All That Life Can Afford (2025) Emily Everett "All That Life Can Afford is equal parts escapist romp and desperate hustle - a book about class, family, friendship, and double-edged dreams. Emily Everett's sharp, lyrical prose grips you from the start."
Liquid (2025) Mariam Rahmani "I love this book. After hilariously tearing through the faux-profundity of so many of our cultural fixations-from Los Angeles, to academia, to rom-coms-the novel moves to Tehran, and slowly morphs into a touching examination of vulnerability, dislocation, grief, and longing. Underneath the posturing and razor-sharp wit, we find the yearning heart and hard-won intelligence of a young woman who has found herself adrift. I couldn't stop thinking about Liquid-sexy, sly, daring, and utterly brilliant. Mariam Rahmani is the most exciting new writer I've read in ages."
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (2024) Joseph Earl Thomas "Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer of incredible gifts. The voice here is so distinctive, galloping with intelligence, poetry, honesty, and humor. Bless You Otis Spunkmeyer spun me around, like many of my favorite novels, it reads like direct communication from the soul."
The Great Divide (2024) Cristina Henríquez "The Great Divide feels both sweeping - power and science, history and empire - and incredibly precise in its rendering of the human soul. Henrequez writes gorgeously, creating indelible characters whom you'll never want to leave."
Witness (2023) Jamel Brinkley "Jamel Brinkley is one of the best story writers we have. Witness is a book of psychological acuity, of graceful sentences, of devastation and heart. Read everything this man writes, and know the world anew."
I Will Greet the Sun Again (2023) Khashayar J Khabushani "A moving debut, teeming with desire and light, and quietly devastating. Khashayar J. Khabushani's voice keens and surprises, and at the center of the book we find K, tenderhearted, spirit glowing like a beacon."
Before All the World (2022) Moriel Rothman-Zecher "Before All the World startles and swirls, and makes fresh the experience of language itself. It has it all: a gripping story, an original structure, and a tender, ghostly glow."
The Dove in the Belly (2022) Jim Grimsley "Dove in the Belly is Jim Grimsley at his finest. A beautiful book, which somehow captures all the complexity and confusion of first love and grief-sorrow and courage-with the simplicity, clarity, and sincerity of a masterful writer."
Ruin (2022) Cara Hoffman "Tough, scarred, feral and sexy. The book and the characters refuse to conform and like in all good outlaw literature [Hoffman] takes sharp aim at the contemporary culture's willingness to do so."
Velorio (2022) Xavier Navarro Aquino "Velorio recognizes that neither utopia nor dystopia are finite states, that they exist alongside and even inside one another, like the hurricane and the eye, the empire and the island. Xavier Navarro Aquino takes us on a riveting, harrowing journey through the aftermath, where the natural violence of the storm is compounded by disaster capitalists; the dead haunt the living; impossible decisions are made and seemingly impossible futures are born."
All Day Is a Long Time (2022) David Sanchez "This book has it all, not only does the harrowing story grip you from the start, but the voice is so insightful, so poetic, so absolutely alive to the world, that you won't be able to put it down. David Sanchez is a wonder, an important, essential new voice."
Alec (2021) William di Canzio "Maurice and Alec are one of literature's iconic couples. It's been more than a century since Forster first let these lovers into the world, and what a treat to return to them now, in di Canzio's moving homage, where we find our boys still offering valuable lessons, still tender and troubled and courageous enough to love."
All the Water I've Seen Is Running (2021) Elias Rodriques "This novel; this portrayal of American youth--tender, and tough, and searching; this voice, which absorbs and transforms tragedy into elegy; this is one I've been waiting for. All the Water I've Seen Is Running is a mesmerizing look at friendship and loss, and Elias Rodriques is a devastating wonder."
The Care of Strangers (2020) Ellen Michaelson "The book is incredibly touching in all senses of the word--in fact, it is about touching--about the way we handle and care for one another. . . . The portrait overall is quite moving. . . ."
Shelter in Place (2020) David Leavitt "I've long been a fan of David Leavitt's work, for its range, its depth, its smarts and its humour. He is a phenomenal and prescient writer."
Bestiary (2020) K-Ming Chang "K-Ming Chang is ferociously talented, one of my favorite new writers. She understands the language of desire and secrecy. Here is a book so wise; so gripping; so mythical and dangerous; so infused with surreal beauty, it burns to be read, and read again."
Luster (2020) Raven Leilani "Hilarious, honest, bursting with desire and sharp insight, Luster is absolutely captivating. I didn’t so much read it, as gulp it down. There’s so much to learn here, so much to admire. Leilani is an irreverent, impeccable stylist - a voice we need right now."
It Is Wood, It Is Stone (2020) Gabriella Burnham "It Is Wood, It Is Stone is a fever dream of a book; absolutely captivating and wonderfully destabilizing. I could not put it down. It is about uprootedness, class and color, and sex. It is about women on the verge—of collapse, of escape, of self-knowledge—failing and flailing and propping one another up. It is a book about the limits of propriety and the boundlessness of grace. Burnham is a writer of such remarkable insight, it’s impossible to believe this is her debut."
Everyone Knows How Much I Love You (2020) Kyle McCarthy "Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is masterly, mendacious, and a total thrill ride. I was hooked instantly, laughing alongside Rose, alternately cheering and chastising her entanglements and escalations. McCarthy is an edgy writer and the prose is all at once darkly comic, sexy, and razor-sharp in its psychological insights. Not since a certain Mr. Ripley have I been so consumed in another's covetous desires."
Leading Men (2019) Christopher Castellani "Leading Men stirs up the kind of beautiful trouble we admire in the work of Tennessee Williams. A clever, allusive, multi-layered novel filled with wit, insight, and heart. I loved it."
99 Nights in Logar (2019) Jamil Jan Kochai "99 Nights in Logar is a revelation, in every sense of the word. An intimate look at childhood, at an Afghan province, at people and places as they deserve to be known, in all their complications. This is a novel that mourns all that has been lost, and chases after what might still be recovered. A romp, a poem, a prayer, a song of childhood—like youth itself, the writing is all energy, adventure, and possibility. Jamil Kochai is an astoundingly talented writer, listen up."
Stray City (2018) Chelsey Johnson "Stray City has it all. As funny as it is moving; as joyful, as radically communal, as it is lonesome . . . Honestly, one of the most absorbing, finely-tuned books I’ve had the pleasure of falling down into. Chelsey Johnson is a wonder."
