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

Bestseller Berg (Earth’s the Right Place for Love) serves up a deceptively simple story with hidden depths. Flo Greene, 92 and widowed with no children, has been given a four-to-six-week prognosis for her terminal cancer. She writes a long letter to her close friend Ruthie, a young woman who grew up next door and was like a daughter to her. Ruthie is married with children but is considering divorce, and Flo announces her intention to leave her modest house to Ruthie. As the letter unfolds over the length of the novel, alternating with sections of third-person narration, Flo reminisces about Ruthie’s childhood and adolescence and pointedly chronicles her own ups and downs with her late husband. Meanwhile, when Flo is not writing her letter, she befriends neighbor Teresa McNair, a death doula who helps people cope with the end of their lives. Flo, saddened by Teresa’s resignation to singlehood at 51, helps her navigate online dating. Berg exhibits great range in her portrayal of the folksy Flo, whose sweetness is far from saccharine; she believes in being honest and forthright, as when she steers Teresa away from talk of a miraculous recovery from her cancer, thinking after all she’s 92, and “her doctor is not a dope.” Readers will be charmed by this heartening tale. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

In Mahajan’s immersive third novel (after The Association of Small Bombs), a family tragedy unfolds against the backdrop of political upheaval in India. As the story opens in 1980, Sanchin Chopra, grandson of a late revered Indian politician, is trying to forge a new life in Michigan with his wife, Gita, even as she longs to return to Delhi. During a visit there, Sanchin’s lecherous uncle, Laxman, sexually assaults Gita, and the other family members, including Sanchin, brush her off when she tries to tell them about it. Meanwhile, Laxman, a failed businessman, attempts to launch a new company with Karishma, the wife of Sanchin’s brother Brij, and embarks on an affair with her. Brij, a broken man following his service in the Indian Air Force, physically abuses Karishma and their two sons. After Sanchin and Gita move back to Delhi, Brij comes to deeply resent his brother’s presence, and eventually, Gita pushes Sanchin to grasp the depth of Laxman’s depravity. In the mid-1980s, members of the far-right Bhartiya Janata Party court Laxman, hoping to win over establishment voters by exploiting his family name, and the family tensions build to a tragic denouement. Even those unfamiliar with Indian political history will be swept up by the well-drawn characters and gripping drama. The author proves himself a consummate storyteller. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Saenz’s darkly funny debut finds a college senior scrambling to pay her late mother’s debt to a drug dealer. Arvy Keening is still living at at her free-spirited mother’s Texas home months after the funeral when she discovers a baggie of illicit pills. Then a large woman and an armed man show up at her door and inform her that the pills are Mona, a rare drug that stimulates mind-blowing orgasms for women. The pair demands that Arvy cover the $10K they expected from her mother’s sale of the drugs, or they’ll kill her. In a panic, she turns to her classmates’ attractive drug dealer Wolf, who agrees to help off-load the pills. She also tests one of the Monas during an exam, which triggers vivid sexual fantasies involving Wolf and others that lead to a wild orgasm. Though a handful of women are happy to find solo satisfaction from the pills, Arvy still has too many left in the bag as the 36-hour deadline looms. Arvy and Wolf’s will-they-or-won’t-they subplot drags on a bit too long, but Saenz’s depiction of the erotic elements are delightfully over-the-top (Arvy’s Mona dose ends with her emitting the “breathy cackle of a madwoman”), and the quest narrative builds to a satisfying reckoning with the complicated legacy of Arvy’s mother. There’s a beating heart at the center of this titillating story. Agent: Jessica Spitz, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

A reincarnated Anne Boleyn pursues personal and social justice in this playful work of speculative historical fiction from poet Lehmann (The Sweating Sickness). Following her 1536 beheading, Anne awakes in a box, escapes, and sews her head back on. Deeply concerned about her daughter, Elizabeth, she flees London for seedy Southwark, where she’s shocked to hear people exulting at the death of the “whore queen” and begs help from a prostitute named Alice, who agrees to put her up in the brothel where she works. Anne claims to be running away from her abusive husband to rescue her daughter. Alice, suppressing her suspicion that there’s more to the story, takes Anne to her family in the swampy fenlands. There, Anne realizes that courtly life and her self-satisfaction in pushing reforms have blinded her to the plight of the common people. After telling Alice the truth, Anne makes plans to return to London, where she hopes to finally bring her agenda to fruition. Lehmann offers deep character work, portraying Anne’s early self-righteous naivete and discovery of her political savvy, and she successfully pairs a thrilling plot with a complex reflection on the limits of women’s power. Readers will be delighted. Agent: Renée Zuckerbrot, Massie McQuilkin & Altman Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink