Archives de catégorie : Literary

LOCALS de Jared Jackson

In the vein of Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, Bryan Washington’s Lot, and Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez, this debut, in the form of a strongly linked story collection, brings to brash and tender life a cast of young, working-class characters navigating love, grief, survival, and the pursuit of something more in Hartford, Connecticut in the aughts.

LOCALS
by Jared Jackson
Viking, Spring 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

Mikey becomes a man too early when he begs for emotional scraps from his uncle’s girlfriend. Collin reveals his cowardice when he fails to show up for Bebo, an outsider far braver than Collin will ever be. Enis, a refugee on the local baseball team along with Collin, Bebo, and Mikey, wants more than he can ever get from his neighborhood or his girlfriend. Minnie wants redemption. Suit Man wants a warm place to sleep. Ms. Ana wants a daughter. And Andrews wants his white fraternity brothers to accept him despite being a “local,” while all his cousin Ant wants is for Andrews to remember he already has a family—that Hartford has always been his family.

Vibrating with vivid imagery and characters whose voices alternate between aching frankness and exhilarating swagger, the interlocking pieces of this book tumble one into another like so many expertly laid dominoes. The result is a striking vision for reclamation—of faith in city, and faith in self. Jackson is a generational talent descended from a distinct literary tradition (encompassing everything from Joyce’s Dubliners to Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love; Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street to Barrett’s Young Skins) but blazing a thrilling path all his own.

Jared Jackson is a proud Hartford native and writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator currently living in New York. He has been awarded residencies, fellowships, and grants from MacDowell, Yaddo, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, and several others. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, and VQR, and was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2023 (guest edited by Min Jin Lee). He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was a chair’s fellow, creative writing teaching fellow, and an adjunct assistant professor. Jackson is the director of programs and partnerships at Poets & Writers, Inc. He was previously the program director of literary programs at PEN America.

CITY LIKE WATER de Dorothy Tse

Lucid, nightmarish, and indelible, a wondrous and pointed message in a bottle from a city not so different from your own.

CITY LIKE WATER
by Dorothy Tse
translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce
Graywolf Press, March 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

The city you grew up in is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it—classmates, teachers, counterfeit watches, the erotic toe cleavage that used to lead the way down secret passages. Yet you still catch snatches of conversation lingering in the air and glimpse sun-dazzled residents retreating into dark crevices.

People seem to keep disappearing. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until police helicopters unleash a glittery spray that turns them into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home, until he is quietly absorbed into the enormous new TV gifted by the government, and you spot him doing tai chi or picking through leftovers in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister, before she flew away in her school uniform? As the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth you can no longer navigate, where does this leave you?

Lucid, nightmarish and indelible, City Like Water is a wondrous and pointed message in a bottle from a city not so different from your own.

Dorothy Tse is a Hong Kong writer and the author of Owlish, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, and Snow and Shadow, which was long-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. She is the cofounder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres. 

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.

A GOOD ANIMAL de Sara Maurer

An immersive, coming-of-age debut novel by a stunning new voice in fiction, for readers of Barbara Kingsolver and Ann Patchett.

A GOOD ANIMAL
by Sara Maurer
St. Martin’s Press, February 2026

In the farm fields surrounding Sault Ste. Marie, a border town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, time seems to stand still. Summer, the sun scalds the local boys’ necks as they bale hay for cash. Winter, the girls bundle up against the cold and jostle through the high school halls like trailered sheep.

Most kids dream of leaving, but Everett Lindt plans to stay on his family’s sheep farm, develop his own herd, and eventually rebuild the crumbling homestead that looks over the land he loves. When he meets Mary, a Coast Guard brat determined to set out on her own, he soon feels he can’t live without her. After she discovers she’s pregnant, he’s convinced she’ll stay by his side forever. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. With limited access to reproductive care, Everett and Mary discover a solution with potentially disastrous consequences.

Intimate and haunting, A GOOD ANIMAL is a breathtaking story of the complexities of love, the beauty and brutality of rural life, and how one decision can echo through generations and shape who we become.

Sara Maurer lives with her family in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Albion College and master’s from Eastern Michigan University. She honed her creative writing craft while completing Stanford’s Continuing Studies Novel Writing Certificate program. Her short fiction can be found in The Chicago Review of Books, The Twin Bill, Dunes Review, and The Hominium, where her short story was just nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A Good Animal is her first novel.



Early praise:

“An aching, exquisite story of young love, curtailed by a country where our freedoms have to be bought, A Good Animal is a stunning, unforgettable, and deeply American novel. It is about sex and strength and hard, satisfying work; about dreams and opportunities and what we lose, have lost, are still losing. It’s about where we come from, where we’re going, and who breaks our hearts along the way.” —Julia Phillips, author of Bear and National Book Award finalist Disappearing Earth

“A Good Animal is a wonderful debut novel filled with tremendous heart and an authentic appreciation for place and the natural world…You won’t be able to stop reading this deeply affecting story of star-crossed love and hometown heartbreak.” —Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and A Forty Year Kiss

WHILE THE GETTING IS GOOD de Matt Riordan

Amid the gangland wars of Prohibition, one fisherman’s long-shot play to secure his family’s future brings disaster to everyone he loves. Based partly on family lore, Matt Riordan’s follow-up to The North Line is for readers of Jeannette Wall’s Hang the Moon and S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed.

WHILE THE GETTING IS GOOD
by Matt Riordan
Hyperion Avenue, April 2025
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Eld should’ve known better. Hell, he did know better. But watching lesser men hit big paydays—men who didn’t fight in Europe—grew unbearable. So, when the opportunity arises, he reaches for a little something extra for his family, and even more for himself. With Prohibition expiring in a matter of months, his turn from fisherman to rumrunner was supposed to be temporary. It seemed the perfect plan. Even Maggie, Eld’s normally sensible wife, is on board.

Things don’t go to plan. Amid the region’s players battle to capture the biggest piece of a shrinking pie, Eld’s tiny family operation is caught in the crossfire. One bitterly cold night packing whiskey across Lake Huron costs Eld dearly, and his family even more.

Hunted by gangsters and squeezed by the Depression, Eld, Maggie, and the children are scattered: Eld to Canada on a doomed quest, Maggie and her daughter forced into finding sanctuary in a faith more cult than religion. When they finally reunite, they may not even recognize each other as the same people who crossed their fingers and threw the dice for a shot at a better life.

Matt Riordan grew up in Michigan but spent his early twenties working on commercial fishing boats in Alaska. After college Matt drifted from commercial fishing through a variety of jobs before landing in law school. He became a litigator in New York City, where he practiced for twenty years. He now lives with his family in Australia.