Biographer Clark (Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath) makes her fiction debut with a potent story of two lovers, one American and one German, reckoning with the legacy of WWII. It’s 1996 and Anna is in finals week at Harvard when she meets Christoph, a handsome and in... Continue reading »

Barclay (I Will Ruin You) delivers a harrowing supernatural thriller centered around a model train set. In 2001, seven-year-old Jeremy receives a toy engine for Christmas and ties one of his sister’s dolls to the tracks. When the train strikes the doll, a glass shatters in the kitchen, seve... Continue reading »

Bestseller Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue) unfolds an epic and emotionally resonant tale about three lesbian vampires connected through the centuries. In 16th-century Spain, wild Maria avoids pregnancy and eventually escapes her lonely marriage with the help of a mysterious herba... Continue reading »

Gunn debuts with a hilarious romance exploring the ways in which pop culture influences every aspect of life, from the products people buy to their perceptions of love. Reality TV junkie Edie Pepper, 35, is decidedly unhappy with her life following a bad breakup and a series of even worse hookups. S... Continue reading »

Manga fans and murder mystery aficionados will delight in this stunningly illustrated high-fantasy novel by Ikemoto Ghosh. Hakai Hyo is the 33rd person in her family to take up the mantle of hellmaker, someone capable of curating a personalized hell for a paying client’s worst enemy. When a demon cu... Continue reading »

This urgent debut from Hourani spotlights Palestine’s struggle for liberation through a book-length poem interwoven with personal history. Hourani grapples with how to find adequate language to confront histories of occupation and genocide: “the more time i spend with words/ the more i realize that ... Continue reading »

In this tour de force from Brotherton (A Bright and Blinding Sun) and Lee (A Single Light), four friends’ lives change irrevocably when America becomes embroiled in WWII. In 1930s Mobile, Ala., preacher’s son Jimmy Propfield shares an idyllic upbringing with childhood sweetheart Cl... Continue reading »

This revelatory study from Koresky (Films of Endearment), editorial director at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, examines how mid-century Hollywood films explored queer themes under the Motion Picture Production Code, which only allowed movies to “imply or metaphorically evo... Continue reading »

Ichikawa, publisher of Quilt Diary Japan magazine, and art historian Wong (Sewing and Survival) serve up an enchanting celebration of kawaii (“small and cute”) quilts, which are characterized by their intricately detailed scenes featuring tiny, cartoon-like figures. Delvin... Continue reading »

Historian Tolan (Faces of Muhammad) traces in this vibrant and sweeping survey the 1,400-year evolution of Islam. Stressing Islam’s conceptual unity (“we are one umma”) and diverse reality, he tells its history by stitching together the stories of key figures. Among them are Um Waraqa, a wo... Continue reading »

When 18-year-old Lacrimosa “Lark” Arriscane discovers she can save her brothers from financial ruin in exchange for marrying a god, she agrees without hesitation; following her expulsion from boarding school in an incident that smashed career dreams and destroyed her friendships, Lark believes she h... Continue reading »