A Japanese American private school teacher gets caught in a firestorm of racial politics in Sasaki’s timely if muddled debut. Aki Hayashi-Brown teaches history at the prestigious Wesley Friends School in Washington, D.C., where her daughter, Meg, is a junior. When someone graffitis “Make Wesley White Again” on the arts building, Aki is dragooned into serving as interim director of a new DEI task force. Meg insists her mom find a way to punish suspected culprit Aaron Wakeman, son of the school’s biggest donor, but Aki feels torn between her fierce desire for justice and the instinct her parents instilled in her to cope with racism by “ignoring, denying, or deflecting.” Meg, on the other hand, is outspoken in her accusations against Aaron, and after she’s suspended for slapping him, the pressures on Aki mount. Some of the satire feels a bit convoluted—Aki is understandably conflicted, but it’s sometimes hard to tell whether Sasaki means to skewer the cloistered world of private schools or the cultural forces that make her characters believe such institutions are a necessary evil. Despite its occasional frustrations, this leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Melissa Danaczko, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ghosh debuts with a satisfying speculative collection about grief and desire. In “Desiccation,” an Indian American teen named Meghna falls for the only other Indian girl on her figure skating team, whom she suspects of being a vampire. “The Fig Tree” follows a married woman who returns from the U.S. to her birthplace of Kolkata to scatter her mother’s ashes. There, she glimpses a ghostly woman and wonders if her mother has returned. In “Leaving Things,” wolves overrun a city and devour the women. Afterward, a lonely survivor shelters a wolf baby, unsure what will happen when it grows up. “Lemon Boy” and “Natalya” explore the consequences of revisiting past relationships through the stories of protagonists confronted by the ghosts of their ex-lovers. Some of the shorter entries feel underdeveloped, but for the most part, Ghosh sharply draws the contours of her invented worlds and evokes her characters’ insatiable desires with vibrant imagery (“The whole apartment had turned into a gaping mouth, the [candle] wax its saliva pooling on the dining table”). These stories effectively sustain a sense of the uncanny. Agent: Angeline Rodriguez, WME. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Espinoza (Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime) returns to fiction with the arresting story of an elderly wrestler’s last days. Ernesto Vega is visited while in hospice care by his son, Freddy; his gay grandson, Julian; the ghost of his wife, Elena; and a manifestation of his lucha libre persona, El Rey Coyote. Elena and El Rey Coyote press Ernesto to reexamine his life and his competing devotions to wrestling, his marriage, and his close childhood friend Julián Tamez. Meanwhile, Freddy, who once performed as El Rey Coyote Jr., agonizes over having to permanently shutter his father’s East Los Angeles gym, which never bounced back after the pandemic lockdowns, and Julian, an underpaid community college professor, chafes at being fetishized by other men for the color of his skin. The seamlessly interwoven story lines bring each character to vivid life, and Espinoza shines in the lucha libre scenes (“The crowd gasping, unmoving as they witnessed the flurry of leaps and jumps, the swirling colors and lights, these men doing such incredible things, things no mortal was ever expected to do”). This is a knockout. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the moving latest from Barr (Women on Fire), a Jewish woman survives the Warsaw ghetto to become a Hollywood legend. In 2005, 85-year-old Lena Browning, known for her mid-century femme fatale roles, is approached by young movie star Sienna Hayes, who wants to make a biopic of Lena’s life. She agrees to cooperate under the condition that the last segment of the film will be shot in real time with Lena playing herself. In a parallel narrative set in 1943, Lena, whose real name is Bina Blonski, lives in the ghetto with her husband, Jakub, and his brother, Aleksander. Once a celebrated actor and daughter of a prominent Jewish architect, Bina is now destitute and nearly starving, though that doesn’t stop her from joining Aleksander in his resistance activities. But when she uses her Aryan looks to charm and then assassinate the collaborator overseeing a ghetto sweatshop, the Nazis retaliate, sending Jakub to Treblinka. Bina suffers more loses and betrayals in the run-up to the ghetto’s dramatic uprising, which is memorably staged by Barr. The depictions of ghetto residents finding the strength to fight back are chillingly realistic, raising the novel’s emotional stakes to excruciating heights. Fans of WWII historical fiction won’t want to miss this. Agent: Stephanie Abou, Massie & McQuilkin. (May)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the propulsive if schematic latest from Watson (The Language of Kindness), three female doctors in present-day London find their friendship and their ethics tested when they’re confronted with a secret from their past. Olivia, the perfectionist, is a cardiothoracic surgeon, while Laura works as a doctor on a helicopter rescue team and Anjali is a general practitioner. When Olivia’s teenage daughter, Freya, attends a party with Laura’s son, Rudy, another boy named Joe Duggard falls down a flight of stairs and sustains brain damage. With Joe in a coma, the women try to guard their children’s futures. Laura’s position on the hospital’s ethics committee becomes particularly thorny, as she’s empowered to determine whether Joe will be kept on life support or the children will face involuntary manslaughter charges. The situation echoes a drug-fueled party during the women’s med school days, when a classmate was accidentally killed during a brawl and they fled the scene to avoid being implicated, and they argue now over who was at fault. Watson’s tendency to withhold key information can feel gimmicky, but she shines in her portrayal of medicine as an imperfect blend of art, science, and emotion. Fans of medical fiction will admire this. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the bighearted and introspective latest from Moniz (Big Familia), a 30-something Latinx bisexual man puts his life back together in Northern California after his first baby is stillborn and his marriage falls apart. Efren “Chino” Flores, a high school biology teacher, returns from Seattle to his roots in San Francisco to recover from his grief. The narrative spans several years, beginning with Chino renting a sublet, reconnecting with friends, finding new lovers, and getting sober. He then spends a year in a Sonoma County cabin. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he forms a pod in Oakland with Metal Matt, who takes him to a nude beach for a bracing dip in the bay; Metal Matt’s girlfriend; and a mixed-race couple who offer food and hugs and dish on their secret OnlyFans account. He also reflects on the sexual encounters he’s had with men and women since separating from his wife and tries to find a way to love again despite the longing he feels for her. Moniz’s thoughtful narrative demonstrates the reparative power of friendship, and how it can even transcend the bonds of love. Readers will be entranced. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

North concludes her Ithaca trilogy (after House of Odysseus) with an intelligent revisionist portrayal of Odysseus’s return. The story opens with a gloomy assessment of the wayward hero’s island kingdom: “Everyone concurs that Ithaca is the pits.... Her inland forests are scraggy, wind-blasted things, her one city little more than a spider’s town of twisted paths and leaning houses that seem to buckle and brace against some perpetual storm.” Odysseus, who has finally come back, incognito, from the Trojan War, receives a similar scouring; he’s depicted here as a “somewhat short man with a remarkably hairy back,” who had performed “many vile and bitter deeds.” His return sets in motion a violent showdown with the legion of suitors pursuing both his wife, Penelope, and his throne. North adds satisfying depth to the character of Penelope, whose loyalty to her kingdom takes precedence over devotion to her husband, whom she resents for disguising himself to gauge her faithfulness, and for failing to consider the “delicate political balance” she’s worked to maintain. North closes out her saga on a high note. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

A 30-year-old closeted gay architect struggles with self-acceptance in this snappy if overwrought family drama from Cone (The Counterfeiter). In 2011, Adam Stover finds love for the first time with French Canadian cellist Yves Montjour, who he meets by chance on a Manhattan street. A year later, Adam comes out to his family, most of whom are accepting, and introduces them to Yves. Adam also tells one of his coworkers about Yves, though for the most part he allows his colleagues to believe he’s straight out of fear of how they might react and of committing to an identity he’s still unsure of. The couple’s world is rocked when it turns out that Adam’s younger sister is dating Pietro, who once had an intense fling with Yves. Meanwhile, Adam’s older sister, who’s convinced he’s not actually gay, tries to set him up with her stunning Greek friend, Aphrodite. Still concerned about his boss’s potential reaction, Adam invites Aphrodite on a work retreat, causing a rift with Yves that drives him back toward Pietro. Adam’s continued questioning of his sexuality can be repetitive, and the timeline, which stretches to 2015, is a bit hard to follow. Still, Cone’s dialogue has the zip of a clever stage play. This has just enough sparkle to carry readers through to the finish line. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sachs (The Organs of Sense) lends a touch of the fantastical to Viennese life at the end of WWI in this inventive novel in stories. In a framing device, a mute young woman is being treated by a neurologist, who receives a letter from a sanatorium patient who claims to be the woman’s father and who insists her name is Gretel. He proceeds to mail 26 “bedtime stories,” alphabetically arranged, to be shared with Gretel. Starting with “A: The Architect” and ending with “Z: The Zionist,” these interlacing fables feature reappearing locations and characters, and evoke Vienna’s artistic milieu of choirs, painters, composers, and stage performers, as well as the city’s abundance of sanatorium residents and scientists. Stories of broken families, the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and revenge abound. Feathered within each tale are short segments devoted to reminding Gretel of her mother’s all-consuming commitment to her musical ambitions, which played a role in their separation. “N: The Neurologist,” hints at Gretel’s ailment with the story of a naturalist so obsessed with creating a lifelike taxidermied heron that he steals his daughter’s voice. Throughout, Sachs keenly captures the pulse of a city on the cusp of immense change. This spirited volume lingers long after the final page. Agent: Amelia Atlas, CAA. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Wingate’s stellar latest (after Before We Were Yours) explores a centuries-long legacy of missing child cases in Oklahoma’s Winding Stair mountains. In 1990, the long-buried remains of three young girls are discovered in the newly created Horsethief Trail National Park. When park ranger Valerie Boren-Odell, whose husband’s death has left her to care for their seven-year-old son alone, learns her boss won’t investigate how the girls died, she feels compelled to uncover their names and what happened to them. As the disappearance of a teenage boy and the discovery of an unidentified man’s corpse complicate Valerie’s investigation, Choctaw tribal police officer Curtis Enhoe offers insight and access to tribal records that help link the cases. In a parallel narrative set in 1909, 11-year-old Olive “Ollie” Radley’s Choctaw foster sister Hazel disappears after being molested by Olive’s stepfather. When he turns his attention to Hazel’s younger sister, Nessa, Ollie decides they must flee. The pair evade pursuit by moving deeper into the forest, discovering to their surprise that other victimized children, most of them Choctaw, are also hiding there. Wingate’s insightful depiction of her young characters’ vulnerability and resourcefulness enriches the intricate plotting, and her portrayal of the region’s history, culture, and landscape enthralls. Wingate is at the top of her game. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Book Group. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink