Multiple generations of vampires serve as a metaphor for the Chicano experience in this provocative outing from Romo (El Puente/The Bridge). In 1099, in the Indus Valley, a bathhouse attendant named Shandor is bitten by ancient vampire Kali. “Drink,” says Kali, offering her own blood, “or you will die”—a phrase that becomes a refrain throughout the centuries-long story of Shandor’s lineage. Next, in late-15th-century Spain, Shandor, now a vampire, turns Radamés, the idle and illegitimate son of a local courtier. In 1864, Radamés makes local laborer Carlos his servant. Using Carlos’s ability to walk in daylight, Radamés leaves Spain for the New World, where he meets Tepín, a vampire of Aztec descent, possessed of a deeper and more ancient power than Radamés’s European vampiric lineage. These Filth Eaters are unhurt by silver and can wed and bear children. The two fall in love and bear a son, Doro, whom the reader meets as a violent, drug-addled livestreamer in a postapocalyptic 2070s New York City. The product of centuries of colonization, domination, and survival, Doro is unsure if he wishes to continue living. Romo adds texture to the narrative with evocative descriptions of Tepín’s Mesoamerican vampire culture and the suffering her people endured at the hands of the Spaniards and the Catholic Church. This postcolonial novel teems with intriguing ideas. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Nigerian author Awoke (The Liquid Eye of a Moon) offers a captivating and magic-fueled adventure set in contemporary Africa. Ten-year-old Ekwe defies his father’s warning that if he touches a forbidden leaf called an ekwukwonju, he will “be blown away by wild wandering winds.” Not long after, Ekwe falls asleep on a bus, arriving unintentionally in Maidaguri in northeastern Nigeria after riding all night. He’s taken in by a cow herder, Danjuma, and slowly learns the family’s language. One evening, as the family sits down for supper, Muslim extremists burst into their home and open fire, injuring Danjuma and killing one of his wives and a daughter. Afterward, Danjuma migrates with his surviving family to the south, where they briefly find peace, until local tensions between farmers and cow herders erupt in violence. Ekwe is then borne away by a large owl to Central Africa, where he is mentored by a mercenary named Jafari. When he and his fellow mercenaries are abandoned by their employer, Jafari and Ekwe resort to petty crime, until Jafari accepts a proposal from a shady war profiteer who makes him swear allegiance to the Mesopotamian goddess Lamashtu. Then, suddenly, Ekwe wakes up at home, “confused and dizzy,” and learns that a much older, richer man is courting his 12-year-old sister, Oyibo. Awoke weaves his immersive and lyrical tale with folklore and vivid scenes of real-world violence. This one hits hard. Agent: Annie DeWitt, Shipman Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A repatriation case against a New York City museum forces a lawyer to revisit troubling memories from her college summer abroad in Lemle’s suspenseful debut. The Italian government is seeking the return of an ancient cup made from rare glass that it claims was looted from a Roman villa. The investigation into the cup’s provenance resurrects memories that estate lawyer Lena has largely suppressed of the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps 18 years prior, during which her professor, Cyrille, disappeared. In alternating chapters, readers see a 19-year-old Lena fall in love and under the sway of a mysterious local. As multiple people from that summer converge in present-day New York City during Lena’s investigation, she confronts her own complicity in the sprawling market for antiquities, which encompasses criminals and preservationists alike. Along the way, Lemle sharply interrogates notions of cultural heritage and ownership (“Museums are mausoleums built to house the spoils of a bunch of rich people”). Keeping track of the overly complex cast of characters can be challenging, and the unrelated subplots on Lena’s upbringing slow the pace. Still, armchair travelers will enjoy themselves. Agent: Sabrina Taitz, WME. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Unferth’s remarkable third novel (after Barn 8) takes place in a distant future where a severely depopulated Earth has turned mostly to sand. At the outset, protagonist Dylan is being raised by her mother, Rosemary, in an underwater pod. Rosemary is a researcher, part of a team from a lab back on Earth’s surface who are working to preserve the DNA of the planet’s many species in an effort to eventually recreate Earth as it once was. The original collection, known as Earth 2, and its copies, 3 through 5, have been lost to looters, and the team is now compiling Earth 6. Though Dylan finds the work of the lab “irritating and absurd, all this so-called Earth-saving,” it offers her an escape from the suffocation of her mother and the depths of the ocean when she lands an internship on the surface. Tasked with sweeping sand, she makes a miraculous discovery of “micro-animals” that appear lifeless and can be used to hide DNA. Over the course of the satisfying narrative, Dylan, as an adult, carries on Rosemary’s work. Unferth shines in her ability to craft relatable characters in extraordinary circumstances, and the novel remains accessible even as it explores deep ontological questions about the nature of life. This is profound. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Four-year-old Marili learns about life and death and discovers the beauty of the natural world in this deeply perceptive and sensuous 1951 novella from Austrian writer Haushofer (The Wall). The story takes place over the course of a year in an idyllic alpine forest, where Marili is being raised by her maternal grandparents. Her grief-stricken grandmother explains that she’s not Marili’s mother, who died along with her four sons—three in war, and the youngest, Max, at five, from diphtheria. Sadness hangs over the house during the gloomy winter until the first ray of February sunlight lands in a “yellow rectangle... on the kitchen floor.” In summer, Marili explores the surrounding meadows by herself, pushing past her fear of the unknown, and is enchanted by the flowers, especially the fire lilies, which “seemed to come to life under her breath.” The strong-willed and curious girl, who prays with her back turned to the painting of Jesus in her bedroom and beats up a neighbor boy who threatens to drown a litter of kittens, carries glimmers of the adult heroines in Haushofer’s fierce later work, and the story grows unsettling when Marili alarms her grandparents by catching a fever like the one Max had. The main event, though, is Haushofer’s painterly depiction of the landscape, as when she describes how the fog lifts as winter approaches and “a different color... shimmered yellow and red through the milky veils.” It’s a stunner. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

The diverting latest from Léger (God Loves Haiti) traces a Haitian soccer hero’s rise and fall. Gilbert Chevalier’s story unfolds in reverse, while he’s facing a firing squad in the late 1950s for an unspecified offense. The son of a well-off businessman, Gilbert adores soccer and uses his endless charm to woo women, including firebrand Aurélie. As a favor to his father, who hopes for a financial windfall, Gilbert marries Elizabeth, the daughter of a rich Nazi hiding in Haiti after WWII, before leaving alone for New York City to study finance at Columbia. While away, Gil promises to focus on his education, but he quickly joins pickup soccer games in Central Park and gets recruited for the 1950 U.S. World Cup team, despite not being an American (“a small technicality,” he’s told). After he scores a game-winning goal against England, he becomes an overnight sensation. As the years pass, he slouches around Europe and his soccer career declines. Called back to Haiti to visit his ailing father, he learns that Elizabeth has taken up with another man, Aurélie is raising his nine-year-old child, and his life is in danger. Léger sustains the momentum with energetic set pieces, which often involve Gilbert’s Zelig-like encounters with celebrities, as when he rescues Miles Davis from an angry spurned lover. It’s a blast. Agent: Christy Fletcher, UTA. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Delgado Lopera (Fiebre Tropical) dives into Colombia’s taboo queer culture in this scintillating narrative of a man torn between belonging and self-expression. Growing up in the small town of Ebaguí, Ignacio dominates on the soccer field but also longs to be glamorous like his neighbor Lucrecia, so much so that he wants to “unzip Lucrecia’s face and try it on.” Living under the rule of his alcoholic and physically abusive father, Ignacio takes refuge in secretly swimming naked with Lucrecia’s son, Felipe, and tying his soccer jersey on his head, pretending it’s long hair like Lucrecia’s—something he’s seen men get beat up over. As a young man in Bogotá, Ignacio meets Mamadora Eléctrica, a travesti, at a queer nightclub, and she becomes a mother figure to him. In the present, Ignacio raises a teen daughter, Valentina, and mourns the death of his wife, Alma. To Valentina, he looks like a “mummified bird,” lounging around the house in his flimsy pink robes, dangling earrings, and colorful rosaries, having lost his job at a bank due to frequent absences and drunkenness at work. Meanwhile, Valentina pieces together the story of Alma, who was said to have “popped pills like candy” while Ignacio had affairs with men. The author’s turns of phrase are striking and indelible, and the characters are deeply and lovingly portrayed, including Mamadora, who looks out for the lonely Valentina, helping with her homework and making sure her disapproving aunt doesn’t try to separate her from Ignacio. It’s exquisite. Agent: Kent D. Wolf, Neon Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A volcanic eruption forces a rural veterinarian to cut short her maternity leave in the uneven debut novel from New Zealand poet Wallace. With ashfall covering the streets of the unnamed narrator’s small town, day cares close, office workers report from home, and grocery store shelves stand empty. But the natural disaster is only one battle among many for the narrator, a working mother who struggles with crying children, an inattentive husband, mountains of laundry, and the biases of her male coworkers. When a position opens at her midsize veterinary practice, she alone advocates on behalf of a younger female colleague. One of her children develops a respiratory illness from the thick, gray ash, which makes “everything more urgent.” Despite the intense subject matter, the plot slips into clichés, such as the depiction of a sexist male colleague. Still, the narrator offers impactful reflections on motherhood, which for her feels “like shattering your body into pieces, gluing them back together so the light shines through the seams, then flooding it with greenery, your whole insides a garden fit to burst.” The result is a somewhat pedestrian story punctuated by distinctive bursts of lyricism. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Maksimowska (Giant) serves up a sardonic portrait of a young woman in search of fulfillment. Gosia, pushing 30, teaches high school chemistry in Toronto and finds her life “entirely dull and unsatisfying.” She immigrated to Canada from Poland as a child and is now in a common-law relationship with her French Canadian boyfriend, Peter, who leaves her unsatisfied. (“I was self-conscious of how much sex I wanted to have. I often cried after he fell asleep, frustrated, rejected, deprived.”) Gosia becomes attracted to a female colleague named Harris and kisses her during a night of drunken debauchery. Peter’s father, Phil, meanwhile, is diagnosed with lung cancer and given three months to live. While he’s in the hospital, Gosia travels to Poland with her mother to visit her estranged father and grapples with whether to tell Peter about her indiscretion with Harris. While the narrative is initially confusing, due to its jagged leaps forward and backward through time, Maksimowska’s mordant wit shines (“Pride was best kept personal and private, like masturbation,” Gosia reflects), and she adds depth to the characters, as when Gosia discovers a connection between Peter’s ambivalence toward sex and Phil’s infidelity. There’s much to admire in this cutting narrative. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A married high school teacher confronts his despair and isolation in this insightful outing from Strout (Tell Me Everything). Artie Dam, 57, has a beautiful home on the herMassachusetts coast, a long and stable partnership with his wife, Evie, and a job he loves, but he can’t shake his “accretion of loneliness,” nor can he bring himself to reveal it to anyone. Recalling the suicide of a character in a novel he read, Artie is reminded that “people do die of loneliness” and decides to end his life. After he nearly drowns in a sailing accident, his brush with mortality renews his desire to live, but he’s rocked again when his 27-year-old son, Rob, confides in him that a DNA test showed he’s not Artie’s biological child. As father and son reimagine their bond, Artie must decide whether to jeopardize his marriage by telling Evie what he’s learned. Some of the episodes feel a bit random, but Strout masterfully explores her central themes (after a “lunatic” former president is reelected, a clear reference to Trump, Artie feels like the “country was committing suicide”) and offers timeless observations, suggesting, for example, that her characters feel distant from those they love most because “to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know.” This will stay with readers. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink