Historical novelist Morris (The Tattooist of Auschwitz) turns to contemporary fiction with an affecting if hackneyed story of a dying teen’s last wish. Jesse, 15, is in and out of the hospital with terminal leukemia. Alex, about to turn 30, is a brilliant but socially awkward coder working at a CGI studio, who lives alone except for his dog. When Jesse makes a wish through a foundation for an immersive 3-D film of her life to leave for her family after she’s gone, Alex’s company takes on the project. Working together, Alex and Jesse incorporate drawings by her younger brother, her mother’s poetry, photos of the family at their favorite picnic spot on the beach, and staged scenes featuring Jesse to surprise her family. Meanwhile, the strain of Jesse’s illness has torn her parents’ marriage apart, and her father treats Alex with contempt and hostility. What’s more, Alex’s boss wants to turn Jesse’s wish into a publicity stunt, which nearly drives Alex to quit. Though Morris avoids the maudlin by sustaining an upbeat tone, the plot veers into cliché, as when Alex finds himself falling in love with a blue-eyed social worker at the hospital. It’s a mixed bag. (May)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

For Barbara Foerster , the 58-year-old Brooklynite who narrates Lavery’s wry and empathetic latest (after Christmas at the Women’s Hotel), having a best friend is one of the most important things in the world. Another important thing for Barbara, who works at a gourmet food market, is cooking. So it’s a double blow when she prepares a special dinner for her best friend, Susan Montgomery, only for Susan to confront her with a long list of her faults. (Barbara doesn’t share them with the reader, but she explains that “after a certain point, I told her that I got the idea.”) Barbara then sets out to find a replacement friend, someone who is “a champion of her own happiness, and peacefully minded, but who can still have fun being a little bitchy.” It turns out, however, that Barbara has issues in her other relationships—things are rocky with her son, for example, after she said she didn’t want her young granddaughter around her antique furniture. As Barbara contends with her antisocial habits, she realizes she might have to widen her circle, and she attends an Episcopalian church. Barbara is an endlessly companionable narrator, especially in her moments of self-awareness (“divorced women, as a rule, have totally lost whatever interest in behaving reasonably they ever had in the first place”). Thanks to Lavery’s sharp-tongued heroine, this one leaves a mark. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

Mexican author and scholar Eudave makes her English-language debut with a mysterious and fantastical novella set in 1977 Guadalajara, an “unusual year” when the “world fell apart, or would soon fall apart,” amid punishing weather, nuclear anxiety, Pinochet’s military coup, the death of Elvis, the Son of Sam, and other portents. It begins with a young girl named Maricarmen, who visits a parish fair with her father and sister and becomes obsessed with a freak show exhibit of a “serpent girl” kept in a glass box by a fortune teller. Before Maricarmen leaves the fair, she witnesses the serpent girl being raped by her keeper. In the chapters that follow, Maricarmen and her neighbors are gripped by a series of disturbing encounters, sometimes involving animals or ghosts. There’s the boy who watches a man routinely hang his dog from a tree in a precise and scientific manner, the girl whose pet boa constrictor patiently endures its doting owner while considering whether to make a break for the jungle, and the ghost who visits the children’s bedsides to tell them stories. Eventually, the various threads converge into a satisfying and thought-provoking finale. Readers will be grateful for the introduction to this distinctive writer. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

The writer protagonists of these stimulating metafictional stories from Ozeki (A Tale for the Time Being) long for connection and creative fulfillment. The title entry, framed as an author’s note, concerns a short story called “The Typing Lady,” written by a woman who caught the attention of the narrator at a library. The protagonist of this story within the story, also a writer, collects old typewriters in a quest to reconnect with her late mother, a poet who clacked out her work on a Remington. “Ships in the Night” traces aspiring romance author Cayenne’s vagabond life with her teen daughter, Baby, and Cayenne’s benevolent drug-dealing boyfriend, Guy. Much of the story takes place in Vancouver, where Guy protects Baby from a predatory man, while Baby longs for stability. In the hilarious “Dead Beat Poet,” a young woman named Caitlin puts her dream of becoming a poet on the back burner while working as an editorial assistant at a publishing house. During an editorial meeting, Caitlin is suddenly possessed by the ghost of a poet who claims he was friends with Allen Ginsberg and tells her the publisher should focus on poetry, causing Caitlin to blurt out “more poems!” In Ozeki’s sure hands, the story channels the ghost’s dated braggadocio into a timely rant against corporate workplace woes, as when he calls Caitlin’s boss a “one-eyed shrew who does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom.” Ozeki’s atmospheric tales radiate with intelligence and wit. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

New mothers possess superhuman abilities and sustainable electricity wards off the climate crisis in this clever blend of fantasy and speculative fiction from Tsao (The Majesties), set in an alternate version of Sydney. Despite these seeming advances, protagonist Vivi has been left behind. Plagued by postpartum fatigue, she lacks the powers gained by other mothers in the final stage of labor, called “rebirth,” during which they give birth to their “fetal mother.” The fetal mother then quickly grows to the mother’s size and cannibalizes her, and this new version of the mother holds preternatural strength, energy, and maternal instincts. Vivi was cannibalized but ineffectively, and she’s been diagnosed with “malabsorption.” After her husband gives her a cruel ultimatum—divorce or induced labor, to repeat the rebirth—she leaves him. Vivi, who is ethnically Chinese and immigrated to Australia from her native Indonesia with her family, seeks refuge with her uncle, who helps her train as an electrician, and she becomes a “hobbler,” providing power to those who can’t afford to convert their homes for service by the new grid. There’s a lot going on here, and while the narrative feels cluttered, Tsao cannily uses the fantastical elements to explore a new mother’s anxieties about measuring up to other mothers. It’s worth a look. (May)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

A literature scholar turned private investigator takes on a strange case related to the late Alice B. Toklas in this clever debut novel from poet Bussey-Chamberlain (Grief Is the Thing in Pleather). The unnamed narrator has recently left academia and London behind and set up shop in present-day Brighton. She receives a call from a mysterious man who claims that Toklas, partner of modernist writer Gertrude Stein, had a horn growing from her forehead, which she hid behind hats. For reasons that come out later, he desperately wants the narrator to track down the horn. She agrees because she needs the money, but she’s not convinced by the rumor, which she takes for “cruel lesbian gossip.” She also feels some kinship with Toklas, who survived Stein by 21 years, given that her partner, May, has recently died. Still, she investigates in earnest, traveling to the British Library to view Toklas’s archives and stopping into Shakespeare and Company in Paris, where a bookseller insists Toklas was merely hiding a cyst. Throughout, the narrator offers thoughtful meditations on grief (“No one will ask me if my grief can be contained to paid leave”), which are leavened with droll humor about the futile and misguided work of academia. There’s much to admire in this well-paced queer detective novel. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

Jackson (Pineapple Street) serves up an enjoyable tale of a writer who makes new friends and then steals their stories. Caroline Lash, the 28-year-old daughter of a famous author, chafes at the idea that she’s a nepo baby. After she sells a story to the New Yorker, she quits her mid-level publishing job and leaves New York City for an 18-month fellowship in coastal Greenhead, Mass. Traveling there by train, she has a meet cute with environmental scientist Van Whittaker, a Greenhead local, who gives her napkins after she gets a jelly donut all over her white jeans. They meet again in Greenhead, and he invites her into his circle of high school friends, including his ex-girlfriend, Bailey. Not long after Caroline and Van begin hooking up, Bailey announces she’s pregnant with Van’s child. As Caroline tries to figure out how she feels about the news and navigate her place in the tight-knit group, which she’s already come to treasure, Jackson weaves in chapters focused on Bailey and the others, showing the story from their points of view. Further complicating the truth is Caroline’s thinly veiled novel in progress about Greenhead and her new friends, which heightens their interpersonal drama. Jackson has a knack for local color and well-rounded character work, as she gradually picks apart Caroline’s “ingrained snobbishness” about “life outside the city.”This has plenty of heart. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

A middle-aged Englishwoman seeks fulfillment while reflecting on her choice not to have children in the insightful if diffuse debut novel from picture book author and illustrator Haworth-Booth (The Last Tree). As the unnamed narrator enters menopause, she revives a childhood obsession: “Horses began to return to my thoughts at the same time that change began to happen in my body.” She answers an ad to become a “sharer” of a white and black horse owned by another woman (the “true mother”), tending to the horse a few days a week. In between caring for the horse, writing children’s books, and attending a residency, she looks after her neighbor’s children, who she refers to as “not-my-daughter” and “also-not-my-daughter.” As the months pass, her relationship with the horse blossoms from a chosen chore to something deeper and more sustaining. Stretches of self-reflection are punctuated by chipper emails from a newsletter author who espouses the wonders of their lifestyle: “What’s your favourite thing to do instead of the school run?” Some readers will find themselves wanting more from the fragmentary narrative, which often leaves thoughts half formed, but Haworth-Booth ably captures early middle-age disquiet and the soothing balm of animal companionship. Fans of Sheila Heti will appreciate this. Agent: Ed Wilson, Johnson & Alcock. (May)

Correction: An earlier version of this review mischaracterized a plot point.

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

Cooper (Brian) delivers the plodding story of a fraught collaboration between a composer and a saxophonist. Nearing 50, Rebekah Rosen is “at once both innovative and indecisive,” feeling inspired one minute and sensing the “death throes of a failed composer” the next. Her agent sets up a meeting with Evie Bennet, a “star-to-be” who plays her saxophone in flashy designer sneakers and eventually agrees to perform Rebekah’s composition in progress at a prestigious classical music festival in London. Rebekah is possessive and resentful of Evie, attracted to her “glistening youth” and intimidated by her talent and confidence. The novel follows their relationship as the two very different women get a feel for each other and the evolving piece and discuss architecture, another of Rebekah’s interests. In third-person narration, Cooper dutifully describes the buildings and music Rebekah and Evie like and dislike, and he supplies potted biographies of numerous composers and architects as well as a parade of minor characters, like a shoe retailer, who enter the protagonists’ lives. As the concert approaches, there’s less of a crescendo than a steady drone of meetings and outings. Despite the formidable intelligence behind it, this novel never sings. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink

Stoddard debuts with a breezy if superficial retelling of The Philadelphia Story set on modern-day Cape Cod. Tess Lowell, a Manhattan art agent and socialite, divorced her ex-husband, Peter Hyun, an artist, five years ago, over his alcohol abuse. Peter, sober for the past few years, is surprised to receive an invitation not only to Tess’s wedding but to the preceding week of festivities. He arrives on the cape with his acquaintance, Mitch, an aspiring writer, and pretends Mitch is his boyfriend, but it turns out the joke is on them: the invite was sent as a prank by Tess’s brother. Despite the Lowells’ longtime disapproval of Peter, they offer him and Mitch the use of their guest house. Over the disastrous week, Mitch, a stalwart member of the working class, verbally spars with the Lowells and Tess’s fiancé, a centrist politician and “safe” choice for her future, with whom she lacks the spark she had with Peter. While Peter and Tess remember what drew them to each other, Mitch falls for both of them. The novel’s epigraph borrows a line delivered by Katherine Hepburn: “The time to make up your mind about people is never.” Unfortunately, Stoddard’s characters never surprise the reader, hewing to stereotypes throughout. This one never quite takes flight. Agent: Aurora Fernandez, Trident Media Group. (June)

Reviewed on 04/17/2026 | Details & Permalink