A Termination

Honor Moore

“This book is a masterly account of what it meant, in the 1960s, to be a woman of spirit and intelligence plunged into the particular hell that is unwanted pregnancy. Both haunted and haunting, A Termination will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.” – Vivian Gornick

After the Forest

Kell Woods

“Dark as molasses and dripping with witchcraft, love, and magic gingerbread, After the Forest is the fairytale retelling of the year.” – Lauren Chater

Anyone’s Ghost

August Thompson

“In Anyone’s Ghost, August Thompson has given us a devastating, heart-cracking, richly imagined love story for the ages. I read hungrily, relishing Thompson’s poetic eye and deep respect for the complexities of life, loss, sexuality, and love.” – Sarah Thankam Mathews

As Rich as the King

Abigail Assor (tr. Natasha Lehrer)

“Don’t let its French prize-winning status fool you: this is a pleasurable, even filthy summer romance....This confident debut suggests that Assor may prove a worthy successor to Sagan. She has certainly earned her prize money with this dirty beach read about motorbikes, moody teens and misplaced desire on the Moroccan coast.” – The Times (UK)

Becoming Little Shell

Chris La Tray

“I’m in awe of Chris La Tray’s storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multilayered narrative from threads of personal, family, community, tribal, and national histories. Together they make a story as strong and beautiful as a Metis sash — a story of identity, kinship, and the journey toward justice.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer

Bright Young Women

Jessica Knoll

“Bright Young Women is a fearless and intoxicating ride into the aftershocks of a series of brutal murders. Knoll explores in vivid, pointillist prose the effects on the ‘bright young women’ of the title, both the victims snuffed out in their glorious prime, and those left behind in their wake. It’s a compelling, almost hypnotic read and I loved it with a passion.” – Lisa Jewell

Bury Your Gays

Chuck Tingle

“Brilliantly bloody, wildly fun, and extremely scary, Bury Your Gays brings a sledgehammer down on tired tropes and makes a masterpiece of their guts. A profoundly smart and emotionally resonant novel that is sprinkled with cinema magic and a brutal Hollywood reckoning.” – Rachel Harrison

Cloud Missives

Kenzie Allen

“This incredible debut announces Kenzie Allen as an important voice in Native literature. Through impeccable craft, she explores themes of health and healing, Indigenous genealogy and identity, kinship and love. These poems are a ‘song against the song of our demise.’ May their missives travel far and wide; may their words bloom like sweetgrass.” – Craig Santos Perez

Colored Television

Danzy Senna

“A riveting and exhilarating novel about making art and selling out, about being middle aged and precariously middle class. As fearless as she is funny, Danzy Senna is one of this country’s most thrilling writers.” – Rumaan Alam

Dear Dickhead

Virginie Despentes (tr. Frank Wynne)

“Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk-rock George Eliot with a keen taste for the pitiable innards of her characters: no one else has her slyly penetrating eye, her spiky sense of humor, her razor wit that cuts like wire through the accumulated crud of our age’s default thought patterns....A droll, hilarious, insightful record of our unfortunate times.” – Alexandra Kleeman

Everything/Nothing/Someone

Alice Carrière

“Spare and direct, with flashes of Didionesque elegance....The writing of this book and the presentation of Carrière’s life is brutal and honest and funny and shocking....One of the most compelling first-person memoirs I’ve read in a long time.” – Bret Easton Ellis

Hotline

Dimitri Nasrallah

“Spectacular....Few novels have captured with such quiet, precise subtlety the interplay between isolation and connection that so often dominates the life of a new immigrant....Nasrallah is one of my favorite writers working today, an exceptional talent who deserves to be much more widely read.” – Omar El Akkad

How to Love Your Daughter

Hila Blum (tr. Daniella Zamir)

“A striking and memorable novel. With single-minded intensity, How to Love Your Daughter reckons with parent-child boundaries: the ones that are clear, and the ones that are sometimes hazy, or dangerously nonexistent.” – Meg Wolitzer

Olive Days

Jessica Elisheva Emerson

“Olive Days is a lush and intoxicating Los Angeles daydream. Emerson is the real deal — a stylist whose every sentence captures how it feels to be alive, to be in love, to live in the aching distance between who you want to be and who you are.” – Ruth Madievsky

Pearl

Siân Hughes

“Pearl is a gorgeous, swirling, haunted and haunting potion of a book. It embodies like no other the truth that every absence is as singular and elaborate and mysterious as the presence of the thing — or person — it describes, no matter how back to front, inside out, lucidly or ethereally memories of its particulars may come and go. How utterly moving, to be under its beautiful, artful spell.” – Paul Harding

Quarterlife

Devika Rege

“An ambitious, unusual, formally risky novel that attempts nothing less than a full-scale portrait of India circa 2014....A promising first outing by a skilled writer.” – Kirkus Reviews

Rules for Ghosting

Shelly Jay Shore

“A movingly wrought story about the ways queerness, Jewishness, grief, and joy intersect in messy, painful, and beautiful ways.” – Lev AC Rosen

Seeing Through

Ricky Ian Gordon

“Ricky Ian Gordon’s Seeing Through is a remarkable story about the considerable effort it takes to be an artist and a human being, simultaneously. It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s intimate and it’s profound.” – Michael Cunningham

Special Topics in Being a Parent

S. Bear Bergman and Saul Freedman-Lawson

“Honest, loving, and inclusive, Special Topics in Being a Parent takes much consideration when discussing the perspective of both the parent and the child. Beautifully illustrated with truly heartwarming, funny moments, this thoughtful look at compassionate parenting would make a wonderful gift for anyone welcoming a child into their home.” – Liz Climo

Supremacy

Parmy Olson

“Supremacy makes the topic of artificial intelligence approachable and entertaining by telling the human stories of the people building AI companies. There is never a dull moment in this gripping book.” – Arvind Narayanan

The Wedding People

Alison Espach

“The Wedding People is a wickedly funny and deeply satisfying novel about a woman with nothing to lose, armed with a green dress, some chocolate wine, and a coconut pillow, cut loose to cause delightful mayhem. It’s a story of lovers who turn into strangers, strangers who turn into friends, and the weird and wonderful connections that make us feel truly alive. I loved it.” – Jenny Jackson

The Wisdom of Sheep

Rosamund Young

“A wonderful antidote to the hectic pace of modern life... there’s gentle humour, stoicism and countryside wisdom to be found on every page. Rosamund writes with an easy skill, and the short anecdotal nature of the book can be quite addictive....Packed full of delightful conversation.” – James Oswald

We Will Be Jaguars

Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson

“If you want to understand the climate crisis and do something about it, read this book. Nemonte’s writing is as provocative as it is inspiring, a heroine speaking her truth which is exactly what we need to hear. Had we listened long ago to these voices we wouldn’t be in the eye of the storm now.” – Emma Thompson

Whalefall

Daniel Kraus

“One of our oldest stories, one of our greatest fears, and one of our most capable writers. Stranger things than being swallowed by a whale have probably happened, but they’ve rarely been told so well.” – Stephen Graham Jones

Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend

MJ Wassmer

“Part scathing social commentary, part post-apocalyptic romcom, Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend is an absolute marvel — MJ Wassmer’s debut is clever and cunning, touching and witty (with twist after twist). I adored it — bravo, can’t wait to read more from him!” – Ashley Tate