An emo note by a 14-year-old Franz Kafka is up for auction.

By James Folta

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December 4, 2024, 1:27pm

The earliest known writing by Franz Kafka is about to be available for bidding at the auction house Bonhams. Kafka, who would go on to write surreal and absurd books later in his life, signed a short note in the friendship book of his friend Hugo Bergmann as a teen.

The note reads:

Es gibt ein Kommen und ein Gehn
Ein Scheiden und oft kein – Wiedersehn
Prag den 20. November.
Franz Kafka.”

Which Bonhams translates as:

There is a coming and a going
A parting and often no – reunion
Prague, November 20th [1897]
Franz Kafka

Pretty intense! The dash and pause before “reunion” is particularly forceful and emo. It’s hard to read a lot into this, but since this is a discovery from A Great Writer, overinterpretation is inevitable. Decades later, a 90-year-old Bergmann interpreted his friend’s note:

When Kafka wrote these words at Barmitzvah age, did Kafka have in mind the deep meaning that we attach to his words today? – I don’t know… we can probably interpret these lines as a warning to his generation.”

Kafka may have written these words with deep meaning — he wouldn’t be the first intellectual teen with literary aspirations to think they were really onto something big — but a “warning to a generation” feels a little much to hang on such a brief phrase.

From the perspective of literary history, finding the oldest bit of Kafka’s writing is interesting and, to a lesser extent for the layperson, exciting. Still, I think Bergmann and the auctioneers are overstating things.

The auction’s copy interprets this note by a young Franz to be already expressing “a ‘Kafkaesque’ sentiment.” Maybe, but to my eye this aphorism seems more typically teenaged than anything else, the 19th-century equivalent of an emo “have a great summer” yearbook note. Plus, “Kafkaesque” refers to writing that is absurd and uneasy, full of anti-authoritarianism, alienation, and existential anxiety. Which is typical of Kafka’s later work, but also exactly the kind of thing 14-year-olds have been writing forever.

If Kafka had grown up more recently, he might have written this little aphorism not in a libro amicorum, but on bathroom tiles in a mall that is barely staving off bankruptcy. Put some power chords under this phrase and you’ve got the chorus to a punk song, composed in a suburban bedroom for a band called Ellen Degenerate or something. Put this phrase under a black and white picture and you’ve got a Tumblr post.

Kafka went on to write great things, but at 14, seems like he was just another angsty teen.

It’s time to add horror and romance to the Best American roster.

By Drew Broussard

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December 3, 2024, 1:04pm

I’m a sucker for The Best American series. For whatever reason (be it the generally strong curation, the often-fascinating opinions of guest editors, or a residual nationalism I should probably interrogate a bit more closely) I always look forward to the tidy paperbacks and approach them as a kind of survey-course designed to show what was up the prior year in American letters. I think the structure is also terribly compelling: there is a series editor, who works to keep an eye on the field at large and compiles a long-list of stories, and then a guest editor who does the work of narrowing down the final choices. This, in theory, ensures that the choices aren’t homogeneous or repetitive and instead that they’re always somehow refreshed and revised with each ensuing year—and while it doesn’t always work like that, for the most part it succeeds. (It’s even more fun when, as Heidi Pitlor said happened with Lauren Groff in this year’s Best American Short Stories, the guest-editor pushes back and tells the series editor to send them more dynamic or more interesting stuff!) There’s an understanding, I think, that these are not definitive lists but rather well-curated attempts to show what’s going on in any given field.

I’m here today to tell you that I think we are due for two further additions to the Best American canon: Horror and Romance.

I’d argue that we’re actually overdue for a horror collection, in much the same way that the introduction of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy a decade ago was overdue: the genre has moved from the margins into the mainstream conversation, not just in literature but in TV and film and music and even non-fiction. And the romance boom of the last few years isn’t going away, so we might as well confirm its importance to the culture at the same time as we welcome horror more formally to the fold.

I should acknowledge that there are “best of the year” collections for horror (as there are for SFF and mystery/suspense) already out there. Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year collections are wide-ranging and curated by one of the best editors in the business, but they’re out from a genre press and pointed very much towards the already-genre-embracing. The series should continue for as long as Ellen (or whoever might someday succeed her) want to publish it, much the same way that Otto Penzler has run a Best Mystery Stories series for years. We can and should have multiple iterations of such things!

I’m bringing this all up right now because this year’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy includes a number of stories from the Jordan Peele-edited Out There Screaming, an unabashedly horror-focused collection—and while they do fit, thematically, I couldn’t help feeling like there was some mission creep happening. Sure, genre is mostly made up and it’s not like anybody was upset that Lauren Groff included Marie-Helene Bertino’s vampire story “Viola, in Midwinter” in Best American Short Stories—indeed, it might be good to see genre-creep happening! But also, damn it, I want a dedicated collection to scratch these particular genre itches.

I even have some suggestions for series editors! Emily Hughes is the no-brainer choice for Best American Horror, as I feel confident that her finger on the pulse of the genre would translate seamlessly to not only picking the long-list but picking great guest editors as well. Emily’s already the go-to for horror readers, so why not make it even more official? As for Best American Romance, I think that either or both of the Koch sisters (who run the bicoastal iterations of already-legendary romance bookshop The Ripped Bodice) would be awesome curators—not least of all because their specific curation has helped me get into romance over the last few years, so just imagine what they could do with introducing it to more readers?

All this to say: your move, Mariner Books / Harper Collins. I know the reading for the 2025 installments of Best American has already begun, but genre readers are scrappy and hungry—I bet these could be ready in time for next fall, if you move fast. There are certainly readers waiting, and I’ll be the first in line.

A little treat for Caro-heads: Bryan Cranston reads from The Power Broker.

By James Folta

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December 3, 2024, 10:19am

The 92nd Street Y held a conversation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Caro’s landmark book The Power Broker, his masterwork on Robert Moses and how he remade New York City through an audacious program of public building. The live conversation happened last month, but is now available to purchase and stream. Caro was interviewed Stacy Schiff, the writer of award-winning biographies of Vera Nabokov, Cleopatra, as well as a book on the Salem Witch Trials.

As Lit Hub’s resident Caro-head, I was already excited to check out this event, but I hadn’t realized that the evening opened with a reading by actor Bryan Cranston — incidentally the same actor who played Caro’s other great subject, LBJ, in the 2016 HBO film All the Way.

After some loving jabs at the devotion this book inspires and its notorious length (“There are only 50 chapters…”), Cranston reads from Power Broker’s opening pages. The performance is fun, and Cranston gets an ad-libbed laugh by archly reading “Shea Stadium,” a part of Moses’ legacy that was demolished and replaced in 2009. Cranston’s also reads some of the famous list sections that Caro rattles off in The Power Broker’s opening chapters. The drumbeat of names is Caro’s attempt to contextualize the scale of Moses’ impact, a technique cribbed from The Aeneid.

The Power Broker is a pleasure to hear read out loud, which is a testament to Cranston’s acting abilities and to Caro’s writing. His lyrical cadence and force make for a captivating performance — I feel like sections of his books could be good audition monologues for actors, especially if there happen to be some nerdy casting directors out there.

If you’re interested to hear more, the entire interview is available now on the 92nd Street Y’s website.

Gay Talese! Gabrielle Korn! Poets respond to Taylor Swift 23 new books out today.

By Gabrielle Bellot

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December 3, 2024, 4:33am

December, astonishingly, is here, the tail end of a year that has felt remarkable for many reasons, too many, indeed, to list. And the year to come is one defined by extraordinary uncertainties, both in the United States and beyond. Still, we’ll always have books (well, one hopes, anyway!), and to that end, I have twenty-three scintillating new offerings for you in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Below, you’ll find hotly anticipated novels and story collections by Gabrielle Korn (queer cli-fi!); Julia Armfield with a novel influenced by King Lear; Weike Wang’s striking exploration of family and couple dynamics; Omar Khalifah with a mix of humor and horror in Palestine’s past and present; and much, much more. In poetry, over a hundred poets respond in verse to Taylor Swift lyrics; Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani have a highly giftable chapbook box set featuring new voices in African poetry; and Mackenzie Polonyi offers up innovative, multigenerational poems.

And in nonfiction, you’ll find a collection of Gay Talese’s writing, a new edition of Lucy Grealy’s classic memoir, a surprising history of the cello and its players, a look at the voyages across and many civilizations living across the Atlantic Ocean before Columbus set sail, and more.

The future is murky, but it’ll always be a bit better with something good to read by your side. Be safe and well, Dear Readers, and I’ll see you next week!

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Gabrielle Korn, The Shutouts
(St. Martin’s Press)

“[The Shutouts] shifts its critique from corporate white feminism to the sinister side of activist culture and cults of personality….Readers seeking cli-fi that celebrates queer characters and survival will find this a hopeful look at the future even after disaster.”
–Library Journal

Weike Wang, Rental House
(Riverhead)

“Funny and delightful, Rental House is a story for anyone who’s experienced demanding parents, misunderstanding in-laws, a vacation-gone-wrong, or mid-life questions about how to reconcile your own personality liabilities with those of the person you love most.”
–Elif Batuman

Julia Armfield, Private Rites
(Flatiron Books)

“Inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, this characteristically eerie and emotive novel explores faith, legacy, and grief for loved ones and for the world as we know it.”
–GQ

Gay Talese, A Town Without Time: Gay Talese’s New York
(Mariner)

“The [collection of essays] shines with the love that the author, the son of an Atlantic City tailor, bears for his adopted home, giving E.B. White’s legendary ode, Here Is New York, a run for its money….Even on rereading, Talese’s work gets better, like fine wine.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Lucy Grealy, Suleka Francey Jaouad (foreword), Autobiography of a Face (Thirtieth Anniversary Edition)
(Harper Perennial)

“A memoir of great beauty. In her intensely elegant prose, Lucy Grealy describes the loneliness of pain, the confusion of childhood, the slow shock of her disfigured face with an exquisite unblinking intelligence that is both gracious and, improbably, filled with joy. I love this book.”
–Cathleen Schine

Callum Robinson, Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman
(Ecco)

“I didn’t think it possible to blend the tones and sensibilities of James Herriott and Anthony Bourdain, but Callum Robinson has managed to do it—in wood! This wise and wonderful book takes the lucky reader as deeply into the grain of Britain’s primal medium as it does into the psyche of one its most gifted practitioners. Trees, chairs, and woodworkers alike will resonate differently once you’ve become Ingrained.”
–John Vaillant

Kristie Frederick Daugherty (editor), Invisible String: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift
(Ballantine Books)

“Meditative, varied, and visceral, paying tribute to Swift’s love of words and her deeply felt passions…[an] indelible, beautiful collection.”
–Booklist

Mackenzie Polonyi, Post-Volcanic Folk Tales
(Akashic)

“In Mackenzie Polonyi’s stunning debut collection, the human body becomes a landscape inscribed by multigenerational story, memory, and trauma. In these visceral lyric poems, boundaries between self and nature dissolve. Polonyi unearths ancestral connections…as her symptoms and injuries merge with her suspended yet rooted foremothers’ own ruptures. An alchemical blend of folklore and science….Blistering yet nurturing.”
–Christopher Salerno

Kwame Dawes, Chris Abani, Kumi: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set
(Akashic)

“[AA] collection of poems that speaks both softly and forcefully, as well as emotionally and ideologically, about what it means to be human and African today….Kumi is a tribute to a visionary and valuable investment in African poetry.”
–The Rumpus

Ella Baxter, Woo Woo
(Catapult)

“Smart, razor sharp, and witty, Woo Woo takes us on a wild journey of female ambition, art, social media, stalkers, and dinner parties full of people with exquisite mullets vaping. I’ll read anything Ella Baxter writes–and Woo Woo is unmissable.”
–Sarah Rose

Amanda Lee Koe, Sister Snake
(Ecco)

“Amanda Lee Koe has written a wild, sexy steroidal burst of a novel. A freewheeling retelling of an ancient Chinese legend, Sister Snake is an inquiry into self-reinvention, escaping one’s destiny, belonging and all that makes us human–or not.”
–Tash Aw

Pat Barker, The Voyage Home
(Doubleday)

“Barker’s vision of a world shaped by violence, a key theme in all her fiction, is equal to the tragic grandeur of ancient myth, and her insistence that ordinary people’s sufferings be given equal weight with the woes of the mighty gives it a contemporary edge. More brilliant work from one of world literature’s greatest writers.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Chris Bollen, Havoc
(Harper)

“A lot of books claim to be Highsmithian, but this one actually is: A highly readable, twisty, and shrewd satire presenting as a thriller about entitlement, loneliness, jealousy, and the eternal friction between the young and old. Utterly enjoyable.”
–Hanya Yanagihara

Patrick Hutchison, Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
(St. Martin’s Press)

Imagine if Bill Bryson had decided to put down stakes during his walk in the woods and asked Charles Bukowski to help him refurbish a derelict shack deep in the forest of the Cascade Mountains. And there you have Patrick Hutchinson’s hilarious and poignant Cabin. Hutchison braves truck-swallowing mudslides, spiders vying for outhouse ownership, hermit meth tweakers, and glowing-eyed mountain lions (both real and imagined) to chronicle not only his dilapidated cabin’s transformation, but his own.”
–Bob Drury

Kate Kennedy, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound
(Pegasus Books)

“It is the cello’s capacity to live materially and biographically that Kate Kennedy explores in this strikingly original book. She organizes her account around four European cellists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose difficult and dangerous lives extended far beyond the good manners of the concert hall.”
–The Times (London)

Andrew Hui, The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries
(Princeton University Press)

“A] stimulating history….Hui makes a convincing case that personal libraries were intimately bound up with Renaissance conceptions of selfhood. Bibliophiles will find much to ponder.”
–Publishers Weekly

Omar Khalifah, Sand-Catcher (trans. Barbara Romaine)
(Coffee House Press)

“For anyone looking for insight—tinged with grim humor—into the years leading up to the present political crisis in the Middle East and the decades-long goal of Palestinian autonomy.”
–The Millions

Zahid Rafiq, The World with Its Mouth Open
(Tin House)

“The World With Its Mouth Open is a brilliant debut collection, both restrained and revelatory. In eleven meticulously crafted stories, Zahid Rafiq details the human mechanics of modern-day Kashmiri life. There is so much of the world here, rendered in small intimate moments of grief, violence, humor, and wanting, every sentence taut as a tendon. Rafiq is a writer of considerable talent, and this collection marks the beginning of what will be a marvelous literary career.”
–Omar El Akkad

Cary Groner, The Way
(Spiegel & Grau)

“This epic journey through a near-future, postapocalyptic landscape blends extreme suspense with serene meditation…. Groner offers a contemplative take on the postapocalyptic genre that leaves room for hope but doesn’t stint on realism. This novel reads like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road meets Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”
–Library Journal

Claire Mulley, Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter
(Pegasus Books)

“Gripping, moving and important: an amazing and until-now neglected story of female WW2 heroism and secret derring-do. This tale of the resistance fighter Agent Zo is amazingly told and deeply researched by the excellent historian of WW2 espionage Clare Mulley.”
–Simon Sebag Montefiore

John Haywood, Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus
(Pegasus Books)

“Haywood has penned a sweeping, eye-opening maritime history of the North Atlantic Ocean. Crammed with fascinating stories and details, this narrative spans thousands of years. An expertly written and accessible survey of the pre-Columbian Atlantic world.”
–Library Journal

Glenn Adamson, A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present
(Bloomsbury)

“A masterful cultural history, revealing how imagining the future has long been a way of remaking the present, not only for religious prophets, scientific thinkers, and science fiction writers, but in struggles for Native American sovereignty, civil rights, women’s rights, environmental justice, and more. In a moment when the future can seem too dark to contemplate, A Century of Tomorrows advances the liberatory possibilities of thinking about the days to come.”
–Louis S. Warren

Rémy Ngamije, Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space: A Literary Mixtape
(Gallery/Scout Press)

“I am actively jealous of Remy’s imagination and its daring. Here we have a writer who sees everything, from the absurdities and complexities of Namibian life and then offers them to you wrapped in humor and the tapestry of global south music to say we are all mixed. This is a journey across all genres to paint a picture of an Africa that has globalized onto itself – the West even though the present is peripheral. Through Remy, Windhoek sings its song. Take a listen!”
–Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Kaveh Akbar! Anthony Veasna So! Irreverent travel! 24 books out in paperback this December.

By Gabrielle Bellot

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December 2, 2024, 4:55am

December is finally here, the final month in a year in which time has sometimes felt more like a labyrinth than a line through calendar days, a year of sudden twists and turns. And the year to come will be dense with, if not outright defined by, uncertainty. And that is precisely why the things that bring us joy and contemplation, like our books, are more important than ever. To that end, I’ve compiled a list of exciting new fiction and nonfiction titles coming out in paperback this December.

And there’s indeed a lot to be excited about. It’s especially a strong showing for fiction, with a bevy of celebrated works by Kaveh Akbar, Tana French, Jill McCorkle, Jonathan Evinson, Louise Kennedy, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, and many others. And, in nonfiction, you’ll find many excellent options, as well, including Anthony Veasna So’s wide-ranging essays, Shahnaz Habib’s irreverent history of travel, Einstein’s life in ninety-nine particles, a new look at the fascinating collage artist Peter Beard, and more.

If you missed them in hardcover, be sure to check out these paperback editions. It’s been a strange year, and there’s much more of that to come. But everything is better with books by your side. Read deeply, and add these to your to-be-read lists, or let them be gifts for someone whose to-be-read piles have room yet to grow.

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Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
(Vintage)

“Incandescent….Akbar has created an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic. But it speaks to Akbar’s storytelling gifts that Martyr! is both a riveting character study and piercing family saga….Akbar is a dazzling writer, with bars like you wouldn’t believe….What Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Tana French, The Hunter
(Penguin)

“As French revisits the seemingly bucolic landscape where trouble roils just under the surface, her writing continues to shift from mystery to meditation….Morally shaded and complex, [The Hunter] will leave you thinking about who’s right—and what’s wrong—long after you turn the last page.”
–NPR

Jonathan Evison, Again and Again
(Penguin)

“Evison’s dazzling new novel does what the best literature does, pulls us out of our lives and plunges us into another–in this case many others…in a way that is truly, mindbendingly, genius. A stunning Scherazade-told tale about the only subject that matters—love—Again and Again is about the stories we tell ourselves to create ourselves, the stories we believe, and the way a human heart can shatter and still find a kind of wholeness.”
–Caroline Leavitt

Anthony Veasna So, Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes
(Ecco Press)

“Anthony Veasna So’s talent for evoking the anxieties, longings, and memories of diasporic Cambodian Americans—on voluptuous display in his posthumously published short story collection Afterparties—is put to vivid use in this new collection of delicately hinged essays that address everything from ‘deep reality TV’ to So’s stint as an art student.”
–The Boston Globe

Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel
(Catapult)

“Thoughtful and thought-provoking….It’s both a welcome addition to the existing library of literature on travel and a resonant critique of much of it—and it may well leave you thinking more about your own experiences making your way across the globe.”
–Tobias Carroll

Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair
(Picador)

“Wiman weaves together poetry, essay, and memoir in this dazzling, multivocal examination of and refusal to accept existential despair….Wiman’s knowledge is vast, and his evocative imagery lingers in the mind….[Zero at the Bone is] a gorgeous ode to the power of poetry to grapple with life’s most anguished moments.”
–Poetry

Louise Kennedy, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac: Stories
(Riverhead)

“Incisive stories [of] women at precipitous turning points in their lives….Each story reverberates with a sense of the far-reaching effect of choices made or imposed. It adds up to a remarkable and cohesive collection.”
–Publishers Weekly

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, Alice Sadie Celine
(Simon & Schuster)

“Like Didion but with more warmth and a queer sensibility, Alice Sadie Celine is packed with so much of what I love in a book: tight prose, smart, fully realized characters grappling with inappropriate love affairs, and bright California land and light. It’s extraordinarily lovely and I savored every word and didn’t want it to end.”
–Bethany Ball

Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes: And Other Stories
(Algonquin)

“Jill McCorkle has had an extraordinary ear for the music of ordinary life since the beginning of her career, able to work with the voices we know so well to write these stories about they will not tell us, what they would rather not tell us, what they hope to tell us, what too often goes unsaid. And this collection is a new wonder.”
–Alexander Chee

Colette Brooks, Trapped in the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory
(Counterpoint)

“Brooks ruminates upon the past while reframing events to challenge our present perceptions of what matters most when we look back and formulate life lessons….This is a sophisticated, thoughtful collection that should be read with the kind of care that Brooks instilled into each provocative essay.”
–Booklist

Virginia Sole-Smith, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture
(Holt)

“If you have ever held a piece of food or briefly glimpsed a part of your body and felt a complicated thing, you need to read this book. Fat Talk is about parenting—but also about living—within and outside of the nefarious stories we’ve been told about food and bodies and how and why they relate to health; about the dangers of restriction and the freedom and the power that can come from loving ourselves and one another on new and better terms.”
–Lynn Steger Strong

Jonathan Scott, Into the Groove: The Story of Sound from Tin Foil to Vinyl
(Bloomsbury)

“Into the Groove is a thorough exploration of the sound revolution that brought music to the masses… Jonathan Scott contributes a wealth of valuable information that will engage audiophiles everywhere. A winning book of history mixed with pop culture.”
–Manhattan Book Review

John Sayles, Jamie MacGillivray
(Melville House)

“[R]emarkable in that it manages to be both sweeping and intimate, to deliver to the reader the tides of political history but also a moving and internalized portrait of two young people swept along on these tides…Jamie MacGillivray is Sayles’s sixth novel—his first was published in 1975—and by some distance his best….Sayles writes superbly about the confusion of warfare and deals equally well with the horrors of the plantations…a first-rate historical novel.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Diana Clarke, The Hop
(Harper)

“[An] ambitious and addictive feminist tale….With a complicated mother-daughter relationship, unconditional friendships, disappointments, and a bold stance on the sex industry, Clarke’s novel consistently stirs the head and the heart. This is a great achievement.”
–Publishers Weekly

Mike McCormack, This Plague of Souls
(Soho Press)

“McCormack’s language is evocative, perfectly suited to the noirish atmosphere he builds throughout the book . . . As in Solar Bones, McCormack displays his gift for describing landscapes and situations that might seem unlovely, but for the fact that they are loved by the author’s observing eye….This is a strange novel, sinister yet hopeful, a descent into darkness that somehow manages to rise into a ringing light.”
–The Guardian

Samuel Graydon, Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles
(Scribner)

“Graydon reveals Einstein, warts and all, in a marvelous way that few if any previous biographies have ever managed. Each scene impels you to read the next, making it hard to put the book down. A highly original, irresistibly engaging portrayal of history’s most iconic scientist. Bravo!”
–Michael Guillen

Christopher Wallace, Twentieth-Century Man: The Wild Life of Peter Beard
(Ecco Press)

“Spirited….Wallace blends biography, art criticism, reportage and essayistic digressions to create a portrait of a man so disillusioned with civilization that he sought to ‘rewild himself’…the man is sharper as a result.”
–The Washington Post

Mary Beard, Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World
(Liveright)

“Throughout, it is clear that Beard—a decorated retired Cambridge professor (and blogger and TV presenter), who excels at making the ancient world accessible to nonspecialist audiences—is herself deeply intrigued by the Roman emperor…in these rigorously researched pages is an account that gives life to an often shadowy yet captivating figure….Above all, she makes her readers rethink any simplistic notions they may have about what it meant to be the emperor of Rome.”
–The Washington Post

Melissa Rivero, Flores and Miss Paula
(Ecco Press)

“Deeply compassionate and tender, Melissa Rivero’s new novel paints a striking portrait of the mother-daughter bond with wisdom and empathy. In alternating chapters, we see an immigrant mother and millennial daughter unfold and evolve—with stunning depth. Melissa is a phenomenal talent who combines authenticity and a bold, fresh voice to deliver raw, unforgettable women/characters. Not to be missed!”
–Etaf Rum

Claire Oshetsky, Poor Deer
(Ecco Press)

“Beautiful, terrifying….Grief is a well-trod territory in fiction, but in Oshetsky’s hands, this familiar topic becomes fresh and strange….With Poor Deer, Oshetsky proves themself the bard of unruly psyches.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Carsten Henn, The Door-to-Door Bookstore
(Hanover Square Press)

“Carsten Henn has written a sensitive, poetic novel about the magical power of books to connect people. This novel is a pleasure to read for all book lovers.”
–Aachener Zeitung

Richard Snow, Sailing the Graveyard Sea: The Deathly Voyage of the Somers, the U.S. Navy’s Only Mutiny, and the Trial that Gripped the Nation
(Scribner)

“As engrossing as Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea. In Richard Snow’s masterful hands, the collision between a brash, young, wannabe pirate and his rash, too-proud, unyielding commanding officer is a sea story for the ages. What happened on Somers during a routine U.S. Navy voyage in 1842 is as shocking and unsettling today as it was in its day.”
–James Sullivan

James Lee Burke, Harbor Lights: Stories
(Grove Press)

“Burke’s eight-piece story collection shines, from the atmosphere found while cherry picking in a northwestern Montana orchard to the smell of summer watermelons in the South….These stories, while filled with dark themes, are bright with descriptive natural features, spanning from before the Civil War to more modern times, offering a look into the battlefield history of the South and how it remains alive….For Burke’s many fans and those who enjoy Southern tales.”
–Library Journal

Karl Malantes, Cold Victory
(Grove Press)

“Marlantes’ well-plotted, briskly moving novel explores the psychological afterlife of war. The men may court death on the tundra, but their needs are uncomplicated. It’s the women who, in building cross-cultural bridges and making impossible sacrifices, truly demonstrate sisu (Finnish for ‘toughness in the face of hopelessness’).”
–Booklist