Archives de catégorie : Fiction

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.

I AM AGATHA de Nancy Foley

For readers of Elizabeth Strout and Sigrid Nunez, a darkly funny and moving debut novel about the unforgettable Agatha, whose devotion to a widow with dementia (and an inconvenient attachment to her daughter’s grave) sparks a radical reckoning with life, loss, and love’s aftermath.

I AM AGATHA
by Nancy Foley
Avid Reader Press, March 2026
(via Writers House)

Agatha, a bristly painter fleeing her own darkness, decamps to rural New Mexico to live the reclusive life of a small-town curmudgeon. It is there she meets Alice, a mild widow with a deepening case of dementia who keeps steady vigil at her daughter’s backyard grave. Despite Agatha’s rough edges and fierce aversion to sentimentality, she surprises herself by falling in love, and her well-worn convictions begin to upend.

As Alice’s condition worsens, Agatha hatches a plan for them to live together at her remote residence at Mesa Portales. But when Alice’s wayward son comes along with different ideas—and Alice suddenly goes missing—Agatha takes matters into her own hands with the help of a faithful thirteen-year-old-neighbor, a pair of shovels, and her trusty pickup, embarking on an unusual mission that calls into question whether some secrets are better kept buried.

Sharp, watchful, at once thrillingly perceptive and hidden from herself, Agatha is as imposing as the vast landscape her rustic adobe home overlooks. Loosely inspired by the life of Agnes Martin, I AM AGATHA introduces us to this irascible, indelible character who learns—over a stretch of strange, singular days—new ways to fathom life, death, and her own heart.

Nancy Foley grew up in New Mexico. She has been a writer in residence at Hedgebrook, and divides her time between New Mexico and Oregon. I AM AGATHA is her first novel.

TENDERNESS de Rowan Beaird

From the beloved author of The Divorcées comes a novel set in the 1970s during an island wedding, where the bride has recently left a sinister cult that might still be trailing her.

TENDERNESS
by Rowan Beaird
Flatiron/St. Martin’s Press, July 2026

On a remote island off the coast of Virginia, family and friends gather to celebrate the wedding of Shay O’Connor and Andrew Pruitt. From the moment the guests arrive, all they can whisper about is the bride, who recently left the headline-making cult Synanon. Why would someone like Shay, an Ivy League graduate with a wealthy, doting fiancée, join Synanon? And has she really escaped their grasp?

Told from the interwoven perspectives of Shay’s brother William, her longtime friend Joel, and Shay herself, Tenderness is a slow-burn mystery that excavates dark family histories and romantic regrets. As the wedding day approaches, Joel and William pull at the loose threads of Shay’s story, and it becomes clear there is an even greater threat on the island than the secrets each character is keeping from one another.

Set in the tinderbox of the 1970s, Tenderness is a lit match, bringing hidden truths to light and asking if we can ever see ourselves or the people we love for who they truly are.

Rowan Beaird’s fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and Gulf Coast. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. She is the author of the acclaimed novel The Divorcées (Flatiron, 2024).