Nuanced, hopeful and insightful, Ava Robinson’s Definitely Better Now is an endearing portrayal of a young woman redefining herself after one year of sobriety.
Catherine Airey excavates the intertwining stories of three generations of Irish American women in Confessions, a firecracker of a debut novel that never gives up any slack.
Karissa Chen’s Homeseeking is both a love story and a family story, capturing the ever-present yearning for “people, people who shared the same ghosts as you, of folks long gone, places long disappeared.”
In addition to whiplash-inducing twists, Kate Fagan’s The Three Lives of Cate Kay also packs an emotional punch, and readers will find that Cate’s story is as relatable as it is riveting.
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.
With the rev of a chain saw, unassuming Drew transforms into the fiery Vera Bushwack in this hilarious, heartbreaking and intimate graphic debut. Vera Bushwack is sure to be a balm for queer readers.
Julie Heffernan’s first graphic novel, Babe in the Woods, is a stunning, mesmeric work of autofiction loosely retelling how she became an artist while following a hike in the Appalachian Mountains with her infant child.
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