RAVISHING d’Eshani Surya

A brilliant and compelling debut, RAVISHING shines a light on the dark enticements of the beauty industry and how it capitalizes on our desire to be someone we are not.

RAVISHING
by Eshani Surya
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, November 2025

A provocative, darkly surreal novel of two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a beauty tech company, RAVISHING is a searing portrait of the beauty industry’s dangerous ability to change people’s relationship to their bodies and the cult-like grip it has on youth.

For teenage Kashmira, it’s painful to look in the mirror; she has her father’s face, and every feature is a reminder of his abandonment. When a friend introduces her to Evolvoir, a beauty product that changes users’ features, Kashmira is quickly hooked on how it allows her to erase the triggers of her grief. Meanwhile, at Evolvoir’s corporate offices, Kashmira’s estranged brother Nikhil first sees the product as an opportunity to make a difference and a name for himself, but is quickly mired in corporate complicity as reports surface of the product causing severe pain and persistent symptoms in some users. As chaos ensues, Kashmira is hospitalized and must negotiate the constraints of her new reality, while Nikhil uncovers a vicious truth that will force him to decide where his loyalties lie.

Perfect for readers of Gold Diggers and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, RAVISHING is a visceral, yet immensely tender, coming-of-age story of two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a predatory beauty tech company, providing an illuminating portrait of the complexities of growing up brown, chronic illness, and our relationship to ourselves.

“[An] absorbing debut . . .  timely and a hard-hitting takedown of the beauty industry and a nuanced and sensitive look at the pressure on those who don’t fit traditional beauty norms to assimilate.”—Booklist (starred review)

“This debut is thoughtful in its handling of tricky themes of identity, belonging, and, perhaps most compellingly, the intersection of wellness culture and chronic illness. Surya handles this latter with unflinching—even discomfiting—clarity. A speculative take on the all-too-real rot at the heart of the beauty and wellness industry.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Incendiary . . . Surya blends her stirring whistleblower plot with a heartrending depiction of Kashmira’s delusion . . . This one hits hard.”—Publishers Weekly

Eshani Surya is a chronically ill South Asian writer living in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, and is a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, and a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient. RAVISHING is her first book.

BURNOUT de Michael Cooper

A debut literary novel about a down-on-his-luck former detective in LA whose most famous case comes back to haunt him.

BURNOUT
by Michael Cooper
Range Literary Publishing, 2027
(via David Black Literary)

Former Detective James Rivers—JR to his friends—has long left behind his career. He has surfed off into the easy life: hiding out in an Airstream with an ocean view, downing one glittering-green Midori after another, caring for his bulldog and his old man, taking each L.A. day as it comes. But when he learns that convicted murderer Dylan Turner has been let out of prison, a lock unlatches in his brain. He has always known—hasn’t he?—that something wasn’t right with that case, but he never figured Dylan would go free. Was his most famous case his worst mistake? And if so, how will he protect the brother who betrayed Dylan? And how will JR save himself if Dylan comes for him? Pressed back into action by his old-partner-turned-chief-of-police, JR is teamed up with Brittany Charles, a young detective with an unflinching sense of justice and no patience for a has-been’s hesitation. As new victims of brutal murder surface, JR and Britt realize that the clock is ticking.

BURNOUT is the vivid and absorbing story of a man who must face his worst mistakes and discover what’s on the other side. A detective story for our moment, this tale centers on an unruly and vulnerable man, a tarnished knight with a heart that’s been chipped and cracked but not shattered, a man tiptoeing towards sobriety and a more honest life. Fueled by day-glo dialogue, brilliantly vivid humor, one-of-a-kind characters, and vast quantities of heart, BURNOUT is a raw and blistering ballad—about ancient mistakes and lingering regrets, about violence and what crawls beneath it, but also about the life-saving possibilities of empathy, hope, and love.

CO de Rina Schmeller

“Rina Schmeller […] writes with empathy but eschews all sentimentality, revealing not only the full horror of her situation, but also love in all its facets.” —Jenny Erpenbeck

CO by Rina Schmeller
Penguin Verlag/PRH Germany, March 2026

They met on a bridge. They recognised a kindred spirit in each other. They fell in love. And now they have decided to share their lives with each other, regardless of the drug to which he is addicted, and which will henceforth govern her life too. She becomes entangled in his addiction, and starts to orbit him like he orbits the drug, both calm centre and third party. She leaves again and again, to escape the violence, but always comes back. Almost always.

CO is a story about empathy and creeping self-sabotage, about the dynamics of addiction – which affects us all – and about what life is like when you’re co-dependent. Yet it is also the story of a woman’s empowerment and liberation, who finds the strength to let go. And as she embarks on the long and tough road to survival, she gradually regains her independence and finds her way back to herself. A powerful, elegant novel about regaining your inner freedom, sober, quiet and fiercely honest.

Rina Schmeller, born in 1986, studied creative writing in Leipzig and literary studies with comparative literature in Berlin. She has been awarded several fellowships and was a member of the 2020 prose writers’ workshop at the Literary Colloquium in Berlin. In 2024 she published the essay Bedeutung erleben (‘Experiencing meaning’, Edit no. 91) about writing « Co ».

EXIT d’Ezzedine C. Fishere

This highly original novel tells an alternative history in which the Arab Spring leads Egypt and the Middle East to the brink of nuclear war.

EXIT
by Ezzedine C. Fishere
Translated by Jonathan Smolin
American University in Cairo Press, November 2026

In what might be his last night on Earth, the Egyptian president’s translator Ali pens a letter to his estranged son, telling him of everything that has led him, and his country, to breaking point.

Ali is traveling aboard a cargo ship on a dangerous mission to accompany twenty-four nuclear warheads from North Korea to Egypt, where they will be launched at the Israeli occupation of Sinai. But he has blown the whistle on the operation and now must face the consequences: will he be celebrated as a hero or condemned as a traitor?

Fishere’s powerful storytelling offers an alternative history to events post-revolution in Egypt, hinging on the rupture of the Arab Spring. EXIT creates a compelling, and terrifying, vision of the Middle East, one that both teaches us about the present and warns of coming catastrophe.

“[A] wonderful ‘prophetic’ novel”—Jamal Khashoggi

Ezzedine C. Fishere is an Egyptian novelist, diplomat and academic. A distinguished fellow at Dartmouth College, his extensive diplomatic experience includes the Egyptian Foreign Service and the United Nations missions in the Middle East and East Africa. He has published ten novels in Arabic, two of which have been translated into English: Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge which was nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (often referred to as “the Arabic Booker”) and The Egyptian Assassin which was adapted by Pan-Arab TV into a limited television series entitled, “Abou Omar El-Masry.” He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.

DIE NATUR IST KEIN PARTEIMITGLIED de Harald Lesch & Axel Kleidon

Policy-makers must act now, but first, they need to understand how nature actually works. The physicists Harald Lesch and Axel Kleidon express frustration over the widespread unwillingness among broad political circles to understand how nature functions—an essay intended as a wake-up call.

DIE NATUR IST KEIN PARTEIMITGLIED
(Nature Belongs to No Party)
by Harald Lesch & Axel Kleidon
C. Bertelsmann/PRH Germany, March 2026

Again and again, political and economic leaders act as if we can simply ignore the laws of nature, and like to think that technology can perform magic tricks à la Harry Potter. In « Nature Belongs to No Party », two physicists speak truth to power: they explain in clear terms that nature does not negotiate, is not a party member and won’t cede to our demands. What exactly do energy-efficiency and climate protection entail? Why does energy depreciate? And what policies would a government that understands how nature works adopt?

DIE NATUR IST KEIN PARTEIMITGLIED is useful ammunition for anyone who’s as frustrated and angry as the authors about the seeming inability of politicians to tackle climate change head on.

Harald Lesch is a professor of theoretical astrophysics at the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and one of Germany’s most famous scientists. He has presented several accessible and popular science programmes, and written and co-written many popular and bestselling books.

Axel Kleidon studied physics and meteorology at the universities of Hamburg and Purdue. After graduating with a PhD in meteorology, he did a postdoc at Stanford and joined the faculty of the University of Maryland. Since 2006, he has led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. In his research, he uses thermodynamics to quantify natural energy conversions within the earth system, and applies this approach to understanding atmosphere-biosphere interactions, our planet’s response to global change, and the natural limits of renewable energy.