NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED de Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

Structured as a handful of confessional-style podcast episodes that are by turns suspenseful, outrageous, heart-breaking and poignant, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow’s NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED is that rare novel where an unmistakably literary voice keeps you on the very edge of your seat.

NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED
by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Tiny Reparations Books/PRH, publication date TBD
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Ophir isn’t her real name, but she likes it fine for now, and if she’s going to get through this story—the real story of her last 12 years on the run—she’s going to do it on her own terms. This is what our narrator promises as she sets out to broadcast (with the help of a mysterious friend, from an undisclosed location) her tumultuous life as a fugitive, forever estranged from her home and family in Singapore, where it all began. Entrancing her listeners with a tale that transports us from Thailand to Tokyo, and from London to America’s Midwest, it is Ophir’s loneliness and longing for connection that eventually jeopardizes her hard-won freedom. 

Like R.F. Kuang’s YELLOWFACE and Susie Yang’s WHITE IVY, NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED is a stylish, fast-paced story that tests the limits of our ability to empathize with a morally dubious narrator, while also interrogating the idea of a performed self, and what makes an authentic voice. And like Angie Cruz’s HOW NOT TO DROWN IN A GLASS OF WATER, this is a confession that recounts and reframes the complicated paths we take to build a life and a home. Ultimately, it’s an immigrant story… but not the one you expect. 

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow was born and raised in Singapore but now lives in Boston, where she teaches writing workshops (Grub Street) and was for several years a bookseller at Papercuts JP. NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED was written with the support of the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Yu-Mei has previously attended Sewanee (on scholarship), Tin House, and Bread Loaf to workshop her short fiction. Her short stories have won prizes (the Mississippi Review Fiction prize) and special mentions (The Pushcart Prize, Sewanee Review fiction prize, and the Commonwealth Prize in the UK). She received her MFA from Boston University, and this is her debut novel.

THE MOUNTAIN CROWN de Karin Lowachee

An epic dragon-rider quest where Empress of Salt and Fortune meets Temeraire.

THE MOUNTAIN CROWN
(The Crowns of Ishia, Book 1)
by Karin Lowachee
Rebellion Publishing UK, October 2024
(via DeFiore and Company)

Méka must capture a king dragon, or die trying.

War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Méka’s nomadic people, the Ba’Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba’Suon share an empathic connection.

A decade later and under a fragile truce, Méka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary rite: gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country. But Méka’s act of compassion toward an imprisoned dragon and Lilley, a Kattakan veteran of the war, soon draws the ire of the imperialistic authorities. They order the unwelcome addition of an enigmatic Ba’Suon traitor named Raka to accompany Méka and Lilley to the mountains.

The journey is filled with dangers both within and without. As conflict threatens to reignite, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself will depend on the decisions – defiant or compliant – that Méka and her companions choose to make. But not even Méka, kin to the great dragons of the North, can anticipate the depth of the consequences to her world.

THE MOUNTAIN CROWN is the first entry into an unmissable fantasy trilogy about resistance, loyalty, and resilience in the fact of colonial domination.

Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. She has been a creative writing instructor, adult education teacher, and volunteer in a maximum security prison. Her novels have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, best-of collections, and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she serves at the whim of a black cat.

FIRE IN THE HEAD de Daniel Oakman

A gripping and unsettling psychological thriller that goes to the heart of the deep taboo of child assault, and the ramifications of trauma later in life.

FIRE IN THE HEAD
by Daniel Oakman
Black Inc. (Australia), March 2025

Part crime drama, part coming-of-age tale, part modern psychological odyssey, Oakman’s novel is a gripping, unsettling and powerful story about self-discovery, the importance of friendship and the transcendent power of words. FIRE IN THE HEAD addresses a deep taboo in Australian society—the legacy of child sexual abuse and what victims must endure to bring perpetrators to justice.

In March 1999, twenty-seven-year-old James Harper, a shy public servant living in Canberra, is called to a police station to provide evidence on the suicide of his youngest sister nine years earlier. As the investigation gets underway, James confesses that he had been abused by his stepfather, Martin Jenkins, when he was a child. Could the two events be connected? But as he dives headfirst into the legal system in a quest for justice, James must face some disturbing truths about himself and the past he thought he had left behind.

Daniel Oakman, a writer and historian, comes from Melbourne. After a brief sojourn as a public servant in the mid-1990s, he completed his PhD at the Australian National University before a fifteen-year career as a senior curator at the National Museum of Australia. In 2005, his ground-breaking history of Australia and the Colombo Plan, Facing Asia (published by Pandanus Books), was shortlisted for the NSW History Awards. With Melbourne Books he has published Oppy (2018), an acclaimed biography of the sporting icon and politician Hubert Opperman, and Wild Ride (2020), an immersive exploration of how the bicycle has long shaped understandings of the Australian continent and its people. Daniel’s other writing has appeared in diverse publications, including Mountain Biking Australia, VeloNews, Australian Historical Studies, The Big Issue and Meanjin. He lives in Canberra with his partner Cecilie and a dog called Gilbert. FIRE IN THE HEAD is his first novel.

WEISE FRAUEN de Miriam Stein

The first accessible, non-esoteric book about traditional female knowledge.

WEISE FRAUEN
by Miriam Stein
Goldmann/PRH Germany, October 2024

Healers, shamans, priests, midwives, soothsayers: in antiquity, female communities and networks exchanged valuable, even life-saving, knowledge about nursing, healing, spirituality and sexuality. But in our patriarchal societies with their male-dominated academic discourse, female knowledge was often dismissed as irrelevant or un-serious and esoteric.

In her new book, culture journalist and bestselling author Miriam Stein goes in search of the forgotten heroes of our past, whose work still shapes our lives and thoughts today. It is a very personal journey, on which she talks to the modern heirs of our wise foremothers, including sex workers and shamans. She invites us to rediscover traditional female knowledge, and use it to live a feminist life of modern, empowered sisterhood.

Miriam Yung Min Stein is a journalist and author. She was born in South Korea in 1977 and adopted by a family in Osnabrück, where she grew up. She has performed on stage with Christoph Schlingensief and Rimini Protokoll, and published several books, including the bestselling Die gereizte Frau (‘The Irritated Woman’).

CARTIER de Sophie Villard

Love, intrigue and the most desirable jewellery in the world – the first instalment in a two-book series about the Cartier family’s glamorous life.

CARTIER: Der Traum von Diamanten
(Diamond Dreams)
The Cartier Saga, Book 1
by Sophie Villard
Penguin Germany, November 2024

Paris, 1910. Now that her engagement to an aristocrat has been called off, Jeanne Toussaint tries to make ends meet as a seamstress in unsavoury Montmartre. One night, she meets jeweller Louis Cartier in a nightclub. He and his brothers have shops in Paris, London and New York where anyone who’s anyone buys their jewellery. Louis immediately recognises that Jeanne has a sure sense of style and is immensely talented. But it’s more than that: he can’t deny his attraction to this charming, vivacious young woman. But storm clouds are gathering on Europe’s horizon, and the Cartier family are in danger of losing everything.

Sophie Villard is the pen name of a successful German author. She studied journalism and political science, and lives near Dresden with her family. Her novel about the famous art collector Peggy Guggenheim was a Spiegel bestseller. After Madame Exupéry und die Sterne des Himmels (‘Madame Exupéry and the Starry Skies’) and Mademoiselle Eiffel und der Turm der Liebe (‘Mademoiselle Eiffel and the Tower of Love’), she has now turned to writing an exciting saga about the Cartiers.