Hochhauser’s splendid debut retells the “Cinderella” story from the stepmother’s perspective. Twice-widowed Lady Etheldreda Tremaine Bramley has a title and a manor house but virtually no money. Her daughters Mathilde and Rosamund face bleak futures if they cannot marry well, so Etheldreda sells some of her possessions and, with her daughters’ help, takes on household chores to keep up appearances. Meanwhile her shy and sanctimonious stepdaughter, Elin, who has never taken to her father’s second wife, stays aloof. When the queen hosts a ball for her only son, Etheldreda asks the three girls to sew themselves suitable gowns and earn extra money for their adornments, such as feathers. Elin, who neither sews nor sells the household ashes for lye-making as requested, stays home until the fateful night, when she borrows a dress, makes a late appearance, outshines her stepsisters, and wins a proposal from the prince. Though royal connections will be advantageous, Etheldreda grows alarmed by the haste and secrecy of the prince’s wedding plans, the reason for which she uncovers with the help of a trusted court adviser. Hochhauser grounds her tale with a convincing depiction of the medieval setting and offers a stirring exploration of maternal instinct and female strength. It’s a winner. Agent: Alyssa Reuben, WME. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

A family struggles to survive in Appalachian mining country in the intense latest from Steele (Greasewood Creek). In the 1960s, 16-year-old June Branham is pregnant and unsure which of two boys is the father. She’s in love with one, Ellis Akers, but the other raped her, and she doesn’t know where to turn. Ellis and her brother, Tom, have gone to fight in Vietnam, and her stepfather, Isom, has long held a hateful grudge against Ellis’s mixed-race family, out of both racial prejudice and resentment over the affair June’s mother, Bethel, had with Ellis’s father. After June gives birth to her daughter, Grace, Isom kidnaps the baby and hides her, prompting June to make a series of life-altering decisions that are both courageous and dangerous. Along the way, Steele conjures a stark sense of place, depicting the strip-mined landscape, where heavy rains cause the overworked hills to collapse and floods swallow up homes and people, as forlorn at best and malevolent at worst. Though the ending feels rushed, Steele mostly sustains the epic proportions of her ravishing story. This is worth a look. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

The propulsive debut novel from Madden, author of the memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, explores the aftermath of child sexual abuse. In summer 2013, former reality TV star Linzie King publishes a memoir, written by a ghostwriter, detailing how Calvin Boyer, the 25-year-old son of her school bus driver, molested her when she was 13. Linzie’s book contains stories of Calvin’s other victims—including Birdie Chang, whom he abused at 17 when Birdie was nine. With the book attracting media scrutiny, Birdie leaves the Brooklyn apartment she shares with her girlfriend, Trace, for a digital detox on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. On the ferry to Whidbey, she meets an enigmatic man who presses her to explain her trip. She tells him about Calvin, and he offers to kill him. Meanwhile, on tour for her book, Linzie grapples with how her ghostwriter, Yale, spun her trauma into a marketable tale by flattening Calvin into a monster and portraying Linzie as purely resilient. The truth, which Madden slowly untangles, is more complicated. The novel takes a turn when Calvin’s mother, Mary-Beth, who viciously defended him over the course of multiple criminal trials, learns he has been murdered. As the mystery unfolds, each woman reckons with the void left by Calvin, culminating in a dynamic, twist-filled third act. Fueled by biting observations and empathetic characterizations, Madden’s novel reveals how the nuances of sexual trauma are often dismissed in favor of commodified narratives that flatten both victims and abusers, perpetuating a system that fails to protect survivors. This is unforgettable. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/09/2026 | Details & Permalink

The bucolic, self-sequestered life of a mother and daughter is unceremoniously interrupted by a curious stranger in Heller’s lush latest (after Burn). Hayley, a celebrated professor and translator of Chinese poetry, retreats from public life to rural Vermont, where she homeschools her bookish seven-year-old, Frith, in their off-the-grid cabin. Haley chose the rustic setting to escape the burdens of her career and the pain of intimate relationships, and Frith, who narrates, is comfortable with the pastoral arrangement. Things change with an unexpected visit from Rosie Lattimore, a local weaver, who reintroduces Hayley and Frith to the pleasures of social interactions, the notion of fun, and the bounties of true friendship. The unhurried narrative is flush with themes of motherhood, family, the healing properties of poetry, and the kindness of strangers, and periodically flashes forward to Frith as an adult recalling her youth and the way Rosie opened new worlds to her and Hayley. Heller brings the setting to life with lyrical prose (winter icicles “extended their glass fingers,” and pop-top cans of beer issue “sharp sighs”), and delivers an emotionally charged, heart-wrenching conclusion. Readers are in for a treat. Agent: David Halpern, David Halpern Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Kelly and Thorne follow up Starlets with another tale of intrigue and subterfuge, this one set in 1883. Thirteen years ago, Alice Archer’s father was duped into an investment opportunity that wiped out his finances and left the family destitute. To exact revenge on the five scions of New York City’s upper crust responsible for his ruin, Alice, now 28, hatches a clever plan to upend their lives by getting them to invest in phony emerald mines. Posing as Grand Duchess Marie Charlotte Gabriella of Württemberg, she engages coconspirator Ward McAllister to introduce her to Manhattan society. She also recruits a German woman named Dagmar to be her cook and a sweet lady named Béatrice to serve as her maid. By happenstance, Alice meets Coraline O’Malley, aka “Cora Mack,” an accomplished pickpocket and crew member of a traveling magic act. In Pygmalion fashion, Alice transforms Cora Mack from a street-smart country girl into a refined lady who will play her cousin in the scheme and snare one of the younger scions. Readers will trip on a few anachronisms—Victorians didn’t tell each other to “stay in your lane”—but the authors pack the suspenseful plot with entertaining twists. There’s plenty to enjoy in this fast-paced romp. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Brown’s compassionate debut delves with great insight into the lives and minds of the disabled residents of an adult day care center in Southern California. Each chapter tells a client or staff member’s story, and together they reveal a hidden world of the disenfranchised. Walter, autistic and nonspeaking, introduces readers to the ironically named facility, Upward Bound. His mother’s support and schooling enabled him to communicate with a letter board and attend college, but his dream of becoming a novelist faded after his father’s death and his mother’s return to work, leaving him without the necessary support (“Autism on my end of the spectrum is like ADHD times a thousand,” he explains). Jorge, his friend for 20 years who is also nonspeaking, had less nurture growing up, but he’s formed a special bond with Carlos, a staffer who hid a felonious past in order to get the gig, and who deeply empathizes with the clients (“Twenty-eight disabled adults whose lives were being spent in shabby boredom represented to Carlos the wastage of twenty-eight glorious galaxies”). There’s also Tom, who is nonspeaking, has cerebral palsy, and uses a wheelchair. His movie-star good looks attract the attention of Ann, a college student hired as a lifeguard at the facility’s pool who is at first frightened by her charges, then comes to embrace them. The author, who is nonspeaking and autistic, captures the humanity of his characters, particularly through Walter, who explains, “The story of my people isn’t being told, or it’s being told wrong. No neurotypical person can tell this story.” This captivating work illuminates a world too often ignored. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

The vibrant debut by Irish writer O’Hare follows three women bound by their lifelong friendship and a recent tragedy. Former schoolmates Maggie, Harley, and Róise, each 29, are mourning the death of their friend and housemate Lydia in a car crash one year earlier. They’re also each dealing with their own issues while continuing to live together, leaving Lydia’s room as a shrine. Maggie, a lesbian, struggles to move on from another friend who led her on for a year. Harley, who is bisexual and recovering from an abortion, repeatedly hits on their landlord, Frankie, who sells her the cocaine to which she is becoming addicted. Róise, meanwhile, harbors a mix of guilt and rage, given that she never forgave Lydia for causing her breakup with a toxic ex. As each friend celebrates her 30th birthday and new scandals roil their social circle, they wonder if they’ve outgrown each other and the house they shared with Lydia. O’Hare keeps the laugh track running on the trio’s bittersweet “sitcom” arrangement, as when Maggie vents about her love life: “Everyone’s one lesbian friend turns out to be either some weird lass with gills and a passion for taxidermy, or someone I’ve already gone out with. Or both.” This is one to cherish. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

A literature scholar and novelist reflects on the loves of his life in the elegant latest from Plante (the Francoeur Trilogy). As a young man in 1960s Boston, the unnamed narrator meets William, a “beautiful” blue-eyed man who has just returned home from an English university where he studied the classics. The pair embark on a torrid affair, which they keep secret due to the upper-crust William’s apprehension. As their dalliances grow infrequent, William introduces the narrator to an English poet named Cecil, with whom the narrator falls in love and follows to London. There, Cecil introduces the narrator to the Bloomsbury circle, including an elderly E.M. Forster. The group dazzles the narrator, but their engagements occupy too much of Cecil’s attention for the narrator’s relationship with him to go any further. The narrator carries memories of his love for William and Cecil as the decades pass. He finds stability in his professional life as don at Kings College, even as he weathers passionate heights and crestfallen disappointments with subsequent lovers. In his account, he manages to suffuse immense heart and soul into every simmering encounter. Plante’s novel beautifully explores unquenchable and bittersweet queer desire, and a uniquely felt “passion for a world that was a world of men.” It’s a gem. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

An obstinate artist in a remote corner of New Mexico falls for a mild-mannered widow in Foley’s evocative debut, which is based loosely on the life of painter Agnes Martin. It begins in 1971, after 60-something Agatha Smithson has spent the past two years living and working in an adobe house she built on rented land at Mesa Portales. One day, she comes upon her recently widowed landlord, Alice Johnson, who’s of a similar age, chasing after some chickens near her home, a short drive from the mesa. Agatha helps corral them, and Alice invites her in. Alice doesn’t remember that her late husband leased the land to Agatha, but she feels comfortable around the artist and invites her to visit her most sacred site, the backyard grave of her daughter, Lorna, who, according to Alice, was killed by an abusive lover. Agatha and Alice soon begin a secret love affair, and Alice’s son, Frank Jr., becomes suspicious of their bond. When Alice develops dementia, Agatha invites her to move in at Mesa Portales, but she doesn’t want to leave Lorna’s grave. Meanwhile Frank Jr. schemes to put Alice in assisted living and deems Agatha’s lease invalid. Undeterred, Agatha plots a drastic action, until a startling reversal changes her plans. Many of the late plot developments strain credulity, but Foley crafts a colorful portrait of a headstrong artist. For readers intrigued by the lives of bohemian women, this is worth a look. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Goncourt Prize winner Le Tellier (The Anomaly) blends autobiography, biography, and fiction in this intriguing story of a French Resistance fighter. In March 2020, Le Tellier retreats from Paris for the small Provencal town of La Paillette, where he recently bought a house with the intention to “invent some roots for myself.” After noticing the name André Chaix carved into the facade, he finds the same name, with the dates 1924–1944, on a war monument in the village square. From there, the narrative comprises Le Tellier’s reconstruction of André’s brief life. With the help of a small box of André’s belongings, given to him by local historians, the author pieces together what André might have been like. The portrait that emerges includes André’s sweet love letters to his fiancée, Simone Reynier, and historical data concerning the Resistance group he joined. Le Tellier also speculates about films André and Simone might have seen, and muses about the insidious political collaboration with the Nazis that stained daily life in that part of Vichy France. Le Tellier crafts a lifelike world around his central character, complete with striking photographs of André with his brother and with Simone, alongside scans of André’s ID card and letters. It’s an arresting testament to courage and humanity in the face of unspeakable evil. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink