“Madwoman”

Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon, and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it save her life? 

 A gripping portrait of motherhood and motherloss, intimate terrorism and terrifying love, the reverberations of male violence through generations and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, “Madwoman” channels immense power, wisdom, and rage, marking Chelsea Bieker as a major fiction talent. 

Little, Brown and Company

Chelsea Bieker is the author of, most recently, the novel “Madwoman.” Her debut novel, “Godshot,” was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, “Heartbroke,” won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies at MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawaii and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children.

“Sky Full of Elephants”

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family. 

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it. 

Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours. 

Simon & Schuster

Cebo Campbell is an author and creative director based in Brooklyn, New York. Winner of the Linda L. Ross Creative Writing Award and the Stories Award for Poetry, Cebo’s work has been featured in numerous publications. Cebo is the cofounder of the award-winning creative agency Spherical, where he leads a team of creatives in shaping the best hotel brands in the world. “Sky Full of Elephants” is his debut novel.

“James”

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. 
 
While many narrative set pieces of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. 
 
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, “James” is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature. 

Doubleday

Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include “James,” “Dr. No” (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), “The Trees” (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), “Telephone” (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), “So Much Blue,” “Erasure,” and  “I Am Not Sidney Poitier.”  He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. “American Fiction,” the feature film based on his novel “Erasure,” was released in 2023 and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.

“Anita De Monte Laughs Last”

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. 
 
But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. 
 
Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, “Anita de Monte Laughs Last” is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite. 

Flatiron Books

Xochitl Gonzalez is the author of, most recently, the novel “Anita De Monte Laughs Last” and the New York Times bestseller “Olga Dies Dreaming.” Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New York Times, Time, Kirkus Reviews, the Washington Post and NPR, “Olga Dies Dreaming” was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Award. Gonzalez is a 2021 MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her nonfiction work has been published by Allure, Bustle, Vogue and The Cut. As a staff writer for The Atlantic her work was a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and lives in her hometown with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.  

“A Great Country”

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple. 
For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America? 
For readers of “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett and “Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid, “A Great Country” explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream. 

Mariner Books

Shilpi Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and is the author of, most recently, of the novel “A Great Country.” Her previous novels, “Secret Daughter,” “The Golden Son” and “The Shape of Family,” because international bestsellers, selling over two million copies worldwide, in over 30 languages. She holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar. She lives in California with her husband and children.

“Kingdom of No Tomorrow”

It’s that pivotal year, 1968, and Nettie Boileau, a young Haitian student in Oakland, gets caught up in the ongoing revolutionary fever. With her friend Clia Brown, she uses her public health skills to help operate the free health clinics created by the people she believes are “true revolutionaries,” the Black Panthers. When she falls in love with Black Panther Party Defense Captain Melvin Mosley, their passionate love affair soon eclipses all else—her friendship with Clia and even her own sense of self. Pregnant, Nettie follows Melvin to Chicago to help with a newly-launched Illinois chapter of the Panthers, but once there, she finds Chicago segregated, police surveillance brutal and her faith in love eroding as Melvin becomes unfaithful. After a violent tussle with the police and the loss of their unborn child, both Nettie and Melvin are caught in the viciousness of J. Edgar Hoover’s covert campaigns, and Nettie is soon on the run, desperate to find power in her roots and ultimately, to save herself. With richly imagined, relatable characters, “Kingdom of No Tomorrow” tells a story of Black love, self-determination and the importance of revolution in the midst of injustice.  

Algonquin Books

Fabienne Josaphat was born and raised in Haiti, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Of her first novel, “Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow” published with Unnamed Press, Edwidge Danticat said, “Filled with life, suspense, and humor, this powerful first novel is an irresistible read about the nature of good and evil, terror and injustice, and ultimately triumph and love.” Her most recent novel is “Kingdom of No Tomorrow.” In addition to fiction, Josaphat writes nonfiction and poetry, as well as screenplays. Her work has been featured in The African American Review, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Master’s Review, Grist Journal, Damselfly, Hinchas de Poesia, Off the Coast Journal and The Caribbean Writer. Her poems have been anthologized in “Eight Miami Poets,” a Jai-Alai Books publication. Fabienne Josaphat lives in South Florida.

“The Road to the Salt Sea”

Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess. 

But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe—and a new life—is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom. 

As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive and illuminating, “The Road to the Salt Sea” is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere. 

Amistad – Harper Collins

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of the novel “The Road to the Salt Sea.” His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships, and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship from the Word. He studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden, and the United States, and currently teaches fiction writing as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

“Before the Mango Ripens”

Set against the backdrop of 1970s Nigeria, “Before the Mango Ripens” is both epic and intimate. Afabwaje Kurian’s debut announces a brilliant new talent for readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Imbolo Mbue. 
 
In Rabata, everyone has secrets—especially since the arrival of the white American missionaries. 
Twenty-year-old Jummai is a beautiful and unassuming house girl whose dreams of escaping her home life are disrupted when an unexpected pregnancy forces her to hide her lover’s identity. Tebeya, an ambitious Dublin-educated doctor, has left prestigious opportunities abroad to return to the small town of her birth and discovers a painful betrayal when she strives to take control of the mission clinic. Zanya is a young translator, enticed by promises of progress, who comes to Rabata to escape a bitter past and finds himself embroiled in a fight against the American reverend for the heart of the church and town. 
United by their yearning for change, all three must make difficult decisions that threaten the fragile relationships of the Rabata they know. As tensions mount and hypocrisies are unveiled, the people of Rabata are faced with a question that will transform their town forever: Let the Americans stay, or make them go? 

Dzanc Books

Afabwaje Kurian is the author of the debut novel “Before the Mango Ripens.” She received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in Callaloo, Crazyhorse, The Bare Life Review, Joyland Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. She has received residencies from Ucross, Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale and has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and for its International Writing Program. She was born in Nigeria, and grew up in the DC area and the Midwest. 

“Wandering Stars”

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines. 
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in “There There”—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. “Wandering Stars” is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts. 

Penguin Random House

Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California. He currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His first book, “There There,” was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize. He is the author, most recently, of the novel “Wandering Stars.”

“There is a Rio Grande in Heaven”

An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man. 

In “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven,” Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans. 

Blazing with heart, humor and inimitable style, “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven” subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own. 

Mariner Books

Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of “There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven.” A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Lightspeed Magazine and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Brooklyn.

“Lilith”

After her son, Lydan, suffers traumatic injuries in a school shooting, single mother Elisabeth Ross grows enraged at men in power. If they won’t do anything to help end this epidemic of violence, she will. Believing it’s her destiny, she sets out to awaken the world to the cowards these men are and commits her own act of shocking violence. Going only by the name Lilith—the first wife of Adam who fled Eden rather than serve a man—she posts a video of her crime that reverberates throughout society and triggers uprisings that alter the country forever. Praised by some, demonized by others, Elisabeth must keep her identity a secret as she tries to care for her son and avoid punishment by law enforcement and vigilantes alike.

As the startling aftermath unfolds, Elisabeth begins to question her act of violence and the very roots and mythology of violence itself. Was her act of violence—is any act of violence—justified, or has she become the monster that the original Lilith was accused of being? As the law draws closer, and Lydan starts to display odd, terrifying behavior, Elisabeth plots to avoid capture and keep her son safe at all costs, fearing she’ll never escape what she’s done without losing her son forever. Written with Rickstad’s singular command of language and human insight, “Lilith” is a tale of our times. Tragic and profound, it echoes in the mind and lingers in the blood.

 

Blackstone Publishing

Eric Rickstad is the New York Times bestselling novelist of “Lilith,” published March 19, 2024. His previous novel, “I am Not Who You Think I am,” was a New York Times Thriller of the Year. His other books include “What Remains of Her,” “Recap,” and The Canaan Crime Series — “Lie in Wait,”  “The Silent Girls” and “The Names of Dead Girls” — which has been translated in numerous languages. He taught Fiction Writing for Emerson College’s MFA Program and the University of Virginia undergraduate program, as well as American Literature at Boston University. He lives in Vermont with his wife, daughter and son.

“Fire Exit”

From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. He caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep. 

Now, it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she’s ever known? 

Tin House

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. He is the author of the debut novel “Fire Exit.” His debut short story collection, “Night of the Living Rez,” won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the New England Book Award, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Honor, and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and The Story Prize. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Granta, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Talty is an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.

“The Safekeep”

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. 
Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation, leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. 
Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual and infused with intrigue, atmosphere and sex, “The Safekeep” is “a brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history and to one’s own desires” (The Guardian). 

Avid Reader Press

Yael van der Wouden Yael van der Wouden is a writer and a teacher. She lives in Utrecht, Netherlands, and “The Safekeep” is her first novel. 

“Devil is Fine”

Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family. 
Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past. With the wit and rawness of Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout,” “Devil Is Fine” is a gripping, surreal and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit. 

Celadon Books

John Vercher lives in the Philadelphia region with his wife and two sons. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program. John serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of English & Philosophy at Drexel University and was the inaugural Wilma Dykeman writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. His debut novel, “Three-Fifths,” was named one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune and Booklist. It was nominated for the Edgar and Strand Magazine Critics’ Awards for Best First Novel. His second novel, “After the Lights Go Out,” called “shrewd and explosive” by The New York Times, was named a Best Book of Summer 2022 by BookRiot and Publishers Weekly, and named a Booklist Editor’s Choice Best Book of 2022. His most recent novel is “Devil is Fine.”

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom. In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.  Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism and mass incarceration and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means. 

Pantheon – Random House

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times-bestselling author of  Friday Black. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Paris Review and elsewhere. He was a National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honoree, the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Saroyan Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book, along with many other honors. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, he now lives in the Bronx.

 

In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics and sexuality in America. The 10 stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born. With an unflinching eye for the contradictions between what these characters profess to believe and what they do, Temple Folk accomplishes the rare feat of presenting moral failures with compassion, nuance and humor to remind us that while perfection is what many of us strive for, it’s the errors that make us human. 

Simon & Schuster

Aaliyah Bilal was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She has degrees from Oberlin College and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She’s published stories and essays with The Michigan Quarterly Review and The Rumpus. Temple Folk is her first short story collection.

What does it mean to really see the world around you—to bear witness? And what does it cost us, both to see and not to see? In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters—from children to grandmothers to ghosts—live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect with, stand up for, care for and remember one another, they often fall short and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape their futures as well as the legacies and prospects of their communities and their city. In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief and the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness while those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon. 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux – Macmillan

Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He has also been awarded an O. Henry Prize, the Rome Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, Ploughshares and The Best American Short Stories. He was raised in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, New York, and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

After years away from her family’s homeland, and healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. Though the siblings grew up spending summers at their family home in Haifa, Sonia hasn’t been since the second intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. While Haneen stayed and made a life commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her burgeoning acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

Once at Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertude’s lines in Classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many invasive and violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.

Grove Press – Grove Atlantic

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, Granta, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. She was awarded the Plimpton Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award and a Betty Trask Award, and her work has been supported by the Lannan Foundation and Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. 

Riverhead Books – Penguin Random House

James McBride is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Oprah’s Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill ’Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal and an accomplished musician, McBride is also a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.