Archives de catégorie : Fiction

THE TROUBLE UP NORTH de Travis Mulhauser

An atmospheric, haunting novel about a family of bootleggers, their troubled history, and the land that binds them.

THE TROUBLE UP NORTH
by Travis Mulhauser
Grand Central, March 2025
(via The Gernert Company)

The Sawbrooks have lived on prime real estate on the lakes of Michigan since before there was prime real estate. A family of smugglers and bootleggers, every man, woman, and child in each generation has been taught to navigate the nooks and crannies of the rivers and highways that flow in and out of Canada. The hidden routes are the family’s legacy.

But today, the Sawbrooks are deeply fractured, and the money that’s sustained the family is running out. Edward, the Sawbrook patriarch, is dying from cancer, and his wife, Rhoda, is bitterly disappointed in her three adult children. The eldest daughter, Lucy, is now a park ranger, working to federally protect the land against her mother’s will; the middle son, Buckner, hasn’t been the same since he came back from the army suffering from alcoholism; and the youngest daughter, Jewell, is wasting her potential as a card player and bartender.

When Jewell is asked to commit a crime for a major insurance payout, she agrees, eager for the cash, but too late, she realizes that that the boat she torched wasn’t empty…

Together, the Sawbrooks will have to contend with the old, familial ways and the new, shifting world, and face each other—and their pain-filled past—to smuggle one more thing through and out of their land to safety.

Travis Mulhauser was born and raised in Northern Michigan. His novel, Sweetgirl (Ecco/Harper Collins), was listed for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, an Indie Next Pick, and named one of Ploughshares Best Books of the New Year. He is also the author of Greetings from Cutler County: A Novella and Stories. Travis received his MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro and is also a proud graduate of North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan University. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and two children.

ANIMA RISING de Christopher Moore

From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore comes a deranged tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, two psychiatrists and an undead woman’s empowering journey of self-discovery.

ANIMA RISING
by Christopher Moore
William Morrow, May 2025
(via DeFiore and Company)

1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in Vienna, finds a young woman floating in the Danube canal, who has no idea of who she is or where she came from. He names her Judith, after the Hebrew heroine who beheaded an Assyrian general and thus saved her people. Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse, Wally, tend to the girl, but she is almost feral, blurts out nonsense in a variety of languages, and generally scandalizes Viennese café society.

With help from famous psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic one hundred years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein, being kidnapped by an enormous patchwork monster, before he murders her for trying to escape him and then finds herself with the gods of the Inuit Underworld. She is of course, the bride of Frankenstein.

But how did she turn up in Vienna more than a century later? And why are so many people keen to find her, including Geoff, the giant croissant-eating dog who also shares her superhuman strength, endurance and immortality?

Welcome to Anima Rising, Christopher Moore’s most ingenious and most hilarious novel yet.

With a body of work that boasts some of the most outlandish plots and outrageous characters ever to make it onto the printed page, Christopher Moore has made a name for himself as the clown prince of contemporary fiction. He is the author of The Serpent of Venice, Second Hand Souls, and other novels. He lives in San Francisco.

CRUSH de Ada Calhoun

When a husband asks his wife to consider what might be missing from their marriage, what follows surprises them both—sex, heartbreak and heart rekindling, and a rediscovered sense of all that is possible.

CRUSH
by Ada Calhoun
Viking/PRH, February 2025
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency)

She’s happy and settled and productive and content in her full life—a child, a career, an admirable marriage, deep friendships, happy parents, and a spouse she still loves. But when her husband urges her to address what the narrow labels of “husband” and “wife” force them to edit out of their lives, the very best kind of hell breaks loose.

Using the author’s personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes. Destined to become a classic novel of marriage, and tackling the big questions being asked about partnership in postpandemic relationships, CRUSH is a sharp, funny, seductive, and revelatory novel about holding on to everything it’s possible to love—friends, children, parents, passion, lovers, husbands, all of the world’s good books, and most of all one’s own deep sense of purpose.

“Ada Calhoun writes with absolute clarity about the giddiest and most destabilizing feeling—the crush. This novel made me feel dizzy and I loved every second. Calhoun can seduce me any day of the week.” — Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

“The word ‘crush’ often conjures the innocence of adolescence—a time when your life story isn’t yet written and anything is possible. But what happens when that dormant feeling is awakened in middle age? Ada Calhoun’s Crush is a gripping fever dream of a book leading the reading into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession.” — Molly Ringwald

Ada Calhoun is the author of Also a Poet, named one of the best books of 2022 by the New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and featured on the Today show and PBS NewsHour. Her other books include St. Marks Is Dead and the New York Times bestsellers Why We Can’t Sleep.

PANDORA de Frank Miller & Emma Kubert

From legendary creator Frank Miller comes a dark, modern fairy tale about a teenage girl searching for a perfect world. But not all is what it seems.

FRANK MILLER’S PANDORA
by Frank Miller & Emma Kubert
with Anthony Maranville & Chris Silvestri
Abrams ComicArts, November 2024

From legendary creator Frank Miller comes a dark, modern-day fairy tale about a teenage girl searching for a perfect world. But all is not what it seems…

Annabeth is an endlessly curious fifteen-year-old girl. Unpopular at school, unhappy at home, and struggling to feel like she belongs, everything changes for her when she stumbles across a flower-shaped relic with the power to warp reality. Determined to change her dissatisfying everyday life, Annabeth uses her newfound powers to transform the world.

As Miller steps out of his comfort zone to deliver a story from the point of view of a young girl, PANDORA seems like a typical wish-fulfillment fairy tale at first, but soon spirals into a unique and twisted romp through a goblin world where not all is as it seems. Miller’s touch brings an element of the unexpected to the classic myth of Pandora. The fantasy element of the work will help this title transcend the traditional audience for Frank Miller’s storytelling as a crossover title, while showing longtime fans a new side of Miller’s work.

Frank Miller is regarded as one of the most influential and prominent creators in the comic book industry today, known for his intense, hard-boiled storytelling and gritty noir aesthetic across comics, novels, and film. His most notable works include 300, Ronin, the Sin City series, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and Batman: Year One, among others. He has received numerous awards, including two Harvey Awards for Best Graphic Album of Original Work in 1998 and Best Continuing Series in 1996 and six Eisner Awards, including those for Best Writer/Artist, Best Graphic Novel Reprint, Best Cartoonist, Best Cover Artist, Best Limited Series, and Best Short Story. In 2015, Miller was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame for his lifetime of contributions to the industry.

Emma Kubert is a freelance comic book artist, writer, co-creator, penciler, and colorist of Image Comics’ Inkblot series, and a graduate of the Kubert School. She is the daughter of Marvel cover artist Andy Kubert and granddaughter of industry icon Joe Kubert.

Anthony Maranville is a television writer who has previously written for the Emmy, Saturn, and GLAAD Award–winning Star Trek: Discovery and the Emmy Award–nominated Star Trek: ShortTreks episode “Ephraim and DOT.” He also directed the award-winning documentary Mimi Vang Olsen: Pet Portraitist. Chris Silvestri is an award-winning television writer who has worked on shows such as Star Trek: Discovery, NBC’s Hannibal, Netflix’s Brainchild, and Star Trek: Short Treks. He also co-wrote Hide or Seek, a graphic novel with Dan DiDio and Anthony Maranville.

VOYAGERS de Meg Charlton

As the world unravels under a mysterious signal, two childhood friends reunite to confront their shared past and the possibility of an extraterrestrial future.

VOYAGERS
by Meg Charlton
Harper, Winter 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Voyagers is the story of the lifelong friendship between Alex and Ana, narrated by Alex, now in his early 30’s. He’s a lawyer, lives a quiet life. And then the Signal – a narrow-band transmission broadcasting a sequence of pulses from somewhere near Pluto, for which no government claims responsibility – convinces the world that we’re about to make First Contact with aliens. Alex is primed to believe this: when he was 6 years old he went on vacation with his family to Palm Springs, met Ana (vacationing with her mother next door), and during a sleepover the two were abducted by aliens. Or at least, that’s what they told the rescuers who found them after their 36 hours missing, and the story they stuck to as they became minor child stars. As teenagers, their divergence in belief about what “really” happened severed their friendship.

Now, Alex realizes there’s no one he’d rather be with at the potential end of the world than Ana. She has made her living as an ‘experiencer advocate,’ leading retreats for those who’ve experienced extraterrestrial contact, and is coincidentally about to lead one in Palm Springs; Alex will go out to meet her. As the Signal grows louder and starts affecting electronics, grounds planes, and the world devolves into chaos, the two race to meet each other for one final reckoning to uncover what really happened to them as kids – and the reader learns whether there are “really” aliens out there.

Meg Charlton is a writer and screenwriter based in New York City. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in VICE, Slate, The Yale Review, Atlas Obscura and Lux, and been anthologized in the collection Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. Her short fiction has been optioned for film and TV and is currently in development with 3 Arts Entertainment and S/B Films, represented by Alice Lawson and Jason Klorfein at Gersh. She received her MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College where she was the recipient of the Creative Writing Award.