Archives de catégorie : Fiction

MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING de Zee Carlstrom

A loud, fast-paced debut that punches the road-trip novel right in the face.

MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING
by Zee Carlstrom
Flatiron, Spring 2025
(via Neon Literary)

The newly nameless narrator of MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING has rejected the gender binary, flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate job, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is drinking enough booze for two people.

A call from their mother with the news that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing, launches the narrator from Chicago to Deep Red Arkansas in a stolen car and their new bestie in tow a self-proclaimed « garbage goth » with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail). Along the way. they unpack the narrator’s childhood, one ruled by the whims of their father’s anger and paranoia, and a recent personal loss they would rather eat glass than face.

An unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, the liberal/conservative divide, toxic masculinity, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screaming is the loud, funny, tragic, fucked-up enby road-trip novel of our times.

Zee Carlstrom is a creative director and writer from Illinois. They live in Brooklyn.

DON’T TURN AROUND de Harry Dolan

The police call him Merkury. He’s a killer who seems to choose his victims at random. He leaves no evidence behind, and no witnesses. Except for one. But what did she really see?

DON’T TURN AROUND
by Harry Dolan
Atlantic Monthly Press, April 2024
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

When Kate Summerlin was eleven years old, she climbed out her bedroom window on a spring night, looking for a taste of freedom in the small college town where she was living with her parents. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her—the killer’s voice—saying: “Don’t turn around.”

Now, at the age of twenty-nine, Kate is a successful true crime writer, but she has never told anyone the truth about what happened on that long-ago night. When Merkury claims yet another victim—a college student named Bryan Cayhill—Kate finds herself drawn back to the town where everything started. She sets out to make sense of this latest crime, but the deeper she gets into the story, the more she comes to realize that it’s far from over. Her search for the truth about Merkury is leading her down into a dark labyrinth, and if she hopes to escape, she’ll have to meet him once again—this time face to face.

Harry Dolan is the author of the mystery/suspense novels Bad Things Happen (2009), Very Bad Men (2011), The Last Dead Girl (2014), and The Man in the Crooked Hat (2017). He graduated from Colgate University, where he majored in philosophy and studied fiction-writing with the novelist Frederick Busch. A native of Rome, New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

BLUE HOTEL de Dann McDorman

BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

BLUE HOTEL
by Dann McDorman
Knopf, Spring 2025
(via David Black Literary)

A man wakes up in a room with no idea where he is or how he got there. The room has no door nor windows. He has no way to tell the time. He has nothing to eat except for the endless cartons of Cup O’ Noodles (Original flavor) with which he is tormented by his captors. The stubble on his chin doesn’t grow. He loses his mind; he gets his back. Then one day, one hour, one minute, a vintage black typewriter appears on the desk, gleaming like a beetle. He warily taps out his name: J-O-H-N T-H-O-M-A-S. He sits down and begins to write…
Thus begins BLUE HOTEL, during which readers follow John Thomas as he tries to solve the mystery of his imprisonment. His surprising escape, and the discovery of what lies outside his room, launches an exploration during which readers will encounter a strange menagerie of characters: doomsday cultists, a Reality Studies professor, a Big Tech billionaire, an immortal chatbot, a woman who thought she could fly, and two sisters who speak to the dead — plus a few other, rather more surprising personalities…
BLUE HOTEL, Dann McDorman’s follow-up to West Heart Kill, features his trademark mixture of plot twists and philosophical inquiry. It’s a novel filled with bizarre facts and heretical histories, ranging from the origins of artificial intelligence to 19th century revolutionary politics in Canada. BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

THE BRIGHT YEARS de Sarah Damoff

THE BRIGHT YEARS, by Sarah Damoff, is a stunning debut novel about a family torn apart by alcoholism and tragedy and redeemed by love. It’s an unforgettable narrative and an unputdownable read.

THE BRIGHT YEARS
by Sarah Damoff
Simon & Schuster, April 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Ryan and Lillian Bright are madly in love, starting a business in Texas, and parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching her parents’ marriage fracture.

Kendi, a boy from their apartment complex, is one of the only people Georgette can count on, but when tragedy strikes, Georgette distances herself from both Ryan and Kendi as she tries to come to terms with her family’s past. When Lillian’s son surfaces looking for the mother that gave him away, Georgette begins unearthing her parents’ secrets and learning to find grace and love for herself.

Sarah Damoff lives with her husband and children in Dallas, where she is a social worker. She has a degree in Family Studies and a Child Protection Certification from Harvard University. A member of the Writers’ League of Texas, her work centers around family stories.

THE INFLUENCERS d’Anna-Marie McLemore

When May “Mother May I” Iverson’s mansion burns down with her newlywed husband inside, friends, neighbors, media, and the Iversons’ fans and enemies alike begin speculating and investigating faster than detectives.

THE INFLUENCERS
by Anna-Marie McLemore
Dial Press, March 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

May is a social media sensation, glamorous-yet-relatable, but the key to her enduring fame is her daughters, who featured in videos from their births through adorable childhoods, difficult adolescences, and terrible teens. But the girls are all grown up now, and their lingering anger and resentment from childhoods stolen by the camera have started to spill over into public view. April is a businesswoman feuding with her mother over IP; June and July are influencers themselves, possibly threatening May’s dominance; January is a theater tech who steers clear of her mother and the limelight; and March…well, March has somehow completely disappeared.

Could it be one of the girls who murdered May’s less-than-charming new groom? Or could online sweetheart Mother May I have killed the man she’d just recently married and then burned down her dream home to cover it up? Or could it be one of us, the fawning yet fickle mob of media consumers?

THE INFLUENCERS is award-winning (including recently Printz-winning) YA author Anna-Marie McLemore’s first novel for adults, told in multiple points of view, reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides, and in the vein of other compulsively readable family dramas, like The Family Fang and Dava Shastri’s Last Day.

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; Miss Meteor (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); Dark And Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature; and Venom & Vow, co-authored with Elliott McLemore. Most recently, they contributed to the 2023 Printz-winning anthology The Collectors: Stories, edited by A.S. King.