A 40-something woman looks back on her awkward teen years in 1970s London in this bold, hilarious, and surprisingly moving debut. Kadis, a music industry veteran, peppers the narrative with references to the era’s glam stars David Bowie and Marc Bolan, who capture the imagination of narrator Constance Costa and offer solace after she loses her British mother and brothers in a car accident. Constance blames her emotionally and physically abusive Greek father, whom she calls “The Fat Murderer,” for the deaths, and reels from his “jealousy and psychotic need for control.” While fearing she might be her school’s “freak,” she plots ways to kill her father, and takes in conflicting advice from the imaginary voices of Bowie and Bolan. “If I had cared about what other people thought, I’d never have made ‘The Laughing Gnome,’ ” Bowie confides, while Bolan presses her to go to the school disco (“you gotta funk or be square”). Meanwhile, she regularly attends her community’s Greek Night, or, as Constance calls it, “Freak Night,” with the other Greek families in the area. After kissing a boy there, she wonders if things might turn around for her. Kadis successfully balances the dark material with Constance’s teen ebullience and whimsy. In this joyful novel, being a “freak” means wielding a double-edged sword. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, CAA. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Chapman (Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto) unfurls an uneven tale of psychological horror about a woman’s lifelong experiences of the uncanny and struggles with ADHD. Mandy grows up in Tacoma, Wash., with her mother, Jandine; her stepfather, Terry; and her stepbrother, Jeff. As children, she and Jeff are terrified of the basement, convinced there is some evil presence there. Finding refuge at the public library, she reads obsessively about ghosts, aliens, and other unearthly subjects. Mandy leaves for college in Las Vegas and settles there after graduation. Years later, after Terry dies, Jandine joins her there, and Mandy cares for her as she declines from Alzheimer’s. When Jandine dies, Mandy’s childhood fears return, triggered this time by her belief that her kindly neighbor, known as TK, is possessed by a dangerous force. With the help of Jeff’s new girlfriend, Belén, along with Sam, the husband of Belén’s godmother, who is also experiencing cognitive decline, Mandy looks for a way to save TK. Mandy’s hectic narration is cluttered with free-associative tangents into esoteric subjects like ancient Egyptian history. More illuminating is an attempt to decipher an “ADHD parable” in Ray Bradbury’s “The Scythe” (“Today in hyperfocus my path through the grain is clear and easy to follow”). There’s plenty to admire, but not all of it hangs together. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Rosenberg’s incendiary sophomore novel marks a departure from his historical debut, Confessions of the Fox. Here readers are transported not to the 18th century but to a “shrunken little apartment” on the Upper East Side, where self-described “yenta” Barbara Rosenberg is living out her final days. Blitzed on OxyContin, Barbara addresses “my confession, my apology, my prayer” to German philosopher Karl Marx, “god of impossible things” and the idol of her estranged trans son, whom she named Jordana after the Zionist warrior heroine of the 1960 film Exodus. As a child in the 1970s and ’80s, Jordana resisted the trappings of femininity pushed by Barbara, defiantly wearing combat boots and his father’s corduroy blazer. Throughout the novel, Barbara stubbornly refers to Jordana as her “daughter,” and views him as “the biggest disappointment of my life.” Rosenberg crafts his satirical portrayal of Barbara’s transphobia with a dizzying blend of broad humor and vitriol (Barbara calls Jordana a “golem of upside-down gender”). Barbara’s dismissiveness of Jordana’s gender and sexuality can be painful to read, but her voice is consistently arresting, and a shocking final twist will cause readers to reexamine everything that came before. It’s a memorable familial reckoning. Agent: Rob McQuilkin, Massie McQuilkin & Altman. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Reinert’s charming latest (after Flight, the conclusion to the Eventing Series) concerns 21-year-old Brooke Haskell, whose great love is her mare, Roxie, a former racehorse she purchased with dreams of showcasing her talent at equestrian triathlons. While contending with Roxie’s stubborn nature and a lack of funds, Brooke serendipitously meets popular influencer Lenox Alvarez, who encourages her to apply to be a working student at the prestigious River Grove Farm in Virginia, run by superstar trainer Eddie Haskell. Eddie takes on Brooke, who spends the summer learning the business with manager Anise Kincaid and working alongside Lenox, who turns out to be down-to-earth and nurturing despite her moneyed background. Still, Lenox has a competitive side, which emerges when the girls learn they’re both up for the same job at the end of their apprenticeship. As the farm prepares for big events in Florida, Brooke grows wary of Eddie’s rough behavior toward the horses and his alcoholic benders. Matters come to a head when Anise and Eddie try to convince Brooke to sell Roxie to them, and Brooke has to come to terms with the nature of the business and her future. Reinert elucidates the world of equestrian eventing with her deeply informed story. This will please the author’s fans and win her new ones. Agent: Lacy Lalene Lynch, House of Story. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Shorr (The Plum Trees) sets this spectacular portrait of abandonment against the backdrop of the Rust Belt’s decline over the second half of the 20th century. Spanning decades, the novel chronicles the slow dissolution of an Ohio family after the charismatic but feckless Martin Brier, a doctor, leaves his wife, Lora, and three children for a younger woman. Shorr eschews high drama for a quiet accumulation of detail: a secret mortgage taken out on the family home; two of the Brier children, standing outside “for anyone driving by to see,” while they wait for Martin to pick them up; and the humiliations of a woman struggling to maintain dignity in a small town where there are no secrets. The novel shines with a deep understanding of human nature: Lora gradually transforms from a bewildered helpmeet into a self-sufficient woman, while daughter Josie’s lifelong yearning for her absent father evolves into a complex mix of pity and detachment. Masterful, too, are the chapters from Martin’s perspective, as Shorr elicits empathy for her villain while he rationalizes, professes his desire for happiness, and finds solace in his professional life. The final scene between Josie and Martin, over soup in a “dirty little mall restaurant” in Cleveland, is devastating. Keenly observed and melancholy, this powerful and unsentimental novel maps the enduring geography of loss. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Sams’s intimate debut centers on a complicated relationship between two British women. It opens with Julia, the middle-aged narrator, caring for a newborn baby in Brighton, after the baby’s mother, Nim, disappeared from the hospital. Julia reflects on how she wound up in the seaside party town at 18, desperate to escape the conventional life laid out for her by her “placid, attentive” parents. In flashbacks, she recounts falling for Leon, the charismatic and volatile owner of Gunk, a grimy nightclub, in her late 20s. What began as an adventure curdles into marriage, toil, and divorce, as Julia works behind the bar, propping up the failing venue and her now ex-husband, who continues to emotionally drain her. Her life tilts when Leon hires Nim, a teenage runaway. Julia is enchanted by Nim’s unstudied confidence and impressed by her skill (she claims to have worked as a bartender since she was 14, having lied about her age). When Nim sleeps with Leon, Julia’s feelings of betrayal expose the fragile dynamics between the trio. As the novel unfolds, Julia gradually reveals why Nim disappeared. Sams’s writing is assured and muscular (“Sometimes I could grope around inside myself and come up surprised,” Julia observes), and the novel subtly explores Julia’s motivations in caring for the baby and what a happy family might look like. This is striking. Agent: Nicola Chang, David Higham Assoc. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

The renaissance of Australian writer Garner, who recently won the Baillie Gifford Prize for How to End a Story, continues with this marvelous collection of short fiction. In each poignant entry, a different protagonist grapples with their place in the world. Garner sets a tone of casual cruelty at the start of “Little Helen’s Sunday Afternoon,” when the narrator, a young girl named Helen, arrives for a visit at her uncle Jim’s house just as Jim, a doctor, leaves to attend to “some kid [who] cut his finger off.” While her mother and aunt socialize, Helen encounters her secretive older cousin, Noah, in a dark shed with his friends, and he angrily accuses her of spying. The sparely plotted yet sumptuously detailed “The Life of Art” follows a friendship across many decades, while “Civilisation and Its Discontents” explores the aftermath of an all-encompassing affair. Garner pinpoints the texture of her characters’ missed connections (“The silence was not a silence but a quietness of thinking”), as well as their withering view of the world (“The beautiful are greedy. They suck other people’s eyebeams into their blood cells and feast on them, growing lovelier and more opulent, while puritans like me who starve themselves for the sake of power diminish daily”). These stories ignite new ways of seeing the world. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

A disgraced TV executive and his wife retire to Maui, where their life of leisure is interrupted by news that they’ve been named guardians to a late friend’s four grandchildren, in ghostwriter Finn’s uneven debut. The first third focuses on the couple as they fumble around and bicker in the wake of 58-year-old Stafford Hopkins’s forced retirement (the reasons for his ouster are vaguely explained later). When a letter from a lawyer informs him that he has been named guardian for the four grandchildren of his childhood best friend, Bobby Shepherd, who died in an accident when they were teens and Bobby’s girlfriend was pregnant, he’s flooded with memories. Agnes protests, given that their first run at parenting resulted in a strained relationship with their daughter, and Stafford agrees, but he travels back to his small Canadian hometown to set up a fund for the children. Interspersed with his return are long flashbacks to his upbringing, including his idyllic boyhood with Bobby and their falling-out when they were teens. Finn crafts a convincing depiction of an aging married couple, who feel overwhelmed by the effort it would take “to undo the many years of battering and need that had replaced love,” but the listless plotting and delayed revelations wear thin. This one doesn’t quite hang together. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

A family takes in a stranger who arouses suspicion in this tantalizing tale of Dust Bowl Colorado from Dallas (Tough Luck). The narrator, 15-year-old farmer’s daughter Martha Helen Kessler, describes the harrowing dust storms that have destroyed crops and left her community in ruins. When handsome young drifter Otis Hobbs comes to town, he saves a young local boy from a storm and wins the favor of Martha Helen’s mother. Her father offers him a place to stay and a job on the farm. Then Martha Helen’s best friend Frankie goes missing and is found dead by Otis, who had joined the search party. The townspeople’s idle speculation about Otis’s origins and motives leads to accusations of murder, which the Kesslers dispute. Dallas skillfully peppers her well-crafted plot with red herrings, keeping the reader guessing at the truth about Otis and making the final revelations even more explosive. Along the way, she offers a transportive depiction of the storms, when “the earth is on the move” with a “wall of dust,” the sky turns “purple-black,” and the air thrums with static electricity. Readers who enjoy historical stories with a dash of mystery will race through this. Agent: Danielle Egan-Miller, Browne & Miller. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

The beguiling latest from Brooks-Dalton (The Light Pirate) follows an archaeologist whose obsession with the past lays waste to her present. Ember Agni, 38, hasn’t been on a dig for eight years. Biding her time at a university where she’s “not well-liked” due to her lack of interest in teaching, she’s married to a sweet, responsible builder with whom she has increasingly little in common, and longs to return to the field. After the first act, the reader begins to gather that the novel takes place sometime in the future following a climate disaster called the Crisis, but it’s not until much later that Brooks-Dalton clarifies the setting for Ember’s story line. When Ember learns that an unstable former graduate student she has sent to investigate an area forbidden by the government is on his way home with a mysterious artifact, her hopes rise, and she burns whatever bridges she can to follow in his footsteps. At this point, Brooks-Dalton shifts focus from the low-key drama of academic infighting and a crumbling marriage to startling revelations about Ember’s life and the world she’s living in. The adventure story is cunningly crafted, and Ember is a fascinating character: prickly, ambitious, and obsessive in her search for the truth. It adds up to a captivating mind-bender. Agent: Jennifer Gates, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink