Set in the Netherlands, Jaap Robben’s novel "Afterlight" is about an elderly woman’s work to discover what happened to her child. In the book’s present, Frieda is in her eighties. After her husband, Louis, dies, she is deemed too... Read More
Set in the Canadian tundra and propelled by a twenty-five-year-old mystery, Gerard Beirne’s exquisite novel "The Thickness of Ice" is a love story that’s also about culpability and redemption. Jack, Wade’s best friend and a... Read More
An incurable, inexplicable condition brings humanity to the breaking point in Kevin Prufer’s novel "Sleepaway". They call it “the sleeps.” This strange phenomenon works its way across the world, forcing whole communities asleep for... Read More
K-Ming Chang’s "Cecilia" is a surreal novella about the intense, intoxicating memories that surface when an outcast reencounters her childhood best friend. In childhood, Seven’s friendship with Cecilia was passionate to the point of... Read More
In the short stories that make up Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio’s novel "Reuniting with Strangers", women from the Philippines try to make places for themselves halfway across the world. For many Filipinas in the collection, the only way... Read More
In Hannah Regel’s novel "The Last Sane Woman", two frustrated artists, separated by decades, make their ways in the world. Nicola’s artistic ambitions are drained by her day job and self-doubt. She becomes a ghost in her own life,... Read More
A recovering alcoholic considers what to do about his family’s secrets in Morgan Talty’s affecting novel "Fire Exit". Charles was raised on the Penobscot Island Indian Reservation by his Native American stepfather, but that doesn’t... Read More
A lonely hairdresser finds comfort and inspiration in an unlikely place in Stéphane Carlier’s effervescent English-language debut, "Clara Reads Proust". The people working at the Cindy Coiffure hair salon are a dissatisfied bunch.... Read More