Archives de catégorie : Fiction

Duologie THE CHOSEN d’Emily Bähr

Her beautiful sister was meant to be the one competing for the crown prince’s hand – but now shy girl Iris is forced to take her place. Yet if she wants to be queen, she must first survive a deadly contest… Perfect for fans of Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Blood and Ash, Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass and Tracy Wolff’s Crave

THE CHOSEN DUOLOGY
by Emily Bähr
Heyne/PRH Germany, 2025

• The Hunger Games meets The Royals

Book 1: TRÄUME AUS GOLD (February 2025)

This is the day the daughters of Vesmon’s aristocracy have been preparing for all their lives: the day of the Royal Games, whose winner will marry the crown prince. Without her training in magic, Iris would never have qualified for the contest, but now that her sister Hyacinth is suddenly out of the running, she has no choice.

The moment Iris arrives at the royal court, she is drawn into a web of intrigue. Her mentor Cylus is her only hope of survival – but despite his stand-offish ways, he soon makes her lose sight of her original goal…

Book 2: HAUS AUS ASCHE (June 2025)

Young noblewoman Iris fights for her life – and true love.
After the assassination of Prince Cilian and the revelation that Prince Cylus is the true crown prince, the king will do anything to preserve the integrity of the Royal Games. Iris is faced with a cruel choice: continue to take part in this fatal contest, or be executed. Only the top three will survive, but victory – and thus a chance at happiness with Cylus – is impossible. While Iris keeps up her tough fighter’s façade in front of the cameras, deep down she’s finding it increasingly harder to hide her true feelings for Cylus. But ever since his cousin Cilian’s assassination, the prince is convinced he can’t trust her. Will she be able to win his heart – and survive the Royal Games?

Emily Bähr and her cats live in magical Northern Ireland, somewhere between Narnia and Westeros. She makes a living as a graphic designer, while also being a self-confessed nerd who loves sci-fi, the cinema and Pokémon. Bähr would jump at the chance to move to Mars – but since that’s unlikely to happen, she instead travels to the fantastic realms inside her own mind. At night, under cover of darkness, she combs Wikipedia for useless knowledge.

PAPER DOLLS d’Andrea Stewart

The daughter of a famous YouTube family – who left her past long behind her – is forced to go home to save her sister. The debut thriller from two times Sunday Times bestselling fantasy novelist Andrea Stewart that will appeal to readers of Girl A, Sharp Objects and Luckiest Girl Alive.

PAPER DOLLS
by Andrea Stewart
on submission
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Ellie Campbell grew up online: the child of YouTubers, everything from her first period to first boyfriend was put up for the world to pick over, and her family to monetise. Until she grew up.  She changed her name. She changed her hair. She barely speaks to her family anymore.     

But when she spots some unnerving details in her parents’ videos, and gets the news that a close family friend has gone missing – she decides that she has to go back, to make sure that her younger sister Olivia is safe.  

She arrives to a house full of secrets, including one that her parents have kept from the world: Olivia has run away. But Olivia would have come to Ellie if she’d run. Ellie knows it. So where is she? And could it be connected to the disappearance of their neighbour? When a body is found, Ellie is forced to confront the realities of her childhood – and the darkness that lies beneath the perfect façade.

Andrea Stewart is the daughter of immigrants, and was raised in a number of places across the United States. She now lives in sunny California. Her debut fantasy novel, Bone Shard Daughter, was published in the US and UK by Orbit, as well as in 7 other translation territories. Bone Shard War, and the first in her next trilogy, The Gods Below, were both Sunday Times bestsellers. 

LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER de Neena Viel

For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.

LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER
by Neena Viel
St. Martin’s Press, February 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Most Anticipated by Goodreads, People, BookRiot, Reactor, Screenrant, and more

Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.

« Deliciously terrifying and belly laugh-inducing…Viel incorporates well worn genre tropes in new ways and provides plenty of bloodcurdling surprises along the way. » — BookPage, Starred review

« Unique and compelling … a terrifying and immerse supernatural horror story that is clearly underpinned with love. » — Library Journal

« [An] addictive supernatural thriller. » — Publishers Weekly

« Heartfelt and darkly humorous…Fans of Jordan Peele’s films will want to check this out. » — Booklist

« Anxiety metamorphoses into terror for a young Black woman fiercely protecting her own… A relentless descent into familial fears made manifest, both haunting and terribly familiar. » — Kirkus

Neena Viel is a horror writer who lives in a cabin in the Washingtonian woods with her husband and the best dog on the planet. Her passion for philanthropy (almost) rivals her love for ghost stories. LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER is her debut novel.

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU d’Erin Jones

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU explores themes of climate change, wealth inequality, queer lives, and immortality, combining the ensemble storytelling of Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, the speculative nature of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark and C. Pam Zhang’s Land Of Milk and Honey, with the humor and heart of Glass Onion.

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU
by Erin Jones
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, publication 2026-2027
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

In a not-too-distant future, the world’s last glacier has been downgraded to the world’s last iceberg. While society mourns another natural wonder lost to climate change, the billionaire—a former tech mogul turned restaurateur—becomes obsessed with obtaining a piece of the ice to serve at his restaurant. The iceberg has been deemed a protected entity by the United Nations, but that doesn’t worry the billionaire. He needs the ice.  

THE LAST ICEBERG TASTING MENU is a speculative, propulsive literary novel-in-stories following the waning days of the world as we know it, and the nine people who find their fates intertwined with the iceberg and one another across space, time, and class. There’s the helicopter pilot who aids and abets the billionaire’s heist despite physical and emotional scars from what she saw while working in search and rescue amid environmental catastrophes wrought by global warming; the billionaire’s wife, who reserved her place in a future Mars colony by allowing her consciousness to be contained in a box as the world burned; a pair of twins who have only ever lived at sea and now lead scuba tours of communities drowned by rising waters; and finally, the security guard who will do whatever it takes to provide protection (and air conditioning) for his young family, and becomes embroiled in a plot to reclaim the little of the iceberg that remains in containment before it’s gone forever.

Erin Jones is the author of the YA novel Tinfoil Crowns (Flux Books, 2019), a 2020 Moonbeam Awards Silver Medalist, and one of Barnes & Noble’s most anticipated YA books of the year. Jones graduated with her MFA in fiction from Emerson College where she is now affiliated faculty and a writing consultant for ELL students. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

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.