Dispatches from the District CommitteeVladimir Sorokin, trans. from the Russian by Max Lawton. Dalkey Archive, $18.95 trade paper (180p) ISBN 978-1-62897-517-8
Many of the stories in this explosive and taboo-busting collection from Sorokin (Blue Lard) are set against the backdrop of Soviet-era repression. The tales are populated by corrupt and deranged authority figures who cause rampant disorder and commit lurid violence. In “A Hearing of the Fac... Continue reading »
The Mystery of the Crooked ManTom Spencer. Pushkin Vertigo, $18.95 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-80533-512-2
Spencer, a pseudonym for journalist Tom Perrin (The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction), serves up an affectionate homage to Agatha Christie that seamlessly blends satire and fair-play mystery. Crotchety archivist Agatha Dorn is an expert on Gladden Green, author of a bestselling mystery seri... Continue reading »
The Buffalo Hunter HunterStephen Graham Jones. Saga, $29.99 (448p) ISBN 978-1-66807-508-1
Bestseller Jones (I Was a Teenage Slasher) astonishes in this ingenious, weird western reimagining of the vampire tale. In a frame narrative set in 2012, academic Etsy Beaucarne learns of the discovery of a 1912 manuscript hidden in the wall of a Montana parsonage, written by her great-grea... Continue reading »
Dream On, Ramona RileyAshley Herring Blake. Berkley, $19 trade paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-593-81599-1
Blake (Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date) enchants with this sapphic second-chance romance. At 13, Ramona Riley and Dylan Monroe had an adorable meet cute that ended with a life-altering kiss. Eighteen years later, the two are unexpectedly reacquainted in Clover Lake, N.H. Waitress Ramona feels trapp... Continue reading »
Tongues, Vol. IAnders Nilsen. Pantheon, $35 (368p) ISBN 978-1-52474-720-6
Ignatz winner Nilsen (Big Questions) brings an ambitious postcolonialist perspective to the myth of Prometheus, projecting ancient strife among deities into present-day conflict in Central Asia. The plot centers on Astrid, a 13-year-old East African girl dragging a suitcase across the deser... Continue reading »
Shadow ReaderImtiaz Dharker. Bloodaxe, $18.95 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-78037-709-4
Dharker (Luck Is the Hook) combines her poetry and drawings to deliver an exquisite and complex vision of exile, immigration, and adopted homelands. The poems go beyond simple ekphrasis to consider the power dynamics of language and text; in one entry responding to a 19th-century sketch by ... Continue reading »
The Long March HomeMarcus 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 »
Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the NazisSuzanne Cope. Dutton, $32 (480p) ISBN 978-0-593-47600-0
Journalist Cope (Power Hungry) spins a thrilling saga of four young women of the Italian resistance. In interweaving vignettes, she traces how each woman came to join antifascist efforts—some under Mussolini’s regime, others not until the 1943 Nazi occupation, but all because they grew to f... Continue reading »
Two Chefs in the Garden: Over 150 Garden-inspired Vegetarian RecipesLynn Crawford and Lora Kirk. Penguin Canada, $35 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7352-4562-4
Crawford and Kirk, former co-owners of Toronto’s Ruby Watchco, team up to bring farm-to-table cuisine to family meals in their appealing debut. Inspired by seasonal produce from their personal gardens and the desire to encourage folks to eat more vegetables, they provide an innovative cornucopia of ... Continue reading »
Godstruck: Seven Women’s Unexpected Journeys to Religious ConversionKelsey Osgood. Viking, $30 (368p) ISBN 978-0-593-83467-1
In this illuminating account, memoirist Osgood (How to Disappear Completely) interweaves her own story with those of six other women who found religion in a rapidly secularizing society. All millennials currently in their 30s, Osgood’s subjects converted to faiths ranging from Mormonism to ... Continue reading »
Raised by GhostsBriana Loewinsohn. Fantagraphics, $18.99 paper (224p) ISBN 979-8-8750-0050-8
Decades-old notes—jotted on age-spotted, torn scraps of lined notebook paper—stitch together a wistful search for connection and acceptance in this aching semi-autobiographical comic by Loewinsohn (Ephemera). Growing up in 1990s El Cerrito, Calif., middle school–aged Loewinsohn is “estrange... Continue reading »
PREVIOUS GENRE
