A fairy tale with an edge, Stefanie vor Schulte’s "Boy with a Black Rooster" explores a vast land afflicted by cruelty and ill fortune. Martin is a kindhearted orphan whose father went insane and killed the rest of his family. Looked... Read More

In Chuck Rosenthal’s provocative novel "Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest", a girl explores her connection to the Romantic poets. Beatriz does unpaid work cataloging books in a basement library. There, the rows of books serve as portals... Read More

In Vigdis Hjorth’s powerful novel "If Only", a playwright develops an obsession with an older professor that spirals into an all-consuming love affair. At thirty years old, Ida is married with two children. She has a successful career... Read More

Young lovers run up against the limits of their abilities to control their own destinies in Johannes Anyuru’s melancholy novel "Ixelles". Ruth should know a lie when she hears one: she lies for a living, helping brands and politicians... Read More

In Meg Ripley’s subversive, thrilling novel "Necrology", a wise girl raised on the wonders of the wilds is forced to contend with those who would see her kind extinguished. In an alternate version of America, magic pulses through the... Read More

Tragedy strikes a dysfunctional Turkish German family in Fatma Aydemir’s searing novel "Djinns". Hüseyin worked hard his entire life so he could bring his family back to his homeland in style. He dies only a week after accomplishing... Read More

In Afabwaje Kurian’s novel "Before the Mango Ripens", Nigerians fight against white American missionaries for control over their country’s future. “Transition [is] afoot in Nigeria” in 1971, just after the nation’s... Read More

In Michael Weingrad’s slim, nostalgic literary novel "Eugene Nadelman", a nerdy Jewish boy comes of age in 1980s Philadelphia. Eugene shares his first name, and the book its format, with Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene... Read More