In McCoy’s vivid if convoluted debut, a deep-sea diver’s homecoming dredges up painful memories of a disastrous flood and reveals the miraculous existence of a strange cult. Otta Coates hails from Paintsville, which was flooded when she was a young girl back in 1979 after the building of a dam, and now, 30 years later, lies at the bottom of a polluted lake. When 400 residents refused to leave, 240 of them drowned. Blame fell on Otta’s mother, Eugenia, who was accused of helping people prepare for “underwater living.” The tragedy complicated their relationship and colored Otta’s childhood in neighboring Steels. She returns to Paintsville a broken woman, distraught over the accidental drowning of her partner on a dive and having abandoned her graduate studies in marine biology. A parallel narrative follows May, who comes to Otta looking for help finding her daughter, Daphne, who’s missing in Underlake, an underwater town. May grew up in Underlake as part of a cult that believed they were the righteous who were saved when the town was buried under water. As the women’s quest for Daphne progresses, McCoy sheds light on Eugenia’s true motivations, how the residents of Underlake survived underwater, and much more. The narrative becomes a bit tough to follow, but McCoy effectively conveys how May and Otta are bonded by their mutual damage. Intrepid readers will appreciate this magical mystery tour. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

George (Maame) chronicles the unexpected and fraught friendship of two London women in her sharp latest. Novelist Remy Baidoo, 30, has never had much interest in traditional romance, garnering all the support and love she needs from her friend group, who inspired her first book. But as she struggles to write her next novel, the women begin fading from her life. In contrast, schoolteacher Simone Beduah, 29, has convinced herself she doesn’t need friends. Then her religious family disowns her after discovering she’s also a sex worker. When they run into each other at a literary event, Remy, whose inclination to overshare runs on overdrive, forms an unlikely bond with quiet introvert Simone. As their friendship deepens, Remy discovers she’s pregnant from a one-night stand despite being told earlier by a doctor that she can’t get pregnant, and Simone realizes Remy has secretly been writing about their friendship. The revelations force both women to make tough decisions about trust and their futures. While some of the plot turns feel too convenient, George offers a fresh perspective on female friendship, showing that “platonic love can be incredibly romantic.” Fans of the author’s celebrated debut will find much to enjoy. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

For Jean Dornan, the protagonist of Langbein’s incandescent sophomore novel (after American Mermaid) whose life is still in shambles following a toxic relationship with her college professor almost two decades earlier, it feels like “#MeToo had come and gone like a parade two streets over.” The novel takes shape as Jean begins praying to Monica Lewinsky, “patron saint of those who suffer venal public shaming and patriarchal cruelty,” whose affair with Bill Clinton came to light in 1998, just as Jean was in the throes of her own infatuation. Amazingly, the glowing figure of Saint Monica appears to answer, leading Jean to reflect on the summer of her sophomore year at Rutgers, when she studied medieval art in rural France. Singled out by David, the professor leading the trip, Jean becomes as obsessed with his charm as he is smitten by her raw authenticity. But after their brief fling, she has a hard time not seeing herself through his eyes. Langbein packs the fierce and funny tale with weighty insights into female desire, ambition, and selfhood, making it a winning combination of comedy, critique, and fantasy. She also fully delivers on the audacious conceit, which begins with a head-turning prologue on Monica’s affair with “emperor” Bill Clinton: “Well, the emperor had many enemies, foremost among them a dogged Christian prosecutor named Kenneth.... [who] imagined that the emperor had all the sex that Kenneth denied himself, and so he decried the emperor loudly as a man with no virtue, unfit to be ruler of the Americans.” This is a revelation. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Four sisters grow up fast on the grounds of a state mental institution run by their mother in Thurman’s incisive debut novel. Narrator Denise Cross looks back to 1999, when she was nine and her driven, demanding mother, Lisa, head psychiatrist at “crumbling” Mercy Hill in North Carolina, moved Denise and her three older sisters up two grades by transferring them to a magnet school. Lisa hopes they’ll go on to earn medical degrees and help save the floundering facility, and is desperate to speed up the process. The move, reluctantly assented to by the girls’ increasingly restless stay-at-home dad, works out about as well as might be expected. The four sisters are relentlessly bullied at their new school and cope by getting into trouble. In the summer, Lisa tasks them with helping out in the hospital’s understaffed wards, cleaning up and taking care of residents, and continues putting them to work during the school year. Denise’s scrutiny of her family illuminates several consequential years in their lives, showing how she and her sisters were shaped by their experiences “volunteering” on the wards, and how working for their mother led to tragedy. Throughout, Thurman, who grew up near a similar institution, offers a revealing and nuanced view of the asylum’s social value and the stigma that leads to its downfall. It’s a perceptive take on an unusual childhood. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

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, at age 20 in 1992, likens her life to a “kitchen drawer that’s already full of all the things I think I’ll do.” She forges tight bonds with her mother and aunt Jennie, who 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 local 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.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misdescribed one of the character’s circumstances.

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: Lesley 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