A ghostwriter uncovers her client’s secrets and finds love and danger in this enticing tale from Mekler (Sunrise Shows Late). In 1980 Paris, wealthy industrialist Luc Kasten hires 30-something American journalist Diane Jameson to ghostwrite a memoir to share with his family. Diane accepts, intrigued by the charming older man, and agrees to spend the weekend with him at his home in the south of France. Despite Luc’s claim that he wants to set the record straight (“My life has been half-truths for a very long time”), Diane has trouble getting him to disclose seemingly innocuous details, like the name of his childhood best friend. When she presses him, he redirects by flirting, and she begins to fall for him. She also starts digging into his past, casting doubt on his stated birth year of 1920 and discovering that Guy Thibault, an old enemy of Luc’s who was responsible for sending him to a concentration camp during WWII, is now blackmailing him, having recently figured out his long-ago misdeed, which Mekler doesn’t reveal until late in the novel. With Diane enmeshed in Luc’s life and Guy after him, the narrative blends an enriching morality tale with a suspenseful game of cat and mouse. WWII fiction fans won’t want to miss this. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

White debuts with a riveting and tender literary thriller about a young man exploring his sexuality while trying to find his footing in the crime world. Tony Ward has returned to his native Dublin from England, where he fled after fatally stabbing the man he believed to have killed his mentor. A friend connects him with enforcer Darren “Flute” Walsh, who collects money for his drug kingpin stepfather, Aengus Lavelle. After Tony partners with Flute to shake down a series of Aengus’s debtors, he is unsettled by the violent work and by the attraction he feels toward Flute. The pair share a kiss while high on cocaine during a party, and then embark on a secret relationship. Meanwhile, Tony navigates tension with his family and the creeping sense that his past is catching up with him. After he learns a hard truth, the story lurches toward a wrenching conclusion. In between taut action sequences, Tony reflects with piercing insight on the violence he commits (“it leaves a layer of grime on you like a charred bit of toast, and when you scrape it all away into the sink some of you goes with it”). It’s a memorable story of a man’s ill-fated attempt to transcend his hopelessness. Agent: Duvall Osteen, UTA. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pressfield (A Man at Arms) spins a thrilling tale of a mysterious former mercenary and the young woman who is bound to him by fate in 16th-century Spain. Telamon of Arcadia, known as the “iron man” for his current occupation as a blade sharpener, has a mysterious tattoo on his arm that matches the branding of his horse, which farm girl Mariah takes a shine to. The plot kicks into gear when Portuguese troops invade Mariah’s village, ordering the villagers to procure a long list of supplies. If they don’t, every man in the village will be killed, and women and children will be forced into servitude. Mariah’s older brothers bring Telamon’s horse to the Portuguese to be slaughtered, prompting Telamon to attack the Portuguese soldiers before being captured. Mariah helps free Telamon and his horse, and the Portuguese commander, Severiano, orders his nephew, a lieutenant, to pursue the trio and capture them by whatever means necessary. Pressfield blends exciting action with meaty meditations on the brutality of war and its dehumanizing effects on combatants, noting that warfare is “the labor of brutes and savages.” Readers will become closely invested in Mariah and Telamon’s plight over the course of this stirring adventure. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Booker Prize winner Stuart (Shuggie Bain) showcases his impressive gift for characterization in this perceptive and propulsive story of a tight-knit community of Gaelic-speaking sheep farmers and weavers on the remote Scottish isle of Harris. When John-Calum “Cal” Macleod returns from college on the mainland, his father, John, issues a stern accounting: “So, all that money, four years, no woman, and no job.” John, a strict Calvinist and lay pastor at the local church, is both loving and violent, embittered that Cal’s mother abandoned him for his own brother, leaving him to raise Cal with his contentious mother-in-law. John loves Cal, but not his long dyed hair or soft demeanor, and their altercations often end in slaps or with John making a fist while pronouncing his disapproval (“I could do without becoming known as the man who has a hugger for a son”). Cal finds solace with his Walkman and hides his continuing attraction to a neighbor, with whom he experimented sexually when they were teens, and Stuart adds a surprising and deeply affecting layer to the narrative by exploring John’s own secrets. Stuart’s deeply humane character work extends beyond father and son to their neighbors, including a sensitive middle-aged bachelor who belongs to John’s book club and cries while discussing Wuthering Heights. The author continues his winning streak with this brilliant novel. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pataki, author of Finding Margaret Fuller, reimagines the life of famed Gibson Girl Evelyn Nesbit (1884–1967) in this winning tale of how a woman’s beauty transforms her life. When Evelyn is a teen, her widowed mother struggles to make ends meet for her and her younger brother, Kit. Hoping for better opportunities, they move from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, where Evelyn and her mother land jobs at Wanamaker’s department store. Outside the store one day, an artist asks Evelyn to model for her, which leads to similar gigs and eventually a chance to work as an artist’s model in New York City. There, in 1901, Evelyn becomes a chorus girl on Broadway, where she garners the attention of Stanley Pierce, a wealthy and much older architect who pays for Evelyn and her mother’s hotel suite, while Kit remains at boarding school in Pennsylvania. When Stanley becomes sexually abusive, Evelyn fears she won’t be able to maintain her and her mother’s new lifestyle if she leaves him. Then she meets Pittsburgh millionaire Hal Thorne, who turns out to have demons of his own, and the story builds to a shocking confrontation between Hal and Stanley. Pataki expertly highlights how Evelyn’s naivete is shattered, leading her to rely only on herself to overcome physical and psychological trauma. Historical fiction fans will be riveted. Agent: Lacy Lynch, House of Story. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Huisman follows The Book of Mother with a mostly spellbinding but occasionally stultifying autofiction about her paternal lineage. It begins in the early days of Covid-19, after the unnamed narrator and her family have left Brooklyn for a cottage Upstate. They then move to France to be closer to her dying father, Denis. The narrator originally left France for New York at 19. Now, in her 40s, she attempts to make sense of her history by sifting through memories of her father, a colorful academic and womanizer. Many of Denis’s own memories revolve around his father, Georges, founder of the Cannes film festival and once director-general of the Beaux-Arts administration of the Third Republic, whose titles were stripped due to antisemitism in the 1940s. After Denis dies in early 2021, the narrator contacts her half brother, Bruno, as well as Béatrice, a graduate student who wrote about Georges for her dissertation, to learn more about Georges and his mistress Choute. Later sections on Georges’s life lack the punch of the novel’s first half, in which Huisman brilliantly toggles through time, often structuring her narrative as a direct address to Denis (“You fall asleep mid-sentence. I enjoy watching you at rest”). Despite its flaws, this offers an enthralling view into a family’s mysteries. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

News anchor Radford debuts with a dramatic novel of a journalist reckoning with her mother’s traumatic past in revolutionary Cuba. In 1991, Lily Walker begins her first semester at Harvard, where she’s proud of her Black Cuban heritage but knows she’ll have to work twice as hard for her achievements. She tentatively begins a relationship with a classmate named Vikram, despite his family’s expectations that he marry an Indian woman, but eventually breaks it off. After college, she publishes an op-ed in a small California newspaper about the racist response to the O.J. Simpson verdict, which gains attention after it’s syndicated by the Los Angeles Times and lands her a job at NPR in New York City. Meanwhile, Lily’s mother Marisol, hoping to strengthen their bond, writes Lily letters about her past in Cuba. She includes details she’d never been able to talk about with Lily, such as falling in love with revolutionary José Antonio Echeverría, who convinced her to join the revolution in 1956 while she was an intern at a radio station. After José was killed along with the rest of their group, Marisol was captured and raped for months. In straightforward prose, Radford lays out the parallels between Lily and Marisol, showing how their lives were impacted by love and a desire for a better future. It’s an affecting family drama. Agent: Johanna V. Castillo, Writers House. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

A suspicious death sparks an investigation and heated gossip in an Indian American enclave in the excellent debut from Bansinath. Matthew Pillai, 55, is found dead in his car on a New Jersey highway, surrounded by pills. The police interview multiple women whose addresses showed up on his GPS record, including recently widowed Anita Sharma, whose late husband, Ashok, was a colleague of Matthew’s and introduced him to their neighbors on Willow Road. The nonlinear narrative then dives into the Sharmas’ unhappy arranged marriage and move to the U.S. in the 1990s, revealing how in the years since, Anita, who hates America and calls it “death by QVC,” constantly criticizes both Ashok and their daughter, Leila. When Ashok brings avuncular Matthew home for dinner, he takes a shine to Leila, 13, and becomes fast friends with the families in the neighborhood, gaining their trust. He encourages Leila’s desire to become an actor, paying for her drama classes and taking her to Broadway shows, at first with his wife, Louise, then by himself. By the time Leila is 15, she realizes Matthew has been grooming her for sex, driving the story to its crisis point. Bansinath is an impressive storyteller with a firm grasp on the intersecting story lines, showing how Anita’s bitterness drives away Leila, making her vulnerable to a predator. The author also breathes life into the tight-knit community, where neighbors grow jealous of Leila over Matthew’s doting on her and badmouth Anita, whom they view as a snob. Readers will be engrossed by this clear-eyed and explosive tale. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

A Native American girl discovers her sexuality and reels from sexual abuse in this frank outing from Hart (Native Love Jams). Winnow Sticks is five when she and her friends mimic a sex scene from a movie they glimpsed their parents watching. At 10, Winnow is sent by her parents, who are getting divorced, from their Red Lake Nation home in Minnesota to live with her aunt Shelly in Arkansas. There, she befriends a girl named Sarrah, who kisses her. Shelly gives Winnow a pornographic magazine to explain sex, which she and Sarrah look at. Then Winnow moves with her aunt to Texas, where Shelly forces her to attend a weekly Bible study session at a local church, during which Winnow regularly locks herself in the bathroom to masturbate. The narrative blends Winnow’s coming of age with harrowing episodes of sexual assault, as when she’s abducted as a preteen by two boys who threaten to kill her if she doesn’t have sex with them. Here and elsewhere, Hart’s gritty and plainspoken chronicle glimmers with poetic insight—Winnow, humiliated by the attack, spends the night outside, “staring up at the stars, wondering how far my pain and fear stretched out beyond my body. It felt like it was traveling to at least the edge of the solar system.” This bracing tale is worth a look. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Riffing on Doctor Doolittle, the exciting and hilarious debut from Isaacs follows a 28-year-old New Yorker who suddenly develops the ability to hear what animals are saying. Henry Parsons is on a first date in Central Park with a woman named Molly when he hears a magnolia warbler tell the couple to “fuck off.” Henry is the only one who can hear the bird, and soon he’s hearing other animals: the betta fish his housemate owns, two dogs talking while he’s waiting for a bus, and two rats conversing in the subway about dead human bodies being dumped in an abandoned tunnel. The rats’ story leads Henry to leave an anonymous tip with the police, and he tells Molly what he heard, omitting the source. She proposes they search for the body, and when they do, late one night, they overhear two men with Scottish brogues dumping another corpse. Henry loses his smartphone as he and Molly flee, causing the pair to worry the men will find it. Isaacs, who ushers the mystery to a surprising final twist, effectively combines absurd humor with literary references (evoking Kafka, Henry shudders to “imagine the weltschmerz of a cockroach”), and it’s satisfying to watch Henry evolve from milquetoast to man of action. This is a hoot. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink