Cecília Matzenbacher, the Los Angeles–based taxidermist who narrates this intriguing outing from Bensimon (We All Loved Cowboys), views her trade as “history, storytelling, allegory, spectacle.” Cecília’s credo could also describe Bensimon’s fragmentary and genre-blurring novel, which blends snippets on the evolution of scientific study with a tender coming-of-age story and tense political thriller. As a girl growing up in Brazil, Cecília’s life was upended in 1988, when her father, Raul, then a congressman, was accused of murdering his fellow representative and friend, João Carlos Satti. Now, pushing 40, Cecília learns that Raul has had a stroke. As she pieces together what happened all those years ago, she also grapples with her own marital problems—her husband is a frustrated musician who wants kids while Cecília does not—and reflects on how she turned to taxidermy to cope with the possibility that her father is a murderer, finding “comfort in the idea of repetition” at her L.A. museum job. The tangled memories, troubled relationships, and well-crafted depictions of Cecília’s museum dioramas all hang together in Bensimon’s skilled hands. There’s much to admire in this layered work. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

The fascinating and sardonic latest from Volodine (Bardo or Not Bardo) plays out in the mind of a schizophrenic who lives in a postapocalyptic psychiatric hospital among the living and the dead. Breton, the narrator, alternates from first- to third-person, as when he describes himself as a decrepit man who “could pass unnoticed amid a group of seventy-year-olds being led to the slaughterhouse.” He believes his fractious country’s once-reigning political party has tasked him with tracking down a foul-mouthed female paramilitary group called the Monroe Girls. Thirty years ago, Breton was madly in love with their leader, Rebecca Rausch, whose apparent suicide was perhaps the cause of his mental spiral. The funhouse narration flips through Breton’s myriad alter egos, including a bounty hunter named Kaytel. As Kaytel, he relies on informants including Breton himself and a “warlock, shaman, or clairvoyant” named Borgmeister, a stooge for the cops who gives his “dregs” to Kaytel. Later, the narrator reunites with Rebecca and the two team up to find Borgmeister. Volodine maintains control of the vivid images and wild flights of fancy, which range from spiders and sea urchins sprouting from human flesh to talk of cosmonauts and telepathy, thanks to his grounded and ironic prose. It’s a delight. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

In the feel-good debut novel from sportswriter Wojciechowski (coauthor of The Bus), a middle-aged golf reporter’s magic set of clubs alters his view of the game—and life. Joe Riley is partly estranged from his college-age son, Buddy, who comes across a bag of clubs at a garage sale that were supposedly made for golf legend Jack Nicklaus, and impulsively buys them for his father. With them, Joe can hit the ball a superhuman distance of 400 yards. When disgraced caddie Max “Hard Way” Mitchell sees Joe in action, he comes up with the audacious idea of coaching Joe into qualifying for the Masters Tournament. Joe, who has just been laid off from his TV gig, agrees to the plan, but, for an amateur, the road to Masters’ victory is paved with all sorts of hazards—including prying media, suspicious tournament officials, snobbish players, and an unforgiving course. The reader will cheer on Joe as he struggles to win the coveted green jacket and re-earn the respect of his son. Though filled with colorful characters and enough hilarious one-liners for a comedy roast, the narrative is overlong and overstuffed with golf lore, and the magical elements are underdeveloped. Still, this has a ton of heart. Golf enthusiasts ought to tee it up. Agents: Mark Tavani and David Black, David Black Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pulitzer winner Erdrich (The Night Watchman) dives deep into the American psyche in this spectacular collection. The title story chronicles a young girl’s kinship with a lovesick dog and mysterious anointing by a snake (“I looked straight into its wise, primordial face. Its tongue flickered, sensing the currents of pandemonium, and then the forked tip touched my cheek”). In the standout “The Hollow Children,” a group of barflies in northern Minnesota reminisce about a deadly 1923 blizzard. The frame narrative seamlessly dissolves into school bus driver Ivek’s ambiguous account of the storm, in which he describes how he was forever changed by his harrowing drive with a bus full of children, which may or may not have sunk to the bottom of a lake. Two strange speculative stories concern a human-engineered afterlife in a place called Asphodel (“You say goodbye to your body very carefully. The toenails you’ve clipped and polished.... and goodbye tongue, that loved the kisses and also the body of my husband”). In the surreal “Big Cat,” a failed actor marries a woman who comes from a line of loud snorers. After they amicably divorce, they worry about the well-being of their teen daughter, who develops her own problem with snoring. A staggering sense of empathy infuses the stories (“Can it be that all of us upon waking sometimes feel malformed or broken, foolish, as we huddle in our nests all over the earth?”). With its range of voices and styles, this puts Erdrich’s powers on full display. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

English ornithologist Ignatius Green’s field work gets disrupted when he’s forced to take custody of a young girl during the 1847 Irish potato famine in this pitch-black comedy from Walls (The Gospel of Orla). The story unspools as a series of field notes written by Ignatius while he’s living on Tor Mor Rock, an uninhabited island off the coast of Ireland, recording the mating patterns and incubation habits of the garefowl, also known as great auks. At the outset, Ignatius has turned a blind eye to the famine, and is livid with locals from the nearby island of Inishtrahull for stealing from the monthly cache of food and supplies shipped to him from Londonderry. Adding to his ire, the shipment includes a 10-year-old Irish girl who knows very little English and is covered in sores and lice; when Ignatius tries to return her, the locals refuse to take her back. Interlaced with Ignatius’s notes are newspaper clippings about debt collectors being murdered in retaliation for an eviction connected to the girl. Walls documents Ignatius’s travails with mordant humor and adds depth to the portrayal by exploring his grief over the earlier loss of his wife. While the conclusion is unsatisfyingly open-ended, readers will find much to admire, including a third-act twist. This blistering historical is worth a look. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Song (Chlorine) unfolds the arresting story of a young woman struggling to stay afloat in New York City. Vicky, who’s dealing with depression, has a tough time getting out of bed each day for her PR job at Onward, a company started by an actor to prepare clients and their loved ones for death by selling custom urns and offering grief support groups. Not only is Vicky surrounded by death in her day job, but she lives in a dingy apartment above a funeral home in Chinatown, where she collects zhizas, offerings for the dead. She keeps her personal relationships to a minimum, relying on her long-lasting college friendship with Jen. After she meets polyamorous couple Angela and Kevin on a dating app, she opens herself up, forming a throuple with them and connecting in particular with Angela, who has the “saddest pair of eyes she’s ever seen.” Still, faced with the possibility of love, Vicky fears she will self-destruct. Song writes beautifully of a young woman’s aching heart as she faces the challenges of big city life. This one strikes just the right balance between melancholy and hope. Agent: DongWon Song, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this charming tale from Johnson (Jenny James Is Not a Disaster), two long-estranged sisters honor their late mother’s wish for them to reconcile. Rose and her younger sister, Poppy, were very close when they were growing up with their single mother, Andrea, an actor. But after Rose found out that Poppy slept with her boyfriend and future husband, Gareth, she cut off contact. It’s been 17 years since they’ve spoken when they each learn Andrea has died, and that she’s left them a list of tasks, arranged from A to Z, to do together (“A is for ashes” indicates they should begin by scattering Andrea’s remains). Poppy, now a high-flying marketing executive, and Rose, a stay-at-home mother to a teenage son, reluctantly convene at their mother’s cottage and begin to work through the list, which mixes lighthearted prompts (“C is for champagne”) with spiky conversation topics such as the “bastard” men in their lives, including Gareth, from whom Rose is now divorced. Johnson has a keen eye for complicated family dynamics, especially when Rose and Poppy find out their father’s name and debate whether to contact him, and the sisters’ reunion is heartwarming. Readers will be moved. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

A Palestinian writer longs to write a novel about Mary Magdalene in this stimulating English-language debut from Khandaqji, a former Palestinian militant who was imprisoned for his role in a Tel Aviv market bombing and released shortly after the book won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2024. Scheming to leave the Ramallah refugee camp where he’s been living and research the novel, narrator Nur al-Shadi passes himself off as an Ashkenazi archaeologist, thanks to his knowledge of Hebrew, light skin color, and an Israeli ID card belonging to a man named Or Shapira, which he found in a secondhand jacket. Disguised as Or, he travels to a kibbutz to participate in an archaeological dig. There, his burgeoning identity crisis is exacerbated by meeting and falling in love with two women. First, there’s Ayala Sharabi, a Sephardic Jew, who shows him a Holocaust memorial that was damaged during the 1948 Nabka, causing him to quietly wonder, “Does one tragedy create another?” Then he meets Palestinian Sama’ Ismail, with whom he longs to speak in their native tongue. The plot meanders, but the novel develops into an intriguing discourse on the nature of identity, especially with the narrator’s insights into Mary Magdalene’s metamorphosis in the presence of Jesus and the ways in which she symbolizes human contradictions, embodying “the dual presence of good and evil, repentance and sin, angels and demons.” This leaves readers with plenty to chew on. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

With the world still reeling five days after 9/11, a Bermuda-bound pleasure cruise presses on, and the passengers’ private crises feel just as weighty to them as the terror attacks, in Yun’s acerbic if overstuffed debut. The cruise ship Sonata has seen better days, back when it was used for filming Starlight Voyages, a popular Love Boat–esque TV series. Now, it’s hosting a reunion cruise where passengers mingle with former cast members including Doug, a washed-up actor who’s desperate for any gig. Paying customers include Franny, who booked a family trip to celebrate her Korean mother’s 70th birthday, and whose desire to be a good daughter trumped her husband’s suggestion that the cruise would feel “frivolous” at such a time. Among the other passengers is MIT computer science PhD Lucy, risking a job opportunity at fledgling tech company Google by postponing an interview. Added to her ambivalence is her nagging sense of regret over leaving behind her earlier dream to become an artist. Two wide-angle chapters on 9/11’s aftermath (blood banks, flyers for the missing) feel unnecessary, but Yun succeeds at presenting the cruise as tragically absurd, as when the cast participates in a “sexiest male legs” contest and Doug is overcome with a taste of “pure bile.” Beneath the farce, there’s a great deal of depth to this character-driven work. Agent: Jennifer Gates, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Cosmos revisits WWII Greece, the setting of his 2020 debut, Once We Were Here, in his riveting latest. Maria, a 25-year-old married woman, comes across comatose British soldier William, a minor character in the earlier novel, who has washed up on the shore near her Crete village. She helps nurse him back to health and he returns to military duty. Soon afterward, her husband, Demetrious, part of the Greek resistance, returns home from a year of fighting the German occupiers. It’s not long before the armed conflict arrives at their doorstep, and William becomes an important ally to Crete’s resistance fighters and saves Demetrious’s life when he is caught by German soldiers. After a civilian massacre in her village, Maria joins the resistance, a role she never expected for herself. The author shines a light on the lesser-told story of Greece’s role in WWII, evoking the tremendous stamina and courage of its people and showing how their lives are changed under the constant threat of death. It’s a stirring drama. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink