by Mat Johnson
Mat Johnson (Loving Day; Pym) explores the metaphorical dark side of a moon in Invisible Things, a chilling, bitingly funny sci-fi allegory set in an extraterrestrial Potemkin village designed to mimic the worst qualities of U.S. society.
When the first manned mission to Jupiter arrives, the crew discovers a glass dome on Europa's surface; it shelters a replicated American city populated by a million abductees. Their ship returns to Earth empty. Three years later, a rescue mission sets out for Europa. Getting
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by Patrick Radden Keefe
In Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing; Empire of Pain) collects a dozen thoroughly investigated and engagingly reported articles on a fascinating assortment of characters--from the merely colorful to the criminal--that he produced for the New Yorker between 2007 and 2018.
The breadth of his writing--insider trading in the pharmaceutical industry ("The Empire of Edge"); the dogged search for the last of the plotters who brought
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by XiXi Tian
This Place Is Still Beautiful by XiXi Tian is a radiant YA debut about biracial identity and the complexity of love for people and places.
Annalie Flanagan's perfect summer dating a "hazel-eyed underwear model look-alike" is steamrolled with one word, spray-painted on her garage: CHINKS. The cops do the bare minimum, so Annalie's older sister, Margaret, comes home from NYU to seek justice. What she finds first, though, in the Illinois "backwater" she left behind, is a surprising appreciation for the ex-boyfriend
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by Meron Hadero
The characters in Meron Hadero's sharp-eyed debut collection of 15 short stories, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, often find themselves caught between worlds. Whether arriving in the U.S. to pursue an education ("Medallion"), visiting family in Addis Ababa and feeling out of place ("The Suitcase"), or conversing with an elderly German neighbor in Iowa ("The Wall"), Hadero's characters are keenly aware of the contrasts between the places they have left and the places they inhabit. As they engage
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by Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch's Thrust is a complex novel of great imagination. At its center is Laisvė, also known as the Water Girl. In the late 21st century, she and her father hide away from what is left of society in a submerged New York City where only the tip of Lady Liberty's torch is visible at low tide. Laisvė has a fascination with curious objects and an unusual set of skills. "She knew not to be afraid to go to water, because time slips and moves forward and backward, just as objects and stories do."
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by Emi Watanabe Cohen
A 10-year-old boy leads a new friend and both of their dragon companions on a peregrination to save his ailing grandfather in Emi Watanabe Cohen's quiet and healing postwar fantastical debut, The Lost Ryū.
Kohei has an "impossible memory": his Ojiisan with tears in his eyes, gazing up at a soaring beast. But the Ojiisan with whom Kohei and his mother live is an angry, emotionally bereft drunk whose organs are failing. And the giant ryū, "beautiful and brutal" dragons, have not been seen "since bombs fell over
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by Jesmeen Kaur Deo
Jesmeen Kaur Deo's debut, TJ Powar Has Something to Prove, is an entertaining and endearing YA novel that features a teenager working to redefine her own understanding of beauty.
Senior Tejindar "TJ" Powar is attractive, popular, a star soccer player and a member of her high school's debate team. She and her debate partner and cousin, Simran, are featured in the school's newspaper after they win a competition that qualifies them for the Provincials in Vancouver. Their victory is overshadowed, though, when
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