Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

CITY LIKE WATER de Dorothy Tse

Lucid, nightmarish, and indelible, a wondrous and pointed message in a bottle from a city not so different from your own.

CITY LIKE WATER
by Dorothy Tse
translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce
Graywolf Press, March 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

The city you grew up in is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it—classmates, teachers, counterfeit watches, the erotic toe cleavage that used to lead the way down secret passages. Yet you still catch snatches of conversation lingering in the air and glimpse sun-dazzled residents retreating into dark crevices.

People seem to keep disappearing. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until police helicopters unleash a glittery spray that turns them into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home, until he is quietly absorbed into the enormous new TV gifted by the government, and you spot him doing tai chi or picking through leftovers in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister, before she flew away in her school uniform? As the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth you can no longer navigate, where does this leave you?

Lucid, nightmarish and indelible, City Like Water is a wondrous and pointed message in a bottle from a city not so different from your own.

Dorothy Tse is a Hong Kong writer and the author of Owlish, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, and Snow and Shadow, which was long-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. She is the cofounder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres.

THE FIRST GIRL IN HELL de Henry Hoke

A feral western set in 1940, narrated by an ostracized actress on an infernal journey of romance and revenge.

THE FIRST GIRL IN HELL
by Henry Hoke
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Winter/Spring 2027
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

This novel is loosely inspired by one summer in the life of the author’s cousin Tallulah Bankhead. Her fictional stand-in Lucinda’s Hollywood career has ended, and she thinks she knows why. A combination of her queerness, the debauchery of her social life, and a personal vendetta has landed her in the infamous Doom Book, a burn list created in secret by the prudish ghouls behind the Hays Code restrictions on film of the 1930s. Fragmented into prose-poetic pages that mirror the notecards on which her politician father wrote speeches, Lucinda bitingly narrates her whirlwind road trip from a divorce ranch in Reno to a jailhouse in a crumbling ghost town, all the while pining for a woman who she thinks could turn her life around. She might not get sober, but she’ll settle for payback.

Henry Hoke is the author of several books, most recently Open Throat, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, and longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. He has taught at CalArts and the UVA Young Writers Workshop, and lives in Virginia.

DUST de Michael Brissenden

One of Australia’s most respected journalists, during his long career Michael Brissenden has covered politics, national security issues and spent many years working as a foreign correspondent. He now writes gritty crime novels that tackle social issues while maintaining a gripping pace.

DUST
by Michael Brissenden
Affirm Press/ Simon & Schuster, September 2025
(via The Pilkington Agency)

Lake Herrod, a once-thriving community, now lies in the shadow of a nearly dry lake. The town, like the water, is evaporating and its residents are left clinging to what little remains.

When Aaron Love discovers a fresh corpse near the cracked lakebed – along with evidence his missing father is alive and linked to a web of organised crime – he is thrust into a world of deception, injustice and betrayal. With the town on the brink of collapse, Aaron and a haunted detective, Martyn Kravets, uncover a web of conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small community.

Dust is a dark, gripping thriller that explores the complexities of identity, a search for truth, and the unyielding forces of corruption in a world where lives are lived on the fringe, and nothing is as it seems.

‘A deeply human, timely and utterly compelling crime novel, one of the very best to come out of Australia in recent years’. – The NZ Herald

‘Heartbreakingly good.’ – The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald

Michael Brissenden was a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for 35 years. He was posted to Moscow, Brussels and Washington and worked in Canberra for many years in various roles – including as the Political Editor for the daily television current affairs program – The 7.30 Report, as the ABC’s defence and security correspondent and as the presenter of the ‘AM’ Current Affairs program on ABC radio. From 2017 to 2021 he was a reporter with the ABC’s investigative television documentary program – Four Corners. Michael has contributed to a number of essay collections over the years and written for The Bulletin, The Canberra Times and New Matilda. He now writes fiction and has published four novels: The List, Dead Letters, Smoke and Dust.

LOVE IS AN ALGORITHM de Laura Brooke Robson

For fans of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Good Material, LOVE IS AN ALGORITHM follows Eve, a musician with writer’s block, and Danny, a dating app’s disillusioned co-founder, as they navigate the perils of love in the time of AI.

LOVE IS AN ALGORITHM
by Laura Brooke Robson
Park Row/Harper, Spring 2026
(via Harvey Klinger Agency)

Pattern is more than just a dating app—it’s your friendly relationship coach. It will tell you whether you should invest in learning your partner’s love language (quality time!) or pull the escape hatch. The latest version of Pattern includes Bug, a friendly AI chatbot guaranteed to give you bespoke relationship advice and revitalize that spark. Take the uncertainty out of love! This process is entirely safe 🙂

For fans of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Good Material, LOVE IS AN ALGORITHM follows Eve, a musician with writer’s block, and Danny, Pattern’s disillusioned co-founder, as they navigate the perils of love in the time of AI. But then their budding romance becomes the catalyst for a revolutionary new version of the app that promises to quantify relationship health and potential. As the app catches fire, users everywhere begin outsourcing not just compatibility questions but major life decisions to Danny’s algorithms.

But as Danny reckons with the app’s newfound success, Eve wrestles with whether to use AI in her work. When a deepfake video of Eve supposedly getting hit by the M23 bus does the rounds online—and Eve’s fans become convinced she’s dead—Eve must confront what makes life feel real. Meanwhile, Danny struggles to connect with his dying father, who confides more in Bug than in him—forcing Danny to face that the technology he built to bring people closer is pushing him further away from the person he most wants to know.

LOVE IS AN ALGORITHM is a timely, funny, chronically online novel about making art, outsourcing our emotions to technology, and writing our own love stories.

Laura Brooke Robson grew up in Oregon and studied English and Creative Writing at Stanford. She is also the author of the young adult novels Girls at the Edge of the World and The Sea Knows My Name. She lives in New York.

SHADOW OF THE LOOM de Michael Sala

In the tradition of Justin Cronin, prize-winning author Michael Sala has created a breathtaking new fantasy series with an absorbing cast of flawed heroes and heroines. With its propulsive narrative, and its epic world-building, THE WAR OF THE SHROUD is set to become a publishing sensation.

SHADOW OF THE LOOM
(The War of the Shroud, Book One)
by Michael Sala
Text Publishing, June 2026

The world is fractured. Every night, the Shroud rises from the cracks, a dread mist that devours souls…Or transforms them.

Isa was always viewed with suspicion in her village. Partly because her mother was a foreigner, partly because Isa fell into the Shroud as a child and survived. This animosity has smouldered away, fanned by the village Seer. And when Isa’s father can no longer protect her, she has only the forest for refuge.

Dio’s family is poor, but she knows that when the time comes she will be chosen, elevated to the Weaver caste and trained for mighty deeds. But when her father sells her to a city crime lord to pay his gambling debts, Dio will have only two options: kill or die.

Kyron is destined for greatness. As a Second of the Hyrarchs, he will eventually take his place among the half-dozen most powerful people in the world. Until an act of shocking violence destroys his innate powers, and his life is upended. Now he has to decide who he will betray in order to survive.

These three people, living in different places and times, have never met. But a time of crisis is coming for their world. Between them, they hold its future in their hands.

“The story is a huge feat of imagination, the narrative drags you in powerfully, and the characters are subtly drawn but heroic. It hits all the right notes and just the right amount of new ones – everyone here who’s read any fantasy thinks it is up there with best in class.” (Mandy Brett, senior editor)

Michael Sala is a prize-winning Australian author, whose earlier works have been praised by many, including Raimond Gaita and Hannah Kent. He was born in the Netherlands in 1975 to a Greek father and a Dutch mother, and first came to Australia in the 1980s. His critically acclaimed debut, The Last Thread, won the 2013 NSW Premier’s Award for New Writing and was the regional winner (Pacific) of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.