Emily St. John Mandel was born in British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of the novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet - all of which were Indie Next picks. She is a staff writer for The Millions, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and Venice Noir. She lives in New York City with her husband.
Gone to the Wolves (2023) John Wray "Riveting and electric. Wray's brilliant new novel is both a page-turner and an elegant meditation on how far we'd go for our allegiances."
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance (2022) Alison Espach "Espach is an immensely talented writer, and her prose unfolds with a devastating lightness of touch. This novel is deeply moving, always excellent, and often unexpectedly funny."
The Verifiers (2022) (Claudia Lin, book 1) Jane Pek "This book is exhilaratingly well-written. I loved it so much that I didn't want it to end."
The Perfume Thief (2021) Timothy Schaffert "This is a superb novel, enchanting and brutal in equal measure. This is historical fiction at its finest, vivid and beautifully rendered; and yet in their longing for a lost world, Schaffert's characters feel entirely contemporary to our present moment."
Hummingbird Salamander (2021) Jeff VanderMeer "Hummingbird Salamander is harrowing, gripping, and profound. It's both a thriller and a requiem for a disappearing world. I expect this novel will haunt me for a long time."
Migrations (2020) Charlotte McConaghy "Migrations is as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read. This is an extraordinary novel by a wildly talented writer."
The New Wilderness (2020) Diane Cook "The New Wilderness is a virtuosic debut, brutal and beautiful in equal measure."
The Second Sleep (2019) Robert Harris "In the tradition of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Harris presents an extraordinary and terrifyingly plausible vision of a post-technological future, a novel that’s at once an adventure story and a meditation on truth and faith. You’ll never look at your iPhone in quite the same way again."
The Need (2019) Helen Phillips "The Need is a profound meditation on the nature of reality, a fearless examination of parenthood, and also somehow a thriller. This is an extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers."
The Last (2019) Hanna Jameson "A brilliantly executed novel... the questions Jameson poses -- who will be with you at the end of the world, and what kind of person will you be? -- are as haunting as the plot itself. This is a chilling and extraordinary book."
The Dreamers (2019) Karen Thompson Walker "The Dreamers is harrowing, riveting, profoundly moving, and beautifully written. In a word, this book is stunning."
The Wall (2018) John Lanchester "In The Wall, John Lanchester takes our current political climate to its terrible and logical extreme. A harrowing, brilliant, and troublingly plausible vision of the future."
Florida (2018) Lauren Groff "Florida is a magnificent collection, executed with tremendous depth and precision, unsettling in the best possible way. Lauren Groff is a virtuoso."
84 K (2018) Claire North "AN EERILY PLAUSIBLE DYSTOPIAN MASTERPIECE."
I Still Dream (2018) J P Smythe "A haunting meditation on the implications of AI, on intelligence itself, and on what it means to live and die in the age of technology. I Still Dream is a must-read for fans of David Mitchell, for anyone who's ever used a smartphone, and for anyone who appreciates riveting plots and beautiful prose."
The City Where We Once Lived (2018) Eric Barnes "Barnes's new novel is a rare and truly original work: a hard-edged fable, tender and unflinching, in which a man's descent and renewal is mirrored by his city. An eerie, beautifully written, and profoundly humane book."
The Afterlives (2018) Thomas Pierce "A bracingly intelligent, beautifully rendered meditation on ghosts, technology, marriage, and the afterlife. This is a remarkable novel."
The End We Start From (2017) Megan Hunter "A beautifully spare, haunting meditation on the persistence of life after catastrophe. I loved it."
Void Star (2017) Zachary Mason "Void Star is an extraordinary novel. The hallucinatory beauty of the prose is matched only by the book’s velocity and mystery, and the story - of mortality, memory - and what it means to be human - holds all the force and power of mythology."
If We Were Villains (2017) M L Rio "This is a rare and extraordinary novel: a vivid rendering of the closed world of a conservatory education, a tender and harrowing exploration of friendship, and a genuinely breathtaking literary thriller."
American War (2017) Omar El Akkad "American War is an extraordinary novel. El Akkad's story of a family caught up in the collapse of an empire is as harrowing as it is brilliant, and has an air of terrible relevance in these partisan times."
