Archives de catégorie : Literary

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAGIC de Daniel Loedel

A professor’s mysterious death exposes the dark magic her students can’t escape.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAGIC
by Daniel Loedel
Algonquin, Spring 2028
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Martin arrives at Brown as a freshman in 2008, feeling a bit of an outcast. As he struggles to find his footing and his people, he becomes engrossed in a class called “The Philosophy of Magic.” The dynamic professor, who clearly has her favorites and a bit of a cult following at the university, initiates Martin and five other “special” students with a particular and profound kind of magical gift, involving contracts signed in actual blood. However, as the novel opens, her body is found hanging from her ceiling fan in her apartment. And so we go back in time to learn what role, if any, her devoted students played in her demise, as well as how her death affects their futures indelibly, for better and for worse.

Daniel Loedel is the author of Hades, Argentina, which won the Prix du Premier Roman, was a finalist for the Prix Femina and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, LitHub, and other publications. He was a book editor for twelve years, first with Simon and Schuster and then with Bloomsbury. The authors he has worked with have won or been nominated for the Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and many other accolades. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner and four cats.

THE FUTURE PERFECT de Cay Kim

A radiant portrait of a young woman caught between cultures, and what is lost and found in the struggle to succeed.

THE FUTURE PERFECT: A Novel
by Cay Kim
Riverhead, June 2026
(via The Gernert Company)

Before you are anything, you are a daughter.

At first you are at home inside your pregnant mother: a beloved daughter, a vision of the future. But who will you become?

As your family moves back and forth between Korea and the United States, you find yourself caught between two countries. Prioritizing your future over her own happiness, your mother marshals you through a childhood of homework and violin practice and academic achievement to shape you into the person she most wants you to be. Is hers the ultimate form of love? And, despite her sacrifices, is there a world somewhere between your motherland and homeland that can feel like your own?

Told in incandescent prose, Cay Kim’s exquisite debut novel is a portrait of a brilliant young woman growing up between cultures, and a love letter to girlhood, family, and the great dreams we hold for ourselves, no matter where we’re from.

“A book I have been waiting for all my life. Cay Kim has written a daring, sonic, incandescent debut, full of verve and heartache. A story about the pain and love between daughters and mothers, the deep gulf between desire and duty, and the particular experience of straddling both Korean and American homelands, this is a magnificent debut.” —Crystal Hana Kim, author of The Stone Home and If You Leave Me

“Timeless, taut, and daringly tempestuous . . . A masterful and unforgettable debut.” —Paul Beatty, author of the Booker Prize–winning The Sellout

« Elegant and deeply felt, this is a novel full of poise, precision and luminous prose. An assured debut. » —Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown

“Intense, lyrical, heartfelt . . . Written with gorgeous attention to detail and a sense of wonder. A beauty.” —Yoon Choi, winner of the Whiting Award and author of Skinship

“A lyrically profound and triumphant coming-of-age novel.” —Nancy Jooyoun Kim, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese’s Book Club Pick

“A masterpiece of concision and nuance, a searing picture of what it is to grow up between cultures. » —Joshua Furst, author of Revolutionaries

Cay Kim was born in Seoul in 1998. She received her BA from Stanford University, where she won the Urmy/Hardy Poetry Prize, and her MFA from Columbia University. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta and One Story. This is her first novel.

I’M NOT HERE TO HUNT RABBITS de Josh Kendall

This debut is a raw, tantalizing love story wrapped in a thriller that contains as much psychological intrigue as there is action – from one of the most acclaimed editors of the genre.

I’M NOT HERE TO HUNT RABBITS: A Novel
by Josh Kendall
Putnam, Spring 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

Smith thought he had left it all behind: the intense, dangerous work in Afghanistan; the grueling training; the vast reach of his former employer – the mysterious organization Cornerstone; and most of all Helen – the woman he loved and who was now gone forever. Better to start new in a place where no one knows him – Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Security for a local kingpin named Sabadi and his family. A job he could do in his sleep.

But something is off about the whole assignment. The previous security detail seems to know more than they are letting on about the nature of the job and what Sabadi is planning in Ethiopia. Smith is left in the dark, and for the first time in his life, he is not sure where the threats are coming from. The only things he is certain of are that Cornerstone knows he is here and he will have to confront his past with Helen to make it out of Addis Ababa alive.

A different kind of thriller, one in which the tension comes as much from what’s unsaid as what is left in, from an acclaimed editor of the genre, I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits is an existential suspense novel of a life on a knife’s edge.

Josh Kendall was VP and Executive Editor at Little, Brown, and Editorial Director of Mulholland Books where he worked with Walter Mosley, Attica Locke, Robert Galbraith, JJ Abrams, and Tana French among others. He’s worked in various editorial positions at Viking, Picador, and Scribner, and has also taught creative writing at Brooklyn College, University of Iowa, and The New School.

SUNRISE de Téa Obreht

Three lives, 100 years, one Western ghost town: an explosive novel about a mysterious place called Sunrise where the secrets of the past refuse to stay buried, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife.

SUNRISE: A Novel
by Téa Obreht
Random House, August 2026
(via The Gernert Company)

In 2024, Nina’s small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old energy bars, a phone with no service, and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise—a town of the Old West that is strangely well-maintained, but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story 100 years in the making.

In 2003, Sunrise’s golden boy Coll begins to direct town’s annual historical reenactment when he is linked with a scandalous incident at a local bar. And when an upstart author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise’s most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city—and himself.

In 1902, town founder, gunslinger, and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy’s disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence?

These three are strangers, separated by time. But Sunrise has secrets which lie in waiting like gunpowder: quiet, unassuming, until they encounter a spark. Magisterial and suspenseful, Téa Obreht’s novel challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the places we lay claim to, and most of all, of our own lives.

Rooted in one place, yet traveling across three time periods, Téa explores: the complicated concept of people becoming legends big enough to support ticket sales in their own time, and how they perpetuate their own myths, even as they diverge from reality. Our spooky fascination with ghost towns – imagining what once was in a place, or what could be again. What it means to be truly lost and faced with back-to-survival basics in today’s uber connected world. The novel comes together in a heart-in-mouth ending that I haven’t felt since watching Thelma & Louise, literary style. With its matryoshka doll structure and her signature command of language, this novel, brimming with wry humor, sharp observations and pure linguistic joy, is a triumph.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Esquire, Literary Hub, Today

“Téa Obreht never disappoints.”—Esquire

“As the novel goes on, Obreht weaves three timelines together . . . to unravel the mystery of Sunrise, the ghost town to end all ghost towns. Sorry to fangirl but: YAY.” —Literary Hub

Téa Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, Inland and The Morningside. Her novels have won the Orange Prize for Fiction, been a finalist for the National Book Award, won the Southwest Book Award, and won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many other publications. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Obreht now resides in Wyoming.

FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS de Kira Chung Judish

A wildly compelling debut novel about family, ambition, and a lie that spins out of control.

FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS
by Kira Chung Judish
HarperCollins, Winter/Spring 2027
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

When high school senior Minjee Choi insists she’s been accepted to Harvard, she expects the lie to last only long enough to save face. But when her mother Dasom learns the truth, she doubles down instead—determined to keep the family dream alive. Soon, what began as a desperate cover-up becomes a dazzling performance for their tight-knit immigrant community in Fairfax County, VA, where everyone has a stake in the family’s success.

Told primarily through alternating mother–daughter perspectives, FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS reveals the relentless pressure to succeed at all costs, masterfully details the tug-of-war between blending in and standing out, and the weight of carrying generations of hope. At the same time, it’s a total blast—darkly funny, absurd, and irresistibly entertaining, with a duo you can’t help but root for even as the lie unravels. A chorus of nosy neighbors, competitive classmates, and PTA parents adds bite, comedy, and urgency, making the story as layered as it is propulsive.

FLYING GEESE AND OTHER FICTIONS will appeal to fans of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You for its poignant portrait of family and belonging, R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface for its sharp look at deception and desire, and Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation for its satirical take on identity and community.

Kira Chung Judish is a Korean American and Jewish writer based in Silver Spring, Maryland. A graduate of Amherst College, she is pursuing a doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine and was named a 2025 Periplus Fellowship finalist. In addition to writing, she performs in local theatre productions.