TANZENDE FRAU, BLAUER HAHN

In a Romanian mountain town still marked by the past dictatorship, two young people from completely different worlds experience the miracle of love.

TANZENDE FRAU, BLAUER HAHN
(Dancing Woman, Blue Rooster)
by Dana Grigorcea
Penguin Verlag/PRH Germany, March 2026

In 1990s Romania, the dust of socialism still hasn’t quite yet settled. Every summer Roxana and Camil meet in the small town of Busteni in the Carpathian Mountains: she is there on holiday, while he lives on the other side of the tracks. They observe the town’s couples, take inspiration from them and try to discover their secrets: from the successful lawyer who removes her roof when a tree starts growing through her house, to the chalk-and-cheese engineering couple who suffer from the same ailment, to the local beauty who looks like a TV star, who has found love with an unremarkable-seeming man. And with each successive summer, Roxana and Camil’s own story develops too – until they realise that they can only ever be a guest in each other’s lives.

Light as a feather yet profound, TANZENDE FRAU, BLAUER HAHN is a kaleidoscope of love and what it takes for it to take root. A novel about desires unexpectedly fulfilled, opportunities that pass by unnoticed – and how the wheel of life carries on turning regardless.

Dana Grigorcea was born in Bucharest in 1979, she is a Germanist and Dutchist and has lived with her family in Zurich for many years. The Romanian-Swiss author’s works have been translated into several languages and have received numerous awards such as the Ingeborg Bachmann/3sat Award. Her novel « Those Who Never Die » won the 2022 Swiss Book Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 German Book Prize. Dana Grigorcea is a recipient of the Romanian Order of Cultural Merit with the rank of Knight.

SEZ I TO MYSELF: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt

A treasure chest of never-before-collected essays from Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize–winning memoirist, and his boisterous brother Malachy, publishing on the 30th anniversary of Angela’s Ashes, with a foreword by Colum McCann.

SEZ I TO MYSELF:
The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt
Abrams Press, September 2026

In 1996, a retired New York City high school English teacher published a memoir that took the publishing world by storm. Angela’s Ashes, the story of Frank McCourt’s childhood in Ireland, was a bold account of poverty and family tragedy, suffused with humor and compassion. It went on to sell over ten million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.

Frank McCourt was suddenly an internationally celebrated memoirist, a writer who had invigorated the genre. But most readers didn’t know that Angela’s Ashes wasn’t Frank’s first published writing. For years, he and his actor brother Malachy contributed a column to a neighborhood newspaper called The West Side Spirit. Malachy, himself a bestselling writer, also contributed to Our Town, Irish America, and The Southampton Review. And Frank went on to write for prominent publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Life, and Rolling Stone.

Frank McCourt (1930–2009) and Malachy McCourt (1931–2024) were born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America as young adults. For 30 years, Frank taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela’s Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He was also the author of the memoirs ’Tis and Teacher Man. In the 1950s, Malachy opened New York City’s original singles bar Malachy’s. He went on to a long career in film, television, radio, and on the stage, and as a bestselling author of many books, including A Monk Swimming and Malachy McCourt’s History of Ireland.

Tom Allon is an award-winning journalist, columnist, media executive and publisher. He has written for The New York Times, the Daily News, New York Post, Huffington Post, Dan’s Papers, City & State, The West Side Spirit, Our Town, and many other publications. Allon is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Cornell University, and Stuyvesant High School. He has taught opinion writing at Hunter College, and journalism and American literature at Stuyvesant High School. He has four adult children, three cats, and is married to Rebecca Cohen. They live in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and East Moriches, Long Island.

sJonah Allon is a writer and political communications strategist who currently serves as Deputy Communications Director for New York Governor Kathy Hochul. A born-and-raised New Yorker, he lives in Brooklyn.

THIRTY de Ariella Elovic

Do you sometimes wake up and wonder if your true adult life is just across the country? If you’ll ever get to fall asleep next to someone who admires your gnarled toes. If you’ll ever have the confidence to roast a whole chicken for a dinner party that you’ll host at your apartment, atop a fully-accessorized dining table?

THIRTY:
A Guide to Embracing the Wonderfully Messy Decade
by Ariella Elovic
Bloomsbury, December 2026
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

34-year-old Brooklyn-based illustrator and author AriellaElovic has spent the last four years investigating (and being plagued by) these questions, and she writes with a revelation: The truth is, thirty (and adulthood) isn’t about finally feeling settled. It’s understanding that life is all about the in-between.

In these pages, Ariella presents an array of disorienting, thrilling, disappointing, hilarious, and grounding experiences in the most important areas of life—home, career, family, love — offering ways she’s been able to find « richness in the flailing. » Despite all that we’ve been told, our thirties are actually made more valuable by not having everything figured out.

Ariella Elovic is an illustrator and author living in Brooklyn. Her first book, Cheeky: A Head to Toe Memoir, was published in December 2020 with Bloomsbury. From 2020–2022, Ariella partnered with Aidy Bryant and Sudi Green (SNL, Shrill) to develop Cheeky as a pilot for Peacock. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Hey Alma, Cosmopolitan, and elsewhere. She writes and illustrates a weekly newsletter on Substack called Snack Time.

DATING IN THE 21ST CENTURY de Jess Carbino

This is a new kind of dating book. It’s not about the apps. It’s about you.

DATING IN THE 21ST CENTURY:
Unconventional Advice on How to Make Dating Apps Work for You and What They Can Teach You About Yourself
by Jess Carbino
Simon Element/S&S, Winter 2027
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Dating in the 21st Century will blend serious social science and unconventional advice in a fresh, relatable and, most of all, clarion dating handbook that does not demonize the dating apps, instead providing a groundwork for navigating the apps and laying out a roadmap for your dating journey: specific guidelines, along with worksheets and checklists.

Scrolling endlessly through images and profiles of complete strangers can be terrifying, frustrating, and exhausting. Dating in the 21st Century will bring empathy and encouragement as it guides readers toward a new awareness of what that little app on their phone can do to change their lives.

In some ways, this book has more in common with Carol Dweck’s Mindset, Nidra Tawab’s Set Boundaries, Find Peace, and Nicole LaPera’s How to Do the Work than it does with other dating books. It is about blwoing up your preconceptions, understanding yourself more deeply, and knowing how to present your authentic self.

Jess Carbino is a renowned relationship and online dating expert. Dr. Carbino, who’s often referred to as “Dr. Jess,” has been called “the Dr. Ruth of the swipe right generation” by The New York Post and “the Nate Silver of online dating” by the host of This American Life. She is the former sociologist for the dating apps Bumble and Tinder. Dr. Jess received her PhD in sociology from UCLA. Her doctoral research has broadly focused on sex, dating and relationships. She has become the go-to for media on dating, and has been profiled multiple times by publications including Los Angeles Magazine, the New York Post, Fast Company, and she has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Wired, Well + Good, Today, CBS News, GMA, and more. She is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended Emory University, where she graduated with High Honors in just three years.

THIS IS AN ACTUAL TRAGEDY de Natalie Rose Richardson

A mesmerizing debut that combines the transformative friendships of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the suspense of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and the varying vocal registers of Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch.

THIS IS AN ACTUAL TRAGEDY
by Natalie Rose Richardson
Knopf, May 2027
(via Writers House)

Two weeks before freshman orientation, four soon-to-be (unlikely) friends arrive at the University of Chicago as part of its token Scholars of Color (SOC) program: there’s Darwin, an insecure physics geek on a quest to lose his virginity; Nat, an elusive aspiring writer who starts secretly dating her much older mentor; Jordan, the would-be campus all-star who’s too stuck in his head to fulfill his potential, and Stephanie, the undisputed hottest girl on campus, who’s carrying a shocking secret.

Four years later, they combine their strengths to stage a protest as part of Scav – a notorious campus secret society that organizes a yearly competition, one that often spawns dark, borderline illegal situations that the school pays good money to cover up. This year’s prompt: to dramatically reenact “an actual tragedy.” Fifty-five students from SOC don shabby costumes and pitch tents in a Chicago park that, only days prior, was purged of real asylum seekers. But when the cops arrive at the scene, performance becomes reality when tragedy strikes.

Told in four parts, the novel dives into the life of each irresistibly compelling protagonist during one year of college. Their relationships to each other and themselves are tested as they each weather their own individual tragedies. It’s these friends’ complicated ties and devotion to each other that lead them to organize the asylum seeker reenactment—the consequences of which will mark the survivors forever.

With an irreverent, razor-sharp voice that dips into the serious, THIS IS AN ACTUAL TRAGEDY probes loneliness and belonging, race, class, sex, friendship, and the absurdities of American higher education, and marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

Natalie Rose Richardson is a writer from Oak Park, Illinois with degrees from the University of Chicago (BA), Northwestern University (MA & MFA in Poetry), and the NYU Creative Writing Program (MFA in Fiction). The manuscript was closely advised by Jonathan Safran Foer, who writes: “Natalie Rose Richardson arrives with a vibrant, irreverent, singular voice. THIS IS AN ACTUAL TRAGEDY is an actual joy.” Her work has appeared in Narrative, Orion Magazine, Poetry Magazine, and more.