Archives de catégorie : Fiction

ENORMOUS WINGS de Laurie Frankel

An urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality, and mortality, combined with Laurie Frankel’s signature warmth and wit.

ENORMOUS WINGS
by Laurie Frankel
Holt, May 2026
(via The Friedrich Agency)

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. Her children and grandchildren worry it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: she’s pregnant.

Once word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and the paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, all descending on Vista View as Pepper tries to determine her next move. Soon Pepper has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of the novels Family Family, One Two Three, Goodbye for Now, The Atlas of Love, and the Reese’s Book Club Pick This Is How It Always Is. Frankel lives in Seattle with her husband, daughter, and border collie. She makes good soup.

IN EVERY BIRD: BEFORE THE GARDEN de Katy Sewall

Sold in a heated 9-person auction in the US, right before Frankfurt, a prequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic The Secret Garden, for fans of Broken Country and The Thornbirds.

IN EVERY BIRD: BEFORE THE GARDEN
by Katy Sewall
Random House, Spring 2027
(via The Friedrich Agency)

A sweeping emotional tale and love story. IN EVERY BIRD: BEFORE THE GARDEN begins at the moment The Secret Garden starts—just as a cholera epidemic is sweeping through India—except this time, we flash back into the life of Mary Lennox’s mother, and the boy who will help her realize how expansive life can be.

“I was captivated and charmed by Katy Sewall’s debut novel, which more than does justice to its classic inspiration. I came into this book knowing as much about The Secret Garden as I did the Olive Garden, but by the end, I wanted nothing more than to stay a little longer in her rich and insightful world.” — Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins

Katy Sewall is a writer and radio professional based in Seattle. She spent more than two decades working with NPR and currently hosts a weekly podcast called The Bittersweet Life, now in its 11th year.

THE GREAT WORK de Sheldon Costa

A grieving man and his nephew hunt down a myth in this gothic Western adventure for fans of Karen Russell and Victor LaValle.

THE GREAT WORK
by Sheldon Costa
Quirk Books, November 2025
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

Alone in a frontier town in the brand-new state of Washington, Gentle Montgomery is grieving his best friend. Liam, a self-taught alchemist, was killed when he tried to capture a creature that shouldn’t exist: a giant salamander that drives men mad. When Gentle’s nephew Kitt arrives at his doorstep, the two set out together to track the monster down, so they can use its blood in an alchemical formula that will bring Liam back to life.

It’s a hard and haunted journey through the Northwestern frontier. The salamander produces surreal nightmares and waking dreams of a blighted, burning future. And Gentle and Kitt soon find themselves pursued by a bloodthirsty hunter, a sadistic judge, and a doomsday cult, all of whom have their own plans for the river monster. Armed with nothing but Liam’s alchemical notebooks, they must not only find the salamander but learn to understand it—and the terrifying visions it causes—before it’s too late.

Unsettling and profound, THE GREAT WORK is an arcane adventure through the wilderness of friendship and the rotten heart of the early American empire.

“The Great Work is a vision of America as both homeland and horror story. And it also is just a good ol’ page turner, the kind of dark tale that delivers on every promise it makes.” — Joseph Fink, co-creator of Welcome to Night Vale

“Costa’s rip-snorting debut is a wild ride through freaky old America: backwoods alchemists, a sadistic reverend judge, an animalistic cult, and a quest for a primeval monster of nightmares come together in a hell-for-leather frontier yarn packed with action, wonder, and heart.” — James Kennedy, author of Bride of the Tornado “A moody, atmospheric, and singular novel which navigates corners of American history through the complicated territory of horror, the monstrous, and the heroic.” — Kelly Link, best-selling author of The Book of Love

Sheldon Costa is a writer originally from Post Falls, Idaho. His fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Electric Literature, Michigan Quarterly Review, Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, and Crazyhorse, among others. He is a winner of the AWP Intro Journal Project, the 2018 Helen Earnhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award, and the Cream City Review’s 2019 Summer Prize in Fiction, judged by Ramona Ausubel. He holds an MFA from the Ohio State University and lives in rural Missouri with his wife and three cats. This is his debut novel.

GRIEFDOGG de Michael Winkler

Michael Winkler’s first novel Grimmish became a cult hit. Griefdogg is another triumph. Funny, sad, always entrancing, it tells a crazy-sane story about identity, love, family and forgiveness.

GRIEFDOGG
by Michael Winkler
Text Publishing (Australia), April 2026

Meet Jeffrey Watson-Johnson: hydrologist, husband of Martine, father of Bern, model citizen of Mildura.

After inheriting a small fortune from an obscure aunt and a disconcerting encounter with his cousin Pam, Jeffrey decides it’s time to change everything.

He wants to live like the family pet.

As his relationships face upheaval, Jeffrey withdraws further from his old life. Sleeping through the day or wandering beside the river, he discovers a new power: he can sense secret grief in others. What to do with this gift? Or with his awareness of the endless streams of water flowing unseen beneath the earth?

Michael Winkler’s first novel Grimmish became a cult hit. Griefdogg is another triumph. Funny, sad, always entrancing, it tells a crazy-sane story about identity, love, family and forgiveness.

Michael Winkler is a writer from Melbourne, living on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation. He is the author, co-author and editor of numerous books. His novel Grimmish was shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and he won the Calibre Essay Prize for ‘The Great Red Whale’. His journalism, short fiction, reviews and essays have been widely published and anthologised.

THE LAST RUN de Rachel Weaver

A story of family, resilience, and hard work, about fiercely independent people doing the best they can and coming to the hard truth that sometimes, what takes the most courage, is accepting the help of others.

THE LAST RUN
by Rachel Weaver
Lake Union, June 2026
(via Harvey Klinger, Inc.)

It’s been years since Ellie has fished the Alaskan waters—not since her mother died, not since her father took to drink, and not since the birth of her five-year-old son. She’s been living half a life, working a cubicle job in a small fishing town and drowning in debt while barely having the energy to be a single mom to Drew. When she finds her father lying in an alleyway, she learns he’s done the unforgivable. Pete has gambled away the family legacy, the fishing boat and license, and unless he can come up with fifty thousand in two months, the bookie will get everything, Pete will be homeless and Ellie and her son will be stuck in the grinding cycle of poverty. Ellie agrees to fish the season with her dad, bringing Drew on the boat as they chase the pipe dream of making enough money to pay off the debt. Ellie is used to the 20-hour days and the back-breaking work, and she’s used to risking her life to find the biggest catch. What she’s not used to is accepting help from others, and definitely not from a secretive homesteader who seems to have demons of his own. Ellie’s growing attraction and the dangerous Alaskan waters are the least of her worries, though. Because Ellie is hiding secrets of her own and, as the date with the bookie draws closer, she is at risk of losing it all.

THE LAST RUN is a story of family, resilience, and hard work. It’s about fiercely independent people doing the best they can and coming to the hard truth that sometimes, what takes the most courage, is accepting the help of others. Featuring a woman fighting against the limits of her existence and whose story is shaped by her relationships with the natural world, it would appeal to the same audience as Della Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing, Shelley Read’s Go As A River, Julia Phillips’ Bear and novels by Charlotte McConaghy.

Rachel Weaver is the author of Point of Direction (Ig Publishing, 2014), which Oprah Magazine named a « Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now.” It was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a Top Ten Debut for Spring 2014, by IndieBound as an Indie Next List Pick, by Yoga Journal as one of their Top Five Suggested Summer Reads and it won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors, and songbirds. She is on faculty at Regis University’s MFA program and Wilke’s University’s MFA program, and her work has appeared in The Sun, Gettysburg Review, Blue Mesa Review, Alaska Women Speak, and Fly Fishing New England.