“The library belongs to everyone. The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn’t need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside.” – Sally Hepworth, The Good Sister
Burn the Sea by Mona Tewari
fiction / fantasy / historical fiction.
Abbakka Chowta never expected to be queen. The youngest of Ullal’s two rajkumaris, Abbakka has spent years in rigorous combat training to become her sister’s blade. But when the monstrous Porcugi attempt to lay claim to Ullal, Abbakka’s world—and fate—are upended.
The Porcugi—giant half-men, half-snakes who attack from the sea—haven’t been seen in Ullal since their failed invasion more than fifty years ago. But now, they’re back with vengeance and a choice: pay their tithes or suffer total devastation. Soon, Abbakka’s definitions of strength, subterfuge, and statecraft are put to the test. Will marriage to a neighboring king give her the resources she needs to protect her people… or will she watch her homeland be crushed beneath the waves of would-be colonizers?
A lush historical fantasy that reimagines the Portuguese attacks on South India in the 1500s and the fierce real-life queen’s story, Burn the Sea is an electrifying exaltation of female power and the value of freedom.
“[A] bold debut… Tewari’s lush worldbuilding shines… a vibrant homage to the warrior queen that should win Tewari many fans.” – Publishers Weekly
“Mona Tewari’s writing brings history to life in a beautifully woven story of politics, love, loss, and a fight for freedom… lovely and well crafted… I would highly recommend to fantasy and historical fiction lovers…” – Specific Journal
The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer ★
fiction / horror / suspense / mystery.
EXCITING OPPORTUNITY:
Caretaker urgently needed. Three days of work. Competitive pay. Serious applicants ONLY.
Macy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention—it had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all—vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she’s not exactly in the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for.
Besides, it’s only three days’ work…
Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness.
What starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property—and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between it, and the rest of humanity.
“[A] thrilling, immersive, devastating, and genuinely horrifying read.” – Robert J. Wiersema, Quill & Quire
“I’m happy to tell you though that Kliewer is no one hit wonder, proved with interest by his latest The Caretaker, being as uncanny, unnerving and as utterly stressful as its predecessor… read with the lights on… A wildly imaginative, psychological, lean and contemporary take on the haunted house that is cold to the touch… an intensely gripping read…” – George Dunn, FanFiAddict
“Horror fans (and certain magical realism fans) are already accustomed to certain rules guiding the antagonist but Kliewer lets the rules become the antagonist, meaning savvy readers will likely accept this girl vs. house story while savoring this fast-moving dark ride of a book until the savage gut punch of an ending. Twisting and turning but wasting no momentum, this book is for those who like their thriller stories bowstring taut and their endings pitch black.” – James Gardner, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“The Caretaker is deeply unsettling in the best way, with smart ties to Kliewer’s previous novel while still standing strong on its own. It’s emotionally intense, psychologically rich, and genuinely scary. So good.” – Brynna Neal, The Indie Next List
How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves by Megan O’Grady
nonfiction / essays / art.
Barbara Kruger once defined art as “the ability to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive.” Testing that claim, How It Feels to Be Alive braids criticism with personal narrative to consider art’s intimate effects and how it might help us find clarity in an uncertain world.
When Megan O’Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. At the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. As a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation.
Looking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made―often drawing on personal conversations with the artists―O’Grady examines the work’s rippling impact, implicating sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imaginations and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does it offer? A vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to rethink all that we take for granted, How It Feels to Be Alive inspires and exhorts, providing a template to think through the knottiest problems in our culture, our selves, and the connections between the two.
“…enlightening… O’Grady exhibits a remarkable fluidity, leaping across continents and centuries with ease.” – Publishers Weekly
“Critic and essayist O’Grady makes a graceful and absorbing book debut with a melding of cultural criticism and personal narrative to probe the significance and impact of art… An eloquent celebration of art.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…marvelous… provocative… memorable and viscerally elegant… Know anyone who questions the value of art? Hand them a copy of this book.” – Michael Magras, Shelf Awareness
The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang
fiction / science fiction / fantasy.
Speak another people’s language. Know them. Become them.
And discover you’ve destroyed them.
In his training as a spy, Ro was warned: you will always be living a lie.
Jumping into a Star Eater’s mind in the first place requires a moment of perfect psychic connection, and he has studied all his life to comprehend their species. Admires them, respects them, is reverent at the idea of being one of them―the only species physiologically capable of mining the element needed for lightyear-spanning space travel. The species all others crave to know more of, but who have notoriously shared so very little. The species Ro’s own small civilization, with its dwindling resources and withering reach, needs to know more about.
It will feel real, his elders impressed upon him. It will never be real.
But Ro’s certainty runs deep: he will be different. Ro will not be an imposter hiding the truth of his past, because his heart will be one of them. He will be one of them.
To understand is to become. It never occurs to him that the mere act of understanding can destroy.
“This fast-paced and sharp novella about alien societies and linguistic assumptions hits all the right notes for readers who enjoy smart science fiction.” – Kristi Chadwick, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Hugo award winner Huang stuns in this philosophical sci-fi exploration of linguistics and lost civilizations… Huang manages to make completely alien ways of understanding and complex ideas about language, culture, and hegemony easy to follow while providing a fascinating linguistic puzzle that will entice hard sci-fi fans and literary scholars alike. This packs an impressive punch.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Last Night in Brooklyn by Xóchitl Gonzalez ★
fiction.
SPRING, 2007
At twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in.
No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself.
But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.
Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of color living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy―and the destruction of what it can’t.
“Smart, tough-minded, and passionate: a pleasure from start to finish.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…captivating and trenchant… With fascinating characters, rapid-fire dialogue, poignant backstories, sexy and dangerous relationships, excruciating and sardonically funny situations, sharp psychological and social insights, vibrant descriptions, abrupt shifts, showdowns, and revelations, this is an all-the-way-live novel of dreams, anguish, vengeance, and liberation.” – Donna Seaman, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“In this emotionally charged quarter-life drama, Xochitl Gonzalez captures that fleeting moment when everything feels possible… Gonzalez brings this kinetic Brooklyn era to life with sharp, specific detail, capturing both the thrill of its creative scene and the fault lines beneath it… Last Night in Brooklyn is an immersive story about standing at the edge of your life and realizing how quickly the ground can move under you.” – Apple Books Review
“…Gonzalez’s latest novel brings the enclave of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to brilliant light. The author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a master at shaping distinct characters that leave an indelible impression on each other and themselves. Exploring potential, obligation, and living out your wildest dreams, this is literary fiction at its most evocative.” – Ella Ceron, Harper’s Bazaar
Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley
fiction / historical fiction.
Christmas, 1857. America’s future is precarious; civil war looms on the horizon. After her abolitionist husband is murdered in the lawless Kansas Territory, Lidie Newton returns, in mourning, to her hometown of Quincy, Illinois. But her sisters have little comfort to offer, and Lidie is haunted by the memories of her failures—until she takes an interest in her niece, Annie. Beautiful, self-assured, and mischievous, Annie sticks out in Quincy. She becomes an actress at the local theater, and when she is offered the opportunity to perform abroad, she decides to run away. But travel is dangerous for a young unmarried woman, so Lidie, armed with her pistol and her wit, goes with her.
The two women embark on a perilous journey across the Atlantic, rushing toward an unknown future in England. Once they arrive in Liverpool, they vanish into new roles in the household of Annie’s benefactor, Mr. Mallory Cunningham. Annie takes a stage name and finds her way to a career, while Lidie becomes her lady’s maid. But will either of them be content with her new lot in life?
Exuberant and riveting, a sly commentary on truth and beauty and fulfillment that resonates with our times, Lidie delivers a panoramic portrait of a volatile era and the headstrong women trying to live an honest life in it.
“Readers will welcome the chance to spend more time with Lidie, the people she meets, and her incredibly drawn world.” – Jane Jorgenson, Library Journal
“A pronounced strength of Lidie, and other Smiley books as well, is the author’s command of balancing her characters’ interiority with their external action.” – Anita Felicelli, Alta
Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth ★
fiction / mystery / suspense.
Meet Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one years old, gloriously grumpy, fiercely independent, and never without a hot cup of tea―or a cutting remark. She minds her own business in her quiet Melbourne suburb, until a neighbor turns up dead and the whispers start flying.
Because Elsie hasn’t always been Elsie. Once upon a headline, she was Mad Mabel Waller―Australia’s youngest convicted murderer. But was she really mad, or just misunderstood? Either way, she’s kept her secret buried for decades.
Enter seven-year-old Persephone, a relentless little chatterbox who has just moved in across the road (armed with stickers, questions, and no sense of personal boundaries); Joan, who appears to have it in for Elsie; and a healthy dose of public interest―the cops are sniffing around, and the media is circling like seagulls at a picnic.
So Mabel does what she’s always done best―she takes matters into her own hands.
Is she a cantankerous old lady with a shady past? A cold-blooded killer with arthritis? Or just someone who’s finally ready to tell her side of the story?
Sharp, surprising, and wickedly funny, this is the unforgettable story of a woman who’s spent a lifetime being underestimated―and is about to prove everyone wrong. Again.
“…this twisty, voicey mystery might be [Hepworth’s] best book yet.” – Book of the Month
“Hepworth balances heartbreak with Elsie’s delicious snark and strong suspense, but readers will be hard-pressed to resist feeling something here as allies emerge to defeat Elsie’s resigned loneliness. Arguably Hepworth’s best, this is a must-read for fans of Helene Tursten’s Elderly Lady series and Christopher Bollen’s Havoc.” – Christine Tran, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“…engaging and intriguing… Mad Mabel is fantastic. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve read, and I did not want to put it down.” – Heather Caliendo, Book Club Chat
“…gripping… Hepworth very cleverly dangles clues and suggestions throughout… Mad Mabel is not merely a who-done-it with a different slant, it’s a warm-hearted tale of friendship, self-discovery, and kindness, all touched by humour… It could very well be a form of madness not to embrace the story of Mad Mabel…” – Patricia Simms-Reeve, Queensland Review Collective
The Mountains We Call Home: The Book Woman’s Legacy by Kim Michele Richardson
fiction / historical fiction.
When Cussy Lovett, a Packhorse Librarian famed for bringing books to the people of Appalachia, is unjustly incarcerated, she finds a new calling as a prison librarian, bringing hope to downtrodden women and voiceless city residents alike, finding a home even while separated from those she loves.
A vivid portrait of mid-century Kentucky, from the hills and hollers of Appalachia to a vibrant city neighborhood on the cusp of urban renewal, The Mountains We Call Home explores the effects of criminalization and incarceration on the poor and powerless, while tracing the societal consequences of fractured family bonds.
Gritty, heartbreaking, yet infused with hope, The Mountains We Call Home is an authentic American tale and a powerful testament of strength, survival, and the magic of the written word.
“Readers will relish the return of Cussy Lovett, a Blue from Kentucky who was first introduced in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek… The plot unfolds at a fast clip, depicting the cruelty of prison life, Black Louisville, and beyond… fans of historical fiction centered on strong women will love this.” – Susan Maguire, Booklist
“Richardson delivers a deeply satisfying companion novel to her The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek series, exploring injustice, belonging, and the transformative power of literacy with compassion and grace. Readers who have awaited the series’ final chapter will not be disappointed.” – Kerri Copus, Library Journal
“Richardson paints a vivid picture of Appalachian Kentucky and Louisville. The story is gritty and real, with plenty of emotional depth and hopefulness. It’s both heartbreaking and uplifting… An easy five stars—highly recommended for anyone who loves poignant historical fiction.” – Shelley, The Book Review Crew
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff ★
nonfiction / politics / history / technology / biography.
Everyone’s got an Elon take. He’s a messiah. A menace; a genius; a clown. The verdicts differ, but they share one theme: they treat him as an individual.
Muskism argues otherwise. Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.
If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His cars run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us.
Muskism sells itself as the future but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary. It speaks of humanity but warns against empathy.
Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff cut through the hype and the hate to reveal what Musk really represents: a new political economy, where to be “free” means to serve a Technoking. Muskism isn’t about the man. It’s about the machine that made him—and the world he’s making next. To read Muskism is to understand the machinery that made the man, and the world he’s making next, based on his philosophy of power in the spheres of:
- Silicon Valley: A sharp analysis of Elon Musk as more than a tech CEO, introducing “Muskism” as a new Silicon Valley paradigm shaping artificial intelligence, startups, and 21st-century capitalism.
- Big Tech, AI & the Future of Capitalism: Examines Tesla, SpaceX, and digital platforms through concepts like techno-sovereignty, automation, and “state symbiosis,” revealing how Big Tech is restructuring markets, innovation, and economic power.
- Geopolitics, Power & the Tech Billionaire Era: Explores how Musk’s companies influence global politics, infrastructure, and governance—from satellite networks to energy systems—showing how private tech power is reshaping international relations.
“Impressive and unrelenting, this grapples with a destructive ideology that seems poised to consume everything.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“The great value of Muskism is that it is brief, easy to read and yet packed with insights about why we find ourselves in such a perilous situation in which a handful of unelected individuals exert unprecedented domestic and global power.” – Misha Glenny, Financial Times
“Dystopian isn’t a strong enough word for the technocratic future the authors prophesy in this bleak but urgent book.” – Kirkus Reviews
“In their new book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, historian Quinn Slobodian and tech writer Ben Tarnoff dig into the mindset of Silicon Valley’s most gauche tycoon and touch on science fiction more tangentially, but their firmer grasp of just what flavor of capitalism Musk and his cohort represent sheds a brighter light on the topic.” – Laura Miller, Slate
No Way Home by T.C. Boyle
fiction / suspense.
Terrence Tully, work-obsessed and a naif in the arenas of sex and love, is at work when he receives news that his mother has died. A third-year medical resident in a gritty community hospital in downtown Los Angeles, he sees death daily, but the news that his mother has passed away, delivered to his cell phone by the voice of a stranger, jolts him like no other, even as he is in the act of trying to save the life of a patient undergoing cardiac arrest.
Turn the page and he’s heading north on I-15 though a lifeless desert to the small Nevada town where his mother has retired. Overwhelmed with grief and the burden of having to sort out the remnants of his mother’s life, including the house and car she has left him, he stops at a café and has a chance encounter with a pretty young local girl in a turquoise minidress. What seems to him a chance meeting like so many we all experience daily will come to upend his life and morph into a fatal obsession.
For Bethany, a receptionist at the local hospital, who, like many twenty-somethings, is trying to sort out her options in life while haunting the local bars and clubs, this chance encounter is anything but trivial. Down on her luck after breaking up with her boyfriend and surreptitiously living out of her storage unit, she finds Terrence attractive on a number of counts, not least of which is his status as a doctor and, by default, a homeowner.
What follows becomes the heart of No Way Home, a propulsive narrative with cinematic overtones in the tradition of Mulholland Drive and the cold hard lyricism of Cormac McCarthy and Robert Stone, as Terrence is drawn into a toxic love triangle with Bethany and her former beau, Jesse. No longer in control of his ordered and once-predictable life, Terrence becomes hostage to a world where shots of tequila and violent brawls puncture the daily grind of nowhere jobs, aimless sex, and recreational highs―a rootless existence from which there appears to be no escape and no fixed refuge.
Stylistically shimmering and unraveling under a harsh desert sky crenellated by the peaks of the Nevada mountains, T. C. Boyle’s narrative explores what it is, on an animal level, to fight over a woman and what retribution really looks like. Can sexual jealousy breed a thirst for vengeance that becomes desperately pathological? In the hands of “one of America’s greatest living novelists” (Los Angeles Review of Books), No Way Home is a chilling tour de force by an American master at his very best.
“A gripping, forensically exacting novel of pathological behavior, an MRI scan of human nature.” – Donna Seaman, Booklist
“…tense… None of the central characters emerges unscathed from Boyle’s piercing depictions of their transactional and self-serving behavior. This sharply observed novel will keep readers turning the pages.” – Publishers Weekly
“[A] conflagration of rage that starts with a little electrical fire behind the drywall and eventually burns the whole place down… I love the pulpy way this novel keeps ratcheting up the violence, the cringe-inducing humiliations, the face-planting missteps! And, of course, it all pours down on us in the great avalanche of Boyle’s prose that can feel chaotic in the moment until it delivers us masterfully to some breathtaking catastrophe of primal, self-justifying rage.” – Ron Charles
Rabbit Test and Other Stories by Samantha Mills
fiction / short stories / science fiction / fantasy.
A subversive debut short-fiction collection from one of the hottest talents in speculative fiction: 2025 Compton Crook Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back). These riveting stories range effortlessly from fantasy and science fiction to literary fiction, from the here and now all the way into the farthest reaches of space. The central tale of the collection is Mills’ pivotal Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon Award-winning story “Rabbit Test,” which interrogates the past, present, and future of abortion rights.
A time-traveling fisherwoman keeps landing on the right shore, but at the wrong time. A pair of witches fight over the gate between life and death. A new consciousness, intent upon seeing all the wonders of the universe, visits a floating library. A rock-and-roll legend squares off against a town full of devils. Humanity makes first contact, but falters when put in charge of selecting the world’s representatives.
In her strange and emotional worlds, with stakes ranging from the epic to the personal, Mills creates ample room for humor and hope amidst tragedy and struggle.
“This was wonderful from beginning to end.” – Jim Sonreson, Disciples of Boltax
“[A] brilliant, genre-spanning debut collection… Even the shortest of these tales packs a powerful punch.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“A diverse array of stories, each engaging and lively, brimming with heart and an urgent sense of purpose.” – Speculative Shelf
This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark by Craig Fehrman
nonfiction / history / biography.
In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey—having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines—they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion.
From one of the most exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. Craig Fehrman spent five years visiting more than thirty archives, interviewing more than a hundred sources, and collecting oral history passed down over centuries. He came to see that the success of Lewis and Clark depended on much more than just Lewis and Clark. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains’ hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men.
Each chapter moves to a different person’s point of view, describing their desires and contradictions. We see Thomas Jefferson operating in an age of bitter partisan unrest—his secret political maneuvers to fund the expedition, revealed here for the first time, are a case study in presidential power. We witness the strategy and strength of Black Buffalo, completely upending our understanding of Lakota-American diplomacy. York, in his chapters, finds ways to wield power and make choices in an era that didn’t allow him much of either. Clark is not a folksy Kentuckian but a student of the Enlightenment. (Fehrman discovered his college notebook; no previous biographer even realized that he went to college.) Lewis is someone willing to sacrifice everything for his country and his mentor, Jefferson.
In the end, the captains are men who needed help—from Sacajawea, from the Corps, and from each other. Mile after mile, the expedition pushes on through hailstorms and flash floods, frostbite and infections, rattlesnakes and rabid wolves, with the Spanish cavalry in fierce pursuit. Fehrman balances the story’s adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can still surprise us.
“This book is so, so good, one of my favorites of the last decade.” – Patrick Wyman, Tides of History
“[A] riveting and revitalized new history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition… Fehrman provides a model for revisiting long-studied aspects of our nation’s past… nothing less than startling. Fehrman has done a great service to American history in this must-read.” – Colleen Mondor, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“…Fehrman manages to breathe new life into this well-worn tale through his masterful retelling… Like Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, This Vast Enterprise delivers a brilliant new interpretation of a story that deserves to be known in its entirety.” – BookPage, STARRED REVIEW
-
-
-
-
-