Archives de catégorie : Literary

FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS de Kira Chung Judish

A wildly compelling debut novel about family, ambition, and a lie that spins out of control.

FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS
by Kira Chung Judish
HarperCollins, Winter/Spring 2027
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

When high school senior Minjee Choi insists she’s been accepted to Harvard, she expects the lie to last only long enough to save face. But when her mother Dasom learns the truth, she doubles down instead—determined to keep the family dream alive. Soon, what began as a desperate cover-up becomes a dazzling performance for their tight-knit immigrant community in Fairfax County, VA, where everyone has a stake in the family’s success.

Told primarily through alternating mother–daughter perspectives, FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS reveals the relentless pressure to succeed at all costs, masterfully details the tug-of-war between blending in and standing out, and the weight of carrying generations of hope. At the same time, it’s a total blast—darkly funny, absurd, and irresistibly entertaining, with a duo you can’t help but root for even as the lie unravels. A chorus of nosy neighbors, competitive classmates, and PTA parents adds bite, comedy, and urgency, making the story as layered as it is propulsive.

FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS will appeal to fans of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You for its poignant portrait of family and belonging, R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface for its sharp look at deception and desire, and Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation for its satirical take on identity and community.

Kira Chung Judish is a Korean American and Jewish writer based in Silver Spring, Maryland. A graduate of Amherst College, she is pursuing a doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine and was named a 2025 Periplus Fellowship finalist. In addition to writing, she performs in local theatre productions.

WHAT WE COME BACK TO de Chloe Michelle Howarth

The hotly-anticipated third novel from the author of Sunburn, which sold over 100,000 copies and was shortlisted for the Nero Book Award, the British Book Awards and the Polari Prize.

WHAT WE COME BACK TO
by Chloe Michelle Howarth
Publisher TK
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Aly and Meadhbh meet at a party that changes the course of their lives. Meadhbh has just moved to London from small-town Ireland with her best friend Saoirse, and Aly has been living in a penthouse paid for her by parents while she completes yet another degree. They are worlds apart, yet they cannot take their eyes off each other, and they fall instantly and madly in love.

We follow them from London in 2000 to Kilcoom in 2006, navigating obsessions, affairs and estrangements but always coming back to each other. Told through their alternating perspectives, this tender and addictive novel is for fans of Coco Mellor’s Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Nicola Dinan’s Bellies.

Chloe Michelle Howarth was born in July 1996. She grew up in the West Cork countryside, which has served as an inspiration for her writing. She attended university at IADT in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, where she studied English, Media and Cultural Studies. Chloe currently lives in Brighton. Her debut novel, Sunburn, was shortlisted for the 2024 Polari First Book Prize, the 2024 Book of the Year: Discover Award at the British Book Awards and the 2023 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction and longlisted for the 2024 Diverse Book Awards.

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.

GHALEN de Walter Mosley

A stellar addition to the Amistad list: a beautiful coming-of-age novel from MWA Grand Master and PEN and Edgar Award-winner Walter Mosley that explores love in all forms—romantic, familial, and platonic, centered on one Black family, including a neurodivergent man, and the found bonds that helps ground them.

GHALEN: A Romance in Black
by Walter Mosley
Amistad/HarperCollins, May 2026

One of the most acclaimed writers working today, Walter Mosley spins magic once again in this beautiful novel that explores the lives of Black characters and one remarkable family through a lens both universal and unique. It touches on the lives of those whose deepest thoughts and motivations are seldom explored—including the neurodivergent, the incarcerated, and the immigrant tortured by their past—characters who will stay with you and change how you see the world.

Ghalen, a brilliant young Black man, is the son of two seemingly mismatched parents. His mother, a gifted scientist, whose own mother expected her to exceed all the achievements in her family, and his father, a gentle cook at a small vegetarian restaurant, whose idiosyncratic nature shows the young woman a radically different love and understanding of life, despite his inexperience and lack of education.

His parents’ grand love story starts it all off, setting us up to follow Ghalen and his family so deeply, that each new twist and turn feels personal.

The journey through Ghalen’s coming-of-age tale, as he ventures out into the world, is marked with peaks and valleys and such a drive that you can’t help but strap in for it all, while not wanting it to end.

Lush and cinematic, with the narrative drive and indelible power of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead andPaul Murray’s The Bee Sting, Ghalen is one of this bestselling, prize-winning writer’s finest achievements.

Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the 2020 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgars and several NAACP Image Awards. He is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed books that cover a wide range of ideas, genres, and forms including fiction (literary, mystery, and science fiction), political monographs, writing guides including Elements of Fiction, a memoir in paintings, and the young adult novel 47. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He has published fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Nation. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s Snowfall.

In 2020 he was a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and from the National Book Foundation. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an Edgar Award, an O. Henry Award, the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a Grammy Award, and several NAACP Image Awards. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages.

EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY de Imbolo Mbue

Imbolo Mbue’s long awaited epic new novel, about loss, sorrow, forgiveness, redemption and surviving unspeakable tragedy.

EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY
by Imbolo Mbue
Random House, Fall 2026
(via Writers House)

Credit: Kiriko Sano

Three years ago, Wolo’s pregnant wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, his great love was gone, and so was their shining future: the twins they were expecting, the PhD she was on the cusp of finishing, and all the plans they’ve had for a long, happy life. At times the loss seemed insurmountable, but with the help from his tight knit family Wolo has slowly rebuilt a semblance of a life, he goes to work, hangs out with a small circle of friends, and fends off the matchmaking efforts of the older women in his family. His sorrow never leaves him and neither does the anger towards Victoria, the woman who was behind the wheel that terrible day. His wife was not just the love of his life, she became the daughter his mother never had, beloved cousin to all members of his family, her loss has left them all devastated and angry.

Then one day a letter arrives, unbidden, threatening to upend his life once again. It is from Victoria. Wolo’s pastor tells him the letter is the work of the devil; his mother expressly forbids him from even reading it; his whole family is against it. But Wolo does read it and agrees to meet with the person who killed his wife. When he does, the compassion and deep remorse of the woman he meets surprises him. He is not the only person whose life was shattered by the accident and he begins to wonder if forgiving Victoria is the only road to healing for them both.

Moving, empathetic, insightful and compassionate EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY charts the uneven path from heartbreak to hope; from standing up to one’s own family and following one’s own path, to love lost and love found.

Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Her second novel, How Beautiful We Were, about a fictional African village’s fight against an American oil company, was named by the New York Times as “One of the 10 Best Books” of 2021.