Howarth (Sunburn) captures the rhythms and underlying tensions of an Irish village through the eyes of multiple characters in her alluring sophomore outing. After an unexplained scandal, the details of which come out later, the four orphaned siblings of the O’Leary family leave Kilmarra, resettling in remoter, smaller Ballycrea in 1965. This indigent quartet, said derisively by locals to have arrived via “donkey and trap” (it was a pony), attracts the notice of compassionate Betty Nevan and her husband, Bill, who are childless and have a small farm. Not much happens plot-wise, but Howath builds tension by rotating the short chapters between the first-person narratives of Betty and siblings Tom, Anna, and Jack (the youngest, Peggy, is a toddler). The group encounters curious villagers, from the gossipy Ciara Moore to innocent Liam Hennessey, who has eyes for Anna. As the siblings settle into the community and jockey for their place within the Nevan family, Anna develops a growing affection for Betty, and the novel gradually blooms into a sapphic love story in which each woman’s burgeoning understanding of her own sexuality affects all the characters. An additional layer of suspense comes via the incremental revelation of the reasons behind the siblings’ exodus from Kilmarra. It’s an engrossing chronicle of restlessness and desire. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

In the uneven latest from Lee (Phantom Pain), four women’s infatuation with a Korean singer leads to disaster. The women, led by Ahanna, ambush 21-year-old Yosep, her former student turned pop star, during his nightly drive in Seoul. They hold him captive in her father’s mansion, where Yosep, who is given painkillers by the women, suffers from amnesia. The conspirators include Nami, who fell in love with Yosep after seeing him perform on TV; Heeae, who believes him to be her long-lost son, Yohan, and longs to have him back in her life; and Mihee, who desperately wanted to meet her idol. Complications arise when Ahanna’s nephew, Seongwuk, shows up at the house late one night. Heejoo paints a dark portrait of obsession, but the plot is convoluted, and Lee’s translation feels stilted, as in this depiction of Nami spoon-feeding Yosep: “Watching food going into Yosep’s baby-chick-like mouth satisfies her more than watching a goose’s liver fattening pleases a farmer.” Too often, Hejoo’s novel tests the reader’s patience. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Kovatcheva debuts with the sharp tale of a fraudulent vampire slayer who comes to the aid of an oppressed teen girl in 19th-century Bulgaria. Anka is believed to have cursed her village of Koprivci when she was born and her house burst into flames, killing her parents. Since that night, no child of the village has survived infancy. A man known as the Captain, who once loved her mother, saved Anka from the blaze and became her caretaker. As Anka comes of age, she reminds the Captain of her mother, and he awaits her menstruation, planning to marry her against her will. A parallel narrative follows itinerant vampire hunter Yana, who travels to Koprivci and claims the village in fact owes its misfortunes to a vampire, whom she offers to kill. While she goes about her work, Yana stays in the Captain’s garden cottage, where Anka seeks her out. The pair strike a deal that will provide Anka with her freedom and the charlatan Yana with proof of another job well done. Kovatcheva layers the narrative with colorful folklore, grisly details of Yana’s alleged vampire killings, and the characters’ intense desires, including the Captain’s passion for Anka’s mother and Anka’s hope to flee the village. This clever gothic novel offers readers much to savor. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Trellis Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Tsujimura’s touching sequel to Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon continues the chronicles of “go-between” Ayumi, a young man who facilitates reunions between the living and the dead. Ayumi helps TV actor Yuzuru Kamiya contact his late father, whose heavy drinking and abuse of his mother caused her to leave the family when Yuzuru was a boy. Their meeting is tenderly portrayed, as the father cries in regret and the pair fill each other in on their lost time. Elsewhere, Ayumi helps a woman named Misato who wants to see her child, Mei, who drowned when she was six. Before Mei died, she hoped to have a sister, and when Misato and Mei meet, Mei is excited to see that Misato is pregnant. Misato doesn’t yet know whether she’ll have a girl or a boy, but she’s pleased Mei can share in the family’s happiness. Ayumi also assists 85-year-old Hachiya, who’s failed for decades to connect with Ayako, a friend who died when they were teens. Ayako learns from Ayumi about Hachiya’s advanced age, and she finally agrees to meet Hachiya. Tsujimura wrings emotions from each episode, the significance of which is best summed up by Hachiya, who remarks, “It’s a gift to live in the world at the same time as the person you have in your heart.” Readers of healing fiction will find much to love. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this intense if woolly philosophical novel, Irish writer Costello (Barcelona) traces a woman’s decades-long path of self-discovery through two troubling relationships and her life-affirming passion for the writings of Carl Jung. Anna, a 19-year-old country girl from Galway, meets worldly 30-something Peter in 1985 Dublin, where she works as a teacher. She loses her virginity to him while drunk and has no memory the next morning but feels sore and ashamed and tells him she hadn’t wanted to have sex. Over time, she comes to see Peter’s ill-suitedness as a mate, but not before they marry. She takes comfort from Jung’s “poetic” approach to the psyche and the I Ching’s embrace of chance, and she stays with Peter through two failed pregnancies, which she later attributes to the chlamydia he gave her. After eight years of marriage, he asks for a separation, and she painfully agrees. Four years later, at 37, Anna meets a Muslim Frenchman named Karim in a bar. She likes his shy, boyish manner, and they begin dating, but as he becomes more devout, he condemns the Western novels and music she enjoys, and her Jungian therapist encourages her to leave him. Costello elicits sympathy for Anna as she struggles to grow, though the passages with the therapist are didactic. It’s a mixed bag. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Hall debuts with an enticing saga of wartime love and loss centered on a pair of twins from Cambridge, England. When Theo Armstrong joins the Royal Air Force, his sister, Tessa, begins training as a spy for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), telling her family she’s becoming a nurse. After Tessa makes a parachute drop into German-occupied France, she winds up joining the Resistance. Meanwhile, Theo flies into battle at Normandy with fellow pilot Richard Barnes, with whom he hopes to embark on a love affair if both survive the mission. A fiery dogfight ensues, leaving Richard’s fate uncertain in the aftermath, and Theo returns home, where the British government tells him and his parents that Tessa was a spy and that she’s gone missing. Later, Theo joins the government’s security directorate to find Tessa and other missing agents while keeping silent about his sexuality, which is criminalized in Britain. Hall then fast-forwards to 2003 when Theo works with PhD student Edie who is researching female agents in the SOE, and together they search for the truth about what happened to Tessa. Hall evokes the strong bond between siblings, showing how Tessa is not to be outdone by the heroic Theo, and the thrilling narrative highlights the perilous work of female SOE agents. Fans of WWII fiction won’t want to put it down. Agent: Gráinne Fox, UTA. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Memoirist and former child actor McCurdy (I’m Glad My Mom Died) centers her provocative debut novel on a plucky high school senior who falls for her creative writing teacher. Raised by an indifferent, man-chasing single mother in Anchorage, Alaska, Waldo dumps yet another sexually clumsy boyfriend and becomes infatuated with her 40-year-old creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy, despite his “gross decay of middle-aged-ness.” Though she tries to distract herself with online shopping and her retail job at Victoria’s Secret, her infatuation inevitably turns into a messy, all-consuming love affair. The relationship follows a predictable track, as the vast differences between their worlds incrementally erodes their trust and extinguishes the passion, but McCurdy crafts many clear-eyed depictions of the characters’ transgressions, particularly when they meet for sex and their mutual desire reaches a disastrous boiling point. Waldo makes for an appealing narrator, thanks to her precocious and razor-sharp observations, such as her withering view of adulthood’s “routinization of domestic life.” Readers are in for a wild ride. Agent: Peter McGuigan, Ultra Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

An underemployed university graduate lands a strange museum gig in this surreal exploration of loneliness and human connection from Yagi (Diary of a Void). Ever since she was a child, Rika Horauchi has believed she’s wearing an invisible yellow raincoat. Not only does it cause her to remain withdrawn from others, it’s also sweltering, so Rika spends her days working in a frozen food warehouse and her nights watching livestream videos. She also has a talent for Latin, which she’s pleased to put to use in her new job, which involves conversing with an ancient Roman statue of Venus. Initially, Rika feels mismatched with the “breathtaking and much too exposed” goddess, sweating under “too many layers” in her raincoat. Soon, though, she bonds with Venus and finds herself opening up to a potential romance. Rika’s first-person narration is both observant and thoughtful, and Venus charms with her frank dialogue: “Try being ogled all day long. You start to feel empty inside. Like there’s not an original thought in your head.” This whimsical story is a winner. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

A retired eighth grade English teacher reflects on two former students who gave his life meaning in the humorous and poignant third novel from Platzer (Bed-Stuy Is Burning). The nonlinear narrative comprises a manuscript written by 77-year-old Rod Keating after a stroke. In 1987, when Rod was in his mid-40s, his colleague and long-ago lover Enid Smeal asked him to be a father figure for her five-year-old son, Jacob, whom he charms with knock-knock jokes. A great deal of the novel is taken up by Rod’s jokes (“Q: What do you call a Mongolian leader who doesn’t believe in himself? A: Genghis Khan’t”), which illustrate a commitment to silliness that his students find endearing. The novel’s heart, though, is in Jacob and his friend Clara Hightower’s eighth grade year as Rod’s students in 1994. For Rod, the high-achieving Clara becomes “the student who made that calling most worthwhile.” Jacob stands out, too, but after he and Clara fall in love, a meddling school administrator worries he will hinder Clara’s future excellence, and the two wind up at different high schools, with consequences that will reverberate for decades. Platzer, himself a middle school English teacher, evokes the special bonds between exceptional students and their favorite educators. It’s a delight. Agent: Trena Keating, Union Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

An unforgiving Oslo winter sets the tone for these intense tales of life on the margins by Rishøi (Brightly Shining). In “We Can’t Help Everyone,” a five-year-old girl fails to understand the repercussions of giving her mother’s last kroners to a homeless person. The situation becomes more dire when the girl wets her pants, forcing her mother to consider shoplifting a pair of underwear from a department store. “The Right Thomas” follows the title character’s effort to reenter society after a short prison stint. In flashbacks, Rishøi reveals that Thomas has a young son, who was conceived before his incarceration during a one-night stand. Now, Thomas wishes he can be a good father. In “Siblings,” 17-year-old Rebekah grapples with the consequences of her mother’s bipolar disorder. After intercepting a letter from Child Welfare Services stating that she, her four-year-old brother, and her seven-year-old sister will be taken away, she sets out to hide with them in a remote cottage, underestimating the difficult trek in the cold. Throughout, the author imbues the gut-punching slice-of-life scenarios with rich emotions. This devastates. Agent: Karin Ekblom, Paloma Agency. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink