Archives de catégorie : Fiction

THE LOVE AN ABALONE FEELS FOR THE SEA de Genki Ferguson

Take a cool dive into the waters of coastal Japan, the setting for Genki Ferguson’s exquisitely rendered coming-of-age novel, featuring traditional “ama” freedivers.

THE LOVE AN ABALONE FEELS FOR THE SEA
by Genki Ferguson
Counterpoint, Spring 2027
(via The Friedrich Agency)

During one fateful dive, Nagisa, a determined young woman joins the ama—who dive to depths of up to 65 feet without any scuba gear to hunt abalone and other shellfish —and doesn’t return to the surface.

Ren Ioka, Nagisa’s seventeen year old brother, finds himself unmoored by grief and uncertainty upon his sister’s disappearance. But after discovering an unsent love letter written by Nagisa years earlier, Ren becomes convinced that this confession holds the secret behind her inexplicable final dive.

In the process of retracing his sister’s hidden love, Ren meets Aiko, an inscrutable ama who once dove with Nagisa. As Ren gradually uncovers the truth behind his sister’s confession, he finds himself falling for Aiko, not realizing that she’s harboring a secret herself.

Genki Ferguson is a Canadian-Japanese writer and filmmaker, who spent the Spring of 2023 immersed in the world of ama divers in Mie, Japan, and based much of this story on his experiences living and working in their village. Genki’s previous novel, Satellite Love, was published in 2021 by McClelland & Stewart to critical acclaim and several award nominations.

CHILDREN OF THE SAVAGE CITY d’Elizabeth Heider

Fast-paced, evocative, and steeped in the tension of moral compromise, CHILDREN OF THE SAVAGE CITY explores the thin line between hope and illusion in a city where every choice carries a price.

CHILDREN OF THE SAVAGE CITY
by Elizabeth Heider
Penguin Books, February 2026
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Some cities feed on secrets. Naples is ravenous.

A peaceful evening mass at the historic Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo is shattered when a young au pair is killed in one of the cathedral’s quiet chapels. The daughter of the US Ambassador sees it happen–but she’ll speak only to one person: Nikki Serafino.

Shaken by betrayal in her last high-profile case, Nikki has retreated from the relentless vigilance that once defined her work as liaison between Italian police and the US military. Withdrawn and mistrustful, she works her shifts, cares for her aging family, teaches self-defense classes, and avoids entanglement. But this case threatens her self-imposed invisibility–drawing her into a web of lies and resurfacing old wounds and buried loyalties. The murder investigation leads Nikki and her friend, Naples officer Valerio Alfieri, into a shadow architecture of power: built to protect the guilty and hide their secrets at any cost.

Can she and Valerio—each carrying dangerous debts—resist the undertow of corruption that swallows truth whole?

Set against the chaos of modern Naples—the city of Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend—where grace and corruption share the same narrow streets, Nikki and Valerio navigate a landscape where even the most principled must confront the cost of survival.

Elizabeth Heider is the author of May the Wolf Die, named a New York Times Best Crime Novel, a Washington Post Best Mystery, and one of Publishers Weekly‘s best books of the year. Her short fiction has been recognized by the Santa Fe Writers Project and New Century Writer Awards. She holds a PhD in physics and most recently worked as a program manager for Microsoft’s AI4Science and as a scientist in the European Space Agency’s human spaceflight program. She’s authored original scientific research, a patent, analytical reports for the US government and military, and coauthored a journal article with astronaut Thomas Pesquet. She lived and worked in Naples, Italy, as a civilian analyst embedded with the US Navy’s mission in Africa, where she deployed aboard US and European naval ships. Originally from Utah, she now lives in The Hague, where she’s working on the next Nikki Serafino novel.

UND FEDERN ÜBERALL de Nava Ebrahimi

Award-winning author Nava Ebrahimi immerses us in the world of a provincial backwater, weaving the lives of six people into a stunning social novel that asks whether it is possible to retain our humanity and compassion in the face of adversity. For fans of Jenny Erpenbeck, Dörte Hansen and Lucy Fricke.

UND FEDERN ÜBERALL
(Feathers Everywhere)
by Nava Ebrahimi
Luchterhand/PRH Germany, August 2025

A small town, six people embarking on a new chapter in their lives, and one day that changes everything

The fog lingers over the fields and the canal. In the small town of Lasseren near the Dutch border, it is as if winter were refusing to end. Nothing much happens here, in the flatlands. Anyone looking for work inevitably ends up at Möllring, the gigantic poultry slaughterhouse on the edge of town. Here, a handful of people has woken up this Monday morning with great expectations: single mum Sonia hopes to get a job far away from the conveyor belt and portioning machine; for young engineer Anna, more or less everything depends on today’s trial run of the latest automation solution; meanwhile, Merkhausen – a process optimisation manager with a weakness for Polish women whose wife has left him – is looking forward to a first date tonight; Nassim, a visually impaired refugee from Afghanistan, has got himself entangled with Justyna, who is twenty years older than him, and is convinced his poems will soften the hearts of German bureaucrats; and German-Iranian author Roshi has travelled all the way from Cologne to translate the poems for him.

When a careless cyclist breaks Nassim’s cane right in the middle of town, and the story is picked up by the local radio station, Nassim becomes a local legend – but more than that too: he inspires people to look their truth squarely in the eye.

Nava Ebrahimi, born in Tehran in 1978, is one of Austrian literature’s most exciting new voices. She is the winner of the 2021 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, and her novel Sechzehn Wörter (« Sixteen words ») won the Austrian Book Prize and the Morgenstern Prize. After studying journalism and economics in Cologne, she became editor at Financial Times Deutschland and at the Cologne-based Stadtrevue. She has been shortlisted for the Open Mike debut prize, and has attended the Bavarian Academy of Writing. Alongside her novels, she also writes a column for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

SIDE CHARACTER ENERGY d’Olivia Tolich

A sharp, wise, hilarious novel about love—romantic, platonic and toxic—from a brilliant new voice in Australian fiction.

SIDE CHARACTER ENERGY
by Olivia Tolich
Text Pubishing Australia, February 2026

Before she met Bee, Gertrude was alone—like a whale singing on a different frequency so that none of the other whales could find it. Then Bee decided they were friends, and now they’re not just best friends: they live in the same house and work together too.

Gertrude’s whole life, in fact, seems to revolve around Bee. Not that it’s a problem; she’s just not sure why she’s going on double dates with Bee and her new boyfriend Will, a pompous-finance-bro, and his friend Arthur, who is apparently also a jerk.

Apparently. Because there might be more to Arthur than Gertrude thinks. And, according to Arthur, there might be more to Gertrude than she thinks as well. And if that’s true? Where would that leave her life with Bee?

The author herself writes, “This book is for everyone who watches a romcom and thinks the best friend should get their own movie.” 

Senior Editor at Text, Mandy Brett, writes, “A lot of craft goes into crafting effortless fun. Olivia Tolich is a master of her craft.” 

Olivia Tolich is an emerging author based in Melbourne. She holds a Masters of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing from the University of Melbourne and works as an educational publisher. 

ACCIDENTS NEVER HAPPEN de Penny Zang

From the author of Doll Parts comes a literary thriller partly inspired by We Have Always Lived in the Castle, injected with the gothic presence of Poe, and set against the vibrant and smoke-filled bars of the 80s.

ACCIDENTS NEVER HAPPEN
by Penny Zang
Sourcebooks Landmark, December 2026

1985. Madeline, a hard-edged twenty-something bartender in Baltimore, is still processing her father’s untimely death. Before, she and her sister, Annabel, a free-spirited party girl, lived alone in the apartment above the family bar where they spent their off-hours partying until sunrise and dreaming about their unsure futures in a smoke-filled rooms. Now, Annabel is reclusive, the neighborhood treats the family like outcasts, and Mad is struggling to make ends meet.

When a picture taken of the bar makes it look like there’s a ghost in the upstairs window, gothic obsessed tourists start to show up in droves. Desperate to keep customers coming in, Madeline and Annabel decide to embrace the publicity and make up a story that embellishes on the history of Edgar Allan Poe, who famously died in the city. But on opening night of their new venture, Annabel goes missing without a trace, and soon, strange things begin to happen not only in the bar, but in their neighborhood, and soon, Annabel isn’t the only bartender to disappear. Hoping to find the truth behind what happened to her sister, Mad finds herself confronted with the dark underbelly of a haunting Baltimore, and as she digs, she’ll come to realize that some ghost stories may turn out to be true.

Penny Zang is an English professor at Greenville Technical College and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from West Virginia University. She is the author of Doll Parts (Sourcebooks, 2025). Her other work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Louisville Review, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina with her husband and son.