Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2026 Adult Fiction

I HOPE EDEN READS THIS d’Eli Rallo

From New York Times bestselling author Eli Rallo, a debut novel following the lasting impact of a friendship breakup between two women who had been inseparable since childhood.

I HOPE EDEN READS THIS
by Eli Rallo
Grand Central, March 2027
(via Park, Fine & Brower)

For Penelope Straker and Eden Willmington, the term « best friend » has never been enough. They’ve met every milestone and roadblock side-by-side (with Penny always in the lead), from first kisses, trying to « find » themselves at college, to mental health struggles, toxic relationships, and moving to New York City to start their « real lives ». Amidst it all, their friendship was the one thing that was truly unbreakable. But now, they’re no longer speaking.

Penny’s whole world has fallen apart. She’s self-sabotaging―missing meetings at work and convincing herself that all of her friends are hanging out without her. She can’t eat, think, or sleep, and is falling into bad habits, like ghosting her therapist and obsessively swiping on Hinge. This is worse than a breakup. Penny hasn’t just lost Eden… she’s lost her entire sense of self and understanding of her past.

Now, Penny is revisiting moments of their two-plus decades of friendship trying to understand where things went so wrong. Told in alternating timelines, one tracing Penny and Eden’s history and the other unfolding in the immediate aftermath of the breakup, I HOPE EDEN READS THIS asks the question: Is there any heartbreak more painful than the end of a friendship?

Eli Rallo is Eli Rallo is the New York Times bestselling author of Does Anyone Else Feel This Way? and I Didn’t Know I Needed This, and an internet creator with massive followings on TikTok and Instagram. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and the founder of Prose Society, a weekly iHeartRadio podcast and book club. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where she won several Hopwood awards including the Leonard and Eileen Newman Writing Prize in Fiction (2020). She lives a bicoastal but not actually bicoastal life between New York City and Houston and when she isn’t writing or reading, you can find her at piano bars belting out show tunes.

THE FIRST GIRL IN HELL de Henry Hoke

A blacklisted actress exiled to the Nevada desert plots revenge on those who wronged her and hatches a plan to rescue the woman she loves as old Hollywood is consumed by moral panic.

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

Good girls want to marry the boy next door. Bad girls want to be the first girl in hell.

Lucinda is in a pinch, one unbefitting a woman of her stature. She’s made it to hell, but not the way she wanted. Instead of her previously gilded life as a Southern debutante and Broadway starlet, she’s stuck at a divorce ranch outside Reno, Nevada, during the sweltering summer of 1940, drinking herself silly. Gone are the red carpets and platoon of lovers, dreams of splashy acting roles and salacious tabloid coverage. Also gone is Maisie, a seductive showgirl and both Lucy’s best friend and romantic obsession. At least she has her flask. Everything else has been taken away by a single man, whom Lucy calls the Little Prick: the compiler of the feared Doom Book, a ledger containing the names of public figures whose immoral behavior renders them blacklisted. Unsurprisingly, Lucy’s name is first on the list. And to make matters worse, the Little Prick has also taken up with Maisie. Redemption be damned—even if it kills her, Lucy is getting her girl back.

Furious and bawdy, sensitive and quick-witted, and with the spellbinding mythmaking that made his novel Open Throat a cult sensation, Henry Hoke’s THE FIRST GIRL IN HELL follows Lucy on her zigzagging mission for vengeance and salvation, one that blurs extravagant fantasy and bloody reality, mink coats and Winchester rifles, totaled cars and debilitating hangovers. When she does finally close in on Maisie and the Little Prick, Lucy must decide how far she’ll go for revenge. And if it leads her to hell, well, that was already the plan.

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.

SONG FOR ANOTHER HOME de Bora Lee Reed

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko meets Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing in this powerful story of family separation and reunion, as well as love and war from a Reese’s Bookclub LitUp Fellow.

SONG FOR ANOTHER HOME
by Bora Lee Reed
37 Ink/Simon & Schuster, July 2026
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

When news hits in 1950 that the Americans have entered the war between North and South Korea, Oksoon and her family believe the conflict will soon end. But then China joins the war, and they decide to flee their home in Pyongyang despite the freezing temperatures and lack of food. Journeying from the barren, war-torn streets of the North in the winter to the seedy back alleys of the South Korean capital of Seoul in the summer, the family falls in with an unlikely group of miscreants.

Meanwhile, far to the south, Oksoon’s cousin Junho seeks refuge at an orphanage for abandoned children. As the institution struggles to keep its doors open, Junho, with his elementary command of English, is tasked with drafting letters to American missionaries and benefactors to ask for money. When the enigmatic director brings her aristocratic niece to the orphanage, Junho finds himself caught between his impulse for survival and his growing affections for the young woman, even though his feelings put him at risk of being expelled from the only safe place he knows.

Movingly rendered, SONG FOR ANOTHER HOME highlights the power of resilience, the tension between personal dreams and duty to family, and how choices made in a brief moment have consequences that reverberate across time and through generations.

Bora Lee Reed was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. She grew up in Southern California, among a vibrant Korean immigrant community. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has been awarded residences from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and UCross. Bora, a Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow, now lives in Berkeley, CA, where she works as the director of communications for UC Berkeley’s public policy school.