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

Boyd (The Weight) excels with this gritty tale of a corrupt cop, a well-meaning high school teacher, and the violence faced by Black teens on Chicago’s South Side. Curtis Thompson is a beat cop who has been promoted to the Drug and Gang Task Force. His brother-in-law, Buddy Mack, teaches high-school English. One of Buddy’s students, Terrence “T-Rock” Latimore, gets killed after he’s suspected of ratting out drug smuggler Rob Jackson to police officers. Curtis, meanwhile, has been taking hush money from a sergeant who’s in league with Rob. After surveilling Rob’s house, Curtis and his partner follow two teens when they leave the building, suspecting them of trafficking. After a botched arrest, the teens flee, and Curtis shoots one in the back. Curtis’s victim turns out to be Rob’s nephew and Buddy’s student, Truth Jackson, a basketball prospect who hopes to escape the life of crime Rob has been preparing him for. Truth survives, and Curtis is forced to take a desk job while Internal Affairs investigates the shooting along with Curtis’s role in the department’s corruption. Boyd’s stark realism and fatalistic view of the characters’ milieu makes the hopeful ending all the more triumphant. This one hits hard. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins & Assoc. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

A floundering romantasy writer attempts to recover his mojo with help from his friends in the zany latest from Bouldrey (Good in Bed). Having spiraled into drug addiction at Summerhein, a crumbling Xanadu-esque mansion, Walace Weiss invites friends and family to join him on a journey of self-discovery and reinvigoration, hoping their presence will help him complete his long-awaited novel, The Sorrow of the Elves. Along for this epic ride are his drug dealer Cal and Cal’s ex-girlfriend, along with an aging porn star, a stripper and her death-obsessed young son, a recovering teen drug addict, and Walace’s reclusive, agoraphobic twin brother, Wolf. Having assembled this ragtag assortment of characters, whom Walace views as “broken toys at the bottom of a cardboard box,” the novel drags on for a while, without much of a plot, until it climaxes with an ecstatic dance party at Summerhein. Along the way, Bouldrey effortlessly shifts focus among all the assorted personalities. Digressive yet gloriously character-driven, this eccentric narrative will keep the reader’s head spinning. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Sweeney’s latest arresting family drama (after The Nest) tracks the fallout of an affair in 1970s Rochester, N.Y., across two generations. Nina Larkin, mother to Clara and Bridie and wife to Sam, knows something is missing in her marriage. She considers divorce, but worries about the social repercussions, and carries on an affair with neighbor Finn Finnegan, who runs a chain of upscale grocery stores and feels similarly trapped in his marriage. Early one morning, Nina and Finn flee to the Dominican Republic for a quick divorce and marriage, leaving behind shattering notes for their teenage children about their plans. Clara has secretly been dating Finn’s son, Dune, and now Dune blames Nina for blowing up his family and refuses to see Clara, who digs into her grudge against her mother. The story extends to the 1990s, when Dune joins the family business and struggles with alcohol. Meanwhile, Clara refuses to forgive her mother and tells people she’s dead, Sam finally accepts that he’s gay, and Nina and Finn try to live a life back in New York that makes the pain of tearing apart their families worth it. Sweeney excels at exploring how the characters are shaped over time by their complex family dynamics. (As Clara’s new boyfriend puts it: “People change. We change. Sometimes for the better.”) The author’s fans will enjoy this. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink