Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

THE SUMMER WE LIED de Rebecca Hardy

THE SUMMER WE LIED
by Rebecca Hardy
Raven/Bloomsbury, Summer 2026
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Then. Bunking off school on a hot summer’s day, three young teenagers hear a brutal double murder. In the confusing aftermath, only two come forward, and one takes the stand, pointing the finger at a respected member of the community, who police seem only too happy to accuse. But did he actually do it, or do all of them have more than one reason to lie?

Now. Almost two decades later, new questions are asked about old evidence, and their part in it all is about to be discovered. Estranged since the trial, the friends are forced back together when a new attack casts doubt on the conviction, and it becomes clear that someone else knows their secret. As their lives and lies start to crumble around them, they are forced at last to confront their own culpability, the secrets they kept from each other, and the traumas that rest at the heart of their silence.

An English teacher for almost twenty years, Rebecca Hardy has recently taken a career break to pursue her love of writing. She lives in East Sussex, with her wife and teenage son, in amongst the fields and hills where her novel begins. A place which is, thankfully, far more tranquil in real life than on the page. THE SUMMER WE LIED is Rebecca’s debut.

THOUGHTS BE BLOODY d’Auden Patrick

A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them together: this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before. Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel and S. T. Gibson’s An Education in Malice.

THOUGHTS BE BLOODY
by Auden Patrick
DAW, March 2026
(via Mushens Entertainment)

The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene. 

A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls. 

Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web. 

The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first. 

Auden Patrick is a late-20s queer and trans author who most frequently writes about fear, love, and monsters. He was a student at Cat Rambo’s inaugural Wayward Wormhole Workshop in 2023, and his work has appeared in Apparition Lit, Beaver Magazine, among others.

THE UNHELD de Luke Larkin

A girl sets out to find her father after he is carried off by an otherworldly creature in this atmospheric horror Western.

THE UNHELD
by Luke Larkin
Hyperion Ave, August 2026
(via Neon Literary)

While other twelve-year-olds are in school. Charlie spends her days skinning the animals her father hunts in the wild woods just outside their cabin. Charlie’s life in the Montana Territory is a lonely one, as her father is a mercurial man of few words who mostly ignores her until there’s a chore to be done.

One night, a living nightmare appears, stalking out of the trees. Neither animal nor human, the Beast drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him Charlie enlists the aid of two unlikely allies: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occuIt society and a Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit.

Yet as she and her allies prepare for a confrontation with the Beast, Charlie will need to decide if her father is ultimately worth saving. What does she owe the man who called her daughter yet never showed her love?

THE UNHELD is an unsettling and soulful historical horror novel—perfect for readers of Christopher BuehIman’s Between Two Fires, Andy Davidson’s The Boatman’s Daughter, and T. Kingfisher’s What Maxes the Dead. The novel’s ingeniously conceived monster will set your skin crawling, while the indomitable heroine at the story’s center will capture your heart.

Luke Larkin is a writer who lives in Missoula, Montana, where he earned his MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Iron Horse Literary Review, HAD, and Sonora Review.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM de Lyz Lenz

From the author of the New York Times-bestseller This American Ex-Wife, comes a new book by Lyz Lenz—a fierce, funny, and deeply reported love letter to the Midwest and a cri de coeur for collective care in our crisis-riddled country.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
by Lyz Lenz
Dey Street, Spring 2027
(via Neon Literary)

In the decade since Hillbilly Elegy tried to explain America through the lens of white, rural grievance, Lyz Lenz has been living—and writing—a more radical, generous truth from a few hundred miles to the northwest. A proud lowan and nationally recognized journalist, she now blends memoir, political analysis, and biting cultural critique in her signature style: Barbara Ehrenreich by way of Samantha Irby. Through floods, farm bankruptcies, Kum & Go parking lots, hot dish, and butter cows, THE MIDDLE KINGDOM shows how Midwestern communities are improvising survival—even joy— through mutual aid and stubborn care.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM expands on themes that have made Lenz an essential voice in today’s political discourse: the failures of hyper-individualism, the radical politics of care, and the importance of taking « flyover country » seriously.

Lyz Lenz is a journalist and the author of God Land and Belabored. She has written for Insider, The New York Times, Marie Claire, and The Washington Post. Lenz also writes the newsletter « Men Yell at Me », about the intersection of politics and personhood in red-state America.

SLEEP ACROSS THE ANIMAL KINGDOM de Barrett Klein, Niels Rattenborg, and John Lesku

An incredibly exciting and totally enlightening book about the dazzling range of sleeping habits of animals – mammals, birds, fish and insects – and how this can inform us about the evolution and benefits of human sleep.

SLEEP ACROSS THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
by Barrett Klein, Ph.D., Niels Rattenborg, Ph.D. and John Lesku, Ph.D.
Harvard University Press, 2026
(via The Martell Agency)

Written with wit, clarity, total narrative accessibility, and a keen sense of scientific adventure by three experts in the field, this project represents the best of popular science writing that readers today crave, joining together two subjects that are endlessly fascinating and relevant: the mysteries of sleep and animal behaviors. Perfect for readers of Ed Yong.

The book will cover such topics as:

• What is sleep? (vs. hibernation, or other forms of immobility)

• The diversity of sleep (from birds and mammals to roundworms, jellyfish, and the possibility for sleep in plants or single-celled organisms)

• Sleeping in strange ways and places (the strange locations where animals sleep and the unusual postures they can adopt, including sleep in flight, or while vertically-suspended underwater

• When sacrificing sleep is worth it (new recognition of the remarkable ability of some animals to sleep little, and yet side-step, or possibly endure, the negative consequences commonly observed in sleep-restricted humans)

• The comforts and dangers of sleeping with others (animals that sleep with other animals, such as parasites and social sleeping insects)

• Who else dreams?

• Sleeping in a disturbed world (both for screen-loving humans and urban wildlife living with light pollution).

Barrett Anthony Klein is Professor, Biology Department, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, conducting research about sleep, learning, and communication, primarily with insects, and teaching courses in Animal Behavior, Entomology, Scientific Visualization, General Biology, and Organismal Biology. He is one of the featured scientists for a documentary about sleep (aired in Germany and on David Suzuki’s Nature of Things in Canada, and soon to come to the USA), and served as consultant for COSMOS: Possible Worlds. He has appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television. Starting in 2023, he will lead a year-long series of online workshops through Johns Hopkins University, free and open to the public, on visualizing science and participate in a five-year effort, funded by the National Science Foundation, to help find solutions to the biodiversity crisis.

Dr. Niels Rattenborg, the leading world expert on sleep in birds, heads the Avian Sleep research group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. Rattenborg mission is to gain insight into the evolution and functions of sleep through studying birds. He is particularly interested in understanding how birds reconcile the inherent need for sleep with ecological demands for wakefulness, such as avoiding predation, competing for mates, and flying non-stop for weeks at a time. Rattenborg’s research has been published in top scientific journals, including Nature and Science, and is regularly featured in the international press (interviews for web, print, radio, and TV), spanning 25 languages (see detailed lists below). This includes, The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Discover Magazine, Popular Science, The Wall Street Journal, The Times (London), The Guardian, Audubon, Greenpeace Magazine, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and Business Week.

John Andrew Lesku is Associate Professor and Lab Head, Sleep Ecophysiology Group School of Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His work has been featured in Science and Current Biology and BBC News, Discover Magazine, LiveScience, NBC News, New Scientist, Science and CBC Radio (interview on As It Happens)