“THE TRUE TRUE STORY OF RAJA THE GULLIBLE (AND HIS MOTHER)”

In a tiny Beirut apartment, 63-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned. 

When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget. 

Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)” is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love. 

Grove Press 

Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother),” “The Wrong End of the Telescope,” “Angel of History,” “An Unnecessary Woman,” “The Hakawati,” “I, the Divine,” “Koolaids” the story collection, “The Perv,” and one work of nonfiction, “Comforting Myths.” He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and twice a finalist for the National Book Award. He received the Dos Passos Prize in 2019 and a Lannan Award in 2021. 

“KING OF ASHES”

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger. 

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills. 

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything. 

Because everything burns. 

Pine & Cedar Books

S.A. Cosby is a New York Times bestselling writer from southeastern Virginia. He is the author, most recently, of “King of Ashes.” His other novels include “All the Sinners Bleed,” which was on more than 40 Best of the Year lists, including Barack Obama’s, as well as Edgar Award finalist “Razorblade Tears” and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner “Blacktop Wasteland.” He has also won the Anthony Award, ITW Thriller Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award, BCALA Award, and Audie Award and has been longlisted for the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.

“THE WILDERNESS”

Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays. 

Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life. 

As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life. 

Mariner Books 

Angela Flournoy is the author of “The Wilderness,” which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and “The Turner House,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York. 

“CULPABILITY”

Set at a summer rental on the Chesapeake Bay, a riveting family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence, from the bestselling author of the “wise and addictive” (New York Times) “The Gifted School.” 

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, 17-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them in the accident. 

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI. 

“Culpability” explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging and unimaginably provocative. 

Spiegel & Grau 

Bruce Holsinger is the author of five novels, including “Culpability,” “The Displacements” and “The Gifted School,” and many works of nonfiction, most recently “On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age” (Yale University Press). His books have been recognized with the Colorado Book Award, the John Hurt Fisher Prize, the Philip Brett Award, the John Nicholas Brown Prize, the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a First Book, and others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.  

 Holsinger teaches in the department of English at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in medieval literature and modern critical thought and serves as editor of the quarterly journal New Literary History. He also teaches craft classes and serves as board chairman for WriterHouse, a local nonprofit in Charlottesville.  

” INTEMPERANCE”

In this follow-up to the critically acclaimed “The Laughter”—winner of the Washington State Book Award—a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections. 

A woman who has left two husbands announces she will celebrate her 55th birthday by holding a swayamvar. Drawn from an ancient custom in her Indian culture, this is an event in which suitors line up to compete in a feat of wills and strength to win a beautiful princess’s hand in marriage. The woman, a renowned and respected intellectual in an American town who had once declared she was “past such petty matters as love,” knows she is now setting herself up for widespread societal ridicule, but her self-esteem and sexual libido are off the charts even as her body withers from disability, fading beauty and her appetite for cake. 

To her surprise, a cast of characters shows up to support her call—a wedding planner looking for the next enchanting thing, a disability rights activist making a documentary film, and even, begrudgingly, her own young adult son. The Men’s Rights Movement protests her project, angry at her objectification of men. She is waylaid by visitations from goddesses and princesses past, who either try to slap sense into her or cheer her on. She must also reckon with a brutal love story in her ancestry that was endangered by the caste system—a story that placed a generational curse on those in the family who show an intemperance of spirit. As her whole plan spirals into a spectacle, the woman embarks on a journey to decide what feat her suitor must perform to be worthy of her wrinkling hand. What feat will define a newer, better masculinity? What feat will it take for her to trust in the tenderness of love? 

HarperVia 

Sonora Jha is the author of the novels “Intemperance: A Novel,” “The Laughter” and “Foreign: A Novel” and the memoir ”How to Raise a Feminist Son.” After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a PhD in media and public affairs. Sonora and her work have been featured in The New York Times and literary anthologies, on the BBC, and elsewhere. Formerly a journalist in India and Singapore, she is now a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University and lives in Seattle. 

“THE RIVER IS WAITING”

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model. Buoyed by them and by his mother’s enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves? 

Simon & Schuster, Marysue Rucci Books 

Wally Lamb is the author of seven New York Times bestselling novels: “The River is Waiting,” “I’ll Take You There,” ”We Are Water,” “ Wishin’ and Hopin’,” ”The Hour I First Believed,” ”I Know This Much Is True” and ”She’s Come Undone.” Lamb also edited ”Couldn’t Keep It to Myself” and “I’ll Fly Away,” two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for 20 years. Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine, and they have three sons. 

” RING: A NOVEL”

“Ring” takes you on an unforgettable odyssey through the depths of human emotion, from the hollows of grief to the heights of newfound hope. In the backdrop of a snow-covered sanctuary designed to aid the dying, Lee, a middle-aged non-binary person from the Midwest, grapples with the unbearable weight of losing their young adult daughter. Abandoning their previous life and even the comfort of a longtime spouse, Lee is driven by a quest for closure―or an end to it all. 

Enter Ring, a seemingly ordinary dog with an extraordinary role. Brought by Robert, a terminally ill man preparing to make his final walk through the sanctuary’s Seven Pillars, Ring becomes the catalyst for Lee’s own rebirth. As Lee befriends other souls at the sanctuary, each embroiled in their own battles―from Catherine and Samu, the spiritual leaders, to Viviana, a war veteran scarred by trauma―they are nudged toward a revelation that challenges their initial reasons for coming to this remote haven. 

The novel deftly weaves themes of loss, hope, and healing, set against the spirituality-infused environment of the sanctuary. It presents a compassionate view on suicide, grappling with the complex questions it raises about the value and sanctity of life. As Lee engages with mindfulness practices and meditation, the story emerges as an enlightening guide for anyone walking the fine line between despair and hope. 

Don’t miss this emotional journey that tackles the raw, intricate facets of grief, and leaves you pondering the restorative powers of companionship and the human spirit. Ideal for readers coping with loss, struggling with suicidal thoughts, or seeking a deeply spiritual narrative, “Ring” promises to resonate long after the last page is turned. 

Bancroft Press 

Michelle Lerner, a poet by training, received an MFA from The New School. Her poetry chapbook, “Protection (Poetry Box),” was published in 2021. Her poetry manuscripts have been recognized as a finalist for the Poetry Box Chapbook Prize and as a semifinalist for both the Pamet River Prize at Yes Yes Books and the 2020 Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Individual poems by Lerner have appeared in numerous journals and several anthologies and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets 2022. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she worked as a public interest lawyer for nearly two decades before falling ill with late-stage neurological Lyme Disease, from which she is still recovering. She wrote her book “Ring” during her illness, which significantly influenced its content and development. 

“A FAMILY MATTER”

1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.

2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.

Scribner 

Claire Lynch is the author of the debut novel “A Family Matter.” She has a doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a professor of English and creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post and on BBC Radio. She lives in Windsor, England, with her wife and three daughters. 

“WILD DARK SHORE”

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. 

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. 

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. 

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together. 

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, “Wild Dark Shore” is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears. 

Flatiron Books 

Charlotte McConaghy is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels “Wild Dark Shore,” “Once There Were Wolves,” and “Migrations,” which are being translated into more than 20 languages. She is based in Sydney, Australia. 

“THESE HEATHENS”

Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town’s midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For 17-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia’s orbit: celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, boys who flirt too hard and talk too much, atheists! And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home. 

From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn’t want a baby, but what does she want? Will this trip help her find out? 

“These Heathens” is a funny, poignant story about Black women’s obligations and ambitions, what we owe to ourselves, and the transformative power of leaving your bubble, even for just one chaotic weekend. 

Random House 

Mia McKenzie is the two-time Lambda Award-winning author of  “These Heathens,” “The Summer We Got Free” and ”Skye Falling,” and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous Media, an independent media and education project that centers queer Black women and girls. She lives with her family in Massachusetts. 

“HAPPY LAND”

“THIS HERE IS LOVE”

Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—living beside each other, struggling against their circumstances, trying to bend destiny. 

As the 17th century burns to a close in Tidewater, Virginia, America’s character is wrought in the fires of wealth, race and freedom. 

Young Bless, the only child left to her enslaved mother, stubbornly crafts the terms of her vital existence. She stands as the lone bulwark between her mother and irreparable despair, her mother’s only possibility of hope, as Bless reshapes the boundaries of love. 

David is a helping child and a solace to his parents, and he gave a purpose to their trials. His survival hinges on his mother’s shrewd intellect and ferocious fight, but his sustenance is his freed Black father’s dream of emancipation for the entire family. 

Jack Dane, a Scots-Irish boy, sails to Britain’s colonies when his father sells him into indentured servitude as an escape from poverty. There, Jack learns from the rich the value of each person’s life. 

A breathtaking, haunting, and epic saga, “This Here Is Love” intimately intertwines us with these beautifully drawn, unforgettable American characters. Bless, taken to serve the slaveowner’s daughter, must decide where she belongs: with the enslaved or above them. David, sold away from his people, retreats into himself even as he yearns to unite with others. Jack, acting impetuously, changes his fortune, but will doing so sacrifice his humanity? 

All three come together on Jack’s land. As they face and challenge each other, they will relinquish and remake beliefs about family and freedom, even as they confront the limits of love.

W. Norton & Company

Princess Joy L. Perry is the author of the debut novel “This Here is Love.” She is the recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship and a winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award. Her short stories have appeared in All About Skin, African American Review and Kweli Journal. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia.  

“ENDLING”

Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity. 

Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. 

Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, “Endling brilliantly” balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from overseas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion? 

Doubleday 

Maria Reva is the author of the novel “Endling.” She was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada and holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere, and has won a National Magazine Award. She also works as an opera librettist. 

“BEHIND THE WATERLINE”

When Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans, teenaged Eric and his grandmother and many of their neighbors decide to ride out the storm. Kionna Walker LeMalle’s masterful debut novel brings her readers, like the rising water, onto Eric’s street in the Third Ward, where stranded dogs bark for a time, where neighbors are floating on doors, and where Eric and his grandmother must take refuge in his second floor bedroom. After days of heat, dwindling supplies, and relentless rising water, neighbors begin to disappear and Eric’s grandmother, already known as an eccentric, begins to falter. It is then that Eric—in a dream, a hallucination, or something else—discovers a room beyond his closet wall, a place he has never seen. What he discovers inside will send him on a path to discover secrets to survival, bitter progress, and, ultimately, the history of his own people—those he sorely misses and those he never even knew.

Blair

Kionna Walker LeMalle crafts stories and poetry from the distinct culture and history of the American South. Her work has appeared in table//FEAST, The Southern Quarterly, The First Line and The Bayou Review. She earned her MFA at Houston Christian University, where she now teaches in the Department of Narrative Arts. Her debut novel, “Behind the Waterline,” won the Lee Smith Novel Prize, selected by contest judge Deesha Philyaw. 

“SO FAR GONE”

Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons. 

Now Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia? 

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind. “So Far Gone” is a rollicking, razor-sharp and moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called “a genius of the modern American moment” (Philadelphia Inquirer). 

Harper 

Jess Walter is the author, most recently, of “So Far Gone,” and seven previous novels, including the bestsellers “The Cold Millions” and “Beautiful Ruins,” the National Book Award Finalist “The Zero,” and “Citizen Vince,” winner of the Edgar Award for best novel. His short fiction, collected in “The Angel of Rome” and “We Live in Water,” has won the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize and appeared three times in Best American Short Stories. He lives in his hometown of Spokane, Washington. 

“James”

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. 
 
While many narrative set pieces of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. 
 
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, “James” is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature. 

Doubleday

Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include “James,” “Dr. No” (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), “The Trees” (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), “Telephone” (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), “So Much Blue,” “Erasure,” and  “I Am Not Sidney Poitier.”  He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. “American Fiction,” the feature film based on his novel “Erasure,” was released in 2023 and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.

 

“Before the Mango Ripens”

Set against the backdrop of 1970s Nigeria, “Before the Mango Ripens” is both epic and intimate. Afabwaje Kurian’s debut announces a brilliant new talent for readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Imbolo Mbue. 
 
In Rabata, everyone has secrets—especially since the arrival of the white American missionaries. 
Twenty-year-old Jummai is a beautiful and unassuming house girl whose dreams of escaping her home life are disrupted when an unexpected pregnancy forces her to hide her lover’s identity. Tebeya, an ambitious Dublin-educated doctor, has left prestigious opportunities abroad to return to the small town of her birth and discovers a painful betrayal when she strives to take control of the mission clinic. Zanya is a young translator, enticed by promises of progress, who comes to Rabata to escape a bitter past and finds himself embroiled in a fight against the American reverend for the heart of the church and town. 
United by their yearning for change, all three must make difficult decisions that threaten the fragile relationships of the Rabata they know. As tensions mount and hypocrisies are unveiled, the people of Rabata are faced with a question that will transform their town forever: Let the Americans stay, or make them go? 

Dzanc Books

Afabwaje Kurian is the author of the debut novel “Before the Mango Ripens.” She received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in Callaloo, Crazyhorse, The Bare Life Review, Joyland Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. She has received residencies from Ucross, Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale and has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and for its International Writing Program. She was born in Nigeria, and grew up in the DC area and the Midwest. 

 

“Wandering Stars”

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines. 
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in “There There”—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. “Wandering Stars” is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts. 

Penguin Random House

Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California. He currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His first book, “There There,” was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize. He is the author, most recently, of the novel “Wandering Stars.”

“There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven”

An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man. 

In “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven,” Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans. 

Blazing with heart, humor and inimitable style, “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven” subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own. 

Mariner Books

Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven.” A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Lightspeed Magazine and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Brooklyn.

“The Safekeep”

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. 
Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation, leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. 
Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual and infused with intrigue, atmosphere and sex, “The Safekeep” is “a brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history and to one’s own desires” (The Guardian). 

Avid Reader Press

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and a teacher. She lives in Utrecht, Netherlands, and “The Safekeep” is her first novel. 

“Madwoman”

Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon, and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it save her life? 

 A gripping portrait of motherhood and motherloss, intimate terrorism and terrifying love, the reverberations of male violence through generations and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, “Madwoman” channels immense power, wisdom, and rage, marking Chelsea Bieker as a major fiction talent. 

Little, Brown and Company

Chelsea Bieker is the author of, most recently, the novel “Madwoman.” Her debut novel, “Godshot,” was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, “Heartbroke,” won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies at MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawaii and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children.

“Sky Full of Elephants”

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family. 

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it. 

Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours. 

Simon & Schuster

Cebo Campbell is an author and creative director based in Brooklyn, New York. Winner of the Linda L. Ross Creative Writing Award and the Stories Award for Poetry, Cebo’s work has been featured in numerous publications. Cebo is the cofounder of the award-winning creative agency Spherical, where he leads a team of creatives in shaping the best hotel brands in the world. “Sky Full of Elephants” is his debut novel.

“James”

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. 
 
While many narrative set pieces of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. 
 
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, “James” is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature. 

Doubleday

Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include “James,” “Dr. No” (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), “The Trees” (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), “Telephone” (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), “So Much Blue,” “Erasure,” and  “I Am Not Sidney Poitier.”  He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. “American Fiction,” the feature film based on his novel “Erasure,” was released in 2023 and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.

“Anita De Monte Laughs Last”

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. 
 
But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. 
 
Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, “Anita de Monte Laughs Last” is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite. 

Flatiron Books

Xochitl Gonzalez is the author of, most recently, the novel “Anita De Monte Laughs Last” and the New York Times bestseller “Olga Dies Dreaming.” Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New York Times, Time, Kirkus Reviews, the Washington Post and NPR, “Olga Dies Dreaming” was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Award. Gonzalez is a 2021 MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her nonfiction work has been published by Allure, Bustle, Vogue and The Cut. As a staff writer for The Atlantic her work was a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and lives in her hometown with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.  

“A Great Country”

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple. 
For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America? 
For readers of “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett and “Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid, “A Great Country” explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream. 

Mariner Books

Shilpi Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and is the author of, most recently, of the novel “A Great Country.” Her previous novels, “Secret Daughter,” “The Golden Son” and “The Shape of Family,” because international bestsellers, selling over two million copies worldwide, in over 30 languages. She holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar. She lives in California with her husband and children.

“Kingdom of No Tomorrow”

It’s that pivotal year, 1968, and Nettie Boileau, a young Haitian student in Oakland, gets caught up in the ongoing revolutionary fever. With her friend Clia Brown, she uses her public health skills to help operate the free health clinics created by the people she believes are “true revolutionaries,” the Black Panthers. When she falls in love with Black Panther Party Defense Captain Melvin Mosley, their passionate love affair soon eclipses all else—her friendship with Clia and even her own sense of self. Pregnant, Nettie follows Melvin to Chicago to help with a newly-launched Illinois chapter of the Panthers, but once there, she finds Chicago segregated, police surveillance brutal and her faith in love eroding as Melvin becomes unfaithful. After a violent tussle with the police and the loss of their unborn child, both Nettie and Melvin are caught in the viciousness of J. Edgar Hoover’s covert campaigns, and Nettie is soon on the run, desperate to find power in her roots and ultimately, to save herself. With richly imagined, relatable characters, “Kingdom of No Tomorrow” tells a story of Black love, self-determination and the importance of revolution in the midst of injustice.  

Algonquin Books

Fabienne Josaphat was born and raised in Haiti, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Of her first novel, “Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow” published with Unnamed Press, Edwidge Danticat said, “Filled with life, suspense, and humor, this powerful first novel is an irresistible read about the nature of good and evil, terror and injustice, and ultimately triumph and love.” Her most recent novel is “Kingdom of No Tomorrow.” In addition to fiction, Josaphat writes nonfiction and poetry, as well as screenplays. Her work has been featured in The African American Review, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Master’s Review, Grist Journal, Damselfly, Hinchas de Poesia, Off the Coast Journal and The Caribbean Writer. Her poems have been anthologized in “Eight Miami Poets,” a Jai-Alai Books publication. Fabienne Josaphat lives in South Florida.

“The Road to the Salt Sea”

Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess. 

But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe—and a new life—is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom. 

As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive and illuminating, “The Road to the Salt Sea” is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere. 

Amistad – Harper Collins

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of the novel “The Road to the Salt Sea.” His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships, and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship from the Word. He studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden, and the United States, and currently teaches fiction writing as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

“Before the Mango Ripens”

Set against the backdrop of 1970s Nigeria, “Before the Mango Ripens” is both epic and intimate. Afabwaje Kurian’s debut announces a brilliant new talent for readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Imbolo Mbue. 
 
In Rabata, everyone has secrets—especially since the arrival of the white American missionaries. 
Twenty-year-old Jummai is a beautiful and unassuming house girl whose dreams of escaping her home life are disrupted when an unexpected pregnancy forces her to hide her lover’s identity. Tebeya, an ambitious Dublin-educated doctor, has left prestigious opportunities abroad to return to the small town of her birth and discovers a painful betrayal when she strives to take control of the mission clinic. Zanya is a young translator, enticed by promises of progress, who comes to Rabata to escape a bitter past and finds himself embroiled in a fight against the American reverend for the heart of the church and town. 
United by their yearning for change, all three must make difficult decisions that threaten the fragile relationships of the Rabata they know. As tensions mount and hypocrisies are unveiled, the people of Rabata are faced with a question that will transform their town forever: Let the Americans stay, or make them go? 

Dzanc Books

Afabwaje Kurian is the author of the debut novel “Before the Mango Ripens.” She received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in Callaloo, Crazyhorse, The Bare Life Review, Joyland Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. She has received residencies from Ucross, Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale and has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and for its International Writing Program. She was born in Nigeria, and grew up in the DC area and the Midwest. 

“Wandering Stars”

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines. 
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in “There There”—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. “Wandering Stars” is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts. 

Penguin Random House

Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California. He currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His first book, “There There,” was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize. He is the author, most recently, of the novel “Wandering Stars.”

“There is a Rio Grande in Heaven”

An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man. 

In “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven,” Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans. 

Blazing with heart, humor and inimitable style, “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven” subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own. 

Mariner Books

Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven.” A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Lightspeed Magazine and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Brooklyn.

“Lilith”

After her son, Lydan, suffers traumatic injuries in a school shooting, single mother Elisabeth Ross grows enraged at men in power. If they won’t do anything to help end this epidemic of violence, she will. Believing it’s her destiny, she sets out to awaken the world to the cowards these men are and commits her own act of shocking violence. Going only by the name Lilith—the first wife of Adam who fled Eden rather than serve a man—she posts a video of her crime that reverberates throughout society and triggers uprisings that alter the country forever. Praised by some, demonized by others, Elisabeth must keep her identity a secret as she tries to care for her son and avoid punishment by law enforcement and vigilantes alike.

As the startling aftermath unfolds, Elisabeth begins to question her act of violence and the very roots and mythology of violence itself. Was her act of violence—is any act of violence—justified, or has she become the monster that the original Lilith was accused of being? As the law draws closer, and Lydan starts to display odd, terrifying behavior, Elisabeth plots to avoid capture and keep her son safe at all costs, fearing she’ll never escape what she’s done without losing her son forever. Written with Rickstad’s singular command of language and human insight, “Lilith” is a tale of our times. Tragic and profound, it echoes in the mind and lingers in the blood.

 

Blackstone Publishing

Eric Rickstad is the New York Times bestselling novelist of “Lilith,” published March 19, 2024. His previous novel, “I am Not Who You Think I am,” was a New York Times Thriller of the Year. His other books include “What Remains of Her,” “Recap,” and The Canaan Crime Series — “Lie in Wait,”  “The Silent Girls” and “The Names of Dead Girls” — which has been translated in numerous languages. He taught Fiction Writing for Emerson College’s MFA Program and the University of Virginia undergraduate program, as well as American Literature at Boston University. He lives in Vermont with his wife, daughter and son.

“Fire Exit”

From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. He caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep. 

Now, it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she’s ever known? 

Tin House

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. He is the author of the debut novel “Fire Exit.” His debut short story collection, “Night of the Living Rez,” won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the New England Book Award, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Honor, and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and The Story Prize. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Granta, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Talty is an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.

“The Safekeep”

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. 
Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation, leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. 
Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual and infused with intrigue, atmosphere and sex, “The Safekeep” is “a brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history and to one’s own desires” (The Guardian). 

Avid Reader Press

Yael van der Wouden Yael van der Wouden is a writer and a teacher. She lives in Utrecht, Netherlands, and “The Safekeep” is her first novel. 

“Devil is Fine”

Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family. 
Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past. With the wit and rawness of Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout,” “Devil Is Fine” is a gripping, surreal and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit. 

Celadon Books

John Vercher lives in the Philadelphia region with his wife and two sons. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program. John serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of English & Philosophy at Drexel University and was the inaugural Wilma Dykeman writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. His debut novel, “Three-Fifths,” was named one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune and Booklist. It was nominated for the Edgar and Strand Magazine Critics’ Awards for Best First Novel. His second novel, “After the Lights Go Out,” called “shrewd and explosive” by The New York Times, was named a Best Book of Summer 2022 by BookRiot and Publishers Weekly, and named a Booklist Editor’s Choice Best Book of 2022. His most recent novel is “Devil is Fine.”