The holiday season fails to provide the necessary sparkle in Lavery’s underdeveloped companion to Women’s Hotel. As Christmas 1964 approaches, the residents of New York’s Biedermeier Hotel for Women land much needed seasonal work and manage to cover their back rent, but not without facing new challenges. Among the cast are Pauline Carter, who has a gig looking after lost children at the World’s Fair, and strives to break fellow Biedermeier resident Josephine Marbury of her pickpocketing habit, which Josephine has taken to out of desperation. There’s also Katherine Heap, 10 years sober, who faces a moral dilemma while attempting to reconnect with her younger sister, and Lucianne Caruso, who starts a dating service for young ladies and strictly enforces her rules, chief among them that “the evening ends at her front door.” Meanwhile, tenants Carol Lipscomb and Patricia De Boer have been acting secretive, and hotel manager Mrs. Mossler worries it may be connected to the recent jewel theft at the American Museum of Natural History. The character sketches are appealing but the narrative never finds its footing, as promising story lines such as the one involving the World’s Fair fail to materialize and others are left unresolved. Admirers of the last novel might appreciate the extended view into the women’s lives, but others can take a pass. Agent: Kate McKean, Morhaim Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

A hardened care worker takes her teen charges on the road to escape a dangerous near-future Texas heat wave in the mordant debut from Nolan. Beatrice Campbell is the supervisor of Twin Bridge, a mental health residence for girls run by a company called Tender Kare, outsourced by the state and funded by the girls’ forced participation in drug trials. The latest trial drug, BeZen, shows impressive results in controlling the girls’ disruptive behavior, though it makes them “forget glacial chunks of their past.” Beatrice isn’t too bothered by this side effect (“I was good at my job because I lacked imagination. Only occasionally, in raw accidental bursts, did I think about the unhappiness of the girls,” she narrates), and Tender Kare is so encouraged that they offer to move the staff and residents to a new and nicer facility in Atlanta. Before Beatrice can secure their travel money, though, Twin Bridge loses power during a dangerous heat wave. Convinced she needs to get the girls to Atlanta for their survival, Beatrice sets off with them in a stolen passenger van and a dwindling supply of BeZen. Their journey, however, hits a series of snags, first with a delayed crossing into Louisiana, where they wind up stuck after the state closes its borders. Nolan keenly portrays Beatrice’s hope and despair as she transforms from bureaucrat to would-be savior. This glimpse into a terrifyingly plausible future smuggles tenderness amid the horrors. Agents: Ellen Levine and Audrey Crooks, Trident Media Group. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

The discovery of a woman’s body in an English bog kicks off the piercing latest from North (Outlawed). It’s 2018 and American forensic scientist Dr. Agnes Linstrom is tasked with identifying the remains, which are uncannily well-preserved. Though initially believed to be a murder victim from 1961, the body turns out to date back more than two millennia. Agnes needs more time to provide answers about who the woman was, but her work is complicated by interventions from a peat moss company eager to resume its harvesting in the area, and from environmental activists calling for a stop to Agnes’s forensic digging. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Agnes and the long-dead woman, a young druid leader who travels from her village near the bog to a settlement ruled by a king who has welcomed Roman influence, sometime around 50 BCE. As the druid returns home, she is badly wounded by a rival leader. Eventually, Agnes determines these wounds were not the cause of the druid’s death. Part of the novel’s thrill comes from the way in which North leaves the rest of the mystery for the reader to piece together, and Agnes’s partial access to the truth is made even more poignant through the masterful depiction of how painfully out of sync she is with other people (“She spoke in what she thought was a normal and measured way... but every time she could see the senior professors sneaking sidelong looks at one another”). North reaches new heights with this brilliant novel. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Wambugu debuts with a resonant coming-of-age novel about the complicated interplay between friendship and artistic ambition. Growing up in Pawtucket, R.I., Ruth and Maria are two of the only Black girls at their Catholic school. Ruth, the daughter of emotionally distant Kenyan immigrants, is immediately drawn to Maria, whose beauty and charisma glimmer despite her troubled home life: “I was struck by two things: her dirtiness and her tremendous confidence.” Throughout their school years, Ruth clings to Maria’s coattails, eventually following her to Bard College, where they study art and plot how they’ll become famous—Ruth as a painter and Maria as a filmmaker. After graduation, they both move to New York City, where Maria finds success, while Ruth struggles with self-doubt about whether she can ever become an artist and jealousy toward the increasingly distant and manipulative Maria. An older, more established Ruth recalls these youthful experiences, and her first-person narration is suitably reflective and, at times, regretful and even melancholy. It’s an understated portrait of an artist learning how to come into her own. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (July)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Kaufman (All My Friends Are Superheroes) serves up a funny novel in stories about a strange motel. The opener, “Fifteen All True Facts About the Shamrock Motel,” is a list of the establishment’s unique qualities, among them: “You don’t find the Shamrock Motel. The Shamrock Motel finds you.” In “Pick Me,” a man named Derek Wilson is feeling abandoned by his workaholic wife, May, when he stumbles on the motel. He checks into a room and begins masturbating to memories of past girlfriends, but takes a break to call and invite May to join him in the room. “If the Bear Makes You Happy” depicts divorcée Bonnie and her trysts with a bear at the motel, which make her “feel like a risk-taker, the kind of woman she imagined she’d be if she hadn’t spent so long in a loveless marriage.” Illicit sex also features in “Burt Reynolds,” about a guest named George who hires sex worker Peggy to join him at the motel. While George is getting pegged by Peggy, he enters a portal to a place called Queertasticland, where the mayor encourages him to embrace his sexuality. Some of the jokes are a bit silly, but the collection charms with its conceit of a motel as refuge for private desires. This is worth a look. (June)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

In the jaunty latest from Jha (The Laughter), a twice-divorced feminist scholar decides to celebrate her 55th birthday by throwing herself a swayamvar, a traditional Indian ceremony in which a woman invites potential suitors to compete for her hand in marriage by performing various feats. The unnamed narrator’s novelist son is skeptical, as are social media users, who debate the feminist merits of her online invitation to the swayamvar. A distant cousin from India warns her via email against the event, claiming that a curse was placed on their family that dooms the women’s marriages. Jha interweaves mystical Hindu elements throughout, as with the narrator’s series of encounters with mysterious women who might be goddesses, such as a woman she meets on a bus who gives her encouraging and whimsical advice: “Meet new people. Eat more cake. Meet old stories. Hydrate. Ask for what you want.” The narrator receives help from an enthusiastic young wedding planner, a wedding dress designer, and a sophisticated dance teacher with an air of “old Indian wealth,” each of whom contribute to a successful party at which the narrator defies her haters by attracting a wide array of suitors. Jha adds depth to the brisk story with hints of the narrator’s troubled family history and sticks the landing with a surprising and rewarding conclusion. It’s a fresh and sassy take on romantic comedy conventions. Agent: Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts, HG Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

A successful writer chafes at criticism and obsesses over a murder case in the ponderous latest from Kraus (I Love Dick). The novel begins with four-year-old Catt Greene’s move with her family from the East Bronx to the Connecticut beach town of Milford in the 1960s. As the Greene family struggles in the ensuing years to adapt to suburbia, Catt explores drugs, sex, and radical politics. Kraus then skips ahead to the 2010s, when Catt’s writing career gets a belated jump-start that mirrors Kraus’s own. Like Kraus, Catt published an autobiographical novel titled I Love Dick in the 1990s, which is now rediscovered and adapted for TV. Meanwhile, Catt, who lives in Los Angeles with her partner, Paul, stews over snarky tweets about her role as a landlord and catches flak from an antigentrification group over her involvement with an L.A. art gallery. She and Paul then retreat to northern Minnesota, where Catt reads about the killing of a local man named Brandon Halbach and the three teens charged with his murder. Sensing that her life is now “redundant,” she considers writing about something else and muses on how to mine the murder for a novel. The combination of score-settling and an artist’s search for new material makes for an awkward stab at autofiction. This fails to capture the magic of the author’s previous work. Agent: Laurence Laluyaux, RCW Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Shea debuts with a spellbinding tale of magic and motherhood centered on 30-something hopeful mother Oona. Pregnant again after five miscarriages, Oona makes her way to an island retreat called Bare Root off the coast of Maine, where a group of witches help pregnant women carry their babies to term. Oona has history with Bare Root. Her mother, Ursula, is the manager, and Ursula banished Oona at 18 under mysterious circumstances that are revealed later. What’s more, her husband Jacob’s late sister, Daphne, died by suicide as a guest at Bare Root, back when Oona still lived there. Disguised now as a registered guest who couldn’t make it to the retreat, she shows up and participates in a protection spell. After Jacob’s unexpected arrival, the secrets of the past gradually come to light, and Oona gets a chance to redeem herself for what happened to Daphne and reverse a curse that may have caused her miscarriages. While the narrative can be choppy in its transitions between the many plot threads, it has plenty to say about what it means to be a mother (“Motherhood granted a woman access to power,” Oona muses), and it delivers a shocking twist. This potent concoction gets the job done. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

Four interconnected narratives comprise the dramatic if heavy-handed latest from Boyne (All the Broken Places), about the generational impact of abuse and the blurred lines between perpetrator and victim. “Water” follows Vanessa Carvin, 52, in the aftermath of her husband Brendan’s conviction for raping eight girls. Accused of being complicit in the crimes, she retreats to an island off the coast of Ireland. “Earth” centers on rising soccer star Evan Keogh’s trial for being an accessory to rape. As the courtroom drama unfolds, Boyne examines a troubling connection between Evan and Brendan. Boyne is at his best in the depiction of Freya Petrus, the protagonist of “Fire.” Now a burn specialist, Freya copes with her childhood rape in heinous ways that would be a spoiler to reveal. “Air,” the weakest link, follows Vanessa’s former son-in-law Aaron Umber, a child psychologist, on a plane trip with his son, Emmet, during which Boyne hints that a great mystery will be revealed about Emmet’s estrangement from his mother and the impact of his parents’ childhood traumas on their dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of surprise. The author has a knack for crafting strong characters and evoking heavy emotions, but the novel’s reliance on the symbolism of the four elements muddies rather than clarifies its insights into the nature of abuse. It’s a mixed bag. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

Alameddine chronicles a Lebanese family’s turbulent but happy lives in his ebullient latest (after The Wrong End of the Telescope). Narrator Raja, 63, shares an apartment in Beirut with his mother, with whom he’s very close. With disarming charm, he reflects on their recent challenges, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and Lebanon’s banking collapse. Raja, who is gay, maintains a similar tone when describing his older brother, Farouk, a family man with whom he’s often at odds: “My brother was as transparent as a piece of glass, only not as smart.” Raja also delves into his life-threatening experiences during the 1975 civil war, including when he was held captive by a soldier named Boodie, whom Raja won over by teaching him to dance. Often Raja’s adventures turn out badly, but in his telling he manages to come out on top. For instance, 30 years earlier, when he was a schoolteacher, he had sex with a man who then tried to blackmail him, threatening to out him to his colleagues. It amuses Raja now to remember that the man didn’t believe him when he claimed that everyone knew he was gay, including his mother. Throughout, the author skillfully juxtaposes unflinching depictions of war and deprivation with the narrator’s joie de vivre. It’s a ravishing performance. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi, Inc. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink