C Pam Zhang’s sentences are visceral and heated. She writes about food and bodies with frenzied truthfulness. There is nothing pretty in Zhang’s second novel, but there is outrageous beauty.
Readers will savor this shrewdly trenchant take on the higher-ed experience.
If you’re going to narrate your novel from the point of view of a poet, you must be able to think like one, and this is where Do You Remember Being Born? achieves its greatest success.
Brendan Basham binds together myth and history in Swim Home to the Vanished, drawing inspiration from the Diné creation tale as well as what is known as the Long Walk—the U.S. government’s forced removal of the Navajo people from their ancestral lands.
In The Unsettled’s short but perfectly paced chapters, Toussaint, Ava and Dutchess tell of not only their disappointment and despair but also their dreams, crafting a heartbreaking tale about Reagan’s America that deftly weaves the past and present into the possibility of a bright, if still-unfolding, future.
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma writes beautifully about the stars and the people who watch them in her second novel, Digging Stars.
In Raul Palma’s brilliantly constructed nightmare, the prose is as consistently fresh and inventive as the devil is inescapable.
The Caretaker is an unforgettable novel of class, power, war, family, yearning and betrayal. Don’t miss it.
Even as it probes the author’s own family legacy, Undiscovered reminds readers of the importance of confronting the white-savior myths that form the basis of so much of what we call “history.”
Bryan Washington shows us characters at their most vulnerable, using food culture to explore conflict, desire, pleasure and passion.
Unexpected humor percolates through the matter-of-fact voice of Loved and Missed’s engaging narrator and main character, Ruth, a 50-something schoolteacher raising her granddaughter, Lily.
Fitness trackers, toddler tantrums, suburban disputes and even Facebook’s algorithms are just some of the many modern-day experiences that Nathan Hill deftly and entertainingly tackles in Wellness.
Anne Enright’s exquisite prose and sympathy toward her characters make The Wren, the Wren a rewarding exploration of how the glories of life are counterbalanced by complications.
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