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LESSER RUINS de Mark Haber

From the author of Reinhardt’s Garden and Saint Sebastian’s Abyss comes a breathless new novel of delirious obsession.

LESSER RUINS
by Mark Haber
Publisher, October 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life’s work—a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way—from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son’s relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.

As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists’ colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor’s memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves.

Laced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, LESSER RUINS is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity’s ecstatic, agonizing search for meaning through art.

Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2024
A New York Public Library Best Book of 2024
A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2024
An Electric Literature Best Book of Fall 2024, According to Indie Booksellers
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2024

« LESSER RUINS mounts decisive proof that Haber is one of the most rigorous and serious—and anachronistic—novelists working today. » —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

« Haber’s novel is fluent and compelling, often rhapsodic, with a cumulative power to its repetitions. » —Hal Jensen, Times Literary Supplement

Mark Haber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Florida. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden (2019, Coffee House Press), was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (2022, Coffee House Press), was named a best book of 2022 by the New York Public Library, Literary Hub, and Publishers Weekly. Mark’s fiction has appeared in Guernica, Southwest Review, and Air/Light, among others. He lives in Minneapolis.

FABLE FOR THE END OF THE WORLD d’Ava Reid

The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in this dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.

FABLE FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
by Ava Reid
HarperTeen, March 2025
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.

When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs—the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.

For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.

As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing.

And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.

Ava Reid was born in Manhattan and raised right across the Hudson River in Hoboken but currently lives in Palo Alto. She has a degree in political science from Barnard College, focusing on religion and ethnonationalism.

Manon Steffan Ros lauréate de la première édition des prix de l’Entente Littéraire

Organisé par la Royal Society of Literature et l’Institut français du Royaume-Uni à Londres, en collaboration avec le ministère de la Culture en France et le Department for Culture, Media and Sport au Royaume-Uni, l’Ambassade de France au Royaume-Uni et l’Ambassade du Royaume-Uni en France, le prix de l’Entente Littéraire a été remis à Londres mercredi 4 décembre lors d’une cérémonie à la Résidence de France à laquelle ont assisté la reine Camilla et Brigitte Macron.

Ce prix a pour but de « célébrer les plaisirs de la lecture et le partage d’expériences littéraires entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Créé lors du sommet franco-britannique en mars 2023 par le Président Emmanuel Macron et le Premier Ministre britannique Rishi Sunak, il est organisé par l’Institut français du Royaume-Uni et la Royal Society of Literature dans le cadre du 120e anniversaire de l’Entente Cordiale. »

Parmi les six titres en lice, deux récompenses de 8 000 € ont été décernées pour distinguer la meilleure publication traduite d’un ouvrage de littérature jeunesse dans chacun des deux pays. Manon Steffan Ros et la traductrice Lise Garond ont été récompensées pour LE LIVRE BLEU DE NEBO, aux côtés de Lucie Bryon pour Thieves.

Pour cette première édition, le jury se composait de Marie-Aude Murail, Thimothée de Fombelle, Patrice Lawrence et Joseph Coelho.

LE LIVRE BLEU DE NEBO (Actes Sud Jeunesse) de Manon Steffan Ros, traduit par Lise Garond, est un « journal intime bouleversant où se mêlent les voix d’une mère et de son fils ayant fait l’expérience d’une étrange fin du monde. » L’adolescent cherche dans les livres des traces du passé. Manon Steffan Ros a travaillé en tant qu’actrice avant de devenir écrivaine jeunesse et adulte. Elle a remporté le prix du livre du Pays de Galles de l’année pour ses romans de fiction pour adultes en plus d’être quatre fois lauréate du prix gallois de littérature jeunesse Tir na N’Og. Avec LE LIVRE BLEU DE NEBO, Manon a remporté la médaille Yoto Carnegie de l’écriture.

UN CLOWN DANS UN CHAMP DE MAÏS bientôt adapté pour le grand écran

RLJE Films/Shudder

Eli Craig, le réalisateur du film culte Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, portera le livre d’Adam Cesare à l’écran, en partenariat avec la société de production Temple Hill. Le film d’horreur sortira au cinéma en mai 2025 aux États-Unis et c’est l’actrice Katie Douglas (Ginny & Georgia) qui jouera le rôle principal de Quinn. 

Basé sur le roman d’Adam Cesare, publié chez HarperCollins en 2020 et récompensé par un Bram Stoker Award, UN CLOWN DANS UN CHAMP DE MAÏS suit Quinn et son père venus emménager dans une ville tranquille en quête d’un nouveau départ. Au lieu de cela, Quinn découvre une communauté fracturée qui traverse une période difficile suite à l’incendie de la précieuse usine de sirop de maïs Baypen. Alors que les habitants se chamaillent entre eux et que les tensions s’exacerbent, une silhouette sinistre (Frendo le clown) émerge des champs de maïs pour nettoyer la ville de ses fardeaux, un meurtre sanglant à la fois.

« Comme toujours dans mes films, il y a un thème plus profond sur la collision entre différentes perspectives et idéaux, qui mène au chaos le plus total. Il était cependant amusant dans ce film de laisser les frissons de l’horreur prendre le dessus, tandis que l’absurdité comique que je ne peux pas m’empêcher de voir dans la vie apporte un peu de légèreté, » a déclaré Eli Craig.

(Lire l’article de Deadline)

UN CLOWN DANS UN CHAMP DE MAÏS a été publié en mai 2023 aux éditions Sonatine.

TOO SOON de Betty Shamieh

For readers of Pachinko and Queenie, a funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women.

TOO SOON
by Betty Shamieh
Avid Reader Press, January 2025
(via Writers House)

Arabella gets an unexpected chance at love when she’s thrust into a conflict and history she’s tried to avoid all her life. 
Zoya is playing matchmaker for her last unmarried granddaughter—introducing Arabella to the very eligible grandson of an old flame and stirring up buried family history.
Naya is keeping a secret from her family that will change all their lives.

Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic (that might garner international attention) in the West Bank. Her grandmother, Zoya, plots to make a match between her and Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster.

Arabella and Aziz’s instant connection reminds Zoya of the passion she once felt for Aziz’s grandfather, a man she desired desperately, even after her father arranged another husband for her. In turn, Zoya would later marry off her youngest daughter, Naya, who aspired to date the Jackson 5 and wasn’t ready to be a wife or mother to Arabella at sixteen. Now that Naya’s children are grown and she’s arrived at an abrupt midlife crossroads, it’s time to settle old scores…

With biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family’s epic journey from fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. Too Soon joins the stories that seek to illuminate our shared history and ask, how can we set ourselves free? 

Read the profile of Betty Shamieh from The Atlantic, written by Gal Beckerman.

Betty Shamieh is a Palestinian American writer and the author of fifteen plays. She is currently the Mellon Playwright-in-Residence at the Classical Theatre of Harlem, where her comedy, Malvolio, a sequel to Twelfth Night had its world premiere in July 2023 to wide critical acclaim, including as a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Her dramedy Roar, which was also a New York Times Critic’s Pick, premiered off-Broadway in a sold-out extended run. Betty is the founding artistic director of The Semitic Root, an artistic collective that supports innovative theatre co-created by Arab and Jewish Americans, which presented her plays Chocolate in Heat and The Strangest. Selected as a Denning Visiting Artist at Stanford and a Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard, Shamieh was named a UNESCO Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, she has been awarded a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowship in Playwriting. Her works have been translated into seven languages and are widely produced internationally, including at the EU Capital of Culture Festival.