Johansson (Antiquity) explores themes of doppelgängers, loneliness, and selfhood in her sly latest. The dizzying hall-of-mirrors narrative unfolds on two tracks, beginning with an isolated and yearning woman named Naomi who meets an enchanting stranger named Laura after they mistakenly wind up with each other’s coats at a café. When they meet again at the same café, Laura confesses that their first meeting frightened her and that she’s seen Naomi around since then, suggesting Naomi might be her doppelgänger (“I have seen you.... Have you seen me?”). A parallel narrative follows an unnamed woman who lives alone and works as a transcriptionist for a ghostwriter. One day, she plays a client’s tape that is silent save for a woman’s whisper, “I have seen you. Have you seen me?” The transcriptionist takes the question to be directed at her, despite the fact that she’s “more invisible than the ghostwriter himself.” Shaken, she begins to feel like she’s “disappearing,” or is “split in two.” Johansson artfully teases out the echoes between the narrative threads, as Naomi and Laura see each other again and move in together and Laura unsettles Naomi by copying her clothing and hairstyle, even impersonating her on the phone. By the end, the two story lines seamlessly converge. Readers will be entranced. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

An ambitious journalist chases a big scoop and seeks to understand her Brooklyn roots in Savitch-Lew’s impressive debut. The story hinges on events from decades earlier, when Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, a Black Puerto Rican community organizer, ran a Freedom School to empower children of color out of her apartment on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville. One night in 1978, a suspicious fire breaks out that destroys Lina’s building and the one next to it, killing a man and rendering dozens homeless. For decades, neighborhood residents believe Lina’s Chinese American landlord, Richard Wong, was behind the blaze. In 2013, recent Yale grad Sadie Chin covers Brownsville for a small citywide newspaper. After she discovers that Richard is her grandfather, Sadie contacts Lina and begins researching the neighborhood’s history to find out what really happened with the fire. Her dogged pursuit of the truth is often at odds with Lina’s insistence that Sadie, a privileged outsider from Park Slope, can never fully know the community or what it had been like at the height of the Black Power movement. The characters are fully realized, and the story of Richard’s arrival in America from rural China as a young boy is particularly poignant. At its heart, though, this is an indelible story of Brooklyn and the recurring tug-of-war between residents and new arrivals over the right to call the borough home. It’s a tour de force. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Van Der Meer’s sharp debut focuses on the travails of a 29-year-old magazine editor. Frankie Miller is reeling from a breakup with her boyfriend and still grieving the loss of her mother seven years earlier when she loses her coveted job at Marie Claire. Reluctantly, she accepts a position as a night editor for the Scoop, an online tabloid. Her uneasiness is tempered by the salary—it’s the most she’s ever earned—and a promise by her volatile boss, David Brown, to eventually transfer her to the prestigious Business Day, a thinly veiled Wall Street Journal, which is also owned by the Scoop’s parent company. Desperate to make the leap, Frankie abandons her integrity when she stumbles on tabloid pay dirt with unflattering photos of 1990s pop star Amanda Myles, who’s been out of the spotlight for decades, then digs up dirt on Amanda’s secret marriage and divorce. Her hit pieces keep coming despite Amanda’s attempts to reach a truce. Then tragedy strikes, forcing Frankie to reckon with her conscience. The author offers a clear-eyed view into the seedy side of the media world, showing how ethics can be cast aside in the pursuit of clicks, and the depiction of the condescending David is particularly bracing, as he berates Frankie one minute then praises her the next. By the end of this well-told story, everyone gets what they deserve. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

When the reader meets Caroline Neumann, the TV comedy writer at the center of Cantor’s hilarious and propulsive debut, her life is in shambles. Her career is going nowhere and her therapist husband, Harry, pressures her to have kids, which she resents while envying his consistent and meaningful work. One day, Harry tells Caroline about a dream shared with him by a patient, whom he calls the Teacher, about murdering her kindergarten students’ parents and burying them in the school garden. Previously, Harry effused to Caroline about the Teacher’s sweet and motherly qualities, causing her to obsess over this woman in her husband’s life who possesses the characteristics she lacks. Now, the Teacher’s homicidal dream triggers her writerly instincts. Not only does Caroline steal the dream for a TV show pitch, she begins following the Teacher and befriends her at a yoga class, claiming she’s new to town and looking to make friends. When the pitch sells, all hell breaks loose as Caroline struggles to keep her lies buried, and finally freezes her eggs out of guilt. Cantor, a writer on comedy shows such as Arrested Development and Inside Amy Schumer, sustains the laughs as Caroline contends with the consequences of one misstep after another. It’s comedic gold. Agent: Allison Hunter, Trellis Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

In these provocative stories, Khong (The Real Americans) offers well-wrought and intricate depictions of Asian American and Asian life, often with a fantastical or speculative twist. “Serene” follows a worker at a Chinese factory for AI-powered sex dolls who grows attached to a doll whom she trains in conversation. In the wry “Colors from Elsewhere,” a woman recovering from a miscarriage learns from her acupuncturist, Dr. Tang, and Dr. Tang’s philosopher sister, that she’s an alien, prompting her to ask the Tangs, who are Asian and share that they are also aliens, “Is every Asian an alien?” Two stories, “The Freshening” and “D Day,” revolve around society-wide transformations: in the former, the U.S. government administers injections to make everyone look white; in the latter, God grows frustrated with the human race’s wanton destruction and turns everyone into animals. The less successful stories don’t develop beyond their conceits. “The Family O” falters under the weight of the elaborate revenge plot at its center, while “Good Spirits,” about a haunted rubber-glove factory, rushes its ending. Throughout, Khong writes about her characters’ ambivalence with precision, as when the protagonist of “Colors from Eleswhere” is “troubled” to realize that she’s “beginning to feel like herself again.” There’s much to admire in this assured collection. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

A vivacious woman falls in love with a priest in 1950s England in the emotive and revelatory debut novel from poet Sy-Quia (Amnion). At a funeral in 2018, Adrian Fletcher learns the family secret that his long-deceased grandfather David left the Catholic priesthood to marry his grandmother Margaret. Recently graduated from university, Adrian moves in with Margaret, whose dementia prevents her from telling the whole story of David’s “laicization.” Sy-Quia unravels the story on parallel tracks, alternating from Adrian’s prolonged grief over Margaret’s decline to Margaret and David’s formative years. David, a WWII veteran, studies in Rome and is posted back to his childhood parish. Meanwhile, Margaret becomes enamored by Catholic devotion and converts, then moves to Rome to study theology at a new experimental college that admits laywomen. Back in England, she teaches alongside David at a girls’ school. David’s liberal views surprise Margaret, and the two are swept up in the possibilities promised by Vatican II, eventually allowing their spirited discussions about celibacy and the possibility of women entering the priesthood to verge into romance. Sy-Quia plumbs the depths of David and Margaret’s confusion as they grapple with the limits placed on their freedom by the Catholic Church, and the narrative of forbidden romance blossoms into a revelatory meditation on the double bind of faith, showing how the characters’ impossible decision will force a loss either way. This is superb. Agent: Matthew Marland, RCW Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Batalion, author of the bestselling Holocaust history The Light of Days, chronicles the friendship between two very different Jewish women in 1938 Warsaw in her illuminating debut novel. Born into a family of wealth and privilege, Fanny Zelshinsky is engaged to be married and studies French at Warsaw University. Unbeknownst to her domineering mother, she wishes to change her major to art and indulge in the passion her mother believes is just a hobby. Meanwhile, Zosia Dror, who has newly arrived in the city, wants to prove herself as leader of a Labor Zionist youth group and obtain a visa to British Palestine. The two women meet on campus, where Zosia has sought help from Prof. Wanda Petrovsky in getting a visa. When they discover that Wanda, who is also involved in Zosia’s organization, appears to be missing, they join forces to find her. As Fanny proves to Zosia that her social connections give her an edge in the search, Zosia draws Fanny into the world of the working-class Labor Zionist movement, where she considers trading her financial security for independence. With the characters facing persecution as Jewish people on the university campus, Batalion uses the odd-couple friendship to show how adversity unites unlikely allies. Readers will be riveted. Agent: Alia Hanna Habib, Gernert Co. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Lange (Us Fools) entertains in this sharp and off-kilter story collection. After the husband of the title story’s unnamed protagonist abruptly moves to Utah, she’s forced to single-parent their toddler daughter in Los Angeles, where she seeks to schedule casual sex during her daughter’s day-care hours. She goes online for help with her dating profile, where other mothers “slammed her for being a new mom with sick slut desires,” then “privately called her their hero.” She has some initial success with hookups, but the project is complicated by a visit from her mother. In “Heart Beats,” Boston couple Carol and David attend a dinner party, where their hosts invite them to play a “kinky” and “extreme” form of spin the bottle, and the night ends with David grappling with the outcome. In one of the more emotionally potent entries, “Dog Star,” teenager Honey lives in an artificial world, where she and her best friend, Alice, chafe at their circumstances. As Honey puts it, “We’re given trampolines, but we’re told not to jump on them,” to which Alice responds that at school, they’re “expected to grow and to learn and to progress, only to suffer for it.” Lange’s well-honed stories build to stinging epiphanies. Those with a taste for acerbic wit will find much to enjoy. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Henry (As the Storm Clouds Gather) delivers a dull coming-of-age story with a thin veneer of suspense centered on the JFK assassination. On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, 23-year-old Dallas resident Jolene Johnson is working as the secretary for a company housed in the Texas School Book Depository. Though she’s initially excited that the presidential motorcade will pass by her office, a flyer accusing Kennedy of treason leads her to suspect “this day was going to go unbelievably sour.” The foreshadowing doesn’t get much subtler from there: that afternoon, Jolene has a chance encounter with an acquaintance who works in building named Lee Harvey Oswald. Henry attempts to build tension by toggling between the lead-up to the shooting and flashbacks to other turning points in Jolene’s life, including her decision to attend college and pursue a career in journalism, the dissolution of a romantic relationship, and her political awakening, which led her to break with her right-wing family. Unfortunately, neither the setting nor the characters come to life. Muddy prose (“The wave inside of me crested, knocking loose some bricks in the wall that had built up around my soul”) doesn’t help matters. It’s a letdown. Agent: Lindsay Guzzardo, Martin Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

In the whip-smart latest from Li (Number One Chinese Restaurant), four Chinese American friends are forced to confront the truth of how they view one another and themselves when a documentary about them goes viral. The story begins in 2009 when recent University of Maryland economics grads Diana Zhang, Justin Yu, Errol Chen, and Vivian Wang return home to their North Potomac, Md., neighborhood to weather the rough job market. While growing up together, they were friends with Grace Li, a wunderkind Harvard grad and aspiring documentary filmmaker. Back home, Grace convinces them to appear in her film, Bad Asians. The film is a hit on YouTube, launching Grace’s budding film career but pigeonholing the foursome into stereotypes, from overachiever Diana and basic girl Vivian to egotistical Errol and “hottie with a body” Justin. Li excels in her character work, picking up three years later to show how each of the four finds themselves following the paths they’d hoped to resist, and concluding in 2016 with Grace’s epiphany related to the film (“I saw clearly what it looks like when you live your life for someone else”). Throughout, Li offers piercing social commentary on the expectations placed on her characters and how those pressures were exacerbated by the Great Recession. Readers will tear through this. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink