Alering mixes mountain magic and teenage angst in her potent if murky debut set in 1980s Appalachia. Sisters Sheila, 17, and Angie, 12, live on a mountain with their mother and their great-aunt Thena, who took the family in after a hazily described traumatic event involving their father. Sheila, who has a rope tied around her neck that only she can see, works as a dishwasher at a state asylum for the criminally insane when she is not at school, while Angie spends her free time drawing tarot-like cards whose characters talk to her, including one she names the Worm King. After two women are found bludgeoned to death on a hiking trail near Thena’s house, the girls put their minds and their magic toward finding the killer. Many strange things happen—a boy who inexplicably lives at the asylum tells Sheila he can see her rope, drawings of Angie’s characters appear in a patient’s cell, and the sisters eventually turn up useful clues thanks to input from the Worm King. Some readers will be left scratching their heads, but Alering pulls off an evocative portrait of the creepy rural setting. It’s a passable Appalachian gothic. Agents: Martha Perotto-Wills and James Mustelier, Bent Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Shepherd’s imaginative latest (after The Cartographers), a middle-aged woman wins the chance to star in a mind-bending reality TV show built around a new technology called The Bubble, which allows contestants to choose different lives for themselves and adjusts their memories to match. Marsh, a recently divorced paralegal, begins her tenure on the show by repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempting to rekindle her marriage. Eventually, she constructs new lives as a high-powered lawyer in Hong Kong, a wildlife photographer in Iceland, and more. She also pursues a romance with her high school boyfriend and improves her relationship with her teenage daughter. Each life feels like an improvement on her real one, but when glitches appear in The Bubble, Marsh worries her chance at a perfect life will slip through her fingers. In the chapter endings, Shepherd playfully mines nostalgia for Choose Your Own Adventure series (“If Ren didn’t break up with Marsh last night: Turn the page”). Whichever path readers take, they’ll find a tantalizing and well-knit story. Reality TV fans especially ought to take note. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, CAA. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

A London heat wave and a whale stuck in the Thames form the backdrop of McKenna’s stimulating first novel. The narrative unfolds over a pivotal weekend in the lives of a group of friends, as the oppressive weather and crowds of tourists exacerbate their stress over their uncertain futures. Maggie, 30, worries her pregnancy will put a strain on her relationship with Ed and complicate their planned return to their Essex hometown. Ed, in turn, is excited to get away from his dead-end courier job and start a family with Maggie, though he’s also secretly having anonymous sex with men. Ed once carried on a relationship with Maggie’s friend, Phil, who’s falling in love with Keith, one of his roommates in an illegal warehouse loft. The characters’ precariousness is frequently and cleverly laid bare through the presence of the whale, whose ordeal is tied by many to climate change, and the narrative boldly explores themes of sexuality, shame, and miscommunication. McKenna’s ornate tapestry is one to savor. Agent: Liv Maidment, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Chilean writer Emar (1893–1964) stocks the surreal tales of this freewheeling collection, originally published in 1937, with magical animals and unnerving settings. “The Green Bird” recounts the adventures of a parrot, from when it’s plucked out of the Amazon by a French doctor to its death and a shocking moment of violence involving its ghost. In “Damned Cat,” the narrator ventures into the wilderness and has a cosmic encounter with a cat. The narrator of “The Cantera Estate” visits a farm that’s been listed for sale and finds the property suffused with “a marked discontent.” The narrator and two men accompanying him recite the alphabet and the solfège scale in an attempt to restore order to the property, but instead find themselves in a nightmare comprising exploding anthills and sinister ladies with parasols. The story lines zig and zag in unexpected ways and are most effective when readers allow the chaos to wash over them. This dizzying collection will appeal to fans of Kō bō Abe, Lenora Carrington, and Witold Gombrowicz. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the beautiful latest from Mengestu (All Our Names), a journalist pieces together the mysteries of his early life in the wake of his biological father’s death. The story takes place over three days after Mamush travels from Paris to the Ethiopian community outside Washington, D.C., where he spent the latter half of his childhood. Upon his arrival, he learns from his mother that Samuel, who lived nearby and whom Mamush knew growing up as a family friend and later found out was his father, has just been found dead in his garage. The circumstances of Samuel’s death are murky and the characters are careful about making assumptions, partly due to the taboo nature of suicide in Ethiopian culture. After Mamush pays condolences to Samuel’s wife, he heads to Chicago, where he was born shortly after his pregnant mother immigrated from Ethiopia, hoping to find answers about Samuel and his mother’s early relationship. Mamush knows Samuel arrived in Chicago when Mamush was six, with plans to start a network of taxis around the U.S., but instead toiled as a cabbie and became addicted to drugs. From there, the story unfolds like a fairy tale as Mamush imagines the ghost of Samuel telling him how he met Mamush’s mother and why they were never together in the U.S. Mengestu shifts fluidly between fabulism and realism, and the narrative is full of wisdom related to Samuel’s disillusionment with the American dream. Mengestu’s tremendous talents are on full display. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the exceptional latest from Savaş (White on White), an idealistic young couple flounders in their half-hearted effort to put down roots in an unnamed city far from their respective homelands. Asya, who makes “joyful and naïve” documentaries about everyday life, met fellow international student Manu in college. Since graduation, they’ve been renting a small, dark apartment in the city, and now decide they’re ready to buy their own place. They visit a range of listings, including a converted factory, a house in the suburbs, and an apartment off of an alley, the last of which they conclude is perfect except for the layout, which feels wrong in a way they can’t articulate. Though they want to step further into adulthood, they also want to preserve their youth, and they chafe at the willful conformity of their peers. Their friend Ravi, who patches together a living with tutoring gigs and collects old photographs, is a kindred spirit. So is their elderly neighbor, Tereza, with whom they read poetry. Savaş captures the singularity of the couple’s logic in lucid prose, and the real estate search gives shape to the spare and subtle narrative, as the couple’s indecisiveness and their affection for Ravi and Tereza keep readers guessing as to what they’ll do. It’s a masterpiece. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Moreno-Garcia (Silver Nitrate) returns to the world of moviemaking for this layered if schematic story of a Mexico City receptionist whose exotic looks land her the lead role in the eponymous 1950s Hollywood epic. Vera Larios has no professional acting experience, which infuriates costar Nancy Hartley, who was certain the role was hers and that it would have been her big break. While Nancy schemes to knock Vera out of the picture, Moreno-Garcia unfurls a parallel story line in which the biblical Salome navigates power struggles in her uncle Herod’s court through stratagems not unlike those wielded by Vera and Nancy. Moreno-Garcia shines a light on the racial and gender politics of postwar Hollywood and intertwines her tale with enough real history to please Tinseltown obsessives, though her stock characters are straight out of central casting: in addition to the vulnerable ingenue and bitter bit player, there are a vain male lead, martinet director, and harried screenwriter. This isn’t the author’s best. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky Literary. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Reyes debuts with a scintillating collection of stories in which Salvadoran characters reckon with new technologies and the evils of capitalism. The wry opener, “He Eats His Own,” follows a finance broker in Los Angeles who pays his relatives in San Salvador to grow and ship mangoes for him to eat, even as their work puts them in the crosshairs of gang violence­. In the pitch perfect “Try Again,” a bisexual Salvadoran American man pays a biotech company to transplant his late father’s brain tissue into a robot. After being rejected by his father because of his sexuality, he finally finds the acceptance he craved via the AI-powered robot. In “Self-Made Man,” one of the more devastating entries, a researcher uncovers a secret U.S. government program to create manual laborers from the reanimated corpses of undocumented Central Americans. The volume is shot through with genuine pathos and astute social commentary, and Reyes shifts effortlessly from absurdism to satire to sci-fi. These dynamic tales herald the arrival of a promising new talent. Agent: Aemilia Phillips, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lindley’s enticing first novel explores the seamy side of the antiquities market. Soon after a fisherman reels in a stunning marble figure near a small Greek island, Dr. Elizabeth Clarke, a 30-something American specialist in female Hellenistic statues, arrives to assess it. The nude form, which is missing two arms, could be the perfect focal point at the Los Angeles museum where she’s an assistant curator. Her boss, William, pressures her to make the acquisition, claiming that if she fails, her “coldness will be to blame.” The stress exacerbates her chronic migraines, but her mood improves after she meets her translator, Niko, and his wife, Theo. Eager to connect with the enchanting Theo, Elizabeth pretends to understand her elliptical statement about the statue being“complicit” in its “un-freedom.” Elizabeth loses herself to the island and the couple, imagining they want to sleep with her and failing to grasp Theo’s much different ideas about what should be done with the statue (the details come out later). Things take a turn when one of the statue’s missing arms mysteriously appears and vandals begin breaking into local museums. Lindley expertly dials up Elizabeth’s paranoia and keeps the reader guessing as her mission’s true purpose is thrown into question. This one’s hard to shake. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Zaher’s hypnotic debut, an obsessive young Palestinian woman flees her oppressive homeland for Manhattan and employs increasingly unorthodox methods at the private school where she’s hired to teach English. The unnamed narrator, whose parents died years earlier in a car accident, lives comfortably on an allowance from their estate. She fills her free time with elaborate ablutions and stays up late cleaning and organizing her apartment, to the point that she’s so exhausted during class she can’t stay on her feet. She disregards the standard curriculum in favor of harsh life lessons (love is akin to being “taken hostage”) and gives her students bizarre assignments such as extracting confessions from their family members. She chalks up her strange behavior to a coin she remembers swallowing as a child, which she imagines remains lodged in her back. Zaher’s writing is deeply arresting, especially when her narrator is energized by her newfound sense of self-possession in New York, where she walks the streets wearing a “violent” and “sexual” perfume and carries a Birkin bag, which thrillingly transforms her into an object of desire (“I came from a place where a bag could never have power, where only violence spoke. And suddenly I had something that others wanted to possess, I was a woman who others wanted to embody”). It’s a tour de force. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink