Zahid Rafiq peers into the inner lives of 11 people living in Kashmir in his debut short story collection, The World With Its Mouth Open.
Though entertaining in the vein of Bridget Jones’s Diary, I Made It Out of Clay is darker and more complex, following a Jewish woman grieving the loss of her father who creates a golem when she can’t secure a date for her sister’s wedding.
Tom Newlands’ Only Here, Only Now is a winning coming-of-age story distinguished by Newlands’ sympathy for his characters, among them Scottish teen Cora, her wheelchair-using mother, and her mother’s shifty but kind boyfriend.
For the Lahiris, the family at the heart of Nayantara Roy’s deliciously long The Magnificent Ruins, white-hot hate, resentment and violence mingle with love, loyalty and moments of tenderness.
Bruna Dantas Lobato’s debut, Blue Light Hours, is an intimate meditation on home, homesickness and the many tiny ways of attempting to bridge an impossible distance.
Libby Lost and Found takes the idea that books shape our reality and runs with it, in a madcap, implausible and inventive roller coaster ride about an author and her 11-year-old fan.
Told in a poetic voice, Tammy Armstrong’s debut novel, Pearly Everlasting, imagines the life of a girl and a bear raised as brother and sister in a cabin set deep in the pines.
In Sig Burwash’s debut graphic novel, unassuming Drew transforms into the fiery Vera Bushwack, resplendent in assless chaps, with the rev of a chain saw. Vera Bushwack is sure to be a balm for queer readers.
Julie Heffernan’s first graphic novel, Babe in the Woods, is a mesmeric work of autofiction loosely retelling how she became an artist while following a hike in the Appalachian Mountains with her infant child.
Eric Chacour’s debut is an emotional family story, a tumultuous queer romance and a richly textured portrait of ’80s and ’90s Cairo—with an intriguing narrative twist.
Serpell’s hundred-year saga of three families and their intertwined fortunes is as unique as it is ambitious.
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