Simon, the founding publisher of Seven Stories and coauthor of Run Run Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman, captures the rhythms of small-town New Hampshire in his lyrical debut novel. It unfolds in a series of first-person narratives, mainly voiced by Carolyn, who reflects with resignation on becoming a mother at 20 in 1992. She likens her life to a “kitchen drawer that’s already full of all the things I think I’ll do,” and she forges tight bonds with her mother and aunt Jennie, who also became mothers when they were young. A handful of men float through their lives, though none of them seem to be permanent. They include Jennie’s husband, who marries her in 1980, when she’s 14, and Carolyn’s writing teacher at a state college. Elsewhere, elderly Gordon reflects on his “earned optimism” from surviving the Depression and the happiness he found with his wife.Characters describe shared experiences in different ways, but the plot is driven less by events than Carolyn’s yearning—she often feels like the birds around her, skittering “from branch to branch, speaking the language of restlessness.” In the second half, Carolyn deals with her grief following an unforeseen suicide, and Simon skillfully shows how her active mind carries her through (“I make lists in my mind of the people I know, the dead and the living”). This leaves a lasting impression. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

An adulterous couple wakes up one morning in a strange new land with the freedom to enjoy their illicit relationship in Mackintosh’s ethereal latest (after Cursed Bread). Clara, a young and spirited gallery receptionist, has been dating Francis, a married art history professor and father, for a year, but she never spent the night with him until now. They wake up to find themselves in an apartment stocked with their favorite books and clothes, surrounded by a city filled with golden light, music, and other happy cheating couples. They begin to settle into what they call “the city of impermanence,” until they have a fight, triggered by Clara’s sadness over not having Francis to herself if they return to the real world, and exacerbated by Francis’s confession that he hopes to go back. Mackintosh invests more effort in exploring the characters than developing the speculative conceit. As a result, the novel feels more like a situation than a story, which might frustrate some readers. Still, she writes with delicate precision about Clara’s yearning (“In the city there was time for all of this, and more. Time for the ordinary, to which we normally give little value”). It’s a dreamy meditation on the power of love. Agent: Gráinne Fox, UTA. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Vlautin (The Horse) delivers a surprisingly uplifting tale of neighbors helping neighbors while eking out a living in Portland, Ore. Connie works nights as a stripper while raising her two sons, Curtis and Russell, neither of whose fathers live with them. Curtis, 15, bullies his undersized eight-year-old brother, who copes by taking long walks by himself. Their neighbor, Eddie, a kindhearted housepainter, makes sure Russell has good, hot meals to eat, and gets to school each day. After Curtis steals and crashes Eddie’s new car, he’s locked up in juvenile detention, and Russell is flooded with relief. Eddie’s caring and patient nature also extends to his painting crew, which includes frustrating but endearing alcoholic Houston, pompous nonstop talker Cordarrel, and a young punk rock guitarist named Donny. Eddie does his best to keep Houston alive and working, if not sober, and to tune out Cordarrel, while new hire Donny tries to prove himself despite dealing with a tooth infection. The author imbues the novel’s gritty setting with radiant light, especially from the perspective of the intrepid Russell, as when he bravely bikes through an industrial wasteland in search of Houston. With genuine affection, Vlautin captures his characters’ humanity and longing, showing, for example, how Russell daydreams about escaping to an island where he can live without fear. Readers will fall in love with this ode to a struggling community. Agent: Leslie Thorne, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

In the beautiful and resonant latest from Lerner (The Topeka School), a middle-aged man constructs an elaborate farewell to his mentor. In the first of three sections, the unnamed narrator travels to Providence, R.I., to interview 90-year-old artist Thomas for a magazine article. The narrator plans to record their conversation on his iPhone, which he accidentally breaks just before the appointment. Unable to admit the problem to Thomas, he proceeds with the interview, and Thomas embarks on his characteristically stunning soliloquies on art, light, and sound (“There is always music playing that we cannot hear.... We are deaf to the bats singing in ultrasound, or the elephants conversing in their infrasound.... The air is alive with messages”). In the second section, set after Thomas’s death, the narrator travels to Madrid for a symposium on Thomas’s work, where he’s questioned after revealing that he had drawn some of the now published interview with Thomas from memory. (Lerner suggests follow-up interviews took place and were recorded.) The novel concludes with a dialogue between the narrator and Thomas’s son, Max. The pair, who have been friends since college, grapple with their complex relationships with Thomas (“Maybe you were the real son, maybe I was the clone or robot or doppelgänger,” Max tells the narrator), and new mysteries arise over the course of their conversation. Lerner’s lyrical narrative brims with insights into how memories take and change shape, the nature of father figures, and the ways an artist’s influence echoes through time. It’s a knockout. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

The assured latest from Johnson (The House of Eve) links the stories of three Black Americans in Europe and the U.S. after WWII. It begins in 1965 Maryland, where Black teenager Sophia Clark escapes the drudgery of farm work after receiving a scholarship to an elite boarding school. She bonds with classmate Max, a Black boy who was adopted from a German orphanage, and she wonders why “something stirred inside her” when he speaks in German. Meanwhile, in 1950s Germany, Ethel Gathers, whose husband is serving in the Army, adopts from a local orphanage multiple mixed-race children who were born to American GIs stationed in Germany and works to find homes in the U.S. for the orphanage’s other mixed-race children. The third story line takes place in 1948 Mannheim, Germany, where Ozzie Philips, a soldier from Philadelphia, has an affair with Jelka, a white German woman who becomes pregnant with his child. He and Jelka bond over love for their child until he’s stationed elsewhere following the Army’s desegregation. Johnson expertly weaves the narrative threads together, not only through the characters’ shared experiences with racism but also through their individual connections to the German orphanage. The resulting tale offers an immersive view into an overlooked legacy of WWII. Agent: Cherise Fisher, Wendy Sherman Assoc. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Dixon (Bootleg Stardust) spins an enchanting speculative story of a sentient Roomba vacuum cleaner who develops a relationship with her human owner. Retired couple Harold and Edie Winters still live in their family home, where Edie, a piano teacher, is dying of cancer. After she’s gone, Harold’s daughter, Kate, whom he hasn’t seen in years, is summoned by “the Grid,” an AI-driven entity of “algorithms and data” that controls all facets of human existence through the technology in their homes and vehicles. Kate is supposed to help move Harold into a seniors’ residence so the Grid can subdivide the house into apartments, having deemed the space too large for Harold to keep on his own. As this scheme unfolds, the vacuum, who names herself Scout after the To Kill a Mockingbird character beloved by Harold, sets out to save the house and Harold’s belongings, which the Grid wants for a museum. Dixon crafts a fascinating character in Scout, who brims with humanity, as when she observes that a “House without Humans was really no House at all.” The story avoids sentimentality, reaching an ending that feels genuinely hopeful despite the dystopian trappings. Readers will be endeared by this inspired domestic drama. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

A middle-aged man makes peace with his childhood trauma in Perrotta’s stellar latest (after Tracy Flick Can’t Win). Accomplished novelist Jimmy Perrini looks back on his youth in bucolic Creamwood, N.J., after receiving an invitation to a building dedication ceremony in his father’s name. He still hasn’t fully processed the tragic summer of 1974, when, at 13, an unexpected death shook him to his core and left his family unmoored (the details come out late in the novel). Left with “an endless bad dream,” Jimmy stumbled through the rest of his boyhood, which took another dark turn after he struck up a volatile friendship with Eddie, an older boy who smoked weed and drove a Chevy Vega with racing stripes, and Olivia, a high school valedictorian who introduced him to the mysterious magic of a Ouija board. The story lines run parallel as Jimmy’s present-day indifference about returning to Creamwood collides with intense memories of that fateful summer. Perrotta is a confident storyteller, and he packs a great deal of heart into this tale of moving forward amid crushing grief, in which a writer finally gets a chance to exorcise “the demons you think you’ve outrun.” This is sure to resonate with Perrotta’s longtime fans and win him new readers. Agent: Maria Massie, Massie & McQuilkin. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

The incisive latest from Molope (Such a Lonely, Lovely Road) finds a Black South African teen and her mother reckoning with their frayed bond in the aftermath of apartheid. Kelelo Malaka’s mother, Kewame, a former anti-apartheid activist, was a political prisoner at 16, before Kelelo was born, and later became famous thanks to a photograph showing her confronting an armed white soldier with Kelelo strapped to her back. Kelelo learns of her mom’s fame when she’s six and wishes the emotionally absent Kewame could be “[her] mother” rather than “Mother of the Nation,” as she’s called in the press. After apartheid, Kewame and her husband send a pubescent Kelelo against her will to a newly desegregated school, where she becomes withdrawn, forced by administrators to speak only in English and resentful at Kewame’s inability to be soft and comforting. For her part, Kewame, who struggles in an increasingly unhappy marriage, worries about Kelelo, and begins to grapple with how her commitment to activism has harmed her relationships. The story builds to an insightful depiction of the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics. As Kewame reflects, “We love like this, the women in this family: with tenderness and fury.” This will move readers. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

A nostalgia cruise for a once famous boy band and their diehard middle-aged fans provides an opportunity for second chances in this disappointing outing from Straub (This Time Tomorrow). Back in the 1980s and ’90s, Boy Talk ignited millions of teenage girls’ dreams, including those of Annie, now a 50-year-old divorcée who moved on from her adolescent fandom years ago. Still, she books a cabin on the cruise for herself and her younger sister, Katherine, who’s still a “rabid” fan. Katherine cancels at the last minute, however, leaving Annie alone at sea with the superfans. During a photo op with group member Keith, “the nicest one,” Annie asks if he’s okay, and her genuine interest causes him to break down in tears a moment later in the bathroom, overcome with emotion at the decades he’s spent as “a three-dimensional cardboard cutout” for adoring fans. Straub stuffs the narrative with a crowded cast and extraneous subplots, including two involving a lovelorn event producer and another Boy Talk member’s life coach, and fails to bring much depth to a story about the ravages of aging and fame. Meanwhile, the eventual romance between Annie and Keith depends entirely on tropes. It’s a miss. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

In McInerney’s bittersweet conclusion to his Calloway cycle (after Bright, Precious Days), married New Yorkers Russell and Corrine again face uncertainty in a period of momentous change, this time during the Covid-19 pandemic. The couple, now in their 60s, have downsized from their Harlem townhouse to Greenwich Village, which Russell calls “the dead center of Manhattan.” Upon approaching the neon lights of the Odeon, where his friends Washington and Virginia Lee are celebrating their 35th anniversary, he brims with nostalgia for the “protean city” of their youth, when cocaine “made him feel as if he would live forever.” The guest list has dwindled, however, over fears of infection. As the days pass, Russell commits to what Corrine calls an “adolescent sense of invulnerability,” and they attend the opening of their chef daughter Storey’s restaurant, followed by dinner with a pompous group of Russell’s fellow oenophiles. The string of nightlife scenes afford McInerney ample opportunities for razor-sharp observations on Manhattan’s elite, as well as sensuous depictions of culinary pleasures. Darker threads run throughout, including the loss of Corrine’s mother, Covid’s grim realities, and the unstable bonds of marriage (Russell’s view of Washington as the “least likely monogamist” foreshadows trouble). The author’s fans will savor this sobering conclusion to an insightful saga. Agent: Amanda Urban, CAA. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink