
Daphne Kalotay. Triquarterly, $20 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-0-8101-4608-2
In Kalotay’s luminous collection (after the novel Blue Hours), characters seek out sources of hope while dealing with trauma and upheaval. “Relativity” follows Robert, a Boston social worker assigned to help Holocaust survivors claim restitution from the German government, among them a 74-y... Continue reading »

Molly Lynch. Catapult, $27 (288p) ISBN 978-1-64622-142-4
Mothers disappear from their homes across the world in Lynch’s spectacular debut. Writing professor Ada Berger, 39, lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., with her husband, Danny, and six-year-old son, Gilles. Ada’s most comfortable in remote, unspoiled places and is in a perpetual state of fear that climate ch... Continue reading »

Joan Tierney. Neon Hemlock, $13.99 trade paper (98p) ISBN 978-1-952086-57-1
The discovery and death of a serial killer brings the unspoken dramas of an outside-of-the-law small town into focus in this intricate but efficient horror novella from Tierney (Letters from the End of the World). In the near future, Bina Morton works for an autoline, a newfangled alternati... Continue reading »

Kate Bromley. Graydon House, $18.99 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-5258-0475-5
Bromley (Here for the Drama) doesn’t miss a beat with this international enemies-to-lovers contemporary. Violet Luciano, 29, gets a step closer to the professional dreams that she put on hold for her ex-boyfriend when she wins the opportunity to intern with a fashion designer in Rome for a ... Continue reading »

Benji Nate. Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-77046-663-0
This technicolor tour de farce from Nate (Hell Phone) reads like the TV show Girls drawn by Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley. The narrative circles around a group of young housemates and the mundane wackiness of their everyday lives. There are the wannabe influencer whose u... Continue reading »

Christopher Brean Murray. Milkweed, $16 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-63955-026-5
In this playful and haunting debut, Murray turns his gaze toward the ordinariness and expansiveness of human life. Murray’s poems defy convention, propelling down the page with generous narrative energy, spinning stories about characters—“Winston,” “Knut,” and “Segovia”—with the detail-oriented eye ... Continue reading »

Marcus Brotherton and Tosca Lee. Revell, $26.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-8007-4275-1
In this tour de force from Brotherton (A Bright and Blinding Sun) and Lee (A Single Light), four friends’ lives change irrevocably when America becomes embroiled in WWII. In 1930s Mobile, Ala., preacher’s son Jimmy Propfield shares an idyllic upbringing with childhood sweetheart Cl... Continue reading »

Lorissa Rinehart. St. Martin’s, $32 (400p) ISBN 978-1-250-27657-5
“Dickey Chapelle should be a household name,” writes historian and cultural critic Rinehart in her entertaining debut, a biography of the first American female journalist to be killed in combat. Born Georgette Louise Meyer in 1918, Chapelle went from a job promoting a Miami air show to working for a... Continue reading »

Martha Holmberg. Artisan, $30 (248p) ISBN 978-1-64829-037-4
James Beard Award winner Holmberg (Modern Sauces) informs and delights in this paean to the tomato, offering up more than 100 recipes ranging from variations on classics like caprese salad and tomato soup to more advanced dishes, including “time-consuming-but-worth-it” ratatouille. In a con... Continue reading »

Tasha Jun. Tyndale Momentum, $22.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-496-45957-2
“I’ve always been caught between worlds... struggling to find a firm place to land,” writes Jun of negotiating a biracial identity in this stirring debut. The daughter of a Korean mother and a white father, Jun recalls how, as a kid, she’d think of purging the fridge of kimchi before her friends cam... Continue reading »

Kazumi Yumoto, trans. from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano, illus. by Komako Sakai. Gecko, $19.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-877467-70-7
When Bear’s friend, a little bird, dies suddenly, Bear is bereft. He makes a berry-stained, flower-lined box and tucks the bird inside, where “his tiny black beak gleamed like onyx.” Bear’s carrying the box with him soon disturbs the other animals: “It may be hard,” they say, “but you’ll have to for... Continue reading »

