his coincidental guest are one and the same . . . that Eli may be who the narrator has carefully hidden from himself throughout his adult life.Trade Review"Edward Said, writing about Beethoven's late style, defined late style as that time wherein the artist freed from the expected cultural and historical restraints of form and content unleashes a newness that both confounds and instructs. Dennis Must has achieved that hour of newness in MacLeish Sq. (Red Hen Press, 209 pages). With its visual complexities coupled to broad-ranging literary interconnections, Must's writing raises the text to a "beyond" state where the readers have to let go of what they know." —Dactyl Review"The author’s prose is as lyrical and absorbing as the tale. It is peppered with references to the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville and unfolds one layer at a time. Intricate pencil illustrations by Russ Spitkovsky add yet another layer to the telling of this intriguing story. Fans of psychological novels will find this one enchanting. It will likely be a satisfying read for those who enjoy losing themselves in a mystical, spiritual, Faulkneresque story, complete with a surprising ending." —Glenda Vosburgh in The U.S. Review of Books"MacLeish Sq. is a highly imaginative novel, stylistically brilliant, which contrasts the real with the irreal, the latter being the most compelling—and the most transformative." —Jack Smith, California Review of Books

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Book SynopsisA marvelous debut novel exploring the fractures caused by the Partition of India, as well as the legacy and contemporary parallels of sectarian violence around the world.Lahore, British India. 1943. As World War rages, resentment of colonial rule grows, and with it acts of rebellion. Animated by idealistic dreams of an independent India, Chhote Nanu agrees to plant a bomb intended for the British superintendent of police. Some four years later, following a torturous imprisonment, Chhote flees the city as it descends into violence. Carrying the young son of his murdered wife through scenes of unspeakable bloodshed, he encounters his brother, Barre Nanu, the two of them caught between a vanishing past in the new nation of Pakistan and a profoundly uncertain future in India.Kanpur, India. 2002. Following the death of his grandfather, Barre Nanu, Karan Khati returns from New York to join his sister in their childhood home, which has been transformed by the embittered Chhote Nanu into a hostel for Hindu pilgrims. When their mother arrives from Delhi, Karan and Ila learn that their fathers were two different men—one Hindu, one Muslim—relationships with both of whom were doomed by familial bias and prejudice, the siblings resolve to reconnect, and to understand the painful twist and turns in the family’s story.Moving back and forth from the tumultuous years surrounding Partition to the era of renewed global sectarianism following 9/11, this extraordinary historical novel, “Tolstoyan in its scope” (Ha Jin), portrays a family and nations divided by the living legacy of colonialism. Richly evocative and timely, House of Caravans will endure in the ways only the best literature does.Trade ReviewPraise for House of Caravans"Reminiscent of Zadie Smith's White Teeth... [a] moving evocation of life before, during, and after Partition and the past's immeasurable impact on the present."—Kirkus Reviews “Suneja weaves a tale that spans generations, centering on the trauma of the Partition and its rippling effects on a family trying to find its way back to one another. This is a promising debut.”—Publishers Weekly“Intense and evocative, this powerful debut historical saga recounts India’s partition throughout time to explore the profound intergenerational impacts of the event in nuanced and beautiful storytelling.”—Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine“House of Caravans is an astonishing debut–the work of a master writer. Through finely wrought details and clever plotting, Shilpi Suneja illustrates how the reverberations of the 1947 Partition are felt across multiple generations. With her deft writing and her penetrating imagination, Suneja gifts us with a beautiful testament to the power of storytelling.”—Shawna Yang Ryan, Literary Hub “Suneja’s novel is full of quiet, imperfect characters making hard choices in dire straits, who are aware of themselves as bigger than, and yet completely mired in, their circumstances. The power of this novel as a social novel—as a work of realism that shows the fate of the individual caught up in history—is that it shows how cruelly history treats individuals in the first place. Suneja’s representation of history and its effects effectively captures this miserable process. As a portrait of a family whose members have been caught up and then ground down by history, House of Caravans is a triumph of realism.”—Diane Josefowicz, West Trade Review“Told with sumptuous language and epic intensity, House of Caravans is a captivating, harrowing historical saga.”—Foreword Reviews“Tolstoyan in its scope, House of Caravans is a marvel of a novel. It copes with some major issues of our time, such as the mingling of races, colonization, rebellion, historical violence, migrations, and also love and remembrance. Shilpi Suneja writes with patience, subtlety, and intelligence. She is a genuine artist.”—Ha Jin, author of Waiting “Grappling with themes of social injustice, immigrant life in the U.S., and the complicated bonds within extended families, Shilpi Suneja’s novel reveals a sincere, informed engagement with matters of political history and of human dignity.”—Daphne Kalotay, author of Blue Hours“These are characters I won’t forget, they burn with vivacity, and the scenes do too. I am happy to be among them. . . . This is a marvelous story and Shilpi Suneja’s voice livens it up.”—Fanny Howe, author of Love and I“Straddling two critical time periods of great violence and change on a global scale, Suneja’s novel weaves an intimate tale of two brothers—both brimming with regret, prejudice, sweetness and sorrow—as deftly as a spinner with golden thread. I can’t even begin to fully convey the complexities of this book—its richness, its tenderness, its intelligence—all in a story that pulls you into Suneja’s dreamy imagination. This is a novel that will make you marvel, think, and finally, break your heart.”—Michelle Hoover, author of Bottomland: A Novel“A tale of kinship, violence, separation, and reunion, House of Caravans is rich and evocative, filled with unforgettable details of India at the end of colonial rule. The Partition is an enormous subject, and this is marvelous storytelling.”—Allegra Goodman, author of Sam: A Novel“House of Caravans is an astonishing debut—the work of a master writer. Through finely wrought details and clever plotting, Shilpi Suneja illustrates how the reverberations of the 1947 Partition are felt across multiple generations. With her deft writing and her penetrating imagination, Suneja gifts us with a beautiful testament to the power of storytelling.”—Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island“From intimate love stories to terrorist plots to the political intrigues of 1940s British India, Shilpi Suneja’s absorbing novel introduces a nuanced, sophisticated, and authentic voice that illustrates the human cost of colonialism and resilience of true love. Simultaneously set in 2002 and in the harrowing years before the violent creation of Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, House of Caravans recounts the story of four generations of a family whose members refuse to be defined by the limitations of their times, who dare to love and befriend across religious and class divides. This is a gorgeous and enjoyable tale, eschewing binary and easy definitions of identity, home, and family.”—Rishi Reddi, author of Passage WestTable of ContentsPrologueAugust 2002 April 1943August 2002September 1943 August 2002September 1943August 2002January 1944August 2002 September 1944August 2002 June 1945February 1946 August 2002August 1946August 2002March 1947August 2002September 1947August 2002BibliographyAcknowledgments

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Book SynopsisA magnetic debut collection of stories about the daily lives and labors of girls and women in rural America.In Call Up the Waters, the natural world is an escape hatch, a refuge, a site of work, and an occasional antagonist. In the title story, a devastating drought leads a mother of two deep into the Colorado Rockies in search of water. In “The Handler,” a woman leaves her boyfriend for the New Hampshire woods and fifty-seven sled dogs. A distress call from a boat in Massachusetts Bay compels a mother, in “Sea Women,” to plumb her daughter’s secrets. A girl torn between truth and expectation shows her courage in a funereal performance in “Barn Burning.” And in “Bending the Map,” a woman turns the tables on her obsessive, would-be lover after a powerful storm ravages her canyon home.The characters in these ten stories—search-and-rescue workers, dog trainers, naturalists, archaeologists, and dowsers—are each fundamentally shaped by the environment in which they live and work. They seek meaning through labor, connection through jobs. But in that searching they often find themselves far from their destination. Familiar landscapes suddenly feel strange. Unfamiliar spaces offer something like hope. Off the map and off the grid, these characters, and their regrets and devotions, are nevertheless immediately, intimately recognizable.Sharply observant but steadily elegant, textured with empathy and grit, Call Up the Waters marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.Trade Review Praise for Call Up the Waters "The achievement of these stories has more to do with emotional movement than a point of arrival. This approach creates a sense of depth and realism: These characters exist beyond the moments the text describes; their world is not restricted to a story arc [. . .] A collection that patiently renders emotional depth without recourse to angst or melodrama."—Kirkus Reviews “Caron’s assured debut collection explores humanity’s relationship with the natural world. [. . .] These stories provide strong and varied impressions of characters on the margins.”—Publishers Weekly "With astonishing power and in crystalline prose, the stories of Call Up the Waters follow people who maintain precarious balance on the edge of the natural world."—Foreword Reviews, starred review“In Amber Caron's debut collection of short stories, Call Up the Waters, the natural world is an escape hatch, a refuge, a site of work and an occasional antagonist.”—Jan Risher, The Advocate“The razor sharp insights into the human psyche resonate in every story. There’s no filler, only top notch writing that pulls you in without any predictable ending. The only other collection of short stories I’ve read this year that even compares to this is Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain.”—Todd Miller, Arcadia Books, Spring Green, WI“This stunning debut story collection marks the beginning of what is sure to be a long career. Amber Caron’s knack for character-building drew me right in. Loved this!”—Suzanna Hermans, Oblong Books, Millerton, NY“Call Up the Waters is a stunning collection by an extraordinary talent. With great precision, Amber Caron manages to locate the most fragile and painful parts of her characters’ relationships while also pulling in a vivid sense of the external world and all that is beyond the open window or door. These stories are suspenseful, moving, and beautifully written.”—Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life“Amber Caron’s debut signals the arrival of a bright talent to literary short fiction. Her prose sings, and shapes satisfying stories that reveal deeply human truths about labor, gender, and our ineffable connection to the natural world.”—Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of How Strange a Season“Amber Caron creates a sobering and nuanced sense of emotional wilderness—a world in which no place is ever entirely sure or safe. This book is cool, assured, unsettling, and gorgeous.”—Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index and The News from Spain “Amber Caron writes with flinty tenderness about the ways that human yearnings can collide with impervious physical and emotional landscapes. Her language is swift and precise. Her vision reaches beyond the surface terrain. The result, in this impressive debut collection, is storytelling that reverberates and haunts.”—Deirdre McNamer, author of Aviary: A Novel “Amber Caron’s [work] stood out to our editors for many reasons, among them its bounty of wonderful sensory details, its assuredness of voice, its deft pacing, and the power with which it expresses human resiliency.”—Editor’s note, PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017Table of Contents The Handler | 1Call Up the Waters | 25 The Stonemason’s Wife | 46 Barn Burning | 52 Bending the Map | 78 Sea Women | 99 Shovelbums | 110 Fixed Blade | 130 What the Birds Knew | 143 Didi | 163Notes | 189 Acknowledgments | 191

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Book SynopsisA Novel of Redemption from Addiction and a Broken Family “A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject. I enjoyed this book.” –Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist Carter Kirchner struggles to stay sane and sober as a counselor at Six West, an adolescent drug treatment center run by Sister Mary Xavier, a hard-drinking nun with an MBA. The young Kirchner is caught between Sister Mary’s plan to rescue the center by reforming a hard-case kid and the dysfunctional staff’s clumsy plan to intervene on their boss’s drinking. Meanwhile, Carter’s mother―who never forgave him for giving up a promising hockey career to treat his own addiction―lands in the hospital with an advanced case of cirrhosis. Before Carter can help the young addict commissioned to his care or safely navigate the staff’s dysfunctional intervention effort, he must rescue himself from his family’s broken past. A Clean Heart is a novel by John Rosengren, a writer and recent nominee for a Pulitzer Prize who knows the territory of addiction. He went through treatment at age 17 and has been clean and sober since 1981. He also worked in adolescent treatment centers when he was younger. John Rosengren’s articles have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, and Utne Reader. If you are a fan of the 2018 films Ben is Back or David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy or have read addiction memoirs such as If You Love Me or We All Fall Down, you will love reading John Rosengren’s A Clean Heart.

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Book SynopsisNamed a must read book of 2023 by Nylon, BookRiot, Vulture‎, The Millions, and Ms. Magazine!A baroque work of intimate myth exploring one woman’s interdimensional search for beauty and embodiment, through kaleidoscopic renderings of hospital corridors, brutal breakups, and passionate romance.The Fifth Wound is a phantasmagorical roman à clef about passion as a way of life. In one dimension, this is a love story—Aurora & Ezekiel—a separation and a reunion. In another, we witness a tale of multiple traumatic encounters with transphobic violence. And on yet another plane, a story of ecstatic visionary experience swirls, shatters, and sparkles. Featuring time travel, medieval nuns, knifings, and t4t romance, The Fifth Wound indulges the blur between fantasy and reality. Its winding sentences open like portals, inviting the reader into the intimacy of embodiment—both its pain and its pleasures.Trade Review"Chocked full of winding, brilliant sentences sure to turn readers’ minds inside out, this is a tale of trans love and fantasy that engages with the full scope of the good, the frightening, and the profound."—Isle McElroy, Vulture"Aurora, a trans writer trying to get her work published, narrates this dreamlike novel in which she reflects on past memories of love and violence and yearns for her love, Ezekiel." —New York Times"Through a combination of memoir, mythology, criticism, and fantasy, Mattia attempts to capture the most ephemeral realities and absolute truths about life and love, transition and femininity through peaks of pain and pleasure—not by looking at the horizon beyond these passing sensations, but by traveling through them like a prism, using the transitional power of language to crystallize and shatter life’s most intimate moments."—Christ, Electric Literature"Transcending the limiting confines of not just society, but reality as well, Mattia’s novel promises the reader an experience that recalibrates simplistic notions of truth and fiction, reality and illusion."—ES, The Millions"Aurora Mattia’s cosmic, intimate collection of coming of age trans love and fantasy tells different stories of time travel, transphobia and knifings, and T4T romance."—Sophia June, NYLON"A speculative trans roman à clef about an interdimensional search for love, agency, and freedom from violence for trans people."—Liberty Hardy, BOOK RIOT"Through a series of ranging lamentations, she reconciles fantasies of her own making or borrowed from other historical and contemporary lenses—with the often violently asserted limits she’s encountered in her own life." —Madeleine Crum, BOMB"Mattia flouts genre conventions with a fierce debut about love, trauma, and the publishing industry’s gatekeepers."—Publishers Weekly"I have never read anything like Aurora’s writing. I would say less that I have read her work and say more that I have felt it, deep inside my body. It makes my heart ache. It also makes me long for a hard cock down my throat. Her work is a true spiritual experience, in that it causes me lust, grief, anger and ecstasy, sometimes one after the other and sometimes all at once."—Carta Monir"This book is transdimensional! Wounds are portals; sentences break open. The narrator has a romance with a Siren; is visited by the spirit of Eleanor Rykener (thought to be the first trans woman in recorded history (ie. a police report)); sustains a knife injury in the face; falls deeply in love; makes meaning, makes myths. Excess is the key here. Maximalist fantasy is a protective gauze and the writing conjures magic of all kinds. A "challenging" read; not for everyone because so intensely and defiantly itself; will be beloved by and formative to many."—Megan Milks, Goodreads"The Fifth Wound contains some of the most deliriously, convulsively, terrifyingly beautiful writing I've ever seen. In the delicate, fleshy membrane of her prose, Mattia holds shards of pain, defiance, erudition, and above all passion - with all the biblical resonances of that word. The book is an astonishment."—Barbara Browning"In presenting the transfemme as a systematically villainized siren, The Fifth Wound explores what can happen to us when our songs become twisted and warped, or else ignored. With its evocative, mythological imagery and unexpected turns of phrase, Aurora Mattia's take on the transfeminine confessional is unlike any I've read in recent memory."—Harron Walker"The Fifth Wound is the tender scar of beauty achieved in language. Drawing on rich description, myth, bible stories, autofiction, breathy pillow talk, and breathless confession, it confects a mirror of glamor for the glamor of its author, but which is then delicately rendered onto the page, as a diptych, that the reader might gasp with pleasure. It’s a special kind of transsexual camp, so over the top that what was the top is too far below to see, and we fly free."—McKenzie Wark"This is a densely embroidered autofictional mythography, a surreal book of hours complete with self-flagellation, a Homeric urban odyssey, ecstatic and violent, tender, devastating, and triumphant, and a hallucinogenic yet visceral medical memoir. Mattia peels layer upon layer, cuts again and again, deep into the wound to spill the life inside."—Sarah Gerard"Bold, lush, innovative, and extraordinary, Mattia’s work daringly reimagines the very nature of storytelling. I’ve never read anything like The Fifth Wound—and I’ll never forget it.”—Téa Obreht"If Gertrude Stein had a child with Virginia Woolf, they would produce an exquisite comma/semi-colon named Aurora Mattia. In Mattia’s highly magnetic & hyperconscious world of say boudoir shadows, sugarglass, operating tables, transsexuality, auroral wounds, strident malefic forces, a sentence, a paragraph, an entire chapter does bleed; and, it bleeds hyperchromatically, hyperphilosophically, hyperinventively, and hyper-nonbinarily from The Fifth Wound’s 'mouth, genitals, genitals, pores, eyes, ass, and nose' into her body’s impeccable sheath.”—Vi Khi Nao"Reading The Fifth Wound is like being initiated into a gorgeous, femme mystery school. Her prose is simultaneously antique and so, so contemporary; I felt folded into worlds I didn’t want to leave, worlds marked by longing and corporality, magic and power. Hypnotic and bold.”—Michelle Tea"But it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with Aurora, whose observations about the world come fast and furious."—Joanna Acevedo, Washington Square Review"The Fifth Wound, Aurora Mattia’s debut novel, is a book that defies categorization and convention: it’s memoir, poetry, fantasy, myth, lyric, epistolary, and so much more. It’s the story of Aurora, a trans woman living in Brooklyn, and her doomed romance with Ezekiel. While the book does spend time pulling at trauma and transphobic violence, there’s also humor to be found in the absurd — nuns and mermaids, fairies and erotic text messages — and Mattia’s writing is always sharp and beautiful. In the transfixing The Fifth Wound, the glut of story and form is the point."—Kelsey F., Powells"a hymnal for fairies in love, girlprophets, collectors and hermits. Aurora Mattia has created a new world of language and insisted upon its arrival. I want to run my fingers across every word."—Lou Barcott, Third Place Books"A profound confessional. There’s an immediate, deep connection between writer and reader that makes this one of the most heart wrenching, visceral experiences. Aurora is pure magic."—Audrey Kohler, Book Woman"Aurora Mattia entranced me with this debut. It ebbs and flows, with moments of opaque writing, and tender scenes with a silky translucent shine. This book takes the traumatic and ecstatic moments of her life, her wounds, her loves and circles around them in romantic and stylized prose. Her high femininity and appropriation of a mythic self hit my heart. Mattia did what few could ever do when writing The Fifth Wound, I really loved reading this book."—Iris, Room of One’s Own

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Book SynopsisA madcap tale of sadistic power-play by one of the 20th century’s most beloved French gay writers.My Manservant and Me is a story about the trials and tribulations of having a live-in valet. Written from the uneasy perspective of an aging, incontinent author of extremely successful middlebrow plays, we learn about his manservant, a young film actor who is easily moved to both delicate gestures and terrible tantrums; who's been authorized to handle his master’s finances, who orders stock buys, dictates his master’s wardrobe, sleeps in his master's bed, and yet won’t let him watch variety television. My Manservant and Me reveals the rude specificities of this relationship with provocative humor and stylistic abjection. This manservant won't be going anywhere.Trade Review"Rendered in crisp, cranky English by Jeffrey Zuckerman, My Manservant and Me is a caustic feast. Its extraordinary bitterness is shot through with a certain debased kink."—Dustin Illingworth, The New York Times“The novel was published in France in 1991, the year Guibert died of AIDS. His final years were marked by a bleak isolation akin to the one that engulfs the narrator… Guibert is the consummate poet of obsession: the way it unravels the self, and gives it substance, too.”—Kirkus (Starred Review)“Guibert’s unflinching descriptions and unfettered prose put him in a prominent place on the gay fiction continuum, somewhere between J.R. Ackerley and Garth Greenwell. Thanks to Zuckerman’s sumptuous translation, Anglophone readers can enjoy this captivating firecracker.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “​​In My Manservant and Me Guibert builds a short narrative on the idea that AIDS makes young people old. Without once mentioning AIDS, the book gives the thoughts of a very old millionaire (living in the next century) who becomes more and more a victim of his valet, a sort of fiendish secret sharer . . . And yet the complicity between master and servant is loving if bizarre and violent, and the valet is willing to let his master dictate the very text we’re reading, which is dated ‘Kyoto-Anchorage-Paris. January-February 2036’. Throughout Guibert’s eventful and rushed writing career he had regularly alternated surreal novels filled with invented characters and events with thinly disguised autobiography (often not disguised at all). [My Manservant and Me] is perhaps his most successful invention, partly because it gives in such lip-smacking, shocking detail the truth of physical decline and of the humiliation of being dependent on a hired helper. It’s also a very funny book.”—Edmund White, London Review of Books“in the hands of Jeffrey Zuckerman, who has also translated Guibert’s collection of stories, Written in Invisible Ink, this is a compelling, even unforgettable, if truly repugnant, reading experience. My Manservant and Me is Guibert’s final expression of defiance against any comfortable notions we may have about the approaching end.”—Philip Gambone, The Gay & Lesbian Review

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Book Synopsis“A beautifully rendered and cinematic portrait of a place and its evolution through time . . . A story of survival and the love and devotion between parent and child.” —Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics  Dave Cartwright used to be good at a lot of things: good with his hands, good at solving problems, good at staying calm in a crisis. But on the heels of his third tour in Iraq, the fabric of Dave’s life has begun to unravel. Gripped by PTSD, he finds himself losing his home, his wife, his direction. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: the two of them will flee their damaged lives, heading off the grid to live in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.   As they carve out a home in a cave in that harsh, breathtaking landscape, echoes of its past begin to reach them. Bella

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Book SynopsisA heartfelt story about three young girls searching for adventure during the scorching summer of 1960.

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Book SynopsisInspired by true events, All Sorrows Can Be Borne is the story of Noriko Ito, a Japanese woman faced with unimaginable circumstances that force her to give up her son to save her husband. Set in Hiroshima, Osaka, and the badlands of eastern Montana and spanning the start of World War II to 1982, this breathtaking novel is told primarily in the voice of Noriko, a feisty aspiring actress who fails her audition to enter the Takarazuka Theater Academy. Instead, she takes the part of a waitress at a European-style tearoom in Osaka where she meets the mysterious and handsome manager, Ichiro Uchida. They fall in love over music and marry. Soon after Noriko becomes pregnant during their seaside honeymoon, Ichiro is diagnosed with tuberculosis destroying their dreams.Noriko gives birth to a healthy baby boy, but to give the child a better life, Ichiro convinces her to give the toddler to his older sister and her Japanese-American husband, who live in Montana. Noriko holds on

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Book SynopsisPunk rock legend Blag Dahlia returns with his third transgressive novel Highland FallsNina West is a deceptively petite young trickster who works at a funeral home in the suburban Illinois town of Highland Falls. Her short-term boyfriend Ace fronts the Dunderhearts, a band so unlistenable that only constant infusions of cocaine can make them tolerable. Ace’s grandfather Fredo owns the home and lets the band practice in the basement amid the corpses and formaldehyde while Ace drives the family Hearse.Nina’s brush with a Bolivian consulate official brings so much of South America’s favorite export into their orbit that Dunderheart’s bass player Lex, the only cute one in the band, drops dead just as Nina is about to have her way with him. Meanwhile, just down the street, Ricky Leiber returns to Highland Falls to claim the family home his parents have left him after their untimely demise. Looking forward to a life of anonymous indolence and television addiction, Ricky falls for Nina at his folk’s funeral. Ricky falls hopelessly in love with Nina, while Nina remains hopelessly in love with herself.From the suburban wastelands of Highland Falls, Illinois, all roads finally lead to Hollywood where a blood-soaked massacre vaults Nina to instant stardom and worldwide acclaim. It’s a happy ending guaranteed to captivate a miserable generation.

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Book Synopsis Flip City is the story of fifteen-year-old child model, James Daniel Ross, as he comes of age in 1970—a time of free love, dead rock stars, and serial killers. Escaping the psychiatric facility where his affluent father has placed him, James trades its restraints, prescription meds, and therapists, for freedom, illicit drugs, and the friendship of street kids surviving in the psychedelic shadows of Old Town, Chicago. But when one friend goes missing, James finds himself in an edgy cat-and-mouse game with a John Wayne Gacy-like serial killer whose victims are blond teenage boys. Will James be the killer’s next victim? Or will the killer become James’s?

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Book SynopsisFrom Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, New York Times bestselling author and Russia’s greatest living absurdist, comes an elaborate family drama, social satire, and burlesque of twists, coincidences, and hijinks. Kidnapped is a madcap crime spree that caroms from crisis to crisis, through lands real and imagined. It tells the tale of Sergei Sertsov, not one but two boys from Moscow with more than just a name in common, and the women who go to great lengths to protect them. The story unfurls in a whirlwind of deceit and double crossing—babies are switched at birth, documents forged, palms greased, identities assumed, deaths faked, and authorities duped. Across decades and continents, the narrative veers from a trade office in tropical Handia, to Russia as it plunges through perestroika and into post-Soviet free fall, to a mansion in opulent Montegasco at the start of the twenty-first century. With a dizzying array of characters and settings, Kidnapped is a hilarious saga of determined women triumphing over their many oppressors to save the people they love. Trade Review"The best novel of the year, in every page there’s more wit and talent than in the whole contemporary Russian prose, everyone forgive me. Written with much physiology, humor, the novel is at times scaring, always fascinating and precise from a playwright’s perspective." —Dmitry Bykov, the nationally-rewarded author of The Living Souls and The Evacuator "The scope is epic – the world of Petrushevskaya has no division between important and secondary events, main characters and the rest; each character is measured in scale of fate, the light from cosmos flowing equally though everyone <…> The new moment in this apotheosis of the “matriparchy” is that the great mother, the main hero in Petrushevskaya’s fiction, includes this time both mothers and grandmothers who save other’s children not only from death but also from the orphan-hood." —colta.ru "It seems, they (Petrushevskaya's characters) appear strange to us only. Petrushevskaya as the author completely believes in the story that we read as a funny soap-opera-type nonesense. What is more – the author is ready to feel sorry for everyone involved in this roll of human passions. This very inexorable love and tenderness towards her characters has always brought up a suspicion about some author’s secret knowledge." —syg.ma

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2018 Albertine Prize Finalist for the 2018 Lamba Literary Awards Finalist for the 2018 French American Foundation Translation Prize Available in a new edition, Anne Garréta's sensual portrayal of trysts past. A tour de force of experimental queer feminist writing, Not One Day is renowned Oulipo member Anne Garréta's intimate exploration of the delicate connection between memory, fantasy, love, and desire. Garréta, author of the acclaimed genderless love story Sphinx and experimental novel In Concrete, vows to write every day about a woman from her past. With exquisite elegance, she revisits bygone loves and lusts, capturing memories of her past relationships in a captivating, erotic composition of momentary interactions and lasting impressions, of longing and of loss.Trade ReviewOne of Literary Hub's "30 Books We're Looking Forward To" in 2017 Recommended in CLMP’s 2020 "Reading List for Pride Month & Beyond" Selected by Words Without Borders as one of "8 Queer Books in Translation to Read for Pride Month 2020" Recommended in Flavorwire’s “22 Essential Women Writers to Read in Translation” One of The New Yorker's "Best Books We Read in 2021" "I could smother the book with adoration—it is aching and maddening, intelligent and wildly sexy. But it would be simpler to say that reading it is like meeting someone new and feeling the world come undone. Here is a book that insists that the desire for fiction, for its mimicry and its mirage, is indistinguishable from the desire for another person." —Merve Emre, The New Yorker “Winner of the Prix Medicis, this intense collection of Garreta’s memories of past loves—written under strict Oulipian constraints—is at times at once tender, bitter, and intimate.” —Literary Hub “Garréta more or less perfected the post-modern confessional, doing so with a self-awareness that many authors fail to accomplish… Not One Day is a casual revelation; a delight.” —Sean Redmond, fields Magazine “Deep Vellum has brought out one of the best books I’ve read this year, one whose compact nature contains more room inside than might be guessed from its modest exterior. Happily, Anne Garréta’s ambition is to create books that are not the products of an assembly line.” —Jeff Bursey, The Winnipeg Review

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Book SynopsisFrom political fictionalist Alisa Ganieva: a neo-noir portrait of a legal system in which everything is broken and no one is innocent. Offended Sensibilities chronicles a series of sudden deaths that occur among officials of a provincial Russian town. The events follow a notorious blasphemy law banning forms of expression that offend the sensibilities of religious believers – a law passed after Pussy Riot’s infamous 2013 church-side protest that resulted in their arrest. With this novel, Ganieva moves beyond the Dagestani setting of her previous award-winning books, published in English by Deep Vellum: The Mountain and the Wall and Bride and Groom. In Offended Sensibilities, Ganieva seeks to address nationalism, Orthodox religiosity, sexuality, and political corruption. Suffused with a light touch and at times rollicking sense of humor, this timely, entertaining and thought-provoking novel can be read as an allegory for the current political, social, religious, and cultural climate in Russia today.

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Book SynopsisIvan and Phoebe chronicles the lives of several young people involved in the Ukrainian student protests of the 1990s—otherwise known as the Revolution on Granite or the First Maidan and investigates the difficulties and absurdities of a society swiftly shifting from subjugation to revolution to post-Soviet rule. Married couple Ivan and Phoebe grapple with questions about family, tragedy, and independence. Although protagonist Ivan tells the story, Phoebe's voice rings through the text. The two reflect on the harrowing aftermath of revolution: torture at the hands of the KGB and each other. Ivan refuses to talk about his pain, while Phoebe recounts her past wounds through poetic monologues. The story bounces between politically charged cities like Kyiv and Lviv and Ivan's small, traditional hometown of Uzhhorod. As characters come to exercise their rights to free speech and protest, they must also reevaluate the norms of marriage and home life. These initially appear to be spaces of peace and harmony but are soon revealed to be hotbeds of conflict and multigenerational trauma. Through her characters’ vivid voices, Oksana Lutsyshyna creates a his- and her-story of Ukraine: a panoramic view of post-Soviet society and family life through social, political, and economic crises.

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Book SynopsisFrom the winner of the 2022 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize: a fractal exploration of a woman''s grief as she moves through disjointed segments of time. Divided Island is the story of a woman with a neurological disorder. The day she goes in for the encephalogram that will lead to her diagnosis, she finds herself splitting in two. One of the two women she becomes decides to travel to an island to take her own life; the other remains behind. Scenes and images real and imagined gradually coalesce into the story of a life told from a singular location: a way of perceiving and describing the world, guided by cerebral dysrhythmia. Written in scraps and fragmented chapters, Divided Island is a nonlinear narrative best read as a poetic experience, in which the protagonist''s memories and dreams recompose the world and, in doing so, trouble the very notion of the self. This slim volume makes it abundantly clear why Daniela Tarazona belongs in

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Book SynopsisTold in three distinct voices, Short War brings together a rapturous teenage love story set in Chile, the hunt for the author of an eye-opening literary detective story, and a complex reckoning with American political intervention in South America. When sixteen-year-old Gabriel Lazris, an American in Santiago, Chile, meets Caro Ravest, something clicks. Caro, who is Chilean, is charming, curious, and deeply herself. Gabriel dreams of their future together. But everybody’s saying there’s going to be a coup—and no one says it louder than Gabriel’s dad, a Nixon-loving newspaper editor who Gabriel suspects is working with the C.I.A. Gabriel’s father is adamant that the moment political unrest erupts, their family is going home. To Gabriel, though, Chile is home. Decades later, Gabriel’s American-raised adult daughter Nina heads to Buenos Aires in a last-ditch effort to save her dissertation. Quickly, though, she

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Book SynopsisAfter losing her college scholarship, Arden Firth—with the help of Justin Kirish, a law student with a mysterious past—becomes the reluctant leader of a movement to ban corporations. South Dakota Ballot Initiative 99 is Arden’s last hope to save her grandmother’s farm from foreclosure; but as the movement grows, shadowy forces conspire to quash it, and Arden sees “99” begin to spiral out of her control.A novel charting the intersection between idealism, extremism, and forgiveness, fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Atwood will love The Third Way—the story of a young woman struggling with her own demons while trying to articulate a vision that could change the world.Trade Review“This is a book that will appeal to any and all who wish that they were heard among the din of the two-party noise machine. A wonderfully written book that may prove prescient.”—Seattle Book Review, 5-star review“A playbook for how to seed a revolution, The Third Way is thought-provoking, illuminating, and inspiring. It captivated me from page one and left me thinking meaningful social change is possible. Arden is my favorite kind of protagonist: passionate, determined, and brave enough to take on the ‘C’ word (yes, capitalism).”—Carrie Firestone, author of The Unlikelies and Dress Coded and community organizer of ForwardCT“In this impressive first novel, Aimee Hoben provides a clear-eyed, propulsive, and morally complex look at the systems that vie to hold our country a corporate hostage. The Third Way’s Arden Firth is as winning and knowable a character as I’ve encountered in some time. This is such a bold debut.”—Daniel Torday, author of Boomer1 and The Last Flight of Poxl West“An intriguing thought experiment. The role of large corporations in our society, and the question of who decides about that role, has never been more important.”—Jeff Clements, president of American Promise and author of Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy From Big Money & Global Corporations

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Book SynopsisAndrea Hoffman is an overeducated, underemployed, and unmotivated recent college graduate—until an unexpected robbery blasts her out of her funk and into a job in the finance world of early-1980s Chicago. At first, it seems like a bad fit. But the world of finance has its own weird charm, and she grows increasingly fascinated by the strange language of trading, the complexity of the stock market, and her colleagues, who navigate it all with a ruthless confidence. Even though she has two strikes against her—Jewish and female—Andrea’s quick wit and strong work ethic propel her into an actual sales job and her career takes off. But this is the Wall Street of the eighties, and along with making a lot more money, Andrea adopts a new, fast life of cocktails, cocaine, and casual sex. Drunk on her achievements, she gradually realizes that at some point, she’s going to have to decide what success really means to her.Trade Review“…this tale is ultimately a charming probe into a young woman’s pursuit of what she wants to do and who she wants to be… Schneider has created an endearing, authentic lead.”—Kirkus Reviews “Ms. Cohen Schneider evokes both the ebullience and the excess of that era [1980s], all the while charming the reader with her heroine’s trajectory through her twenties. I found myself rooting for her, sympathizing with her, and fondly remembering my own less-than-straight path through life. An engaging coming-of-age story that will appeal to all ages.”—Deborah Goodrich Royce, award-winning author of Ruby Falls and Finding Mrs. Ford“This book is going to take you on a fabulous '80s adventure in the heart of the go-go Wall Street era . . . . Schneider brings us the financial world we never knew, a world she knows well, her own world of money, love, ambition, excess, and success, reimagined. By turns hilarious, poignant, deep, charming, and brutal—and always true—Andrea Hoffman will keep you guessing, and keep you up all night.”—Bill Roorbach, author of Lucky Turtle and Life Among Giants “Diane Cohen Schneider’s new book, Andrea Hoffman Goes All In, is laugh-out-loud funny and sharp. Set in the 80s, this story is a timeless look at the relationship we have with our jobs. It explores how work may do more than reflect who we are—it may shape who we become.”—Madeleine Henry, author of Breathe In, Cash Out and The Love Proof

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Book SynopsisIn this fast-paced coming-of-age novel we meet Fiona, an art student at a New Jersey college who is brilliant, beautiful, and struggling to find herself. Through her eyes we relive the turbulent culture of sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll, the first draft lottery since World War II, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, the Kent State University shootings, and the harsh realities of war for Americans in their early twenties. Fiona’s best friend, Melissa, is in a dead-end relationship, pregnant, and going nowhere fast. After Melissa’s abortion, Fiona and Melissa spend a week in Florida, where they are introduced to tarot cards and the anti-war movement. Following this experience, Melissa becomes obsessed with the occult; Fiona, though intrigued, approaches the tarot cautiously, with the voice of her conservative Christian mother screaming in her head. After Fiona’s return from Florida, she begins dating Reuben—a journalism major and political activist. Reuben decides to move to Canada to avoid the draft and encourages Fiona to accompany him. But is that really what she wants? Caught between her feelings for Reuben and her own aspirations, Fiona struggles to define herself, her artistic career, and her future.Trade Review“In this ambitious and skillfully written novel, Edwards presents three intriguing protagonists and delivers some rich period details, including about the Vietnam War and abortion laws.” —Kirkus Reviews “What a Trip: A Novel is flavorful, a balanced story that brims with realism and features intelligently written characters.”—Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review “Spare and uncompromising, What a Trip is a historical novel about a young woman’s tumultuous, painful coming-of-age.” —Foreword Reviews “A coming-of-age slice-of-life in which a young woman finds herself in the turbulent 1960s. . . . Their talk and fears and conflicts . . . are highly specific and yet in many ways also timeless, the hearts and minds of young people convincingly rendered, feeling towards their own truths and tragedies as their nation verges on a crackup.” —BookLife “Amid the turmoil of the 1960s in America, a young woman and her circle of friends find meaning in the power of friendships, romance, and many unexpected adventures. It’s a wild ride!”—Vivian Fransen, author of The Straight Spouse: A Memoir“What a Trip takes us back to the late 1960s, when a college girl tests the limits of free love, drugs, and the occult against her political views, family loyalty, and deep-rooted friendships. This nostalgic and gripping coming-of-age novel from debut author Susen Edwards is storytelling at its finest.”—Valerie Taylor, author of What’s Not Said and What’s Not True“What a trip! What a story! Set against the turbulent era of the Vietnam War, the author spins a tale of love, uncertainty, black magic, life, and death, with a nail-biting plot twist I never saw coming. Fasten your seatbelts and go along for the ride. For anyone who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s—and those who wish they had.” —Deborah K. Shepherd, author of So Happy Together “What A Trip celebrates and explores the universal complexity of female friendships. But it doesn’t stop there. It interrogates those tender and vulnerable places where a girl becomes a woman and whether or not those friends can survive the obstacles of youth. Told with beauty, grace, and a sharp insightfulness, Susen Edwards makes an unforgettable debut.” —Krystal A. Sital, author of Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad and PEN Award Finalist“Against the backdrop of the sizzling sixties, a beautiful and intelligent Fiona tries to figure out where she belongs and how she can shape her life. Drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll drive much of the action in this wonderful coming-of-age novel. Ms. Edwards uses her deft talents to create a compelling story that is hard to put down. A great and fast-moving read!”—Jenny Brooks, author of Fractured: A Memoir“Susen Edwards takes us on the ’70s, wild, generational jailbreak ride in her novel, What A Trip. Vietnam, the draft lottery, Woodstock, witchcraft, protests, acid . . . it’s all here! Through the eyes of the wide-eyed Fiona O’Brien, the story is a sensorial immersion in the unhinged explosion of consciousness of the times. I could almost taste the iceberg lettuce salads with fluorescent French dressing, hear the lyrics of a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune, and smell the home-grown weed.”—J. Dylan Yates, author of The Belief in Angels “Wow—this is a trip! Anyone who remembers those days will find themselves in a familiar world, rich with detail and lyrics of the times, including a song playlist at the end. The author’s protagonist has an authentic voice and her worries were our youthful worries.” —Linda Moore, author of Attribution “The cusp of adulthood is both scary and hopeful, and it was particularly fraught in the late ’60s and early ’70s. What a Trip skillfully evokes the era as well as the poignant personal lives of nineteen-year-old art student Fiona O’Brien and her best friend, Melissa. My fingers were crossed all along the way for Fiona to figure out who she is and what she wants, and have the courage to take a chance on her future. A novel that feels deeply honest and true.” —Heidi Hackford, author of Folly Park “An engaging trip through the social and political upheaval of life in the ’60s through the eyes of a young woman looking for love and meaning in life. Sex, drugs, and the Vietnam War provide the backdrop for a story that dramatically illustrates the complexity of the times and the changing values from one generation to the next. Despite the clamor all around them, attempting to pull them apart, the characters in this entertaining and heartfelt novel admirably demonstrate the importance of human connection.” —Debra Green, author of The Convention of Wives “What a Trip by Susen Edwards is like entering a time machine back to the 1960s. Many of the themes in this book—abortion choice, drugs, government corruption—are as relevant today as they were then. Whether you lived the ’60s or only heard about that transformative time from your parents, this book will take you on a journey you will not regret.” —Patricia Grayhall, author of Making the Rounds

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Book SynopsisIn the middle of a perilous drought in the Northwest, an arsonist begins setting fires all around. It gives Zoe Penney nightmares about her home—seated right next to tinder-dry woods—rising up in explosions of fire, as well as haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest.Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Zoe’s husband, Jay, which plunges the family into disbelief and fear. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house.First, Zoe’s fear turns to anger: How can I love you if I am to lose you? How can I live in joy when the sky is falling? But she gradually learns that it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things—if you can love them for what they are teaching you.Trade Review“. . . readers are treated to a poignant story of tenuous growth amid catastrophes. An often moving story of uncertainty and loss.”—Kirkus Reviews“Ann Putnam’s glorious I Will Leave You Never is a story of threat and survival and the ties of love that bind us to one another. This novel resonates with the fragile and yet persistent threads of our living, threads that will vibrate inside you for a long time to come.”—Lee Martin, author of Pulitzer finalist The Bright Forever“Ann Putnam is the kind of extraordinary writer who captures heartbreak and longing with such startling precision and in such beautiful prose that you cannot help but be moved. Zoe and Jay, this family, will live in my memory for years to come.”—Dolen Perkins Valdez, New York Times best-selling author of Wench, Balm and Take My Hand“Ann Putnam’s I Will Leave You Never is a heartbreaking, gracefully rendered story of the quiet moments between and around the devastating ones and of the beautiful inner workings of the heart and minds battling their way along life’s toughest roads.”—Laurie Frankel, New York Times best-selling author of This is How It Always Is and One Two Three“Ann Putnam’s ironically titled I Will Leave You Never is a novel full of leave-takings that even Zoe—the appointed family worrier—could not anticipate over the course of a year that will strain but not break the bonds of her loving family.”—Ladette Randolph, editor-in-chief of Ploughshares and author of Pushcart Prize winner Private Way“Exquisitely written, this luminous novel takes you to the deep heart of a marriage. Threatened by illness and arson, a family with three children and too many puppies ultimately finds the strength to go forward with wit and insight.”—Beverly Conner, author of Where Light is a Place, Falling From Grace“Ominous and original, Ann Putnam’s novel is characteristically lyrical and precise. It is at its heart a love story, where characters facing loss uncover the generative quality of love.”—Beth Kalikoff, author of Dying for a Blue Plate Special“It’s no surprise that Ann Putnam’s most recent novel, I Will Leave You Never, features compelling characters in Zoe and Jay (among others) and lush, vivid writing. Fans of her short stories and her novel Cuban Quartermoon will, like me, rejoice that a new novel has appeared.”—Hans Ostrom, author of Honoring JuanitaPRAISE FOR Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter’s Last Goodbye“Old age, death, and impermanence—it seems at first glance impossible to make a reader see these timeless and universal experiences with fresh eyes, but Ann Putnam’s luminous prose achieves that miracle and more, transforming pain, suffering, and loss into a literary gift of beauty and redemption.”—Charles Johnson, author of National Book Award winner The Middle Passage“Ann Putnam has given us a story of love and loss and survival that moves and instructs. . . . This is truly a work of love and devotion. A gift.”—Annick Smith, author of In This We are Native, co-producer of A River Runs Through It“From the beginning, Full Moon at Noontide seduced me. Then it sliced me open, slapped me in the face, made me cry, and enlarged my spirit. We stay with the story because it is beautifully written, and because it shows us that love—not—death can have the last word.”—Thomas R. Cole, PhD, author of The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of AgingPRAISE FOR Cuban Quartermoon“The lush imagery and cutting-edge prose of this narrative masterpiece makes for a compelling and transformative read.”—Linda Patterson Miller, PhD, author of Letters from the Lost Generation“In her rich and evocative novel, Ann Putnam renders the beauty, lure, strangeness, and intrigue of the island in sensuous detail through the eyes of a North American woman on a personal journey toward restoration and redemption.”—Sandra Spanier PhD, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Penn State University“In this magical novel, Ann Putnam takes us to a world of contradictions, loss, and longing, where the main character confronts the haunting ghosts of her past to finally find absolution, renewal, and hope. A must-read.”—Loly Alcaide Ramirez, PhD, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at University of Washington and author

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Book SynopsisForty-ish hipster dad Jake is happily settled down in the politically progressive, urban, and notably self-satisfied community of Greenwood, working at his not-so-interesting job, playing guitar with his band, and enjoying domestic life with his beautiful and accomplished wife Lisa, their two charming daughters, and the beloved family dog. When Lisa rocks Jake’s world by telling him she wants a divorce, their story unfolds from multiple points of view including those of other family members, Jake’s self-absorbed divorce lawyer, the cranky family court judge who presides over his custody case, his polyamorous millennial girlfriend, and the eighteen-year-old babysitter who also happens to be his lawyer’s daughter. Throughout Greenwood, in the coffee shop, the yoga studio, and the basketball court, lives intersect. Choruses of friends and neighbors gossip, dissect, and weigh in. A surprise witness upends Jake’s custody trial. Things are not always as they seem, and there is no one truth about a marriage.Trade Review“A kaleidoscopic story about the complexities of modern love and the possibilities of starting anew. Every Other Weekend is a fast-paced, vividly imagined, and utterly absorbing novel.” —JASMIN DARZNIK, New York Times best-selling author of The Bohemians “It’s hard to believe this is attorney-in-real-life Margaret Klaw’s first novel. Every Other Weekend is written with the arms-flung-wide confidence of someone who has been paying very close attention to the always messy, sometimes funny, and never boring world of divorce. This delicious dissection of a good-on-paper family torn asunder will keep you happily reading well past your bedtime.” —CELIA RIVENBARK, New York Times best-selling author of Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank “So many things about Every Other Weekend blew me away. As I was reading, the characters’ dilemmas followed me everywhere—into the shower, into my dreams, busting into my train of thought when I was supposed to be working. Few books have had that effect on me. Anna Karenina comes to mind, and the scope and depth of Klaw’s novel is indeed Tolstoy-esque. Every Other Weekend smacks of intensely observed reality, made spellbinding and poignant by a very talented author. The ending will have you begging for more.” —CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN, New York Times best-selling author of Carved in Sand “Margaret Klaw’s debut novel, Every Other Weekend, achieves the very difficult, which is to offer a deliciously readable, rollicking tale that nevertheless explores the deeply tangled threads of domestic life. In her wry stew, made up of over-the-hill hipsters, gossiping yoginis, polyamorous millennials, aging dogs, and scared-of-the-dark kiddos, Klaw raises deep questions about love, loyalty, and justice in a world where there are no pure heroes and villains.” —LISE FUNDERBURG, author of Pig Candy and Black, White, Other “Margaret Klaw’s debut novel, Every Other Weekend, is a clever, page-turning master class in blurred lines, moral ambiguity, and the complicated aftermath of divorce. Written from the perspective of an experienced family law attorney, Every Other Weekend tells the same story through the lens of the attorneys, friends, parties, witnesses, and children involved with staggering results, begging the question: when relationships break apart, how can we ever get to the whole truth and nothing but?” —AMY IMPELLIZZERI, author of In Her Defense and I Know How This Ends “Incisive, smart, and page-turning, Every Other Weekend is much more than the story of a dissolving marriage. Klaw’s keen observations, spot-on turns of phrase, and astute social commentary pepper this tale of an entangled community, half-truths, and outright lies. Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty!” —ANDREA J. STEIN, author of Typecast “Jake Naudain, an aging wanna-be hipster in the tight-knit enclave of Greenwood, is at his wit's end: his wife wants a divorce, and the novel takes off on a face-paced, wildly entertaining romp that pokes fun at dog owners, yoga moms, and vegans, while digging deeper into the musings of a feminist lawyer who represents a self-absorbed, male privileged client. A refreshing read!” —DEDE CUMMINGS, author of The Meeting Place “A satiric, insightful, and thoroughly enjoyable look at the evolution and dissolution of an American family and the lies and truths we tell others and ourselves, from a powerful writer with a deep understanding of the chaos of modern life.” —JON MCGORAN, author of Spliced and Drift

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Book SynopsisCO-WINNER OF THE 2022 SAIF GHOBASH BANIPAL PRIZEThis gritty tale of two men’s ill-conceived quest for a better life via the deserts of the Middle East and the cities of Europe is pure storytellingTwo Bedouin men from Egypt’s Western Desert seek to escape poverty through different routes. One—the intellectual, terminally self-doubting, and avowedly autobiographical Hamdi—gets no further than southern Libya’s fly-blown oasis of Sabha, while his cousin—the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider—makes it to the fleshpots of Milan.The backdrop of this darkly comic and unsentimental story of illegal immigration is a brutal Europe and Muammar Gaddafi’s rickety, rhetoric-propped Great State of the Masses, where “the Leader” fantasizes of welding Libyan and Egyptian Bedouin into a new self-serving political force, the Saad-Shin.Compelling and visceral, with a seductive, muscular irony, The Men Who Swallowed the Sun is an unforgettable novel of two men and their fellow migrants and the extreme marginalization that drives them.Trade Review"This is a pacy, clever, enjoyable book, rich in storytelling and adroitly threaded with social commentary."—The Irish Times“Two Bedouin men seek better lives as illegal immigrants in Libya and Italy.” —The New York Times"Entertaining."—Banipal"Stealing, drug-dealing, and the epic of Egyptian migration . . . A funny, furious, breathless tale." —BULAQ"Unforgettable."—Washington Report on Middle East Affairs"The picaresque novel is spacious enough to house the hilarious digressions, philosophical musings, biting satire, and character sketches in a manner that is entertaining and satisfying at once for the reader: a rambunctious gallop through Egypt, Libya, and Italy, with plenty of adventure."—World Literature Today"The Men Who Swallowed the Sun is a phenomenal translation of a unique and exciting novel about a young Bedouin from Egypt who migrates to Libya under Gaddafi, and then onwards to Italy, hoping to make big bucks, have a good time, and avoid getting sent back to Egypt. The dense, stream-of-consciousness narration of its unlikeable but undeniably charismatic protagonist drags the reader immediately into the gritty surroundings that form the backdrop of this picaresque quest, and Humphrey Davies’s rendering impressively recreates the original’s effect."—Katharine Halls, translator of The Doves Necklace"A furious, unapologetic tale of illegal immigration, discrimination, and erasure. Here is a book that not only attempts to understand the calculus of poverty and aspiration, but also the flawed politics that undercurrent North Africa."—Egyptian Streets"A gripping story"—Al-Ahram Weekly“Compelling”—Al BawabaPRAISE FOR ABU GOLAYYEL:"Abu Golayyel represents a unique experience in Arab literature, an experience inspired by the spirit of the desert and which presents Arab Bedouin life in an atypical manner. His work makes the reader cling to his or her Arab heritage and refuse to abandon it to modernity or Salafism."—The Arab Weekly"A gifted storyteller"—World Literature Today"A great read"—Mona Zaki, Banipal on Thieves in Retirement"Masterful"—Library Journal on Thieves in Retirement"A sophisticated storytelling experiment. . . and a guarded but deeply felt celebration of writing"—The National on A Dog with No Tail“A clever and complex meditation . . . full of swift sarcasm . . . an exploration of Abu Golayyel’s Bedouin identity”—Egypt Independent on A Dog with No Tail“A darkly funny social satire”—Bidoun on Dog with No Tail

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Book SynopsisAn enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this compelling novel combining elements of magical realism with political historyCan one man or a mere ring alter the events of one’s life and the history of a country? Combining elements of magical realism with momentous history, Suleiman’s Ring poses these questions and more in a gripping tale of friendship, identity, and the fate of a nation.Alexandria, Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 Free Officers revolution. Daoud, a struggling musician, is summoned with his best friend Sheikh Hassanein to a meeting with Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seeks their help as he mobilizes for the revolution. Daoud lends Nasser an enchanted silver ring for its powers to bring good luck. The revolution succeeds but Daoud soon grows estranged from Hassanein, who has joined the Muslim Brotherhood, after he suggests that Daoud leave Egypt since as a Jew he is no longer welcome. When Hassanein is arrested, however, destiny draws Daoud into a complex web of sexual intrigue and betrayal that threatens to upend his already precarious existence.Set against the backdrop of the simmering political tensions of mid-twentieth-century Egypt and the Arab–Israeli wars, Sherif Meleka’s story of fate and fortune transports us to another time and place while peeling back the curtain on events that still haunt the country to this day.Trade Review"A quality novel, which put me in mind of aspects of Rohinton Mistry and Naguib Mahfouz in the way it gives us characters to care about, who are then swept away by the chaos of history. The writing is pacy, but it has depth and poetic power – a credit to Raymond Stock’s translation from Arabic. Sherif Meleka is a natural writer. This is a compellingly readable novel of substance."—The Irish Times“[A] dazzling epic novel. . . . poetic and beautiful. . . . deeply moving. . . . Suleiman’s Ring is a timely read, not just for its powerful depiction of Jews in modern Egypt, but for its exploration of themes of nationhood, societal divisions—both along political and identity lines—and the influence that individuals can have on an entire society.”—The Canadian Jewish News"Original, carefully crafted, memorable"—Midwest Book Review"A lovely evocation of the period."—Historical Novels Review"Reading Suleiman’s Ring gave me great pleasure. With its many layers of tone and style, it takes the reader on a journey through modern-day Alexandria, recalling the loss of its essentially tolerant outlook, a tolerance that had lain at the heart of this great city’s renaissance."—Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, author of Clouds over Alexandria"A powerful narration of extremism culminating in the tragic expulsion of the Egyptian Jews from modern Egypt."—Hamdi Abu Golayyel, author of The Men Who Swallowed the Sun"Three generations of Egyptians are depicted elegantly, in the manner of an epic, and with deep historical insight."—al-Qahira "Meleka masterfully blends the story of Suleiman [Solomon] and Dawud [David] with contemporary life, covering an important period in Egyptian history spanning more than thirty years, from the secret preparations of the Free Officers Movement in 1952 to the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981."—al-Ahali

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Book SynopsisWritten by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences todayIt is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man. This other man is Dr Hashim Abdel-Latif, and while he is Amina’s first love, she is certainly not his. Also many years her senior, Hashim is well-known in polite circles for his adventures with women. A Nose and Three Eyes tells the story of Amina’s love affair with Hashim, and that of two other young women: Nagwa and Rihab. A Nose and Three Eyes is a story of female desire and sexua

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Book SynopsisWhat happens when nature will no longer stand by and accept its destruction? A female fire chief discovers an ancient world rooted with secrets that can save—or destroy—in the newest fantasy by Veronica G. Henry, author of Bacchanal.Beneath the forest floor, they watch…Syrah Carthan doesn’t know why she accepted a job as the first female fire chief at Sequoia National Park, where, decades earlier, a forest fire killed her parents. That day, her brother, Romelo, disappeared, as if pulled into the scorched earth itself. Syrah has always had an uncanny affinity for the natural wonders of the park she protects, but after she sanctions a prescribed burn that goes terribly wrong, she quits her position in disgrace.However, when another devastating wildfire breaks out, Syrah, reluctantly pulled back into action, discovers an unknown world that has existed underground since the beginning of time. This secret society, built ar

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