Archives de catégorie : Fiction

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.

SENSUAL WORLD de Lauren Friedlander

A stylish and surreal Midwestern coming-of-age with black humor, SENSUAL WORLD is a story about desire, destruction, and transcendence for fans of Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch and Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise.

SENSUAL WORLD
by Lauren Friedlander
Catapult, February 2027
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Sensual World is about two young women—one escaping an isolated, sordid home in the plains, one escaping a TV-set childhood in The Big City—who meet at an avant-garde theater school in Kansas called “the Con.” They become the best of friends; together they strive to become Artists.

The founder of the Con, Una Flood, wrote a supposedly-cursed, never-performed play and a manifesto on how to become The Ultimate Artist. When the friends are cast in Possum Play, they are torn apart by the absurdist preparations and Flood’s supernatural machinations. A car crash; an identity swap; two women enter a maelstrom of obsession from which only one can emerge! The third act of redemption and reconciliation turns violent and strange—as they strive to embody The Ultimate Artist, the audience (us, fair readers) is unable to look away.

Sensual World lies somewhere in among the concepts of “if Ottessa Moshfegh went to theater camp,” and the movie Poor Things. The novel is viscerally stylish; you will taste the language of the Kansas soil and it’ll shock your senses like Sprite up the nose.

A writer from Kansas, currently in Brooklyn, Lauren Friedlander is a recipient of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her fiction has been longlisted for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions and published in the Best Microfiction anthology, Catapult, Hobart After Dark, Okay Donkey, The Rumpus, Shooter, Slice, and Washington Square Review.

THE END OF ROMANCE de Lily Meyer

A big-hearted, wise, unceasingly buoyant novel about a woman who, after escaping a bruising marriage, theorizes that happiness is possible solely with the eradication of all romance—only to find a love that could change her life forever.

THE END OF ROMANCE
by Lily Meyer
Viking, February 2026
(via The Gernert Company)

Sylvie Broder was taught early to embrace joy. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors whose greatest priority was enjoying the life they’d snatched back from Hitler, Sylvie believes in the tenacious pursuit of pleasure—yet, somehow, finds herself trapped in a suffocating, emotionally abusive marriage. With enormous fortitude, Sylvie frees herself and turns to graduate school, where she develops a new philosophy: Straight women will find true liberation and happiness only once romance is eradicated.

Now, Sylvie prides herself in separating sex from tenderness—having fun with men, but never committing to one. Then she meets Robbie and Abie, and finds her philosophy sorely tested. A warm and gentle man, Robbie treats Sylvie with patience and enormous kindness, offering her comfort she hasn’t had since childhood. Abie is passionate and dynamic, a man who challenges Sylvie, and with whom she finds herself constantly disarmed. With both men, she feels a deep desire that looks, worryingly, a lot like love.

Cleverly constructed, delightfully funny, and beautifully written, THE END OF ROMANCE is an anti-romance romance novel that charts its fallible heroine’s tumultuous journey to love and happiness with erudition and deep feeling—a story for anyone who, despite their very best efforts, has fallen in love, and wondered why.

Lily Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

THE MOODY MORTICIAN de Samantha Jay

A grouchy goth mortician with a heart of gold gets embroiled in the murder investigation of the man she embalmed with the infuriating help of the handsome son of her town’s rival funeral home. The Maid meets « Six Feet Under » with a dash of Dial A For Aunties in this funny, clever debut mystery.

THE MOODY MORTICIAN
by Samantha Jay
Dutton, Spring 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

« I’m telling you, dude. The living. They are the worst. »

For Riley Peluso, a 28-year-old funeral director, death isn’t scary, gross, or annoying—it’s the living who are a problem. She loves her job at the century-old family-run Italian-American funeral home where she works, as she doesn’t have to talk to anyone and besides, she’s the best embalmer in quaint Dorchester, Connecticut. When she notices what someone else might have overlooked – something is amiss about a decedent she’s embalming which might indicate foul play – Riley finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation.

While her nosy, overbearing Italian family is constantly on her case about her introverted lifestyle, and the funeral home is so overbooked she’s working 70 hours a week, Riley finds herself mixed up with Flynn Gallagher, the obnoxiously competitive scion of the rival Irish-American funeral home, who is as dogged as the golden retriever he resembles. In the middle of this mess of the drama of the living, can Riley figure out the truth and restore her faith in her own profession?

Gloriously gory and laugh-out-loud funny, THE MOODY MORTICIAN is a delectable puzzle featuring one of the most endearing amateur sleuths to grace the pages of a mystery in years. This debut establishes Samantha Jay as one to watch.

Samantha Jay is the pen name of first-cousin writing duo Samantha Cusano and Juliet Grames. Samantha is a licensed funeral director in Connecticut. A graduate of the New England Institute of Applied Funeral Arts and Sciences at Mount Ida College, Samantha has earned certificates in specialized embalming and reconstruction and has served as a forensic autopsy tech, working high-profile crime cases and performing eviscerations under the direction of the Medical Examiner to help determine cause of death. Juliet is the international bestselling author of two novels, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna and The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia. Her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery & Suspense, People, Real Simple, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Parade, and many other places. Juliet is Editorial Director at Soho Press, where she has curated the Soho Crime imprint since 2010. She’s the recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Ellery Queen Award as well as of Italy’s Premio Cetraro for Contributions to Southern Italian Literature. Both cousins live in New England, where they juggle the professional obligations they take very seriously with the social demands of their loving Italian family.