In these vivid linked vignettes, Brownlee (Hard Skin) chronicles the challenges and dreams of Native Hawaiians. In “The Black Box She’s Only Seen on TV,” a child is acutely aware of her poverty even from a young age, marking the difference between her home life and the relative affluence of her cousin. Later, in “Oceans Under Threat Like Never Before,” the girl considers how climate change will affect her family, and if they’ll be able to keep the house they built with government subsidies. Older girls, like Kim, a townie, and Jen, a university student, amuse themselves by flirting with local boys in “Another Night on da Kona Pier,” while another student, Kahea, comes home from the mainland in disgrace, “the scholarships she had worked so hard to get not enough to cover everything.” One of the more heartbreaking entries, “The Cannibalistic Sea Slug,” features an abusive mother who burns her daughter’s scalp with bleach, and intersperses the horror with scientific facts about sea slugs, who eat their own kind. Like photographs in a family album, the vignettes surface memories that are happy and painful in equal measure. This accomplished collection is worth a look. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Moffet writes about fatherhood and the bittersweet passage of time in his quietly beautiful debut novel (after the story collection Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events). After the unnamed narrator loses his dad at the age of nine, his paternal grandmother hauls away his father’s possessions. Like the marks left on the carpet by his dad’s now absent recliner, the boy’s memories of his father fade over time. A desultory childhood in a 1980s Florida suburb follows, during which the narrator watches so much TV that “it feels like a punishment.” He attends karate classes, where he sits through lectures from a sensei who sees himself as a role model for at-risk boys. The only real kindness he remembers comes from a neighborhood boy who had lost his father to prison. From there, the novel jumps forward 25 years. The narrator has become a writing professor outside of Los Angeles and father to a son. He feels just as rudderless as a parent as he did as a fatherless son. “I wish I’d inherited some traditions from my father,” he thinks. “I’m mostly trying to be present... and known.” He ruefully notes how his son transforms from a boy who runs to his parents with all his questions and fears into a sullen teenager, now impenetrable behind his earbuds. Along the way, Moffet keenly traces the grace attained through the long arc of acceptance. Readers will be moved. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

The moving and well-rounded latest from Packer (after The Children’s Crusade) finds a terminally ill woman pushing her husband away and choosing to spend her last days with her two best friends. Eliot has stood by Claire since her breast cancer was first discovered eight years earlier. After Claire’s treatment ends and they prepare for in-home hospice care, she tells Eliot she’d like her childhood friend Holly and college roommate Michelle to stay with her, and he’s stunned to realize that she wants him to leave. Feeling stymied, he moves temporarily to Holly’s nearby house. Throughout, Packer explores the foundations of her central couple’s nearly 40-year marriage: the bonds, the inevitable ups and downs, the raising of their now grown children Josh, who’s still grappling with his music career, and Abby, a pediatrician who is married with two children. Though Eliot wants to continue being the attentive and understanding husband who accedes to his wife’s desires, he’s hurt and resentful about her decision, and feels supplanted by Holly and Michelle, who easily usurp his position as caregiver. Packer keeps the reader invested in her thought-provoking exploration of a marriage, as Eliot wonders why Claire doesn’t want him the most as the end of her life draws near. The author’s fans will relish this poignant novel. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Van de Sandt debuts with a vivid portrait of a woman’s trauma and recovery. The narrative unfolds as a therapy exercise written by Franca, a 27-year-old struggling writer from the Netherlands who has spent four years in the U.K. after abandoning her comp lit degree in Utrecht to live with her wealthy English fiancé, Andrew. Following his lucrative sale of an app, Franca has become fully dependent on Andrew, giving up on job-hunting and numbing her unhappiness with drinking and TV. She’s tasked with cooking dinner for Andrew and his colleagues to celebrate the team’s latest venture, but the evening begins with him raping her in the kitchen shortly before their guests arrive, leaving her reeling and trying to make sense of what just happened. The night takes another turn with the unexpected arrival of Franca’s former best friend Harry, whose abrupt departure from Utrecht ended their relationship years ago. As alcohol flows and tensions rise, Franca’s mental state unravels, and the narrative reaches a devastating climax. Van de Sandt weaves together Franca’s fragmented, often gruesome memories with a nuanced exploration of sexual violence within intimate relationships. This leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Millie Hoskins, United Agents. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Adelmann (How to Be Eaten) offers a slashing tale of academia’s exploitative gig economy and the aftermath of the #MeToo movement. Sam, an adjunct writing professor with crippling student loans, thinks she should be further along the tenure track for someone about to turn 34. During her first semester at Baltimore’s Rosedale College, she bumps into Dr. Tom Sternberg, who served as her graduate adviser a decade earlier, and who’s just been hired at Rosedale after leaving his old job for murky reasons. Putting aside her uneasiness at seeing Tom again after their intense relationship when she was a student (the details are revealed later), Sam focuses on the “low, constant hum” of her interminable to-do lists and bounces between lovers as the semester wears on. Then Tom publishes a novel titled Casualty, about a college professor who loses his family and job after having sex with one of his students, and Sam is shocked to realize he’s painted a thinly veiled and highly distorted version of their relationship. Not only has he made himself the victim, but their colleagues conflate her with the novel’s antagonist. Consequently, she undergoes a series of personal and professional reversals and fights to reclaim her narrative. Adelmann takes an unsparing and witty view of academia’s “pyramid scheme,” where “professors are living in poverty while paying back student loans” and “everyone but like ten people are getting fucked, and not in the good way.” This clever campus novel mischievously inverts John Williams’s Stoner. Agent: Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Verve. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Akinmade (Everything Is Not Enough) writes in this uneven family drama about a mother’s shattered dreams and the shadows they cast over her daughter. The novel opens in 2006 Stockholm, where Tina, the biracial daughter of a Gambian woman who never knew the identity of her Swedish father, has just been chosen to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest. The narrative then rewinds to 1978, when Tina’s mother, Nancy, arrives in Sweden on a scholarship with dreams of becoming the first woman president of Gambia. Her anthropology professor, Lars, intentionally undercuts the work of her boyfriend, Malik, another student in his seminar. After Malik is deported, Nancy becomes vulnerable to the predatory Lars’s machinations. The timelines converge in 2016, as Tina comes to understand why her mother has always treated her so coolly. In alternating chapters, Akinmade teases out the parallels between Tina and Nancy, showing with nuance how they each struggle against men who jeopardize their dreams. Unfortunately, the novel is marred by ponderous pacing and repetitive clichés (men and women often “breathlessly” murmur and “softly” whisper in between cries of “I can’t fix you” and repeated assertions of “I didn’t want to fall for you”). It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Jessica Craig, Craig Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

The illuminating latest from Schatz (coauthor of Do the Work: An Anti-Racist Activity Book) looks back on the impact of the sexual revolution before Roe v. Wade. In 1968, high school senior Elizabeth “Baker” Phillips is at the top of her class and expects to attend Stanford in the fall. Her plans are thrown into doubt after she meets a hippie named Wiley at a New Year’s Eve party. Baker and Wiley embark on a secret relationship that ends when she catches him kissing another girl. Shortly after their breakup, Baker realizes she’s pregnant. She initially seeks out an abortion but gets scared and doesn’t follow through. Her mother sends her to a maternity home to have the baby, where she bonds with a roommate whose partner is being shipped off to Vietnam and becomes fixated on past resident Kitty, whose unsent letter asking for help she finds under her bed. During Baker’s final trimester, she races to unravel the mystery of what happened to Kitty and grapples with whether to give her baby up for adoption. Some readers might be frustrated by the cliffhanger ending, but Schatz convincingly evokes the confusion and conflicting emotions of an unplanned pregnancy at a time when abortion was outlawed across the U.S. This resonates. Agent: Jesseca Salky, Salky Literary Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

A 60-something writer revisits her stormy adolescence and painful family secrets in the devastating latest from Hjorth (If Only). Prompted by a chance run-in with a distraught teenage girl and her parents during a symphony concert, the unnamed narrator retires to her cabin in the country and reflects on her time as a 16-year-old student in 1975 Oslo. The oldest of four, she was the only one of her siblings subjected to her mother’s overwhelming and seemingly baseless anxiety. While out with her close girlfriends Unni and Helle, she met a boy named Finn Lykke, and the two began a fumbling adolescent romance. As the narrator reflects on the episode, she remembers sensing an inexplicable dark undercurrent to the excitement of partying and young love. After a failed attempt at sex with Finn, she fictionalized the episode in her diary, portraying it as one of passionate lovemaking. Her mother read the diary and confronted her, and their stand-off revealed deep fault lines within the family that remained a mystery to the narrator until years later, when a traumatic memory came to her “like electric shocks through my brain, lightning-clear.” Hjorth writes vividly of the narrator’s teenage confusion and pain, and her lifelong search for comfort. This swells with emotion. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

In Martin’s well-observed but listless third outing (after the story collection Cool for America), a group of loosely connected 30-somethings float through the Covid-19 era. Aaron, a writer, falls for a man he meets in rehab but stays with his girlfriend, Cassandra, a teacher at a Boston prep school, who views picking him up at the recovery facility as the latest episode of “Aaron’s career-defining, cringe comedy franchise,” in which she plays the “exasperated sidekick.” Cassandra’s ex-boyfriend Malcolm is, like Aaron, a writer and a “charming depressive with a drinking problem.” Malcolm, who lives in New York City with his partner, Violet, a doctor, commutes to teach at Boston University. The final member of the friend group is Antonia, a literary scholar who owes her “moderately productive academic career” to “weed plus Adderall divided (?) by Lexapro.” The narrative flits from one character to the next as they cope with cheating partners, endure lockdown, and question their professional, romantic, and creative choices. Ambivalence and apathy reign; the only characters passionate about anything are satirically drawn supporting players, such as an insufferable experimental musician who has a fling with Antonia. Though stacked with witty observations, this novel, much like its cast, lacks direction. Agent: Amelia Atlas, CAA. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historical fiction author Quinn (The Alice Network) turns her hand to magical realism in this charming tale about the joy of reading and the necessity of public libraries. Alix Watson, 26, struggles to make ends meet in Boston, with only $36.82 to her name and a revolving door of low-paying jobs. Finding refuge at the Boston Public Library, she stumbles across a magic portal to a place where the library’s patrons live inside a book of their choosing. There are rules: the book must be in the public domain, Alix cannot become a named character in the narrative, and the course of the story cannot be changed. Alix chooses Around the World in Eighty Days, but before she enters the book, the library comes under attack from a mysterious force. She and the librarian set out to rescue patrons trapped in other books and rehouse them in paintings, where they cannot be so easily found. The plot becomes a bit unwieldy, but underdog Alix keeps the reader invested with her boisterousness and determination. Bookworms will be enchanted. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink