Moffet writes about fatherhood and the bittersweet passage of time in his quietly beautiful debut novel (after the story collection Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events). After the unnamed narrator loses his dad at the age of nine, his paternal grandmother hauls away his father’s possessions. Like the marks left on the carpet by his dad’s now absent recliner, the boy’s memories of his father fade over time. A desultory childhood in a 1980s Florida suburb follows, during which the narrator watches so much TV that “it feels like a punishment.” He attends karate classes, where he sits through lectures from a sensei who sees himself as a role model for at-risk boys. The only real kindness he remembers comes from a neighborhood boy who had lost his father to prison. From there, the novel jumps forward 25 years. The narrator has become a writing professor outside of Los Angeles and father to a son. He feels just as rudderless as a parent as he did as a fatherless son. “I wish I’d inherited some traditions from my father,” he thinks. “I’m mostly trying to be present... and known.” He ruefully notes how his son transforms from a boy who runs to his parents with all his questions and fears into a sullen teenager, now impenetrable behind his earbuds. Along the way, Moffet keenly traces the grace attained through the long arc of acceptance. Readers will be moved. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

The moving and well-rounded latest from Packer (after The Children’s Crusade) finds a terminally ill woman pushing her husband away and choosing to spend her last days with her two best friends. Eliot has stood by Claire since her breast cancer was first discovered eight years earlier. After Claire’s treatment ends and they prepare for in-home hospice care, she tells Eliot she’d like her childhood friend Holly and college roommate Michelle to stay with her, and he’s stunned to realize that she wants him to leave. Feeling stymied, he moves temporarily to Holly’s nearby house. Throughout, Packer explores the foundations of her central couple’s nearly 40-year marriage: the bonds, the inevitable ups and downs, the raising of their now grown children Josh, who’s still grappling with his music career, and Abby, a pediatrician who is married with two children. Though Eliot wants to continue being the attentive and understanding husband who accedes to his wife’s desires, he’s hurt and resentful about her decision, and feels supplanted by Holly and Michelle, who easily usurp his position as caregiver. Packer keeps the reader invested in her thought-provoking exploration of a marriage, as Eliot wonders why Claire doesn’t want him the most as the end of her life draws near. The author’s fans will relish this poignant novel. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Van de Sandt debuts with a vivid portrait of a woman’s trauma and recovery. The narrative unfolds as a therapy exercise written by Franca, a 27-year-old struggling writer from the Netherlands who has spent four years in the U.K. after abandoning her comp lit degree in Utrecht to live with her wealthy English fiancé, Andrew. Following his lucrative sale of an app, Franca has become fully dependent on Andrew, giving up on job-hunting and numbing her unhappiness with drinking and TV. She’s tasked with cooking dinner for Andrew and his colleagues to celebrate the team’s latest venture, but the evening begins with him raping her in the kitchen shortly before their guests arrive, leaving her reeling and trying to make sense of what just happened. The night takes another turn with the unexpected arrival of Franca’s former best friend Harry, whose abrupt departure from Utrecht ended their relationship years ago. As alcohol flows and tensions rise, Franca’s mental state unravels, and the narrative reaches a devastating climax. Van de Sandt weaves together Franca’s fragmented, often gruesome memories with a nuanced exploration of sexual violence within intimate relationships. This leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Millie Hoskins, United Agents. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Sherman (The Loudest Voice in the Room) delves in this juicy melodrama into the caustic, decades-long family feud over the inheritance of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The account opens with Rupert’s son Lachlan’s 2023 move to oust his siblings—James, Liz, and their older half sister Prudence—from the family trust. Backtracking from there, Sherman traces Murdoch’s rise, from the inheritance of his own father’s Australian newspaper business through his slew of tabloid purchases in Britain and America. Murdoch’s success, the author shows, is owed to both a taste for sensationalism and a cold-blooded ruthlessness, the latter of which bleeds into his personal life, particularly via his transactional bond with his children, whom he “pit[s]... against one another” and for whom deal-making is the only way to gain their father’s attention. Indeed, the dizzying amount of sales and acquisitions can bog down the narrative’s pace, though it serves well to express the extent to which Murdoch manipulates his children for his own gain, including telling Liz that she was “his preferred successor” during his purchase of her successful TV production company only to stop talking to her once the paperwork was signed. The saga reads like a real-life Succession, a comparison even the family can see, as evidenced by their paranoia about possible leaks to the show’s writers. Readers will be riveted by this merciless battle for dynastic dominance. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Akinmade (Everything Is Not Enough) writes in this uneven family drama about a mother’s shattered dreams and the shadows they cast over her daughter. The novel opens in 2006 Stockholm, where Tina, the biracial daughter of a Gambian woman who never knew the identity of her Swedish father, has just been chosen to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest. The narrative then rewinds to 1978, when Tina’s mother, Nancy, arrives in Sweden on a scholarship with dreams of becoming the first woman president of Gambia. Her anthropology professor, Lars, intentionally undercuts the work of her boyfriend, Malik, another student in his seminar. After Malik is deported, Nancy becomes vulnerable to the predatory Lars’s machinations. The timelines converge in 2016, as Tina comes to understand why her mother has always treated her so coolly. In alternating chapters, Akinmade teases out the parallels between Tina and Nancy, showing with nuance how they each struggle against men who jeopardize their dreams. Unfortunately, the novel is marred by ponderous pacing and repetitive clichés (men and women often “breathlessly” murmur and “softly” whisper in between cries of “I can’t fix you” and repeated assertions of “I didn’t want to fall for you”). It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Jessica Craig, Craig Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

When she was six, Justice Kasric watched her blue-eyed merchant father play chess with the Faerie King. Now 15, Justice believes the event was merely a dream. She spends her days yearning for adventure, watching from the sidelines while her 16-year-old sister Faith, as slender and golden-haired as Justice but not as curious, becomes the toast of Victorian London society. One night, however, their father shatters their comfortable lifestyles when he forces the family—Justice, Faith, their younger brother Henry, and their constantly medicated, distant mother—into a locked carriage that takes them to a shadowy mansion. Justice’s discovery that the Faerie have invaded the human world and are targeting her family gains further urgency when she learns that her parents are on opposite sides of the conflict. Together, the Kasric siblings—including older brothers Benedict and Joshua—must find a way to save their family. While characters lack depth at times, and insufficient historical details don’t fully evoke the Victorian setting, Klaver’s (the Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) rich, lyrical descriptions augment the fantastical source material in this engaging series starter. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lucienne Diver, the Knight Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Nine years before this novel begins, eight-year-old best friends Esme Randal and Kayla Price snuck out of their cabin at Camp Pine Lake in Texas. They swore never to discuss the terrible events that followed, but when the girls, now 17, return to the camp as counselors-in-training from their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa., that proves easier said than done. Someone begins sabotaging camp activities, and ominous—and increasingly public—threats appear, referencing that fateful summer. The only other person who knows Esme and Kayla’s secret is a local girl named Lillian Campbell, whom they left to fend for herself that night in the woods. They’re loath to voice their suspicions of revenge lest they get in trouble or look bad in front of hunky fellow counselors Jake and Olly, but as events escalate, they realize they may not have a choice. Narrating from Esme’s increasingly apprehensive first-person perspective, Preston (The Twin) pays homage to classic summer camp slasher films. The underdeveloped, predominantly white cast relies heavily on stereotype, and the clichéd tormenter’s motive feels unearned, but horror fans will likely appreciate this paranoia-fueled tale’s gruesome, shocking close. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jon Elek, United Agents. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Inspired by her own family’s refugee journey from Vietnam to Hong Kong, Văn’s (If You Were Night) spare picture book, powerful in its deliberate simplicity, follows a black-haired, pale-skinned child as they, their guardian, and two younger siblings join other asylum seekers for a perilous maritime voyage. In a third-person voice, Văn anthropomorphizes objects, relaying their wishes: “The dream wished it was longer,” one spread reads, as a balding, mustached guardian holds the protagonist close, and a guardian with a bun rouses the second child to dress them. “The clock wished it was slower,” the subsequent pages read, as the two children tearfully hug their mustached guardian goodbye. The narrative continues as the now family of four make their way onto the boat and beyond. A final-act switch to first-person perspective drives home the journey’s personal nature. Intricate, lissome fine-lined art by Ngai (Dazzle Ships) recalls classical Asian compositions, Japanese woodblock prints, and an evocative sensibility in a gradated, surrealistic color palette. A seamless interweaving of elegant prose and atmospheric art marks this affecting immigrant narrative. Back matter includes heartfelt author’s and illustrator’s notes. Ages 4–8. (May)

Correction: A previous version of this review misquoted the book's text.

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink