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Kewame and her husband send a pubescent Kelelo against her will to a newly desegregated school, where she becomes withdrawn, forced by administrators to speak only in English and resentful at Kewame’s inability to be soft and comforting.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

The protagonists of this glittering story collection from Eisenberg (Housemates) grapple with the messiness of desire and their relationship to their bodies as queer and fat people. In the title story, eight-year-old Alice longs to join the fat ladies who gather weekly at a public pool she watches from her window. When she finally sneaks out to join them one day, she’s comforted by their openness compared to her stifling mother. In “Beauty,” a lonely woman named Marion posts reels of herself applying makeup, from contouring like drag star Divine to looks that make her appear thinner or fatter. Two intriguing plotlines ensue, as Marion accepts payments from a fan for private content and reveals that she’s been bought out from a beauty company she cofounded after she gained weight. Jules, the trans narrator of the excellent “Lanternfly,” works as an assistant for famous elderly gay writer Rob, and feels sad about being tasked with helping Rob find hookups via Grindr, given that Jules wants Rob to want him. Some entries feel underdeveloped, more like sketches or impressions, but stories such as “Beauty” succeed at capturing the effects of isolation, as Marion remembers how she once would “emerge like a mole into daylight.” There’s plenty to admire in these offbeat tales. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Parmar (Vanessa and Her Sister) brings to life 1930s Hollywood with this revealing biographical novel about Katharine Hepburn. Daughter of a prominent Connecticut suffragist and a physician, Kate is devastated at 13 by her older brother Tom’s death by suicide. Eventually, she manages to move forward, graduating from Bryn Mawr, marrying her college sweetheart, and embarking on a theater career in New York. A screen test for RKO Pictures leads to an offer for a part in the film A Bill of Divorcement, and Kate accepts, leaving for Los Angeles with her friend Laura Harding. As she and Laura try to hide their romantic relationship from the press, Kate embarks on an affair with her agent, Leland Hayward, while maintaining a friendship with producer David Selznick’s wife, Irene, and megastar Cary Grant, who dispels rumors about his romantic relationship with Randolph Scott by marrying a starlet. Parmar sensitively explores Kate’s sexuality, which she keeps hidden throughout her career, as well as her vulnerability following Tom’s death and her quest to remain true to her artistic vision despite pressure to adhere to the Hollywood image of a female star. Historical fiction fans will be drawn to this immersive portrait of the legendary actor. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Semple (Where’d You Go, Bernadette) delivers an energetic caper about a woman who gets roped into blue-blooded family drama and a potential smuggling scheme. Among the terms of philosopher Adora Hazzard’s fellowship at the Lockwood museum in New York City is that she provide “moral training” to owners Layla and Lionel Lockwood’s tween twins. Adora, who is divorced, lives nearby in the famed Ansonia building with her surly 15-year-old daughter, Viv, where she has assembled a “coven” of fellow middle-aged single ladies who live on the same floor. The plot kicks into gear when Adora gives an extra ballet ticket to the mysterious David Ignatius “Digby” Beale, and the pair begin a romance, threatening to break the rules of her coven. Soon Digby reveals they met not by chance but because he was following her, and he wants her to deliver a sealed letter to Layla. Initially convinced Digby is attempting to recover a stolen artwork from the museum’s collection, Adora sets out to investigate, and a series of increasingly alarming misunderstandings ensue. Some readers will have trouble keeping up with the freewheeling plot, but Semple’s writing is as limber as ever (defining stoicism for Digby, Adora says, “It’s not Keep Calm and Carry On. It’s Change Your Perception So You Never Have to Keep Calm and Carry On”). There’s plenty to enjoy in this rollicking adventure. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

A wild music scene and an illicit affair propel Scott’s entrancing English-language debut, which was originally published in France in 2000. In 1990s Paris, 31-year-old Louise has spent a year hanging out with a group of queer 20-something women who are fixtures in the city’s techno scene, including her roommate Pallas, with whom she occasionally hooks up, and well-known DJ Alex, her ex-girlfriend. Perpetually broke, drifting between clubs, raves, and lovers, sometimes in a drug-fueled haze, Louise sees a chance at a different kind of future when she lands a major record deal that gives her enough money and time to break free from her close-knit circle and make her own music, “an electro record with lots of rock in it.” But leaving the techno world behind is difficult, in part because of Alex’s current girlfriend, Inès, a seductive student with a serious drug habit and a serious crush on Louise. There is also the pull of Louise’s ex-boyfriend Nikki, a rocker and former heroin user. As Louise careens between these choices, Scott’s addictive narrative offers a kaleidoscopic look at a lively milieu and a woman’s struggle to overcome heartbreak and obsession, and make a life for herself as an artist. Readers will be thrilled. Agent: Alex Reubert, HG Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Clarke debuts with an alluring fever dream of a novel about a young woman who enters an alternate reality. From a young age, Ada hears voices that tell her about things before they happen, such as her parents’ divorce. Years later, in London, she meets an older American man named Atticus at her apartment building’s pool. Seeing him makes her think she should have been him. After he returns to his family in the U.S., Ada can see and inhabit Atticus’s life when she looks in mirrors, where she sees his face instead of her own. Later, she wakes up in a white room where she meets a man named Don who confirms her suspicion that the voices she hears in her head come from an implant placed at the back of her mouth when she was a child. He offers to switch her body with an “identical synthetic copy” to help her cope with her feelings of dissociation. Ada agrees, and things get even weirder, as when she notices during a swim that she’s leaking saltwater from the back of her head. Clarke grounds the bizarre details and vivid imagery in meticulous prose (“At first she thought the voice had come out of the radio, but then she realized it was inside her head, as if somebody had put it there”). Readers will find much to dissect in this intriguing story of an existential crisis. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Kosik debuts with a biting satire of megachurches and online marketing. The story revolves around four members of Moral Mavens Mainframe, a volunteer social media team for Moving Word, a megachurch in Charlotte, N.C. Kristin, the office assistant, still lives at home with her parents. Camryn, the team’s unofficial leader, struggles with massive debt due to a shopping addiction. Savannah, a costar with her family on a Christian reality TV series, is desperately trying to get pregnant, while Trishy, a young single woman, has a habit of taking gifts from the Mavens’ sponsors. Together, they are helping to promote a fundraising gala for an anti-human-trafficking organization. The plot thickens when Kristin suspects their pastor has been siphoning money from the church, which may account for his 62 pairs of sneakers and rumored indoor swimming pool. Hoping to save their reputation amid a brewing scandal, they plot to reveal the truth during the gala. The first half is bogged down in discussions of content strategy and details of the women’s livestreams, but once it gets going, the narrative tackles meaty questions about the aspiring influencers’ true motives beneath their sheen of righteousness. Readers are in for a treat. Agent: Claire Friedman, InkWell Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

In Martin’s impressive and off-kilter debut, a strange infection causes more than 700,000 young women to migrate west across the U.S. The phenomenon begins in 1973, when the women’s skin grows itchy from a fungus, which also makes them lethargic and forgetful. College student Aimee Wallace learns that her best friend Ginny has been infected after she fails to show up for Aimee’s graduation from the University of Maryland. Aimee takes off in search of Ginny, desperate to bring her home. While traveling across Lake Michigan on a ferry packed with infected women, she begins to hear voices and see visions, which she soon realizes are of murdered women’s final moments. Meanwhile, Eve, a disgraced 26-year-old journalist, meets up with a “westward woman” in Asheville, N.C., where she hears about a mysterious man known as “the Piper,” who drives women to the coast. Hoping to restore her reputation, she heads west, following his trail and looking for a scoop. Martin’s second-person narration offers intriguing clues to the story’s meaning (“Some people say you stop being yourself, stop caring about what you used to care about, start acting like some kind of mindless growth inching forward. But don’t you already feel a bit that way?”), and the propulsive plot culminates in a shocking twist. Readers will revel in this layered and mysterious tale. Agent: Maria Whelan, InkWell Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink