We’re excited to share this year-end roundup of novels, novellas, short story collections, and fiction anthologies published in 2024 by independent literary publishers! Read our year-end roundups of nonfiction, poetry, children’s books, and art and drama as well.
Novels
Coming Clean by Beth Uznis Johnson
Regal House Publishing | January 9, 2024
In this novel “Dawn, a self-employed cleaning lady in upstate New York, agrees to pose in the houses she cleans for her friend Matthew’s provocative photography project.”
Grove Atlantic | January 9, 2024
Invisible Woman is “at once a literary thriller about the lies we tell each other (and ourselves), and a powerful psychological examination of the complexities of friendship, marriage, and motherhood.”
Cold Victory by Karl Marlantes
Grove Atlantic | January 9, 2024
This novel is “layered with fast-paced action, historical detail, and a keen eye for the way totalitarianism and loss of truth and privacy threatens love and friendship.”
The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
Sandorf Passage | January 16, 2024
This novel, “presented as a series of depositions by historical figures before a court, tells a straightforward tale: Upon the death of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1481, his eldest son Bayezid takes the throne.”
Europa Editions | January 23, 2024
Bristow’s latest novel is “a fascinating coming-of-age novel about magic and the choices that define future generations.”
The Singularity by Balsam Karam
Translated from the Spanish by Saskia Vogel
Feminist Press | January 24, 2024
Set in an unnamed city filled with refugees, this novel is “a breathtaking study of grief, migration, and motherhood.”
The Flying African by Areg Azatyan
Translated from the Armenian by Nazareth Seferian
Frayed Edge Press | January 30, 2024
This novel “follows the journey of an unnamed traveler, a young Armenian writer who spends fifty-four adventurous days in Africa, one day in each of the continent’s countries.”
One Hour of Fervor by Muriel Barbery
Europa Editions | January 30, 2024
In this novel Barbery “explores the deep love of a father, and what is gained and what is lost when one chooses a ‘family’ of friends over one’s biological family.”
Swanna in Love by Jennifer Belle
Akashic Books | January 30, 2024
Belle’s latest novel is “a kind of inverse Lolita that explores adolescent desire from the girl’s point of view.”
Regal House Publishing | January 30, 2024
This novel follows a former literary agent who, after four years in prison for a crime of passion, “receives an early release from Sing Sing to join an FBI undercover investigation of multiple murders in Manhattan.”
Translated from the Spanish by Denise Kripper
Veliz Books | February 1, 2024
This debut novel “explores daughterhood and unearths a family’s intricate past and secretive present.”
That Pinson Girl by Gerry Wilson
Regal House Publishing | February 6, 2024
Wilson’s novel is “told against the backdrop of the deprivation of World War I, the tragedies of the influenza epidemic, and the burden of generations of betrayal.”
Bellevue Literary Press | February 6, 2024
In James’s novel, “a son’s collapse pulls his two mothers together and apart.”
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner
Graywolf Press | February 6, 2024
Waidner’s novel “is about coming into one’s own, the labor of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself, and what ensues when a large amount of cultural capital is suddenly deposited in a place it has never been before.”
Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier
Translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins
Coach House Books | February 6, 2024
This novel tells “the story of the trio of women who brought the first collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows.”
Full of Eyes Within by Jaye Nasir
The Fabulist | February 8, 2024
Full of Eyes Within is “a haunting parable of society’s brutal neglect of the precious and sacred in our midst.”
Study in Hysteria by Kathleen Collins
Vine Leaves Press | February 13, 2024
The protagonist in this novel “contends with a clandestine and unlikely friendship, a worrisome health scare, a domineering and philandering psychiatrist husband or her own distant daughter.”
This New Dark by Chase Dearinger
Belle Point Press | February 20, 2024
This debut novel “explores the haunted, broken hills of eastern Oklahoma, where over the course of just two cold days in November, the residents of Seven Suns will each face their own kind of weird.”
The Maroons by Louis Timagène Houat
Translated from the French by Aqiil Gopee and Jeffrey Diteman
Restless Books | February 20, 2024
The only known novel by Black abolitionist and political exile Louis Timagène Houat, The Maroons is “a fervid account of slavery and escape on nineteenth-century Réunion Island.”
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump
Two Lines Press | February 20, 2024
Gisler’s debut novel, “set against our increasingly disjointed world, welcomes readers into a home of shut-ins as cozy as it is claustrophobic.”
South of Sepharad by Eric Z. Weintraub
History Through Fiction | February 20, 2024
In this novel, “a Jewish doctor makes an impossible choice between home and faith, then struggles to lead his family on a journey for a new life.”
Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann
Translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight
Book*hug Press | February 22, 2024
This novel is “a literary thriller about grief, love, science, and societal norms.”
Falcon in the Dive by Leah Angstman
Regal House Publishing | February 27, 2024
For this novel’s protagonist, “the French Revolution is a catalyst for bringing down the corrupt aristocracy and avenging her fallen family, until she unwittingly befriends a high-ranking military nobleman.”
When the Ocean Flies by Heather G. Marshall
Vine Leaves Press | February 27, 2024
In this novel, “what begins as a short trip back to Scotland for a funeral soon becomes a journey that puts adoption, sexuality, and identity on a collision course.”
The Midnight Mechanic by Andy Brown
Sea Crow Press | March 5, 2024
Set in Victorian London, The Midnight Mechanic “explores a man’s relentless pursuit to better himself, to escape the muck and make amends, while raising pressing environmental issues that are still pertinent today.”
So You Wanna Run a Country? by Kevin Holohan
Akashic Books | March 5, 2024
Holohan’s science-fictional novel “is a satirical parable of the perils of authoritarianism, nationalism, and device-dependent group-think.”
Counsel Culture by Kim Hye-jin
Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang
Restless Books | March 5, 2024
This novel is “the contemplative, superbly-crafted story of a woman scapegoated by sudden tragedy, and the unexpected paths she must wander in search of redemption.”
Once in the Blue Moon by Virginia Miller Reeves
Deep Vellum | March 5, 2024
“Set in 1940s Oklahoma on a red dirt cotton farm,” Once in the Blue Moon “is grounded in the realities of life near the end of World War II.”
My Heavenly Favorite by Lucas Rijneveld
Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison
Graywolf Press | March 5, 2024
Rijneveld’s novel “tells the story of a veterinarian who visits a farm in the Dutch countryside where he becomes enraptured by his ‘Favorite’—the farmer’s daughter.”
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young
Dalkey Archive Press | March 5, 2024
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling is “a picaresque, psychological novel—a novel of the road, a journey or voyage of the human spirit in its search for reality in a world of illusion and nightmare.”
The Last Saturday in America by Ray McManus
Hub City Press | March 12, 2024
In this novel, McManus “draws a portrait of American masculinity in the face of political division, pandemic, and cultural warfare.”
Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard
Bellevue Literary Press | March 12, 2024
Flight of the Wild Swan “tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend.”
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Warbler Press | March 14, 2024
First published in 1895, and featuring an afterword by Amy Kaplan, this novel “chronicles the repercussions of war on the individual and collective psyche.”
Four Way Books | March 15, 2024
Spark’s novel is “inspired by the life and family of Walt Kuhn (the painter responsible for the 1913 Armory Show that introduced Americans to modernism) and the scandal-ridden Elan boarding school that was forced to shut down in 2011.”
The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Graywolf Press | March 19, 2024
This novel is “full of bodily pleasure, intense observation of nature, and a profound reckoning with the passage of time both within ourselves and in the world we inhabit.”
What the Living Do by Susan Wadds
Regal House Publishing | March 19, 2024
According to Alissa York, this is “a fierce and fearless novel about a woman drawn to self-destruction yet desperate to live—and maybe even love.”
The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts by Dewitt Henry
Pierian Springs Press | March 21, 2024
This novel “tells the story of a 36-year-old Philadelphia woman whose quiet, working-class life is suddenly shaken by the death of her widowed father and by her younger sister’s takeover of the family home.”
I Disappeared Them by Preston L. Allen
Akashic Books | April 2, 2024
This novel is “a brutal, boy meets girl love story that delves into the Periwinkle Killer’s childhood to confront the age-old question, is a serial killer designed or destined?”
Deep Vellum | April 2, 2024
Told in three distinct voices, this novel “brings together a rapturous teenage love story set in Chile, the hunt for the author of an eye-opening literary detective story, and a complex reckoning with American political intervention in South America.”
The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa
Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
Restless Books | April 2, 2024
Al-Essa’s novel is “a perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government.”
Regal House Publishing | March 26, 2024
In this novel, “when Madison and Elliot’s affair is exposed, the news sends shockwaves that will rock their lives and the lives of those around them.”
Houdini’s Last Handcuffs by Charlie and Cheryl Young
Vine Leaves Press | March 26, 2024
Weaving historical fiction and fantasy, this novel follows children who summon Houdini “via an enigmatic pair of handcuffs from their father’s magic collection.”
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay and Lucy Scott
Two Lines Press | April 9, 2024
Set in Suriname in 1966, this novel is “a moving portrait of a woman finding peace in the legacy that is her daughters and granddaughters.”
The Good Deed by Helen Benedict
Red Hen Press | April 9, 2024
“Set in 2018 against the ironic backdrop of an overcrowded, fetid refugee camp on the beautiful, Homeric island of Samos in Greece,” The Good Deed follows the stories of five women.
Acre Books | April 15, 2024
“Alternating between the perspectives of a kleptomaniac waitress named Cora and her nine-year-old friend Glass,” this novel “depicts a small-town America turned alarming.”
Dzanc Books | April 16, 2024
Absolute Away is “a novel about travel in its largest sense–about the self, the past, the future, aging, ideas, relationships, our own mortal being(s) as transitive verbs, and how what and who we are connects to everything else.”
Ashes, Ashes by Fredrick Soukup
Vine Leaves Press | April 16, 2024
In this novel, Soukup is “laying bare the struggles foster children experience in their pursuit of identity, belonging, and love.”
Bitter Water Opera by Nicolette Polek
Graywolf Press | April 16, 2024
In this novel, Polek “describes an individual awakening to faith while exploring our deepest existential questions. How do we look beyond ourselves? Where do words go? What is art for?”
Invisible Publishing | April 16, 2024
This novel is “a tart, unhinged flail into widowhood, the parasocial, and some of the more careworn corners of the internet.”
Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud
Restless Books | April 16, 2024
Sorman’s “macabre ballet whirls from industrial slaughterhouses to the boutique butcher shops of Paris.”
The Late Rebellion by Mark Powell
Regal House Publishing | April 16, 2024
In this novel, characters “challenge traditional notions of what it means to be southern, and what it means to be accepted, particularly when the old ways begin to crumble.”
Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
Archipelago Books | April 16, 2024
Gråbøl’s debut novel “offers a critique of institutionalization and an urgent recalibrating of the language and conceptions of care.”
Divided Island by Daniela Tarazona
Translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis and Kevin Gerry Dunn
Deep Vellum | April 23, 2024
This nonlinear narrative is “a fractal exploration of a woman’s grief as she moves through disjointed segments of time.”
Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century by Patrik Ourednik
Translated from the Czech by Gerald Turner
Dalkey Archive Press | April 23, 2024
Ourednik’s novel “explores the horror and absurdity of the twentieth century in an explosive deconstruction of historical memory.”
Translated from the Japanese by Albert Novick
Dalkey Archive Press | April 23, 2024
Marshland is “an epic novel on a Tolstoyan scale, running from the pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan.”
Book*hug Press | April 23, 2024
Play is “a haunting, riveting novel that reminds us of both the beauty and danger of imagination.”
The Instruction (Bar Mitzvah Edition) by Adam Levin
McSweeney’s | April 23, 2024
This novel is “the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker.”
Three Rooms Press | April 23, 2024
This novel’s protagonist “lives out of her car, cleaning houses of the well-to-do in the LA area to meet her shoestring budget. Then Covid hits, and everything changes.”
Zoo, or Letters Not about Love by Viktor Shklovsky
Translated from the Russian by Richard Sheldon
Dalkey Archive Press | April 23, 2024
Although the letters in this epistolary novel “cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author’s own unrequited love.”
Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn
Red Hen Press | April 30, 2024
Dear Edna Sloane is “a funny, fast-paced epistolary novel about fame, writers, ambition, and the ups and downs of a creative life.”
Dr. Josef’s Little Beauty by Zyta Rudzka
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Seven Stories Press | April 30, 2024
This novel is “a Holocaust story as fascinating and compelling as it is terrifying and puzzling—a book about aging and war crimes, pain and pride.”
Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić
Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Seven Stories Press | April 30, 2024
Bodrožić’s novel “tells a story of being locked in: socially, domestically and intimately, told through three different perspectives, all deeply marked and wounded by the patriarchy in their own way.”
The Sister Knot by Ann S. Epstein
Vine Leaves Press | April 30, 2024
Epstein’s novel follows “how two orphaned young Berlin women become each other’s family during and after the Holocaust.”
Black Heron Press | May 1, 2024
Set in San Francisco and the Bay Area, this novel is “about a young man’s passage, about three lives evolving over forty years.”
Regal House Publishing | May 7, 2024
In this historical novel, “Akmaral is bound for battle from birth, training as a girl in horsemanship, archery, spear, and blade.”
American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
Dalkey Archive Press | May 7, 2024
Cárdenas’s novel “unfurls into a layered, poignant, and unflinching portrait of how family separations have impacted the minds of Latin American deportees in a technology-bound 21st century.”
Bomb Island by Stephen Hundley
Hub City Press | May 7, 2024
Set in Coastal Georgia, Bomb Island explores “subculture communities, survival, and found family set on an island near an unexploded atomic bomb.”
Commission of Tears by António Lobo Antunes
Translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe
Dalkey Archive Press | May 7, 2024
Lobo Antunes’s novel “weaves together the three voices of daughter, father, and mother as they recall the terrors of their life in Angola, and their own suffering.”
Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott
Graywolf Press | May 7, 2024
Not a River is a novel “about masculinity, guilt, and irrepressible desire, written in a style that is spare and timeless.”
The Aziola’s Cry by Ezra Harker Shaw
History Through Fiction | May 7, 2024
In this historical novel, “love, tragedy, and the pursuit of literary greatness intertwine in a tumultuous journey that defies societal norms and tests the resilience of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
Rain Breaks No Bones by Barbara J. Taylor
Akashic Books | May 7, 2024
According to Laurie Loewenstein, “In Rain Breaks No Bones, the shadow of guilt, shame, and anger haunts—sometimes literally—Taylor’s mid-twentieth-century Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
These Songs I Know By Heart by Erin Brubacher
Book*hug Press | May 7, 2024
These Songs I Know By Heart “weaves vignettes of everyday mythology into an absorbing and honest meditation on the connections in our lives.”
Coach House Books | May 14, 2024
In this novel, “a queer writer travelling through India can’t escape the regrets of his past, nor the impending ruin of his present.”
One Tuesday, Early by Annalisa Crawford
Vine Leaves Press | May 14, 2024
In this novel, the protagonist’s “partner, her friends, her neighbours have all vanished without a trace. The entire town is deserted.”
The Joyful Song of the Partridge by Paulina Chiziane
Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw
Archipelago Books | May 14, 2024
“A roiling chronicle of motherhood and colonization,” this novel depicts “the pressure to assimilate in Portuguese-controlled Mozambique.”
The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Europa Editions | May 14, 2024
This novel, which follows seventy-two ragazzi in Sicily, is “a polyphonic tale of immigration and community.”
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
Two Lines Press | May 14, 2024
Martínez’s debut novel is “class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun.”
Morning & Evening by Jon Fosse
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
Dalkey Archive Press | May 21, 2024
In his latest novel, Nobel Laureate Fosse “gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed.”
Red Hen Press | May 21, 2024
According to Amanda Coplin, this novel is “part coming-of-age story, part ode to the landscape of northern Minnesota.”
Disobedience by Daniel Sarah Karasik
Book*hug Press | May 21, 2024
Disobedience is “a remarkable work of queer and trans speculative fiction that imagines how alternative forms of connection and power can refuse the violent institutions that engulf us.”
From Where We Are by Nicole Zelniker
Vine Leaves Press | May 21, 2024
In this novel, “each character’s tale begs the questions: What does it mean to be part of a family, what does it mean to survive, and is that enough?”
Her Best Self by Mindy Friddle
Regal House Publishing | May 21, 2024
This novel “is filled with dark twists, exploring what happens when the transgressions of the past come back with a vengeance.”
Bellevue Literary Press | May 21, 2024
Told in two mirrored narratives, this novel “unleashes the wonders and mysteries of childhood in a profound exploration of identity, spirituality, and community.”
A Good Life by Virginie Grimaldi
Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle
Europa Editions | May 28, 2024
In Grimaldi’s American debut, two estranged sisters “must return together to the Basque Country, to the house of their adored grandmother, to empty out her home and in the process to reconcile, to remember, and to pour out what is in their hearts.”
The Default World by Naomi Kanakia
Feminist Press | May 28, 2024
Kanakia’s novel “skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture and asks whether ‘found family’ is just another of the twenty-first century’s broken promises.”
Vine Leaves Press | May 28, 2024
According to Nick Perry, this historical novel about Charles Dickens is “a dark hymn to pre-Victorian London in all its grotty glory.”
Regal House Publishing | May 28, 2024
“In this exquisitely tender novel,” writes Brian Hall, “Ollie Curtin is a felon justly convicted, yet a man so otherworldly he’s almost a holy innocent.”
A Bridge Home by Mona Alvarado Frazier
Arte Público Press | May 31, 2024
Set in 1970s California, this novel “highlights elements of California history that are often overlooked, portraying the strength of a community in giving its people a bridge to a better life.”
Clouds Are The Mountains of the World by Alan Davis
Woodhall Press | June 4, 2024
This novel-in-stories “dramatizes the heroic quest of three women—mother, daughter, granddaughter—to reunite in a post-apocalyptic future.”
Dalkey Archive Press | June 4, 2024
The “ultimate dysfunctional kids” in Levy’s novel “are every boy and girl reeling from the pain of their childhoods, forgetting what they need to forget, inventing worlds they think will be better.”
Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Transit Books | June 4, 2024
First published in Kenya in 2014, this novel is “a multilayered narrative that reimagines the history of Uganda through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan.”
Europa Editions | June 4, 2024
In this new installment in the Glasgow-based series, Detective Harry McCoy searches for a missing boy and investigates corruption.
Forgotten on Sunday by Valérie Perrin
Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle
Europa Editions | June 4, 2024
Perrin’s novel “depicts the consequences of undeclared love and, in her inimitable way, portrays once again how the past is never really past.”
Translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky
Europa Editions | June 11, 2024
The first novel in Bernini’s Machiavelli Trilogy “recounts the enigmatic life of Niccolò Machiavelli, revealing the complex man behind the infamous political strategist.”
Cómo no ahogarse en un vaso de agua by Angie Cruz
Translated to the Spanish by Kianny N. Antigua
Seven Stories Press | June 11, 2024
Cruz’s novel, presented here in a Spanish-language edition, follows “a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story.”
Nauetakuan, a Silence for a Noise by Natasha Kanape Fontaine
Translated from the French by Howard Scott
Book*hug Press | June 11, 2024
In this novel, a young art history student in Montreal “connects with other Indigenous artists and thinkers, learning about the power of traditional ways and the struggles of other Nations.”
Red Hen Press | June 11, 2024
In this first novel in a new series, “Detective Arias hunts for a murderer on a liberal arts campus that prides itself on its progressive curriculum but is rife with jealousy, racial and sexual tensions, and a hierarchy as real and destructive as a medieval fortress.”
Between This World and the Next by Praveen Herat
Restless Books | June 11, 2024
Winner of the 2022 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Herat’s thriller is “a breathtaking exploration of power, identity, unconditional love, and the question of how far we’ll go to uncover the truth.”
The Vixen Amber Halloway by Carol LaHines
Regal House Publishing | June 11, 2024
LaHines’ novel is “a jailhouse confessional, a dark comedy, an oeuvre of women’s rage, a suspenseful revenge fantasy, and a moving portrait of one woman’s psychological breakdown.”
WannaBeat: Hanging out … and Hanging on … in Baby Beat San Francisco by David Polonoff
Trouser Press Books | June 12, 2024
This book is “an incisive and provocative novel about yearning for authenticity in the face of an increasingly artificial reality.”
Long Day Press | June 11, 2024
In this intergenerational novel, “the offspring of a central Texan family fight, steal, dig holes, and force people to eat sand.”
Translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley
Feminist Press | June 11, 2024
Tongueless is a psychological thriller following two rival teachers that “sheds light on the current political situation in Hong Kong.”
Vine Leaves Press | June 18, 2024
In this novel, “an elderly Korean woman relives her years upended by the Korean War, finding love in the rubble, and her acclimation to 1960 America.”
Dalkey Archive Press | June 25, 2024
This novel is “a rhapsodic saga that could have come only from Barnes’ pen—and politics—as impactful today upon at its first pressing, a document of sexual revolution and censorship.”
Confuse the Wind by Rachel Stolzman Gullo
Vine Leaves Press | June 25, 2024
This novel is “about our human interdependence and how we desperately need one another to survive and hopefully thrive.”
Translated from the Dutch by Kristen Gehrman
Sandorf Passage | June 25, 2024
Originally published in 1969 and set in 1950s Suriname, this novel “makes it all too clear what women have had to, and continue to, sacrifice in the name of claiming their identity.”
Dark Property by Brian Evenson
Black Square Editions | July 1, 2024
According to Ben Ehrenreich, in this novel “McCarthy’s sprawling Western lyricism has been replaced by a tight almost Beckettian absurdism, like Blood Meridian boiled down to an oozy ichorous syrup.”
Dalkey Archive Press | July 2, 2024
This novel “follows the strange, wonderful, fluxional world of the Crickholmes, where nonconformism is celebrated, siblings form autonomous republics, and eccentricity reigns supreme.”
False Idols: A Reluctant King Novel by K’wan
Akashic Books | July 2, 2024
In this sequel to The Reluctant King, “Maureen King and her son Shadow are forced to vacate their family estate and end up back where it all began for them: the slums of Brooklyn.”
The Caricaturist by Norman Lock
Bellevue Literary Press | July 2, 2024
The penultimate book in The American Novels series is “a tragicomic portrait of America struggling to honor its most-cherished ideals at the dawn of the twentieth century.”
Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida
Translated from the Japanese by Haydn Trowell
Europa Editions | July 9, 2024
This novel is “a symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy.”
Out of the Rain by J. Malcolm Garcia
Seven Stories Press | July 16, 2024
This debut novel “takes us into the growing world of the homeless in the United States, particularly in San Francisco.”
Vine Leaves Press | July 16, 2024
Gillen’s novel “is alive to the weight of familial expectations, the pursuit of our deepest hopes and dreams, and the struggle to make meaningful connections in the anxiety of the digital age.”
Slant Books | July 16, 2024
According to Bret Lott, this novel is “by turns fable, romance, theology, and plainspoken testimony to life and death and love and heartbreak.”
W(h)ine and Cheese by S. Atzeni
Read Furiously | July 23, 2024
A “campus novel mostly off-campus,” W(h)ine and Cheese is “a story of friendship, privilege, and bad ideas.”
Survive by Frederika Amalia Finkelstein
Translated from the French by Isabel Cout and Christopher Elson
Deep Vellum | July 23, 2024
Finkelstein’s novel ”is concerned with the work of grieving for strangers—a grief which does not begin or end, but is rather a structural part of one’s being in the world.”
Kings of Coweetsee by Dale Neal
Regal House Publishing | July 23, 2024
This novel is “filled with false charges, child brides, and murder ballads about the heartache of wronged women and the revenge they seek.”
Wrinkled Rebels by Laura Katz Olson
Vine Leaves Press | July 23, 2024
Wrinkled Rebels is “a story of how six people achieve meaningful lives through the struggle for social justice.”
On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ
Feminist Press | July 23, 2024
This novel is “a lost feminist masterwork by feminist and speculative fiction icon Joanna Russ about a lesbian’s coming-to-consciousness during the social upheaval of the 1970s.”
In Their Ruin by Joyce Goldenstern
Black Heron Press | July 30, 2024
This novel “opens in the colorful, parochial Chicago suburb of Cicero, beginning in the late 1940’s when the remnants of the gang once led by Al Capone still existed.”
Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman
Dalkey Archive Press | August 6, 2024
First published in 1930, this novel “portrays the post-partum psychosis of Marthe Gail, who after giving birth to her son, is committed to an insane asylum.”
The Curve of Equal Time by Thomas McGuire
Red Hen Press | August 6, 2024
In this novel, “Nora Tyler returns to Alaska after many years away and finds work on a salmon fishing boat, but the long, hard season brings both deep friendships and unexpected violence.”
Life After Kafka by Magdaléna Platzová
Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker
Bellevue Literary Press | August 6, 2024
This novel follows Franz Kafka’s one-time fiancée, Felice, and “illuminates the bravery required to move forward through the shattered remains of one world to rebuild life in a new one.”
Jellyfish Have No Ears by Adèle Rosenfeld
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Graywolf Press | August 6, 2024
In this novel, Rosenfeld “shines an extraordinary light on the black hole of losing a sense and on the vibrancy that can arise to fill the void.”
The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager
Dzanc Books | August 13, 2024
Drager’s novel is “at once an ode to birds, an elegy to space, and a journey into the most haunted and uncanny corners of the human mind.”
Red Hen Press | August 13, 2024
In this novel, Hong is “recasting the myths of Eurydice, Orpheus, Persephone, and Hades through the lens of a Korean American family.”
Country of Under by Brooke Shaffner
Split/Lip Press | August 13, 2024
According to Helen Benedict, “Country of Under is a novel about the pain and wonder of being between identities. Between male and female. Citizen and immigrant. Fulfilled and empty.”
Correspondence with My Greeks by Scott Cairns
Slant Books | August 20, 2024
Correspondence with My Greeks is “a work at once deeply human and hauntingly transcendent, the full flowering of the poet’s lifelong devotion to the generative power of the word.”
Long Man’s Pillow by Julie Ann Castillo
Regal House Publishing | August 20, 2024
In this novel set in an Appalachian town, “Vicki’s land is the only source of water, and she’s left to decide who gets water and who dies.”
Circle of Animals by Sadie Hoagland
Red Hen Press | August 20, 2024
This novel “tells the story of a woman, Sky, grappling with a sexual assault in her workplace and the disappearance of her troubled ‘hippie’ mother the same week.”
The Fabulist Words & Art | August 20, 2024
Saremi’s “fantastical narrative lays bare the exploitation and compromise at the heart of a society obsessed with sex, power, and filthy lucre.”
Beautiful Dreamers by Minrose Gwin
Hub City Press | August 27, 2024
This novel is “a story of a precocious teen and her mother, their gay best friend, and the con man who unravels their family.”
Red Hen Press | August 27, 2024
Set in contemporary Iran, Mirage “delves into the complicated relationship between Roya and her identical twin sister, Tala.”
The Last Tale of Norah Bow by J. P. White
Regal House Publishing | August 27, 2024
This coming-of-age novel is “a tale filled with characters steeped in betrayal, remorse, and a fierce desire for more lives.”
Aram’s Notebook by Maria Àngels Anglada
Translated from the Catalan by Ara H. Merjian
Swan Isle Press | August 28, 2024
This novel follows “a mother and son’s fictional journey to escape the Armenian Genocide and start anew.”
Third Class Relics by Elizabeth Genovise
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | September 1, 2024
This novel “recalls many Biblical myths, stories in which one person must perish so that those around him might be awakened to their inner darkness but also to their capacity for redemption.”
Woodhall Press | September 2, 2024
A “captivating blend of comedy, romance, and twisted fairy tale,” the novel Grimwell “prompts readers to ponder the profound influence of literature on our lives.”
The Poisoned Fruit: A Topaz Tenkiller Novel by Julie Colacchio
Woodhall Press | September 2, 2024
In this novel, Topaz Tenkiller “finds a secret lab with mutilated Mage corpses and discovers that scientists are harvesting magic.”
Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Two Lines Press | September 10, 2024
Croatian journalist and novelist Karakaš “relays an epic in village miniature: the story of a father, a son, a farm, a family dog, and a nation’s descent into fascism.”
Baobab Press | September 10, 2024
This debut novel from a fourth-generation Montanan “charts the liminal destruction of society and self, where wild and rural places are encroached upon by more contemporary forces.”
Don’t Pity the Desperate by Anna B. Moore
Unsolicited Press | September 10, 2024
Moore “knits together all the feelings and realities of trying to emerge from addiction–the pathos, the gallows humor, the family difficulties, the regeneration of self–into a compulsively readable novel constructed of lovely sentences and electric scenes.”
Now You Owe Me by Aliah Wright
Red Hen Press | September 10, 2024
According to Jessica Jiji, this debut novel is “a crisply written, fast-paced thriller with meaning layered so deftly into the entertainment, you get a double bonus of social commentary and spine-chilling twists.”
Everything Happens to Me by Peter Cherches
Pelekinesis | September 12, 2024
This episodic novel “chronicles the trials and tribulations of Peter Cherches, an obscure Brooklyn writer who suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous tormentors, most notably his next-door neighbor.”
Translated from the Greek by Peter Bien
Laertes | September 16, 2024
According to Ewa Chrusciel, this novel is “framed by two funerals: the protagonist’s father and a murdered woman. It is also marked by more invisible griefs, the grief of linguistic dislocation, displacement, and internalized exile.”
New Moon: Day One by Thanassis Valtinos
Translated from the Greek by Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis
Laertes | September 16, 2024
According to Nicholas Gage, this novel “tells a coming-of-age tale of two boys who struggle to deal with their emerging sexual impulses as they try to survive the brutalities of a vicious civil war.”
Blood on the Brain by Esinam Bediako
Red Hen Press | September 17, 2024
Blood on the Brain is “a novel about the complications of family, romance, and culture—and how coming of age can feel like a blow to the head.”
Translated from the German by Damion Searls
Dorothy, a publishing project | September 17, 2024
According to Luke Kennard, this novel is a “bizarre and beautiful psychodrama about hospitality, control, and domination” that “seems to take place half in the ‘real world’ and half in a Leonora Carrington painting.”
The Changing of Keys by Carolyn Jack
Regal House Publishing | September 17, 2024
In The Changing of Keys, “a gifted, fourteen-year-old pianist finds himself sent away from his Caribbean home against his will, to study classical music in the U.S. with a family friend he’s never met.”
Seven Stories Press | September 17, 2024
This novel is about what it means to “‘contain multitudes’—to love both men and women, to defend your mixed-race family in the American South, to care for someone who experiences the world in fundamentally different ways than you do.”
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim by Jacob Wren
Book*hug Press | September 17, 2024
Wren’s novel is “an intricate study of our complicity in violent global systems and a celebration of the hope that underpins the resistance against them.”
Briefcases from Caracas by Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez
Translated from the Spanish by Barbara Riess and Suzanne Corley
Black Square Editions | September 20, 2024
In this novel, Mendez Guédez’s Caracas is “the sinking ship at the center of this twenty-first century transnational Stevensonian Caribbean tale of shifting conflicts, loyalties, and surprising treasures.”
A Hunger With No Name by Lauren C. Teffeau
University of Tampa Press | September 20, 2024
This novel is “a powerful story of survival—personal, ecological, and cultural—in the presence of overwhelming technological power.”
We Walked On by Thérèse Soukar Chehade
Regal House Publishing | September 24, 2024
Set during Lebanon’s civil war, Chehade’s novel “immerses readers in the landscape of war, weaving political unrest into everyday life.”
The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
Feminist Press | September 24, 2024
According to Nino Cipri, Killjoy’s novel is “a reminder that fantasy can be a vehicle for so much: interrogations of power, knowledge, ethics, an exploration of how to live in the world.”
The Last Client of Luis Montez by Manuel Ramos
Arte Público Press | September 30, 2024
The third novel in Ramos’s Luis Montez Mystery series “leads readers on a breathless chase through Colorado and west to California as the activist and attorney finds himself running from the law.”
No One Knows Their Blood Type by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
Translated from the Arabic by Hazem Jamjoum
Cleveland State University Poetry Center | October 1, 2024
This “novel of Palestine centers its narrative not on the battlefield of history, but on how women live every day and the colonial context of their embodied lives.”
Blindspot in America by Elom K. Akoto
Red Hen Press | October 1, 2024
This novel “gives a provocative depiction of some of the realities immigrants face in the United States—racism and discrimination—but also their hopes and faith in a country that promises freedom and opportunity to all.”
Green Writers Press | October 1, 2024
Hart’s eco-novel “illuminates the spiritual connectedness of chance occurrences and weaves a powerful tale of strife, introspection, and reclamation.”
Broke Heart Blues by Joyce Carol Oates
Akashic Books | October 1, 2024
Originally published in 1999, this reissue of Oates’s novel is “at once a scathing indictment of the cult-like nature of fame and celebrity in America and a deeply moving meditation on human need and longing.”
The Book of Losman by K. E. Semmel
Santa Fe Writers Project | October 2, 2024
The titular character of this novel “learns of a new drug designed to locate the root of his Tourette through childhood memories,” is “lured by promises of a cure and visits the mysterious lab that developed the drug.”
Translated from the French by Susan Ouriou
Book*hug Press | October 8, 2024
Britt’s novel “asks what happens when one can no longer play a role—whether in a couple, family, or social structure—and exposes the resulting friction between pleasure and consequence.”
The Propagandist by Cécile Desprairies
Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
New Vessel Press | October 8, 2024
According to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, this “haunting autobiographical novel shows that the Nazi occupation of France is not an event in the distant past but part of family histories and memories that still go unspoken.”
Deena Undone by Debra K. Every
Woodhall Press | October 8, 2024
According to S. T. Joshi, this horror novel’s supernatural motif is “incorporated into a broader tale of searing domestic conflict fueled by love, betrayal, and hatred.”
Nightboat Books | October 8, 2024
Pre-dating the British Sexual Offences Act of 1967, Hyatt’s novel “is a portrait of London’s Soho that is now lost, an important document of queer working-class life from a voice long overlooked.”
Beneath a Sky of Stone by E. B. Tolley
Woodhall Press | October 8, 2024
In Tolley’s debut novel, Ryan Shaw “learns that he has survived a fall of seventeen kilometers into the Earth’s crust and is trapped underground in the Republic of Inner Earth.”
Grid Books | October 10, 2024
In Strong’s eighteenth published book, “youth and age come into close contact and understanding, even while made to cope with the concerns of a larger world.”
Old California Strikes Back by Scott Russell Duncan
FlowerSong Press | October 14, 2024
Russell Duncan’s book is a “magical memoir and meta-novel that chronicles the journey of its mixed-race author—SRD—as he dismantles the myths surrounding Californios and the Chicano condition.”
Nothing Vast by Moshe Zvi Marvit
Acre Books | October 15, 2024
This novel “delves deeply into the circumstances and concerns of Jews in cities across the globe—in Poland, France, Morocco, and the United States—as well as in Israel.”
Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Book*hug Press | October 15, 2024
This novel is “a gothic tale set at the dawn of modern gynecology, when the female body appears as a cryptic landscape and male hubris reigns.”
Ronsdale Press | October 18, 2024
Spaner’s novel tells the story of a Vancouver man “shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the not-so-civil wars that go on within families and intimate relationships.”
Green Writers Press | October 22, 2024
In Ellis’s speculative novel, the two protagonists “discover the key to human hibernation—but when their secret goes public, death, deception, and moral dilemmas wreak havoc on their lives.”
The Rhino Keeper by Jillian Forsberg
History Through Fiction | October 22, 2024
Based on the true story of a Dutch sea captain who traveled with an Indian rhinoceros called Clara, The Rhino Keeper “evokes both the thrill of discovery in the archives and the wonder felt by a world in which no European had seen a living rhinoceros.”
To Be Marquette by Sharon Dilworth
Carnegie Mellon University Press | October 29, 2024
This campus novel “portrays an undergraduate narrator groping for meaning in a world where personal transformation takes place alongside conflicting cultural paradigms.”
Water, Spiderweb by Nada Gašić
Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias–Bursać
Sandorf Passage | October 29, 2024
Gašić’s “literary noir is set in motion by the historic 1964 Sava River flood that runs through the lives, and generations, of an eccentric cast of marginalized characters.”
Sister Deborah by Scholastique Mukasonga
Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti
Archipelago Books | October 29, 2024
This novel “at its core is a story of what happens when women—black women and girls—seek the truth by any means.”
Unsolicited Press | October 29, 2024
According to Brenda Janowitz, this romantic novel is “a thoughtful exploration of the choices we make, and how one chance meeting (or lack thereof) can change your life in complicated and unexpected ways.”
We Shall Not All Sleep by Tony Woodlief
Slant Books | October 29, 2024
According to Ron Hansen, this coming-of-age novel is a “beautifully written portrait of a father and son’s deep love for each other, and of the guilt and hauntings, both real and imagined, that threaten and challenge them.”
Waiting for Maria by Ifeoma Chinwuba
Iskanchi Press | October 30, 2024
This novel, a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, “explores the harrowing experiences of female inmates caught in Nigeria’s sluggish justice system.”
The Man with Yellow Hair by Meriel Mongie
Iskanchi Press | October 30, 2024
This novel “delves into the experiences and emotions of mature women, providing readers with a rich and nuanced portrayal of relationships, loss, and the passage of time.”
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 1, 2024
This novel “weaves diverse elements into a story both light-hearted and philosophical, exploring along the way universal human touchstones of obsession, ruined love and the inexplicable mysteries that shape our lives.”
Lady Without Land by Krystal Anali Vazquez
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 1, 2024
This debut novel “is a story told in fragments about señorita who feels lost in and lost without Los Angeles.”
Fragments of a Paradise by Jean Giono
Translated from the French by Paul Eprile
Archipelago Books | November 5, 2024
This is a new edition of “Giono’s oft-overlooked seafaring tale” that “sweeps the reader along a narrative as poetic and undulating as the wind.”
Woodhall Press | November 5, 2024
The Mistake “weaves a compelling tale of a mixed Jewish/Roman family’s dynamics, against the backdrop of the Roman world, in a society which is on the cusp of change.”
McPherson & Company | November 8, 2024
In Hill’s novel containing 265 short titled passages, “a mercurial young woman comes to believe that the barren city she inhabits is actually the underworld.”
Graywolf Press | November 12, 2024
Davis’s historical novel about Marie Antoinette “is an enchanting meditation on girlhood, womanhood, architecture, and—above all—time and the soul’s true journey within it.”
Not Even the Sound of a River by Hélène Dorion
Translated from the French by Jonathan Kaplansky
Book*hug Press | November 12, 2024
“Told through multiple perspectives, newspaper accounts, and historical documents,” this novel “is a moving tale of love’s phantom pains as shared through the relationships between three generations of mothers and daughters.”
The Moonstone Covenant by Jill Hammer
Ayin Press | November 12, 2024
This fantasy novel follows “the story of four women who set out to uncover the secret origins of an intricate, magical city—and to change its fate.”
Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea by Elias Khoury
Translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies
Archipelago Books | November 12, 2024
In the second installment of his trilogy, Khoury “weaves personal and cultural memory into a tale that humanizes the complex Palestinian experience, and traces the careful contours of the unspeakable.”
My Home Somewhere Else by Federica Marzi
Translated from the Italian by Jim Hicks
Sandorf Passage | November 12, 2024
Marzi’s English-language debut “weaves together a multigenerational story about how hard it can be to let the wounds of the past heal.”
A Boy’s Guide to Outer Space by Peter Selgin
Regal House Publishing | November 12, 2024
According to Michael Nethercott, Selgin’s novel “presents a lost world of 1960s small-town life with all its constrictions and aspirations.”
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuang-zi
Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
Graywolf Press | November 12, 2024
A finalist for the 2024 National Book Award in Translation, this novel “unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.”
The Green Man’s War by Juliet E. McKenna
Wizard’s Tower Press | November 15, 2024
This “modern fantasy rooted in the ancient myths and folklore of the British Isles” tells the story of Daniel Mackmain, who resolves “clashes between ordinary people and the supernatural world.”
The Moon Won’t Talk by Morgan Howell
Regal House Publishing | November 19, 2024
According to Ellen Parent, this protagonist “speaks with the wisdom of youth and the wit of a poet in this coming-of-age story teeming with ghosts, naive young love, mysterious neighbors and dreamy days spent fishing beside the river.”
Transcendental Factory: For Mina Loy by Karla Kelsey
Winter Editions | November 19, 2024
Kelsey’s “lyric-documentary rendezvous” with writer and visual artist Mina Loy combines experimental biography with fiction and fact and “elevates networks, constellations, and tracings over conventional chronology.”
Sundown in San Ojuela by M. M. Olivas
Lanternfish Press | November 19, 2024
According to Nalo Hopkinson, this horror novel is “a wild ride of brujas and old Aztec gods, chupacabras and haunted houses that gets stranger, darker, and more dire with each turn of the page.”
Slant Books | November 26, 2024
Mojtabai’s novel “offers us a varied cast of characters at Shady Rest, including: Eli, who fancies himself a ladies man; Elora, anxious about her wayward nephew; the aloof but lonely scholar Wiktor; and Maddie, a bit eccentric, true, but more wise and compassionate than most.”
Translated from the Croatian by Vinko Zgaga
Deep Vellum | November 26, 2024
Popović’s short story collection “is a playfully existential meditation on youth and the search for the self.”
The Third Temple by Yishai Sarid
Translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan
Restless Books | November 26, 2024
According to Reza Aslan, this science fiction novel is “an unsettling—one could say prophetic—reflection on faith, zeal, and the consequences of ideological extremism.”
American Still Life by Jim Naremore
Regal House Publishing | Dec 16, 2024
According to Tara Deal, this novel tells the story of photojournalist Skade Felsdottir, “whose past recklessness becomes the true focus of her documentary project to shoot roadside memorials.”
Novellas
Pour One for the Devil: A Gothic Novella by Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr.
Lanternfish Press | March 5, 2024
According to Kimberly Davis Basso, “What should be a simple visit by an academic to a Carolina island historical society becomes a gothic nightmare with a Chicago twist.”
L’Air du Temps (1985) by Diane Josefowicz
Regal House Publishing | March 12, 2024
In this novella set in 1985, “the shooting of Mr. Marfeo disrupts the quiet suburban neighborhood of Maple Bay and prompts thirteen-year-old Zinnia Zompa to reorganize everything she knows about her parents.”
The Hebrew Teacher: Three Novellas by Maya Arad
Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
New Vessel Press | March 19, 2024
In these novellas, all “comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity,” Arad “probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.”
Before. During. After. by Philip Charter
Pelekinesis | April 15, 2024
In this novella-in-flash, “characters in a small town navigate events that will change their lives forever.”
Buster: A Dog by George Pelecanos
Akashic Books | May 7, 2024
Buster is “the story of one dog’s lifelong journey, as told by the animal himself.”
Let Gravity Seize the Dead by Darrin Doyle
Regal House Publishing | July 9, 2024
This novella “is an intergenerational literary horror story featuring a blend of suspense, beauty, and terror.”
Captain Chicano Draws a Line in the American Sand by Stephen D. Gutierrez
University of Tampa Press | August 15, 2024
In this novella, “Captain Chicano is out to save the country! White supremacy is on the rise and he is the only one capable of beating it with a secret weapon. Love. But will it work?”
Middle Creek Publishing & Audio | October 1, 2024
Set against the background of seasonal drama in the bird world, Davis’s novella “embodies the visceral response—angst and exasperating sense of helplessness inflamed by the distance between the will of the people and our national policy, and the bewilderment we feel—to the barbaric violence and violations of human rights happening in Ukraine.”
Game Over Books | October 29, 2024
This novella focused on food, the body, eating disorder, identity, and desire is “an alternative campus novel that explores the possibility of love in a world where everything is always excessive yet unfulfilled.”
Regal House Publishing | December 10, 2024
According to Megan Staffel, this novella is “a masterful puzzle, a one-way conversation that poses more questions than it answers as a wife tries to communicate with her husband.”
Fiction Chapbooks
Another Way of Coming Home by Chris Helvey
Appalachia Book Company | March 15, 2024
Another Way of Coming Home “steeps readers in the rich beauty of the Appalachian land while reminding them that no man is safe from the justice of the mountains.”
The Constantly Unfolding Horrors of Vasily Nikoleyevich by Jen Burke Anderson
Fabulist Editions | June 18, 2024
Burke Anderson’s short-fiction chapbook “applies a layer of hallucinatory strangeness to modern despair and anomie in this darkly comic work of ‘Dostoevsky fan fiction.’”
You Can Take It From Here by Marguerite Hogan
Fabulist Editions | September 13, 2024
In this chapbook of stories, “a woman’s life is wonderfully upended by the very good relationship advice she gets from a colorful talking condom.”
Of Love and Water by Elizabeth Burton
Appalachia Book Company | December 2, 2024
Burton “brings her personal experience of living in western China to the story” in this chapbook, “sharing glimpses of Uyghur culture and language.”
Lemon Street’s Angel of Death by Larry D. Thacker
Appalachia Book Company | December 2, 2024
Thacker’s chapbook is “a wry commentary on the interpersonal antics of small town neighborhoods.”
Short Fiction Collections
There Will Never Be Another Night Like This by John Salter
Slant Books | January 9, 2024
In this short fiction collection, Salter’s “insights into the human condition, its dreams and nightmares, are always unflinching but never without compassion.”
Unbend the River by Devin Murphy
Black Lawrence Press | January 19, 2024
The characters in this collection of linked stories set in Western New York, “all of whom are tied to a modern knife manufacturing plant, illustrate all the ways love and longing shapeshift over the course of a long life.”
Harbor Lights Stories by James Lee Burke
Grove Atlantic | January 23, 2024
The eight stories in this collection “move from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons, and trailer parks across the South.”
Dressing the Saints by Aracelis González Asendorf
Black Lawrence Press | January 26, 2024
According to Cristina Garcia, Dressing the Saints is “a beautiful collection of short stories that captures the losses, family allegiances, and ruptures of Cuban exile.”
Thirty West Publishing | January 26, 2024
This debut short fiction collection “merges the brutal with the surreal, blurring the line between safety and danger, sinner and saint.”
People Without Wings by Morgan Christie
Digging Press | January 31, 2024
Winner of the 2022 Digging Press Chapbook Series Award, this collection of three stories “invites you to explore the depths of grief, the heights of transformation, and the beauty of human connection.”
Midwatch by Jillian Danback-McGhan
Split/Lip Press | February 6, 2024
In this debut short fiction collection, “women service members confront a world that treats their military service as spectacle.”
How You Were Born by Kate Cayley
Book*hug Press | March 5, 2024
This tenth-anniversary edition of How You Were Born, featuring three new stories, explores “the importance of connections, even when missed or mislaid, and the possibility of redemption.”
History Is Embarrassing by Karen Chase
CavanKerry Press | March 5, 2024
Chase’s essay collection “weaves together threads from one single life—a girl suffering from polio, a poet, a Jewish woman, a writer, and a painter.”
Below the Falls by Ross McMeekin
Thirty West Publishing | March 22, 2024
In these stories, American landscapes are “a vital background for characters faced with conflicts that cannot be easily resolved, illuminating interior worlds filled with contradiction.”
Autumn House Press | March 26, 2024
This book of 16 stories is “a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women’s bodies and psyches.”
The Last Philosopher in Texas: Fictions and Superstitions by Daniel Chacón
Arte Público Press | March 31, 2024
In this short fiction collection, Chacón “weaves a rich tapestry of insightful stories and superstitions that brims with humor and the mystical.”
The Ballad of Gato Guerrero by Manuel Ramos
Arte Público Press | March 31, 2024
Originally published in 1994, this second installment in the Luis Montez Mystery series “takes readers on a wild ride through Denver’s mean streets and deadly encounters with young gangbangers.”
The Dalai Lama’s Smile by Paula Closson Buck
Acre Books | April 1, 2024
The characters of these stories ranging from fabulism to realism “are forced to negotiate fallout stemming from religious dogma, environmental crisis, and political violence.”
Sporting Moustaches by Aug Stone
Sagging Meniscus | April 1, 2024
This collection features “thirteen tall tales about the role facial hair has played in athletics and competition over the years.”
Santa Fe Writers Project | April 9, 2024
The thirteen stories in this collection “explore how humans have used, abused, and spectacularized their equine companions throughout American history.”
I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López
Feminist Press | April 9, 2024
The stories in I’ll Give You a Reason “explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey.”
Seven Stories Press | April 23, 2024
Most of the stories in this collection take place “in the 1950s, examining the lives of women in that period—the suppression, the lack of opportunities, the dependency on men.”
Litany of Saints: A Triptych by Diana Rojas
Arte Público Press | April 30, 2024
In this debut collection, “Rojas’ characters grapple with their self-perception as they consider what they’re supposed to be and who they want to be.”
The Holy Ghost and Other Spooky Stories by Bernie Brown
Current Words Publishing | May 1, 2024
This collection of twenty-seven spooky stories is “guaranteed to ruin a good night’s sleep.”
A Professional Lola by E. P. Tuazon
Red Hen Press | May 7, 2024
Winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, this collection blends “literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity.”
A Question of Belonging: Crónicas by Hebe Uhart
Translated from the Spanish by Anna Vilner
Archipelago Books | May 7, 2024
In these stories, Uhart “reinvigorates our desire to connect with other people, to love the world, to laugh in the face of bad intentions, and to look again, more closely.”
Translated from the Spanish by Heather Houde
Feminist Press | May 7, 2024
The stories in this debut collection depict “the disillusionment that comes with being young and queer in Puerto Rico.”
Dispatches from the District Committee by Vladimir Sorokin
Translated from the Russian by Max Lawton
Dalkey Archive Press | May 14, 2024
This short fiction collection is “a revelatory, offbeat portrait of Soviet life beyond the propaganda and state-sponsored realism.”
Don’t Mind Me by Brian Coughlan
Etruscan Press | May 14, 2024
The short stories in Don’t Mind Me “dig deep into what it means to live in an increasingly connected, but isolated modern world that demands far more than we can possibly hope to provide.”
Of Fathers & Gods by Jim Roberts
Belle Point Press | May 14, 2024
This debut collection of short fiction “delves into the relationships between fathers and their children: the good, the bad, and the awful.”
Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! by Garrett Caples
Wave Books | May 14, 2024
This collection of phantasmagorical stories “draws on Marcel Schwob, magical realism, and speculative fiction for inspiration, projecting worlds dominated by dream logic and impossible (and often hilarious) dimensions.”
Stealing Home by Sharon Hashimoto
Grid Books | May 14, 2024
In her debut short story collection, Hashimoto “brings us stories that trace the costs of war and internment as felt across generations of Japanese Americans.”
Black Lawrence Press | May 17, 2024
This short fiction collection “subverts the reader’s common perceptions about how love can heal, how loss and suffering can transform, and how every character deserves a second chance.”
Exile in Guyville by Amy Lee Lillard
BOA Editions | May 21, 2024
In the stories in this collection, “probable futures and alternate realities take aim at unruly women, and show how they refuse to be ruled.”
My Visit to the Shadow District by Vladimir Poleganov
Translated from the Bulgarian by Peter Bachev
Fabulist Editions | May 28, 2024
This chapbook is “a place where museum visits and walking tours provide cover for a clandestine mission that’s more like a waking dream.”
Dzanc Books | June 11, 2024
The stories in this collection “provide a deep and nuanced view of contemporary Iranian women as they navigate a crucial moment in their nation’s history.”
Under the Neomoon by Wolfgang Hilbig
Translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole
Two Lines Press | June 11, 2024
Originally published in Germany in 1982, this short fiction collection “is a neon-bright reminder of humanity’s folly and the importance of storytelling from down below, where the workers toil.”
Long Day Press | June 11, 2024
In these short stories, “David Bowie sees every mask he has ever worn, every shapeshifting phase of an iconic, fifty-year career even the most jaded critic wouldn’t hesitate to call ‘classic.'”
Alice James Books | June 11, 2024
Revell’s fifteenth collection “weaves anxiety and morality into a tangled web, asking how we’re supposed to live in a world where our imaginations can cause irreparable harm.”
Ricky & Other Love Stories by Whitney Collins
Sarabande Books | June 25, 2024
In this short fiction collection, Collins “applies her sharp eye, black humor, and generous heart to love stories (and the stories we tell ourselves about love).”
In This Ravishing World by Nina Schuyler
Regal House Publishing | July 2, 2024
The short stories in this collection feature “an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis.”
The Potato Eaters by Farhad Pirbal
Translated from the Kurdish by Jiyar Homer and Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse
Deep Vellum | July 9, 2024
Each of the stories in this collection “underlines ‘otherness,’ or isolation and displacement in contemporary society.”
The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due
Akashic Books | August 6, 2024
In some of these stories—which include elements of horror, science fiction, and suspense—”the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal.”
The History of the Baker’s Dozen by Gary Fincke
Pelekinesis | August 6, 2024
The characters in these short stories “deal with anger, frustration, sexual desire, cultural shifts, work issues, and an assortment of other common issues deepened and made singular.”
Delinquents and Other Escape Attempts by Nick Rees Gardner
Madrona Books | August 13, 2024
The characters in these Ohio-based linked stories “battle addictions, build scrap-metal rocket ships, and tether themselves to plans that will either get them out of dodge or blow up in their faces.”
The Trees by Claudia Peña Claros
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
Relegation Books | August 20, 2024
In these short stories, Claros “piercingly renders a world in perpetual tumult, marked both by convulsive disputes over property and power and by nature’s resistance in the face of human injustice.”
From Savagery by Alejandra Banca
Translated from the Spanish by Katie Brown
Restless Books | August 27, 2024
Banca’s debut short fiction collection “throws its arms around a displaced generation of young Venezuelan migrants, reveling in the clamor and beauty of their day-by-day survival.”
Soul, Ghost, My Absolute by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson
Rain Mountain Press | August 30, 2024
According to Laurie Blauner, in these stories Stevenson asks, “Is what we feel more real than reality itself?” and “answers through dreams, apparitions, love, memory, longing, and spirituality.”
Harlow Smith Postcards: Icons in Black & White by Stephanie Dickinson
Rain Mountain Press | August 30, 2024
According to David Chorton, in this collection of vignettes Dickinson “highlights the darker aspect of a high-octane existence and illuminates the interior worlds of Jean Harlow and Bessie Smith.”
Madness and Greatness Can Share the Same Face by Amanda Headlee
Woodhall Press | September 2, 2024
This book is “a collection of thirteen dark fiction tales that spiderweb across space and time to explore the line where, with a step, one can be pitched into the realm of greatness or depths of madness.”
City of Dancing Gargoyles by Tara Campbell
Santa Fe Writers Project | September 3, 2024
“Water and safety are elusive” in this book of speculative climate fiction, “where history books bleed, dragons kiss, and gun-toting trees keep their own kind of peace.”
Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda
Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary
Feminist Press | September 10, 2024
The thirteen women in these linked stories “spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to endure, telling their own stories in bold, unapologetic voices.”
Stealing Home by Sharon Hashimoto
Grid Books | September 10, 2024
Hashimoto’s debut short story collection is “both an allusion to an American pastime, and a searing condemnation of its history of forced internment.”
The Devil’s Library by Joachim Glage
JackLeg Press | September 15, 2024
According to Andrew Tonkovich, this is a “funny, subversive, and authoritatively anti-authoritarian” short fiction collection in which Glage “finds no tradition unassailable or otherwise invulnerable to his joyful repurposing.”
Four Way Books | September 15, 2024
These 10 stories “make quick work of the easy truths and thoughtless salvos that keep us from seeing the wildness of our irreducible lives.”
The Hungry and the Haunted by Rilla Askew
Belle Point Press | September 17, 2024
Set primarily in eastern Oklahoma during the 1970s, these short stories are a “testament to young women and other outsiders navigating relationships, social change, and the power of place during increasingly precarious times.”
The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies by Maggie Cooper
Bull City Press | September 17, 2024
The stories in Cooper’s collection grapple with “the role of gender and the body in creating and maintaining communities” and “dream of worlds where we can all escape our narrow orbits.”
Beware the Bantam Fighter by David I. Santiago
Arte Público Press | September 30, 2024
In this collection of interrelated stories, Santiago “braids together one Puerto Rican family’s experiences on the mainland and the island to create an engaging look at their cultural heritage and its effect on assimilation and daily life.”
American Muse: Starlite Pulp Novellas
Starlite Pulp | October 1, 2024
This collection of novellas features “two dark westerns by Brian Townsley and Jean-Paul L. Granier, and two gritty crime yarns by Manny Torres and Alex Slusar, all thematically linked by the search for the American Dream.”
Little Ones by Grey Wolfe LaJoie
Hub City Press | October 8, 2024
Informed by “Appalachian experience and traditions of Southern storytelling,” these “mischievous polyvocal tales are an exercise in audacity, in embracing the bizarre and carnivalesque within us.”
Hungry Gods, and Other Matters of Conscience: Speculative Fictions by Heather Bourbeau
Fabulist Editions | October 10, 2024
These short stories show us “a revolution launched by a slice of cake; an empath trained to avenge the genocidal crimes of her ancestors; a balloon that can buoy a wounded soul into a new life of liberation.”
Near Strangers by Marian Crotty
Autumn House Press | October 11, 2024
The eight stories in Near Strangers “center on resilient female protagonists and offer a view into queer life in America outside of its major coastal cities.”
The Ghost Town Collectives by Brittney Corrigan
Middle Creek Publishing & Audio | October 15, 2024
According to Peter Rock, Corrigan’s short stories collect “tales of loss—lost relationships, lost climates and landscapes, lost possibilities and yet they are always infused with hope and empathy.”
Scream Queen by Jeremy Griffin
Black Lawrence Press | October 15, 2024
Scream Queen navigates “issues of violence, spirituality, addiction, parenthood, and mortality for a clearer understanding of how our failures ultimately shape us.”
Take Me With You Next Time by Janis Hubschman
WTAW Press | October 15, 2024
The “morally complex and often wryly funny” stories in Hubschman’s debut collection feature “women held captive by misguided desire, heartbreak, and bewildering grief.”
A Knock at the Door by Lily Hoàng
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 1, 2024
This short fiction collection “peeps through a tiny, distorted keyhole, and on the other side, fairy tales wait—with patience, with malice, with magic.”
Animal Husbandry by Taylor Garcia
Unsolicited Press | November 5, 2024
The men in Garcia’s short story collection “are in the midst of their own personal apocalypses as the real and artificial world decays around them.”
Really Shockingly Bad Things and Other Stories by Sam Asher
55 Fathoms Publishing | December 1, 2024
This collection of short stories “takes a hard, but often deeply moving look at a near-future dystopia, a time and place not too far from our present reality.”
Fiction Anthologies
After Dinner Conversation: Nature of Reality Edition
After Dinner Conversation | April 21, 2024
This anthology features stories “about the philosophy and ethics exploring the nature of reality and perceptions.”
Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa
Catalyst Press | May 7, 2024
Edited by Rachel Zadok and Helen Moffett, this anthology features 11 writers from Africa and the African diaspora who “explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive us apart.”
After Dinner Conversation: Equality Ethics
After Dinner Conversation | May 21, 2024
This anthology features stories from literary magazine After Dinner Conversation “about the philosophy and ethics of equality and diversity.”
Someplace Generous: An Inclusive Romance Anthology
Generous Press | May 28, 2024
This anthology—edited by Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame and featuring writers such as Richard Siken, Brionne Janae, and Corinne Manning—”presents voices largely new to the genre of romance, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story.”
Pelekinesis | July 8, 2024
Edited by Meg Pokrass, Gary Fincke, and Grant Faulkner, this anthology “provides recognition for outstanding literary stories of 400 words or fewer.”
Bitter Become the Fields: A Horror Anthology
Horns and Rattles Press | July 27, 2024
This anthology of flash, micro, and short fiction with common themes of flora and fungi asks, “What lies dormant below the grass? In the unplowed fields? Deep in the woods?”
After Dinner Conversation: Government Ethics
After Dinner Conversation | July 21, 2024
Edited by Kolby Granville, this anthology features short stories “about the philosophy and ethics of government law and regulation.”
After Dinner Conversation: Research Ethics
After Dinner Conversation | July 21, 2024
Edited by Heather Zeiger, this anthology features short stories “about the philosophy and ethics of research.”
Kurdistan +100: Stories from a Future State
Deep Vellum | August 6, 2024
This anthology “poses a question to twelve contemporary Kurdish writers: might the Kurds have a country to call their own by the year 2046—exactly a century after the last glimmer of independence (the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad)?”
After Dinner Conversation: Business Ethics
After Dinner Conversation | August 7, 2024
This anthology includes short stories about the philosophy and ethics of business.
After Dinner Conversation: Examining the Past
After Dinner Conversation | August 21, 2024
This anthology features short stories “about the philosophy and ethics as we revisit and examine our past as individuals.”
The Fabulist Book of Miniatures
Fabulist Editions | September 3, 2024
Edited by Josh Wilson, the first volume of this anthology brings together 26 speculative miniatures “of magic, mystery, science fiction, experimentation, intrigue, poignance, loss, fulfillment, desire, yearning, humor, and horror” from The Fabulist Magazine.
Akashic Books | November 5, 2024
This fiction anthology edited by Chris McKinney is “a riveting collection, exploring shadows and corners of Honolulu that will never be found in a tourist brochure.”
Operation Panic: Cold War Stories of the Atomic Bomb
Woodhall Press | November 19, 2024
This anthology gathers short stories originally published between 1946 and 1980—by Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Judith Merril, and more—revisiting “the fears and anxieties—and the imagined future—of a world changed by atomic weapons.”
Coolest Stories Press | November 21, 2024
According to Bobbie Ann Mason, this anthology of short stories edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey—featuring Linda Bernal, Demond J Blake, Philip Cesario, and more—is “tender, moving, electrifying, comical, and quirky.”
Wizard’s Tower Press | November 21, 2024
The second volume of this anthology, edited by Roz Clarke and Joanne Hall, was “produced in response to accusations that stories of women warriors were somehow unrealistic and anachronistic.”
The Presence: A Collection of Haunted Stories and Folklore
Kinsman Avenue Publishing | December 20, 2024
Edited by Monique Franz, this anthology features stories by Mir Aziz, Franka Zeph, Mei Davis, and more that blend “the spectral and the mundane with tales rooted in the haunts and mysteries of cultures around the globe.”
Graphic Novels
Dzanc Books | April 2, 2024
This graphic novel told in the form of a sentence diagram is “set in a parallel-universe United States in which the government has recently been overthrown by a military coup.”
Chaos in Kinshasa by Thierry Bellefroid and Barly Baruti
Translated from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger
Catalyst Press | August 1, 2024
In this graphic novel written by Bellefroid and illustrated by Baruti, “a Harlem gangster’s trip to Central Africa to attend the legendary 1974 Ali-Foreman ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ boxing match becomes a one-way ticket to the seedy underground of Zaire.”
SN_33P’sCoolZine.pdf by Tenacity Plys
fifth wheel press | August 27, 2024
In this graphic novel, “when SN_33P (aka Sneep) learns their creator Carol is going to be executed and turned into a living neural net, their digital punk zine becomes an exegesis of their grieving process.”
Last of the Pops by Adam Wilson
Read Furiously | October 15, 2024
This graphic novel dives “into the soundtrack of a wannabe podcaster, a teen graffiti artist and her estranged brother, a former disc jockey, the newest owner of a vinyl legacy, and a tortured singer on the cusp of greatness.”
