Families reckon with life-altering events, artists transform themselves, and colonialism rears its ugly head in this season’s novels and collections. Plus, Native writers Tommy Orange and Morgan Talty follow up their breakout debuts.
Top 10
All Fours
Miranda July. Riverhead, May 14 ($29, ISBN 978-0-593-19026-5)
A middle-aged artist and mother reinvents herself while holed up at a motel, in this comic road novel.
Bear
Julia Phillips. Hogarth, June 25 ($28, ISBN 978-0-525-52043-6)
Phillips once again tells a story of two sisters in a remote setting, this time on an island in the Pacific Northwest, where they encounter a strange creature in the woods.
Fire Exit
Morgan Talty. Tin House, June 4 ($28.95, ISBN 978-1-959030-55-3)
In the follow-up to Night of the Living Rez, Talty writes of a man who considers spilling a secret: that he’s the biological father of a young woman raised by a couple on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation.
Godwin
Joseph O’Neill. Pantheon, June 4 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-70132-4)
O’Neill, whose 2008 hit Netherland was a 9/11 novel about cricket, follows a hapless American and a relentless British soccer agent on a search through Africa for the next Pelé.
The Great Divide
Cristina Henríquez. Ecco, Mar. 5 ($30, ISBN 978-0-06-329132-4)
Henríquez harnesses the points of view of Panamanian and foreign laborers to explore the human cost of building the Panama Canal.
James
Percival Everett. Doubleday, Mar. 19 ($28, ISBN 978-0-385-55036-9)
After deconstructing the tropes of James Bond novels to explore racial injustice in Dr. No, Everett offers a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view.
The Morningside
Téa Obreht. Random House, Mar. 19 ($29, ISBN 978-1-9848-5550-3)
Obreht imagines a near future reshaped by climate change, where a mother and daughter try to build a new life in a once-luxe high-rise.
My Heavenly Favorite
Lucas Rijneveld, trans. from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison. Graywolf, Mar. 5 ($28, ISBN 978-1-64445-273-8)
Rijneveld revisits the isolated rural setting of his International Booker–winning debut with the Lolita-esque story of a lecherous veterinarian and an oppressed teenage girl.
Parade
Rachel Cusk. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 18 ($27, ISBN 978-0-374-61004-3)
As in her novel Second Place, Cusk explores relationships between artists, their subjects, and their work, this time with the story of a woman whose painter husband begins portraying her upside down.
Wandering Stars
Tommy Orange. Knopf, Feb. 27 ($29, ISBN 978-0-593-31825-6)
Orange draws on the history of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to expand on his blockbuster debut There There, outlining the characters’ ancestral histories and portraying what happened after the last book’s cliff-hanger ending.
Literary Fiction longlist
Algonquin
The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez (Apr. 2, $28, ISBN 978-1-64375-384-3). Think Stephen King’s Pet Sematary except for a writer’s manuscripts, which come back to haunt the protagonist after she buries them in a makeshift graveyard.
Amistad
Ella by Diane Richards (May 7, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-333865-4) gives the fictional bio treatment to jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, focusing on her early hardscrabble years during the Depression when she’s a fugitive in Harlem from an Upstate New York reform school.
Archipelago
What Kingdom by Fine Gråbøl, trans. by Martin Aitken (Apr. 16, $18 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-953861-84-9). Danish writer Gråbøl debuts with the story of a young patient living in a psychiatric hospital who grapples with the meaning of institutional care.
Astra House
Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler (May 7, $26, ISBN 978-1-66260-224-5). In Deagler’s debut, the protagonist tentatively builds a new life while in recovery from alcoholism. The author also explores gentrification and precarity in Philadelphia.
Atria
Daybreak by Matt Gallagher (Feb. 20, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5011-7785-9). Army veteran Gallagher, who trained a Ukrainian civilian defense force in 2022, has written a story of a vet who travels from the U.S. to Lviv to fight the Russians and reconnect with an old lover.
Avid Reader
Fervor by Toby Lloyd (Mar. 19, $28, ISBN 978-1-66803-333-3) is a debut about a London family torn apart over conflicting views on Jewish mysticism, secrets involving the Holocaust, and suspicions of witchcraft.
Ballantine
Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki (Mar. 19, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-60023-8) portrays the 19th–century journalist mingling with the transcendentalists in New England, inspiring Nathaniel Hawthorne to write The Scarlet Letter, and finding love and scandal in Italy.
Berkley
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray (Mar. 12, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-43705-6) delves into the life of Frances Perkins, tracing her life from workers-rights advocate in New York City to a fateful meeting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and her path to the White House as secretary of labor during the Great Depression.
Bloomsbury
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft (Mar. 5, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-170-1). Translator and memoirist Croft makes her fiction debut with a story of eight literary translators and their search for a missing author in the Polish forest.
Catapult
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher (July 9, $27, ISBN 978-1-64622-210-0). A Palestinian woman working as a schoolteacher in New York City befriends an unhoused con artist, and the two scheme to resell rare and expensive Birkin bags.
Celadon
Devil Is Fine by John Vercher (June 18, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-89448-9) follows a biracial Black man who learns the land he’s inherited in the northeastern U.S. once held a plantation.
Coach House
Living Things by Munir Hachemi, trans. by Julia Sanches (June 18, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-55245-477-0). A Bolañoesque plot animates Spanish writer Hachemi’s debut, in which a group of friends’ plans for a carefree summer go awry.
Del Rey
The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (July 16, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-60026-9). The author of Mexican Gothic sets her gaze on the golden age of Hollywood in this tale of an unknown actor who gains a coveted role.
Doubleday
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (July 9, $28, ISBN 978-0-385-55059-8). Irish writer Barry heads to 1890s Montana for a novel about an ill-fated love affair and a chase through the badlands.
Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan (May 21, $29, ISBN 978-0-385-54629-4). The heir to a depleted Hong Kong fortune scrambles to find a suitable match at his sister’s destination wedding.
Dutton
This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour (July 9, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-47234-7). Askaripour takes the speculative route after his hit debut, Black Buck, with a novel about an invisible woman seeking justice and the truth.
Europa
The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, trans. by Alison Anderson (May 14, $18 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88966-020-0). The Goncourt winner spins a polyphonic narrative about two immigrants in Sicily and the people they encounter.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg (July 9, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-61220-7) involves a ghostwriter, her missing sister, and a virtual reality device that’s taken hold of their Florida town.
Grand Central
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas (June 18, $28, ISBN 978-1-5387-4098-9). Memoirist Thomas turns to fiction with a narrative of an Iraq War veteran turned med student in Philadelphia who uncovers a legacy of experiments on inmates at a nearby prison.
Grove
I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (Apr. 2, $28, ISBN 978-0-8021-6293-9) portrays a man on a fantastical sailing quest across Lake Superior, where he has strange adventures while grieving his late wife.
Harper
Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin (Mar. 5, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-297359-7) continues the author’s Tales of the City series with a story of 1990s San Francisco and a surprise inheritance in England.
Harper Perennial
Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash (Mar. 19, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-06-328687-0). YA graphic novelist and memoirist Thrash makes her adult debut with a parallel narrative of a lesbian law clerk in legal jeopardy and the Satanic panic that shaped her childhood.
Harpervia
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin (June 4, $28, ISBN 978-0-06-333652-0). Irish writer Murrin’s debut depicts two women stuck in bad marriages in 1990s Donegal as the country verges on the cusp of legalizing divorce.
Holt
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo (Feb. 13, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-26601-9) draws on Japanese mythology for a detective story involving fox spirits, a dastardly hunter, and a vengeful mother. PW’s review says the novel “hum[s] with tension.”
Kensington/Scognamiglio
Becoming Ted by Matt Cain (May 21, $27, ISBN 978-1-4967-4594-1). A middle-aged, self-described “vanilla” gay man is forced to consider new possibilities after his husband leaves him for someone else.
Knopf
The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan (July 16, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-31915-4). The author of Friends and Strangers goes gothic in this novel about an abandoned Victorian house that serves as a refuge for an angsty Maine teen.
Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu (July 30, $28, ISBN 978-0-385-35000-6) involves an Ethiopian American man who embarks on an odyssey for answers about the life of his father, Samuel, after Samuel is found dead.
Little, Brown
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan (Feb. 6, $27, ISBN 978-0-316-56778-7) concerns a sensational murder in a London housing estate and the opportunistic journalist who embeds himself with the family of the accused. According to PW’s review, “This unflinching tale provokes.”
Mariner
A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda (Mar. 26, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-332434-3) interrogates the American dream, class, and model minorities with the story of a first-generation Indian American boy growing up in a gated community who is arrested by the police.
Morrow
Last House by Jessica Shattuck (May 14, $28, ISBN 978-0-06-297989-6) depicts post-WWII American stability and 1960s upheaval through the lens of a wealthy lawyer for an oil company and the family he’s raised in pastoral Vermont.
New Directions
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (Feb. 6, $25.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8112-3801-4). The Waanyi writer offers an epic of climate disaster and Aboriginal history.
New York Review Books
Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin, trans. by Max Lawton (Feb. 27, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68137-818-3). This fantastical satire by an exiled Russian novelist earned outrage from Putin supporters when it was first published in 1999, due to a sex scene involving Stalin and Khrushchev and other irreverent episodes.
Norton
Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman (Mar. 5, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-324-02044-8) comes 11 years after the author’s smash debut, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. It’s about the inner workings of a big-box store in Upstate New York and the interpersonal relationships of its employees.
One World
The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (Feb. 27, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-72939-7) centers on a milieu of independent-minded Black women in antebellum New Orleans. Per PW’s starred review, Ruffin “paints a vibrant picture of the setting” in a story that heats up when the enslaved protagonist uncovers a violent resistance network.
Open Letter
Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin, trans. by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (May 21, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-960385-12-3). Dusapin again renders a seaside setting in its off-season, this time in Vladivostok, Russia, where a Geneva fashion school grad works on costumes for a circus troupe.
Overlook
Mother Doll by Katya Apekina (Mar. 12, $28, ISBN 978-1-4197-7095-1) features a psychic medium, ancestral stories from the Russian Revolution, and a young Russian American woman’s present-day grief over her dying grandmother.
Penguin Press
Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories by Colombe Schneck, trans. by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer (May 14, $27, ISBN 978-0-593-65593-1), portrays a woman at various life stages, exploring her friendships, love affairs, and relationship to her body.
Putnam
The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley (May 21, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-54045-9) revisits the eponymous gay uncle from The Guncle, this time in New York City, where he’s working to revive his acting career, and in Italy, where he travels with his niece and nephew.
Random House
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler (July 16, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-73035-5) chronicles the Midwestern homecoming of a 30-something woman after a decade spent eking out a life in New York City.
Riverhead
All the World Beside by Garrard Conley (Mar. 26, $28, ISBN 978-0-525-53733-5). The Boy Erased memoirist turns to fiction—and colonial New England—in his latest book about gay men suppressed by Christianity.
Scribner
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (Feb. 6, $28, ISBN 978-1-66802-545-1). In this 1920s noir, the English writer offers an alternative view of America, one in which Indigenous people were not subject to genocide and a southern city is racially integrated. He also “refreshes the crime genre,” according to PW’s starred review.
Simon & Schuster
Bright Objects by Ruby Todd (July 16, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-66805-321-8). Australian writer Todd’s debut follows a widowed funeral attendant who overcomes thoughts of suicide after forming a new relationship with an astronomer and obsessing over a recently discovered comet.
Soho Press
América del Norte by Nicolás Medina Mora (May 7, $27, ISBN 978-1-64129-564-2). The protagonist, a young Mexican writer, blends an autofictional interrogation of his identity and privilege with an indictment of Trump-era immigration policies while the writer’s enrolled in the University of Iowa’s MFA program.
St. Martin’s
The Women by Kristin Hannah (Feb. 6, $30, ISBN 978-1-250-17863-3). Historical fiction author Hannah casts her eye on the Vietnam War with the “urgent and eye-opening” story (per PW’s review) of a young American Army nurse and the bonds that form between her and other female nurses.
Viking
The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (June 18, $32, ISBN 978-0-525-55827-9). In this multigenerational saga, Orsola Rosso teaches herself the glassmaking trade in 15th–century Venice, and other Rosso women continue the family business to the present day.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Mar. 12, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-65410-1) follows up Bullwinkel’s Believer Award–winning collection, Belly Up, with a novel about eight women boxers who travel to Reno, Nev., to compete in a professional tournament.
Vintage
Green Frog: And Other Stories by Gina Chung (Mar. 12, $17 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-593-46936-1) brings fantastical conceits to bear on the lives of Korean American women as they deal with grief, unexpected pregnancy, and other life situations.
Yale Univ.
The Children of the Dead by Elfriede Jelinek, trans. by Gitta Honegger (Mar. 12, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-300-14215-0). First published in 1995 and appearing in English for the first time, Jelinek portrays the ghosts who that haunt an Alpine resort, the site of a mass burial.
This article has been updated with further information.
