OTTER MUSIC de Karen Joy Fowler

A love letter to the California Coastline, the creatures who inhabit it, and the stories we tell ourselves to find courage and hope—from the Booker shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

OTTER MUSIC
by Karen Joy Fowler
Putnam, March 2027
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Lainey Miller is a reasonably happy, unmarried Marine researcher living in Santa Cruz, California, heading rapidly towards middle age. When her 11 year old niece points out that Lainey never actually has any FUN (not really) it sends Lainey spiraling down a reinvestigation of both her past—the conspiracist father who abandoned her in his misguided pursuit of « lizard people »—and her future, where most days it feels as if every effort to save and conserve the natural world is futile.

OTTER MUSIC is a story about how each of us must find a little patch of the world to save and tend to—even amongst the fires, and floods and cruelty—because it takes bravery to extend ourselves with love and determination into the awaiting world.

Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent 13 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award and was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Her most recent novel Booth was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, California

UNTRAVELLED WORLD de Martha Perotto-Wills

A heart-pounding, otherworldly adventure, mixed with the thorny, sexy lesbian dynamics of a Julia Armfield novel. For fans of The Ministry of Time and Annihilation.

UNTRAVELLED WORLD
by Martha Perotto-Wills
Random House, Fall 2027
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Ten years ago, the door opened to reveal a surreal, uncharted world adjoining our own: a terrifyingly beautiful expanse of glass which shifts at its own whims—every two hours, every two days—unpredictably gifting clear, flat planes or delivering dangerous crevasses hiding reality-bending hallucinations.

For Teddy, newly graduated and directionless, the era-defining mystery of the other world is merely an icebreaker, a conversation topic on dates gone cold. But then Adrian Clermont, an old family friend, appears in Teddy’s living room seeking funding for an expedition into the other world. Teddy, seeing a chance for purpose and an escape from her privileged, hermetic world, begs to join Adrian’s team.

When the Clermont party make it through the door, Teddy falls helplessly in love with both the landscape and with Jenny Cattaneo, a flinty meteorologist with a strangely deep connection to the other world. When Teddy makes a staggering discovery about a missing explorer, she is forced to reckon with the true cost of the life she’s built in the other world—the first real home she’s ever known.

Martha Perotto-Wills is a writer from London. She has a BA in History and an MA in Queer History. After spending several years as a bookseller and cataloguer in crumbling second-hand bookshops she moved into trade publishing, and now works as an associate agent at a literary agency. She lives in south London with her girlfriend and their cat. UNTRAVELLED WORLD is her first novel, partially born from her obsession with Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World.

SHE’S MINE de Susan Walter

When a four-year-old girl disappears the night after her birthday party, all the guests are suspects. Except for the one who turned up dead. Mary Kubica meets Lisa Jewell in this dark and twisty mystery of domestic suspense.

SHE’S MINE
by Susan Walter
Blackstone, February 2027
(via Laura Dail Literary)

Summer Brownley’s marriage is ending and her heart is in pieces, but she still threw a damn good party. Afterward, though she really shouldn’t, she curls up with a bottle of wine. It’s her soon-to-be exhusband’s night with the kids, what could go wrong?

Well, everything.

The FBI arrives at dawn. Her four-year-old daughter is missing. But the kidnapping is just the beginning of her nightmare. Because as the search for her daughter begins, one of her party guests turns up dead.

There is no shortage of suspects: the cheating ex-husband, a best friend with regrets, a covetous surrogate. Every new lead uncovers another lie. FBI Agent Willow Thorne is assigned to the case. Thorne has a knack for noticing what people choose not to tell her, but there’s something about this case that has her second-guessing herself. If Summer wants to help Thorne find the kidnapper, she’s going to have to expose her tightly-held secrets.

Before her daughter is gone for good.

Susan Walter is a recovering screenwriter and film director who started writing books to kill people because it was frowned upon in real life. Ha! Her first five books include Good As Dead and Lie by the Pool.

DELICATE CREATURES de Kimi Cunningham Grant

Part Where the Crawdads Sing and part The God of the Woods, this novel blends a compelling mystery told across multiple points of view and timelines, gorgeous nature writing, and an unforgettable love story for the ages.

DELICATE CREATURES
by Kimi Cunningham Grant
Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s, Summer 2027

Blue Hollow, West Virginia, 2005. Local journalist Britt has a terrible shock when she arrives at the home of her best friend, Des, to find blood all over the kitchen. Des, her son and her husband are all missing. Twenty years earlier, Ozias and his mother, Mari, arrive in the small town, hoping for a fresh start. The trouble is, the very white town of Blue Hollow isn’t welcoming to two multiracial outsiders, except for Des, their young neighbor who lives up the mountain. Over time, Des and Ozias fall in love and dream of a life together, but when Ozias decides to join the army and is later deployed to Kuwait, Des eventually has no choice but to move on. Then, one night in 1992, Ozias returns to Blue Hollow, his homecoming marked by a night of shocking violence.

Years later, when Britt makes her discovery at Des’s house, the sheriff and the town are quick to tie Ozias to the crime scene, given his recent return to Blue Hollow and his history with Des. But Britt isn’t so sure. After all, she has secrets of her own, one of which is a very good reason to suspect Des’s husband, Gary, might be to blame. Britt isn’t the only one hiding something, though, and as the search for answers heats up, a gripping drama unfolds. Blue Hollow is rife with secrets and preconceptions, and there are people in this town who will stop at nothing to keep the truth from coming to light.

Kimi Cunningham Grant is the author of Fallen Mountains, Silver Like Dust, These Silent Woods, and The Nature of Disappearing. Kimi is a two-time winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Poetry and a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship in creative nonfiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in Fathom, Literary Mama, RATTLE, Poet Lore, and Whitefish Review. She lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD GIRL de Ildy Modrovich

A debut psychological thriller explores what happens when the quintessential “good girl” decides to break bad, by celebrated television writer and showrunner Ildy Modrovich.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD GIRL
by Ildy Modrovich
Grand Central, 2027
(via DeFiore and Co.)

Meet Ferris McKenna: the kind of woman who says ‘excuse me’ to automatic doors, has lied to her husband on more than one occasion that ‘yes, that’s the spot’ and would inevitably end up being the designated driver at her own birthday celebration. Ferris has spent her life being overlooked and underestimated – until she meets Zara, a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. When Ferris gets pulled into a dangerous plan to help her new friend escape, she discovers that being too nice can make you both the perfect ally and the perfect target. As bodies start dropping and loyalties shift, Ferris must decide how far she’s willing to go when pushed to her breaking point – and whether she can trust anyone, including herself.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD GIRL is Gone Girl meets Big Little Lies with the dark humor and edge of You, the kind of compulsive, binge-worthy read designed to keep you up way past your bedtime, perfect for book clubs with bite and readers who love their psychological thrillers served with a side of snark. As a television writer and showrunner, Modrovich always loved creating characters who straddle the line between good and evil, from Californication’s Hank Moody to Tulsa King’s Dwight Manfredi, to the devil himself in Netflix’s Lucifer. THE NOT-SO-GOOD GIRL, her debut psychological thriller explores what happens when the quintessential “good girl” decides to break bad.

Ildy Modrovich spent more than two decades as a television writer and showrunner, producing and developing series for Netflix, Amazon, Showtime, Paramount+, Fox, CBS and ABC. Under her six-season leadership, Lucifer became the number one streamed show of 2021, remains one of the most watched series of all time for Netflix and earned a People’s Choice Award. Prior to her TV career, she fronted a rock band for more than ten years in the LA club scene – where she learned that winning over any audience, whether they’re holding a beer or a book, means giving them something they didn’t see coming.