We’re excited to share this year-end roundup of novels, novellas, short story collections, and fiction anthologies published in 2025 by independent literary publishers! Read our year-end roundups of nonfiction, poetry, children’s books, and art and drama as well.
Novels
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Warbler Press | January 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-965684-24-5
Hemingway’s classic novel, featuring a new afterword by Ulrich Baer, “presents an honest view of the physical and emotional toll of war, and the often complicated nature of love.”
The Feast of the King’s Shadow by Chaz Brenchley
Wizard’s Tower Press | January 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-913892-80-7
According to SFX, this series has “all the adventures a discerning fantasy reader could wish for and Brenchley’s concise, muscular prose makes the story flow, free of genre clichés.”
The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev
Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis
New Vessel Press | January 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954404-30-4
In this historical novel, Lebedev “portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht in World War II.”
The River, The Town by Farah Ali
Dzanc Books | January 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-17-4
This decade-spanning novel is a “poignant and powerful literary debut following the breakup of a Pakistani family in the face of climate disaster, and their indefatigable search for stability, love, and belonging.”
A Tea-Dark Bearing by Janice Kidd
Regal House Publishing | January 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64603-575-5
In this novel set in the Adirondack Foothills in 1801, “two women devise a daring plan of escape through a rugged, untamed wilderness, fleeing the dangerous prejudice of unscrupulous men as well as the stranger that haunts them all.”
Deep Vellum | January 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-354-4
In this debut novel, Ross “tells a story of intergenerational change and conflict in a Black American family in the pre-Civil Rights era.”
Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul by C. Marshall St. John
Sinister Wisdom | January 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-94498-170-9
The protagonist of this novel, originally published in 1915, “longs for love and passion, leading her to Catholicism, and most importantly, a desire for women.”
Rabbits Are Strange, When You Are A Stranger by Alexander Iskin
Box Turtle Press | January 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781893654358
According to Kevin Arnold, Iskin’s novel “draws a reader into an unexpected, delightful, world—a world where the characters awaken to their own creativity.”
We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine by Deni Ellis Béchard
Milkweed Editions | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-57131-148-1
Béchard’s new novel “tackles the most pressing issues of our time—from AI and the genetic modification of humans to gender roles, discrimination, free speech, and class divisions.”
The Good War by Elizabeth Costello
Regal House Publishing | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64603-546-5
This historical novel about a mother and daughter “unfolds over the course of watershed summers in the lives of two very different women who share a desire to make it new even as they reckon with painful truths.”
The Enumerations by Maire Fisher
Catalyst Press | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-96080-308-5
According to the Cape Times, this novel is “an unsentimental but real story about the dark that surrounds the most seemingly successful and ordinary people.”
Underground Barbie by Maša Kolanović
Translated from the Croatian by Ena Selimović
Sandorf Passage | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-9-53351-512-0
Kolanović’s English-language debut “brilliantly captures the vagaries of childhood as innocence gives way to the horrors of the news and the intrigues of sexual curiosity.”
Nobodaddy’s Children by Arno Schmidt
Translated from the German by John E. Woods
Dalkey Archive Press | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-456-0
According to Kirkus Reviews, the novels in this trilogy “comprise—in their unique author’s highly personal style of hybrid digressive montage—a hilariously confrontational picture of his native Germany from the Hitler years well on into the indefinite, postapocalyptic future.”
The Delicate Beast by Roger Celestin
Bellevue Literary Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954276-36-9
According to Alice Kaplan, this debut is a “beautiful and devastating novel about a man born into horrifying political violence and condemned to experience the loss and sorrow he’s spent his whole life avoiding.”
Interficial ARTelligence: The Moments That Met Me by Chuck D
Akashic Books | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-204-3
In his newest graphic novel, Chuck D “details and illustrates his encounters with some of society’s most influential musicians, entertainers, politicians, athletes, and public figures.”
No One’s Leaving by Raki Kopernik
Unsolicited Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963115-24-6
In this novel, “a young woman travels through Europe in the late nineties after she learns of her ex-girlfriend’s suicide, whose ghost follows her around.”
People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi
Translated from the Indonesian by Lara Norgaard
Archipelago Books | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-953861-98-6
This debut novel “combines precise political recounting, stories adapted from articles in newspapers, and fables that Nesi overheard through Indonesia’s robust oral tradition.”
The Way of Florida by Russell Persson
Baobab Press | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-936097-54-8
This historical novel “recasts the tragic story of the failed Narváez expedition, which has trickled down through the centuries via La Relación, the official report published in 1542, as well as many other subsequent retellings.”
Vine Leaves Press | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-131-2
In this speculative fiction thriller, “the battle for the mind has begun—and the line between healing and manipulation is dangerously thin.”
The Voices of Adriana by Elvira Navarro
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Two Lines Press | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949641-73-8
This book is an “innovative novel about grief and how we might reanimate the voices of those we’ve lost, not as ghosts, but as living parts of ourselves.”
The Land of the Living by Timothy Crellin
Green Writers Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9904801-1-7
Crellin’s debut is a “historical novel that explores the themes of immigration and assimilation, war and its impact on families, the role of race and class in forging identity, and what it means to find home.”
Living in Your Light by Abdellah Taïa
Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
Seven Stories Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64421-453-4
According to Darryl Pinckney, this novel follows a Moroccan woman who “speaks of her struggle to keep power over her life, of what she knows of the suffering of the poor, and of women who are autonomous in a land where colonialism never went away.”
Vine Leaves Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-133-6
This speculative novel is a “disturbing journey into a world where empathy comes with a price, and virtual reality may be closer to home than we ever imagined.”
Seven Stories Press | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64421-318-6
This second novel in a two-book series “continues the fictionalized account of the adventures of Sergeant Robert Lamb, an Irish soldier who fought for the British during the American Revolutionary War.”
Lonesome Ballroom by Madeline McDonnell
Rescue Press | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9886839-0-2
According to Leni Zumas, this novel is a “magnificent dive into film, fashion, feminism, motherdom, and the manifold performances that make up a life.”
Optional Practical Training by Shubha Sunder
Graywolf Press | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-324-7
According to Publishers Weekly, this novel following a young Indian woman in the US “coheres into a crystalline portrait of a woman straddling cultures and expectations while attempting to discover who she is.”
Deep Vellum | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-356-8
This novel-in-verse “tells the story of Lua Mater, an obscure Roman goddess who re-imagines herself as an assassin coming to terms with an emerging performance artist identity in the late-20th century.”
Finding Serenissima by Apple Gidley
Vine Leaves Press | March 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-135-0
This novel is a “heartwarming tale of second chances, exploring the complexities of long marriage, independence, and rediscovering love in the most unexpected places.”
My Therapist Says This Grief Journal Is a Good Idea by Andrew Katz
Lanternfish Press | March 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-941360-85-9
In this novel, “KJ fills his therapist-recommended grief journal with plenty of sarcasm, excerpts from sweary, punny high-school short stories, and fourth-wall-breaking asides.”
Strange Object | March 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-358-2
This debut novel is “an allegory of extraction and a tale of adventure and endurance during the waning days of the American whaling industry.”
Vine Leaves Press | March 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-137-4
This thriller novel “explores the intense, often unspoken, struggles of new motherhood and the complexities of human fallibility, raising an unsettling question: Does one irreversible mistake define you forever?”
City of Smoke and Sea by Malia Márquez
Red Hen Press | March 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-0-9639528-3-7
According to Andromeda Romano-Lax, this is a “delightful and inventive novel of hidden roots, unseen worlds, magical alliances, and personal reinvention, bringing the many layers of Los Angeles to life.”
The Death and Life of August Sweeney by Samuel Ashworth
Santa Fe Writers Project | March 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951631-41-3
In this novel, “legendary chef August Sweeney has served his final meal, dying in the middle of service in the very restaurant he built to secure his legacy.”
Dreams Like Thunder by Diane Simmons
Story Line Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-58654-301-3
In this novel taking place “on a small Eastern Oregon farm between Baker and Hells Canyon,” a family “seems less in touch with the 20th century than with the myth of their own pioneer past.”
Tick… Tick… Tick… by Steve Zettler
Vine Leaves Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-139-8
In this speculative novel, “the future of the planet is on a stopwatch, and Harlan is the one person capable of preserving humanity.”
Blues for the Buffalo: A Luis Montez Mystery by Manuel Ramos
Arte Público Press | March 31, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-008-9
In the latest installment of the Luis Montez Mystery series, “a chance encounter with a woman who goes missing leads to the attorney’s involvement in an enigmatic case.”
The Search Committee by José Skinner
Arte Público Press | March 31, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-007-2
In this novel, Skinner “writes darkly comedic scenes with an insider’s understanding of university and border life and the narco violence that has disrupted them.”
The Living and the Rest by José Eduardo Agualusa
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
Archipelago Books | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781962770200
According to Jessica Payn, in this novel Agualusa “consistently treats Angolan history and identity with the lyrical experimentalism and unabashed weirdness of the surrealist.”
You Crushed It by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard
Translated from the French by Neil Smith
Book*hug Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781771669313
This novel centering a stand-up comedian is a “devastating critique of the soft underbelly of toxic masculinity and the complicated ferocity of those who protect it.”
Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story by Beth Kephart
Tursulowe Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957057-19-4
This historical novel “evokes 1918 Philadelphia, a city of war and racism, women’s rights and women’s work, the ferocious paralysis of a bloody race riot, and a flu that will prove to be more deadly than the war.”
The Burning Heart of the World by Nancy Kricorian
Red Hen Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781636281933
“Leavened with humor and imbued with the timelessness of a folktale,” this novel “tells the story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War.”
My Own Dear People by Dwight Thompson
Akashic Books | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781636141916
This novel follows a teenager “trying to come to terms with his own place in multiple worlds: in his family; at school, with its colonial Eurocentric ethos; and within the religion and politics of Montego Bay and the city’s criminal gangs.”
The Harmattan Winds by Sylvain Trudel
Translated from the French by Donald Winkler
Archipelago Books | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781962770224
According to Rumaan Alam, this novel is a “beguiling fairy tale of a book, indebted as much to Bellow’s Henderson as it is to the immortal Peter Pan, a slender novel of the great adventure that is growing up.”
Remember That One Time? by Larry Joe Campbell
Finishing Line Press | April 4, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-88838-826-6
In this novel, an out-of-work actor “begins to look at his own past and the decisions he has made that have led him to being alone over the holidays, reflecting and wondering if his marriage can be saved.”
Hub City Press | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9798885740463
Anderegg’s debut novel is a “darkly beautiful, unflinching novel about modern girlhood in the internet age, the daily toll of trauma, and the limits of love.”
Perpetual Law by Mario Bellatin
Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Beachy
Deep Vellum | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781646053384
This novel “beckons to engage with the reality of borders, linguistic exile, and the types of self-estrangement that can barely be articulated.”
Translated from the Chinese by Jacqueline Leung
Two Lines Press | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781949641769
In this dystopian novel, “a government program incentivizes couples to ‘conjoin’—surgically attach themselves to one another—promising a flourishing economy, ecological revitalization, and personal fulfillment.”
The Best People by Robert Lopez
Dzanc Books | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781938603242
Completing Lopez’s novels-in-stories triptych, The Best People “follows a man who made the mistake of being born and is trying to make the best of that mistake.”
A Girl Is Lost in Her Century, Looking for Her Father by Gonçalo M. Tavares
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
Dalkey Archive Press | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781628975987
“Amid a landscape of rubble, skeletal figures, and helplessness in Europe post-World War II, a girl and a man wander among the ruins” in this novel.
The Way of Wildfires and hard luck believers by Brian David Cinadr
Wet Cement Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9918692-2-5
According to Dana Stevens, Cinadr “writes with the heat and energy of the Santa Ana winds, creating a compelling LA story of danger, love and redemption, as a man finds the courage to sift through the ashes of his broken heart.”
stay with me by Hanne Ørstavik
Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken
Archipelago Books | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781962770187
In this novel, Ørstavik “unravels the binds that fasten us to those we love—why we return despite immeasurable pain, and why we finally, justly, leave.”
Trouser Press Books | April 16, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9898283-7-1
This coming-of-age novel “focuses on the creative process, the devotion required to choose an uncertain life in music, the inspiration for songwriting and the challenge of making the rent while making art.”
New Door Books | April 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7355585-7-8
According to Booklist, this novel is an “engaging, briskly told tale of self-discovery, mother-daughter dynamics, and the complicated bonds of unsettling personal truths.”
People Are Talking by Amanda Eisenberg
Three Rooms Press | April 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-953103-59-8
In this debut novel, “author Mallory Shepard attends her estranged best friend’s wedding in Austin, where she and six friends try to settle old scores—with unexpected deadly consequences.”
Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
Dalkey Archive Press | April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781628975802
“Transgressing genres and genders,” this novel is “among the most daring achievements of postmodern Latin American fiction.”
I Remember Lights by Ben Ladouceur
Book*hug Press | April 24, 2025
ISBN: 9781771669351
According to Loghan Paylor, Ladouceur “has crafted a raw, intimate portrait of queer desire and resilience against the well-researched and cunningly detailed backdrop of Expo 67 and 1970s Montreal.”
Vine Leaves Press | April 29, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-145-9
This novel “strikes all the right chords for anyone who’s ever wondered if it’s possible to reclaim their dreams—and the people—they left behind.”
A Necklace of Ears by Alberto Roblest
Translated from the Spanish by Dillon Scalzo
Arte Público Press | April 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-009-6
This thriller novel “combines detailed descriptions with reflections on today’s society to graphically explore the reality of many hard-working migrants facing harsh conditions in the United States.”
Translated from the Spanish by Lynette Yetter
Fuente Fountain Books | May 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-0-9843756-9-1
In this work of science fiction—written over a century ago and translated into English for the first time in this volume—“a janitor beetle tells mind-boggling tales of when architecture, anatomy and hierarchical corporations became one.”
The Fun Times Brigade by Lindsay Zier-Vogel
Book*hug Press | May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781771669412
Zier-Vogel’s novel “examines the enduring challenges of reconciling being an artist with being a mother.”
After Pearl by Stephen G. Eoannou
Santa Fe Writers Project | May 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781951631475
According to Bruce Robert Coffin, After Pearl is “a wonderfully rendered hard-boiled historical mystery reminiscent of Chandler’s Marlowe novels.”
American Playground by Michael Isaac Shokrian
the Thieving Magpie | May 2, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9925417-0-0
In this novel, “7-year-old Mishel Manoucherian’s family has packed up their life in Tehran and moved to Los Angeles, launching him headfirst into a disorienting new world of social and schoolyard expectations.”
Treasures in Heaven by Kathleen Alcalá
Raven Chronicles Press | May 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7354780-6-7
Set in nineteenth-century Mexico, in this novel protagonist Estela “finds herself swept into a world of politics and entangled in secret relationships.”
Tough Poets Press | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798218346294
“Spanning from the 1970s to the pandemic era,” this novel “traces a half-century of private and public unraveling—from love affairs and secret children to terrorism, war, and the quiet persistence of grace.”
Where I Went Wrong by David Galef
Regal House Publishing | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781646035861
According to Gary Krist, Galef’s novel is “a wistful, engaging, and ingeniously told story of a man who must figure out just when and where his life began to fly off the rails.”
Come Round Right by Alan Govenar
Deep Vellum | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781646053742
This novel is “a paean to a pivotal moment in American history—when the Vietnam War was raging, and the idealism of the 1960s was losing ground to frustration, anger, and violence.”
Spring in Cranberry Harbor by Candace Hammond
Sea Crow Press | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781961864269
In the second book of the cozy fiction Cranberry Harbor Series, “Lizzie Martin has returned to Cape Cod and is co-running the Cranberry Harbor Gazette with her dad, Peter.”
Felony Juggler by Penn Jillette
Akashic Books | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781636142388
According to Elizabeth McCracken, this novel is about juggling: “not just literal juggling—though it is the great American juggling novel—but on every metaphoric level too: moral, sexual, biographical, linguistic.”
Promises: Truth and Lies in London and Kampala by Goretti Kyomuhendo
Catalyst Press | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960803-22-1
Kyomuhendo’s novel “exposes the shadow world of illegal immigrants, and the creativity with which people in the legal margins rise to meet an inhumane system.”
Duet for One by Martha Anne Toll
Regal House Publishing | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036004
Toll’s novel “weaves a poignant narrative of loss, connection, and the enduring hope that love can be found where life resides.”
Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation by Sarah Yahm
Dzanc Books | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-28-0
“Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades,” this novel “combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief.”
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Two Lines Press | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781949641783
According to Asymptote, in this novel Kheir “uses his characters’ ever-shifting perception of their surroundings to probe the truths around globalization and its consequences, patriotism and its faults, free speech and its oppression.”
The Miniaturist’s Assistant by Katherine Scott Crawford
Regal House Publishing | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781646035922
Crawford’s historical novel “explores the mystery of time, how our choices ripple throughout history, and what it means to be a fully-realized woman—in any century.”
The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
New Vessel Press | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781954404328
Daanje’s historical novel “immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatized man who has lost his identity.”
The Gospel According to Danny by David Hicks
Vine Leaves Press | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-147-3
Hicks’s novel is “a deeply human story about love, fatherhood, and the cost of a divided nation.”
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Two Lines Press | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781949641783
According to Yasmine El Rashidi, this novel is “a partly real, partly fantastical depiction of post-revolutionary Cairo and Alexandria as seen through the stories of a struggling journalist.”
Only Smoke by Juan José Millás
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead and Daniel Hahn
Bellevue Literary Press | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 978-1954276444
In this novel, narrator Carlos embarks “on a journey that will bring him closer to his father and teach him how to navigate the invisible borders between reality and fantasy, sanity and madness.”
Defiant Acts by James Stewart III
Acre Books | May 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946724-89-2
Stewart’s novel “documents the life of a working-class interracial couple and their children in a Chicago suburb in the early 1990s.”
Vine Leaves Press | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-149-7
Clare’s novel is “a story about coming-of-age and coming to the truth—a tale of love, betrayal, and the dangerous risks we take to find where we truly belong.”
Translated from the French by Pablo Strauss
Coach House Books | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781552454992
This work of environmental speculative fiction is “a terrifying tale about the ways in which we try to dominate nature, and how nature will, inevitably, wreak retribution upon us.”
Crocodiles at Night by Gisela Heffes
Translated from the Spanish by Grady C. Wray
Deep Vellum | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781646053766
Heffes’s novel explores “familial ties, memories and images of places that are no longer the same.”
Measure of Devotion by Nell Joslin
Regal House Publishing | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036127
According to Elaine Neil Orr, Joslin’s historical novel “chronicles a woman’s excruciating journey to save her son during the Battles for Chattanooga and her desperate efforts to retain some remnant of home in a country strewn with war.”
That’s All I Know by Elisa Levi
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Graywolf Press | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-337-7
In Levi’s novel, “when a stranger loses his dog on the first day after the end of the world, Little Lea warns him not to follow it into the forest.”
Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost by Donald Niedekker
Translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Reeder
Sandorf Passage | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9789533515335
Told from the point of view of a nameless Dutch crew member who died in 1597, this novel “argues that the unchanging characteristics of human behavior are unquestionably why the natural world has changed in so many ways.”
Translated from the Afrikaans by Karin Schimke
Catalyst Press | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781960803139
In this crime novel, “three years after his niece is found dead the week of her wedding, Jaap Reyneke, a retired detective, is still doggedly looking for answers. Why was her body displayed so carefully, like a macabre art installation? Who erased all correspondence from her devices?”
The Cloud Intern by David Greenwood
Under the BQE | May 27, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9911220-0-9
This speculative novel explores the “collective loneliness of a society in which the deepest human connection has become a commodity, and deepest human weirdness may be our best hope.”
Tupelo Press | June 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961209-26-8
This novel “enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing transhumanism.”
Angel Eye by Madeleine Nakamura
Red Hen Press | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-939096-21-0
In this novel, Nakamura “plunges readers back into her spellbinding series, where Professor Adrien Desfourneaux’s journey through peril, passion, and dark magic takes a thrilling new turn.”
Paradise Once: A Novel by Olive Senior
Akashic Books | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-227-2
This historical novel “brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their ‘discovery’ by Christopher Columbus in 1492.”
Midnight Is Not in Everyone’s Reach by António Lobo Antunes
Translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe
Dalkey Archive Press | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-612-0
In this novel set over the course of three days, “our aging narrator has returned to Alto da Vigia to say goodbye to the house where her family spent summers during her childhood.”
Regal House Publishing | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64603-577-9
In this novel, “three women excavate and attempt to reckon with the shared shame and suffering stemming from an unresolved trauma that has cast a profound shadow over their lives.”
Not Long Ago Persons Found by J. Richard Osborn
Bellevue Literary Press | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954276-40-6
In this novel, “the body of a young boy is found floating in a city river with pollen in his lungs from a warm river valley far from the country where he died.”
Translated from the Finnish by Mia Spangenberg
Two Lines Press | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781949641806
According to Niina Pollari, “the personal and political are not collapsed but interlinked, and revolution is closely tied with sensuality” in this novel.
Iris and the Dead by Miranda Schreiber
Book*hug Press | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77166-929-0
“Weaving personal memory with magic realism and folklore,” this novel asks: “What if you could look back and tell someone exactly how they changed the course of your life?”
Blu’s Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Kaya Press | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-935717-01-0
Kaya’s new edition of this acclaimed novel, originally published in 1997, “includes an interview with Yamanaka about her career and the controversies surrounding this novel, along with a contextualizing afterword by Asian American scholar Khuê Ninh.”
Under the BQE | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9911220-1-6
“Centered around a summer science assignment on stargazing,” this novel “travels from the safe cocoon of a home full of SAT prep books and overprotective parents into the light-polluted slate of the New Jersey night.”
The Ice Moves for No One by Arlo Z. Graves
Quills and Cosmos Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-965790-00-7
In this fantasy novel, “the ice moves for no one, the trees do not answer, and the Svall obeys no master.”
Junah at the End of the World by Dan Leach
Hub City Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9798885740494
In this novel taking place months before Y2K, “Junah’s eccentric teacher tasks each of her students to make a time capsule in a shoe box to document their experiences in South Carolina at the end of the world.”
Dalkey Archive Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-452-2
This novel is about “the rich and powerful, tracing their complicated relationships from the 1930s to the 1960s, from New York City to Upper New York State.”
The Journalist by Harry Mathews
Dalkey Archive Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-609-0
“A blend of postmodern metafiction and old-style bedroom farce,” this novel “explores the elusive, sometimes illusive, boundaries between facts and the fictions we weave around them.”
I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Solà
Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
Graywolf Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-343-8
According to Catherine Lacey, this novel is “forged from the deepest and truest stories about the perversity of the body, the sheer drama of the natural world, and the vengeful side of the divine.”
The Magic Kingdom by Stanley Elkin
Dalkey Archive Press | July 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-608-3
This novel “tells the story of Eddy Bale, who, determined to learn from the ghastly experience of his son’s long, drawn-out death, decides to give seven terminally ill children a dream vacation before they die.”
Bellevue Literary Press | July 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954276-38-3
This historical novel “calls into question the American belief in individualism to shape our destiny when confronted with irrepressible, chaotic forces.”
An American Girl by Richard Fellinger
Serving House Books | July 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-947175-92-1
“When Emma’s asked to help create a list of diverse books for their school district, her life intersects with other unforgettable local characters” in this novel.
Philosophical Toys by Susana Medina
Dalkey Archive Press | July 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-572-7
This book is a “cerebral novel about our relationship to objects, filled with ruminations on sexuality, money, and Luis Buñuel.”
The Diamondbacks by Sandra K. Barnidge
Belle Point Press | July 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960215-37-6
This debut novel is a “coming-of-age story about the weight of legacy, the bonds that shape us, and the quiet rebellions that lead us home.”
Deep Vellum | July 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-380-3
“Set in rural Montana,” this novel “centers on the dual coming-of-age of a girl and her father amid the natural and cultural forces that shape their family.”
Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers by Ian M. Rogers
Vine Leaves Press | July 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-161-9
This novel is a “hilarious, heartfelt collision of old-school fantasy, ‘80s and ‘90s cult classics, and the magic of friendship.”
Translated from the French by Jan Steyn
Dalkey Archive Press | July 29, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-610-6
In this novel, Levé creates “a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion.”
Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
New Vessel Press | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954404-34-2
This epistolary novel weaves together its protagonist’s “high hopes and deep disappointments as she navigates relationships, marriage, divorce, single motherhood, financial struggles, and professional ups and downs.”
The Book of Homes by Andrea Bajani
Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris
Deep Vellum | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-381-0
This novel tells the story of “a man and his friendships, his upbringing, his discovery of sex and poetry, his detachment from a self-destructive family, and his liberation from the furniture that has followed him through 20 years of moves.”
Love & Murder by Katie Christine Bishop
Black Heron Press | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-936364-46-6
This novel is “a treatise on the nature of humanity (as portrayed by cats) under the stress of environmental degradation.”
Dzanc Books | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-33-4
This work is a “promiscuous, hive-minded folklore which speaks in many voices at once, past the human, and knows that every town is its own living breathing superorganism.”
Black Lawrence Press | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-163-2
This debut novel “invites us to witness a near-future dystopia filled with cloned animals, a sponsorship-based education system, and a subculture obsessed with body transplants as performance art.”
Your Actual Life May Vary by Linda Lenhoff
Santa Fe Writers Project | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951631-45-1
This novel “delves into valley life vs. city life, child-stealing, eerie theme parks, and overpriced real estate built on land that basically tends to give way.”
An Interview with Michael Martone by Matt Baker
Bull City Press | August 12, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949344-45-5
This novel consists of interviews with Michael Martone, who is “either contemporary literature’s most notorious prankster, innovator, or mutineer.”
Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford
Dalkey Archive Press | August 12, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-562-8
This novel is a “masterpiece of modern domestic life, a comic novel of closeness and difficulty, miscommunication and stubborn resolve.”
Dzanc Books | August 12, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-34-1
This novel “examines the social roots and community fallout of a shooting at a fictional southern university.”
If The Train Arrives by Heather Fellin Tierney
Vine Leaves Press | August 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-165-7
This novel follows encounters between a “neurodivergent ticketmaster struggling with his ended marriage, a willful teenager searching for truth about her past, and a teacher harboring a painful regret.”
The Science of Understanding by Polly Kronenberger
Catalyst Press | August 19, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963511-13-0
In this novel, “scientist Rory Greene finds herself playing the part of sleuth, searching for one of her company’s kidnapped primates as the authorities’ disinterest and dragging feet make life unbearable.”
The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace by Megan Okonsky
Lanternfish Press | August 19, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-941360-89-7
According to Publishers Weekly, “with its humorous, slice-of-life portrayal of rural Texas and sweet sapphic romance,” this novel “is sure to charm.”
Wizard’s Tower Press | August 21, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-917950-04-6
According to Joanne Hall, “a boy and his dog journey across very-far-future Britain, a land crawling with monsters and brimming with magic, in this enthralling and heartfelt novel.”
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Restless Books | August 26, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63206-401-1
In this novel, Reza “masterfully portrays the messiness of family, where affection and resentment intertwine and the weight of a shared past looms large.”
Hothouse Bloom by Austyn Wohlers
Hub City Press | August 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798885740500
This novel “follows a young woman who renounces her painting career and all her human relationships to become one with her late grandfather’s apple orchard.”
The Sea-Stone Sword by Joel Cornah
Wizard’s Tower Press | August 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-917950-08-4
According to Joanne Hall, this novel is a “refreshingly unusual take on swashbuckling heroic fantasy.”
Scouts’ Honor by Carlos E. Cortés
Inlandia Institute | August 31, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-955969-36-9
In this debut novel, “the death of Boy Scout Harry Vincent would wreak havoc on the lives of those who tried to put the death behind them.”
Dangerous Insight: A Detective Kaitlin Kruse Novel by Karoline Anderson
Catalyst Press | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963511-17-8
In this crime thriller, detective Kaitlyn Kruse has “access to her past lives, the memories just beneath the surface, available to help her solve the latest crime, if only she is able to solve the puzzle.”
Vine Leaves Press | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-186-2
In this novel, “conspiracy theorist Theo has a loyal online following, a DIY podcast studio in a pub basement, and a theory that interdimensional vampires are stealing people’s souls.”
Goblin Mode by Caroline Hagood
Santa Fe Writers Project | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951631-49-9
In this novel, “the protagonist, who is and is not Caroline Hagood, takes a surreal odyssey through humor, horror, and plague-time Brooklyn.”
Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Sandorf Passage | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-953-351-538-0
This novel follows a widowed woman as she writes “a letter uncovering everything that has happened in her life that has led her to penning this confession to her friend: from discovering bedbugs to workplace romance and familial fallouts.”
Translated from the Hebrew by Joanna Chen
Warbler Press | September 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-965684-52-8
This novel following a chimpanzee in the US space program is a “deeply moving exploration of friendship, sacrifice, and the uneasy alliance between man and animal.”
Maybe in Heaven by Francesca Penchant
Rachilde & Co. | September 3, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9916634-2-7
This thriller is “the strange, decadent portrait of a lost woman fighting against a bitter little world—in which gender is a performance and love is a con.”
The Winterpoor by George Michelsen Foy
Sea Crow Press | September 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961864-34-4
The protagonist of this novel struggles “for his own sanity and freedom as he tries to care for a mentally challenged and neglected boy while also salvaging the floating studio of a long-dead artist, navigating a doomed marriage, and attempting to make his own art.”
Raven Chronicles Press | September 5, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9914032-1-4
This novel is “a book about birds, a meditation on the deserts of the American southwest, and an unlikely explorer’s account of life on Earth without continued human intervention.”
Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run by Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan
Generous Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9916428-5-9
The thirtieth-anniversary “reboot” edition of this cyber-erotic romantic thriller written in the 1990s “includes an updated lens for today’s readers, as GenZ investigative journalist Drew uncovers what just might be the greatest queer love story of all time.”
Little Neck by Darcie Dennigan
Fonograf Editions | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964499-51-2
In this novel, a child is “sent away to live with the town’s tombstone carvers, a pair of embittered sisters,” where she “begins to piece together scraps of the past—and her dark family history begins to possess her.”
Bind Me Tighter Still by Lara Ehrlich
Red Hen Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63628-280-0
This novel following a siren’s life on land “explores power and hunger, sacrifice and motherhood, and celebrates the fierceness of female strength in a male-dominated world.”
The Franchiser by Stanley Elkin
Dalkey Archive Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-624-3
This novel is a “tragicomic journey across America as one man attempts to create a fast food empire, and a legacy to leave behind.”
Translated from the German by Max Lawton
Deep Vellum | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-382-7
In Schattenfroh, “interruptions, breaks, and annotations both buoy and deceive, and endless historical references, literary allusions, and wordplay construct a baroque, encyclopedic quest.”
The Animal on the Rock by Daniela Tarazona
Translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis and Kevin Gerry Dunn
Deep Vellum | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-397-1
“Through the course of her grief, the protagonist’s body, her instincts, and her perception, begin to experience a transformation as unexpected as it is natural” in this novel.
Wilderness of Mirrors by Olufemi Terry
Restless Books | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63206-398-4
This debut novel “captures the heady abandon of early adulthood in an Africa still reeling from the lasting effects of colonialism and racial Partition.”
Pierian Springs Press | September 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-953136-89-3
In this novel the town of Watertown, which is “built on a proud industrial past and energized by new development, becomes a battleground when the ambitious new Town Manager, Michael Davis, takes office.”
Grace Period by Maria Judite de Carvalho
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Two Lines Press | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949641-82-0
In this novel, a man “has returned to sell his childhood home so he can send his longtime girlfriend—whom he now realizes he may have never loved—on a trip to the Acropolis before her cancer kills her.”
Maria La Divina by Jerome Charyn
Bellevue Literary Press | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781954276482
This work of historical fiction about the opera singer Maria Callas “humanizes the celebrated diva, revealing the mythical artist as a woman who survived hunger, war, and loneliness to reach the heights of acclaim.”
Type Eighteen Books | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 979-8992040548
According to Publishers Weekly, this novel set in Oregon is “a study of entities at war with each other: humankind at war with nature, nature at war with itself, and a population fighting to find the balance between progress, tradition, and conservation.”
Finding Amal by Firyal Alshalabi
Green Writers Press | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9923988-3-0
In this novel, “Hadeel, a young, devout Muslim woman from Kuwait, embarks on a secret journey to America to save her Aunt Amal’s soul from Hell.”
The Philosopher and the Assassin by D. A. Baden
Habitat Press | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7390889-9-6
According to The Literary Studio, this novel is “at once a commentary on the looming responsibility of the climate crisis and our ever-shrinking opportunity to enact meaningful change, and a far from conventional whodunnit.”
Cyan Magenta Yellow Black by Kevin Fenton
Black Lawrence Press | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-196-0
This novel “lovingly summons the Minneapolis Saint Paul of December of 1993, just before the internet changed everything.”
Starry Starry Night by Shani Mootoo
Book*hug Press | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77166-956-6
This novel set in 1960s Trinidad is a “portrait of a child who, despite her privileged appearance, must ultimately fend for herself because her safety depends on it.”
Translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane
Open Letter Books | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960385-43-7
In this novel, Saer “weaves a hypnotic tale of deception, exile, and the search for meaning in a world where nothing is as it seems.”
Hello Wife by Lisa K. Friedman
Santa Fe Writers Project | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951631-53-6
In this novel, Friedman “explores sisterly bonds, the strength of families, and the devastating impact of opioid abuse in modern America.”
Earthquake Shack: A Sadie García Miller Mystery by Susie Hara
Arte Público Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-021-8
In this mystery novel, an investigator “discovers a tangle of intergenerational family conflicts, meets an obsessed housing activist and stumbles into a romance with a femme PI on the same trail.”
Perfect Happiness by You-Jeong Jeong
Translated from the Korean by Sean Lin Halbert
Creature Publishing | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951971-33-5
“With unparalleled psychological precision,” Jeong’s novel “weaves a domestic nightmare centered on Yuna Shin: wife, mother, sister—and covert narcissist.”
Child of These Tears by Molly McNett
Slant Books | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63982-202-7
In this novel set in the early eighteenth century, “the settlers living in the hamlet of Hartfield Falls in ‘English America’ face the looming threat posed by historical and political forces beyond their control.”
Silent Cauldron by E. B. Moore
Frayed Edge Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64251-064-5
This historical novel based on true conditions in Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary “explores the tensions a girl experiences when she wants wider horizons than what the prevailing society deems appropriate.”
Brown-on-Brown: A Luis Montez Mystery by Manuel Ramos
Arte Público Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-023-2
The fifth and final installment in the Luis Montez Mystery series, Brown-on-Brown is a “riveting read about an issue that has become even more relevant as the planet heats up.”
Of Dubious Origin by David I. Santiago
Arte Público Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-022-5
“In this humorous satire about the quest for identity,” two brothers “are on their way to Portugal’s Azores islands—blissfully unaware that they are caught up in shady dealings that could land them in prison!”
The Mean Ones by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
Creature Publishing | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951971-30-4
According to Nat Cassidy, this novel is “heartbreaking and infuriating, full of delightfully ghoulish, garish imagery,” and “makes the wilderness as frightening as memories of cruel adolescent laughter . . . and vice versa.”
Regal House Publishing | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64603-619-6
According to Clare Beams, the events in this novel are “as vast in scope as the division and reunification of Germany, and as particular and human as the struggles and misunderstandings between husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child.”
The Endless Week by Laura Vazquez
Translated from the French by Alex Niemi
Dorothy, a publishing project | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-948980-27-2
This debut novel is “a lyrical anti-epic about the beauty, violence, trauma, and absurdity of the internet age.”
Scare Tactics by David Milofsky 
Serving House Books | October 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781947175693
According to Larry Watson, Milofsky “demonstrates, as the best writers can, that the truth of most lives is often complex and nuanced” in this novel set during 1950s McCarthyism.
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
Warbler Press | October 6, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-965684-80-1
This new edition of the 1952 novel telling the love story of Therese and Carol features a new introduction by literary scholar Catharine R. Stimpson.
Last Night at the Disco by Lisa Borders
Regal House Publishing | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036448
This novel set in 1977 is a “bold exploration of ambition, fame, and the often messy intersections of friendship and betrayal in the music world.”
A Nasty Business by A. R. Goldsmith
Catalyst Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511192
In this novel, a woman in 1970s England “must decide whether she wants to continue her safe village life or whether to pursue a shadowy world of espionage and secrets in a first for the British government—an all female unit of code breakers and communication specialists.”
A Dangerous Business by A. R. Goldsmith
Catalyst Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511376
In the second installment of the Nicollette Beverley Spy series, “Nicollette goes undercover once again—completely alone in a remote Atlantic archipelago off the coast of South America.”
Who Killed One the Gun? by Gigi Little
Forest Avenue Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1942436676
Little’s debut novel “pays homage to the radio classics of the forties and fifties while investigating themes of greed, sexism, and the consequences of unchecked power.”
Chagos Archipelago by Tom Lutz
Red Hen Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63628-427-9
According to Kirkus Reviews, this novel is a “profoundly disturbing tale about the callous disregard for the biodiversity of land masses like Chagos that are often exploited in get-rich-quick schemes.”
The High Heaven by Joshua Wheeler
Graywolf Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-357-5
“Suffused with the absurdist history of American space travel and the wide-open landscapes of the Southwest,” this novel “chronicles a larger-than-life adventure of one extraordinary woman who, despite tragedy, never loses sight of redemption.”
The Song Cave | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9912988-8-9
According to Andrea Lawlor, this novel first published in 1987 “chronicles working-class queer Midwestern life in the 1950s through the coming-of-age of a boy and his uncle.”
A Harvest of Furies by Hayden Casey
Lanternfish Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781941360910
This retelling of Aeschylus’s Oresteia “takes an unflinching look at how foreign war scars the intimate landscape of home–not just in the days of ancient Greek tragedy but in every time and place.”
The Revolution Will Not Be Rated G by Keya Chatterjee
Green Writers Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798991413435
In this debut novel set in the not-too-distant future, Aria Petros “must lead a desperate mission to protect her people as a catastrophic hurricane barrels toward the eastern seaboard.”
Creature Publishing | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-965684-47-4
This horror novel “explores medical trauma through Irish folklore, asking ‘Can a sick woman ever be trusted?'”
My Lips, Her Voice by L. L. Madrid
Creature Publishing | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781951971311
According to Kirkus Reviews, this novel is a “sharp and atmospheric whodunit and a queer ghost story packed full of twists that will leave readers guessing.”
Translated from the Dutch by Anne Thompson Melo
Two Lines Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-953103-66-6
This novel set during a catastrophic flood in the Netherlands examines “what happens when the delicate balance of nature tips in favor of the sea.”
Circling Toward Nightfall by Dennis Must
Red Hen Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63628-284-8
According to Jack Remick, this posthumously released novel is a “literary reconciliation of the mind/body dualism that has plagued humans from the beginning on our search for origins.”
Running on Rooftops by Andrea L. Stout
Blackwater Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781735774756
This novel follows a woman who begins teaching in China as she “seeks to make sense of her new life across the Pacific, with clashing worldviews and blended cultures,” and “finds herself building relationships as varied as the landscapes around her.”
Peace, Love and Haight: A Psychedelic Thriller by Max Talley
Three Rooms Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781953103666
In this mystery novel, a gallery owner in the summer of 1969 “becomes an unlikely player in a deadly game—hunted by the mafia, courted by the cops, and risking everything if his hippie friends learn the truth.”
Range of Motion by Brian Trapp
Acre Books | October 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946724-96-0
“Transforming perceptions of disability and interdependence through tender attention to detail,” this debut novel told from multiple perspectives is “wrenching, beautiful, and sharply comic.”
Stolen Mountain by I. M. Aiken
Catalyst Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511284
In this novel, “EMS Captain turned sleuth Brighid Doran suspects that all is not what it appears on the surface at The Branston Club—a swanky ski lodge being built in her rural Vermont town.”
Chapel Road by Louis Paul Boon
Translated from the Dutch/Flemish by Adrienne Dixon
Dalkey Archive Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781628975192
This novel originally published in 1953 follows “a young girl named Ondine and her brother Valeer, born into poverty at the turn of the century in the industrial city of Aalst, Belgium.”
The Gilded Butterfly Effect by Heather Colley
Three Rooms Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781953103628
This debut novel provides a “hilarious but unflinching look at today’s US college campus experience, from the highs and lows of the non-stop party scene to the absurdities of modern psychiatric care, the implications of prescription drug abuse and campus sexual assault.”
Werewolf Movie by Stephen St. Francis Decky
Frayed Edge Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781642510683
This novel set in the late 1980s South Jersey music scene “stands as a treatise on the ferocity and urgency of creativity as well as the predatory aspects of the music industry.”
If You Leave by Margaret Hutton
Regal House Publishing | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036417
According to Molly McCloskey, this novel’s “evocation of wartime Washington, DC, captures brilliantly the texture of everyday life, both the limbo of waiting for the war’s end and the pinched quality of women’s lives.”
The Maestro and Her Protégé by Kate Whouley
Blackwater Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781963614121
This novel follows Hannah Schaeffer, “a fictional trailblazing conductor, as she navigates the challenges of breaking barriers in a male-dominated industry.”
The Love You Take: A Novel by Robert Wilson
Warbler Press | October 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-965684-80-1
Set in the 1970s, this coming-of-age novel “follows Andy and a small circle of clever, idiosyncratic, and highly engaging friends as they journey from youth to adulthood.”
The Resettlement of Vesta Blonik by Denise Smith Cline
Regal House Publishing | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036509
Set during the Great Depression, this debut novel tells “the story of two strong-hearted strangers, bent but not destroyed by grief and financial destitution.”
Red Hen Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63628-362-3
According to Miriam Gershow, “what begins as a story about Niall, a lapsed monk now corralling a classroom of rowdy teenagers, soon transforms into an examination of making oneself whole in the face of a troubled past.”
Your Name Here by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff
Dalkey Archive Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781628976267
In this novel, DeWitt and Gridneff combine “countless years of literary history, Scientology, dream analysis, linguistics, email correspondence, screenshots, and graphs into a novel of unparalleled scope and vision.”
Translated from the Norwegian by David M. Smith
Deep Vellum | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781913744243
Høghaug’s first work of fiction is a “peasant story, a western novel, a dream quatrain, an adventure, science fiction and a black comedy about violence, crime, guilt and atonement.”
Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian
Dzanc Books | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781951971342
“Set against the backdrop of 1970s Nigeria teetering between post-colonial dependency and self-rule,” this novel “examines the enduring themes of faith, disillusionment, and the search for belonging.”
A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
EastOver Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958094-63-1
In this novel, an amnesiac man’s “search to discover his true identity exposes how even the most ordinary aspects of our lives are often extraordinarily felt.”
Of the Emperor’s Kindness by Chaz Brenchley
Wizard’s Tower Press | October 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-917950-13-8
According to Melissa Scott, this fantasy novel is “beautifully written, with a fascinating world, a deceptively simple plot, and complex and compelling characters.”
The Green Man’s Holiday by Juliet E. McKenna
Wizard’s Tower Press | October 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-917950-10-7
This novel following a supernatural family is a “modern fantasy rooted in the ancient myths and folklore of the British Isles.”
False War by Carlos Manuel Álvarez
Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Graywolf Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-363-6
The characters in this multivoiced novel “are ambivalent castaways living lives of deep estrangement from their home country, stranded in an existential no-man’s land.”
Till Taught By Pain by Susan Coventry
Regal House Publishing | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64603-632-5
According to Rilla Askew, this historical novel following William Steward Halsted and his wife is a “true-to-life love story that illuminates an intriguing woman’s life, the life of her brilliant physician husband, and the wretched secret they share.”
The Conversions by Harry Mathews
Dalkey Archive Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-630-4
According to Foreword Reviews, this novel is a “literary puzzle that questions the nature and meaning of the holy grail as a literary convention, a historical ritual, and the legitimizing force behind kingly power.”
A Complete Fiction by R. L. Maizes
Ig Publishing | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1632462114
According to Laurie Frankel, this novel is “timely and topical, brimming with flawed characters trying to be good, complex situations with no right answers, and tangled threads that only get knottier as you turn the pages.”
The Competition of Unfinished Stories by Sener Ozmen
Translated from the Kurmancî Kurdish by Nicholas Glastonbury
Sandorf Passage | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 9789533515342
In this novel set in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, “Sertac, a vehement atheist, teaches theology classes at an Islamic school as he attempts to complete the stories he starts writing.”
The Year of the Wind by Karina Pacheco Medrano
Translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem
Graywolf Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-365-0
In this novel, a Peruvian writer in Spain is “pulled back into her nation’s fraught history after a fleeting encounter with a woman who is a doppelgänger of Bárbara, a cousin lost to time.”
Across the Acheron by Monique Wittig
Translated from the French by David Le Vay with Margaret Crosland
Winter Editions | November 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-959708-17-9
In this novel originally published in 1985, Wittig “restages the journey through the circles of hell, limbo, and paradise from a lesbian feminist perspective.”
Come Again No More by David Wesley Williams
JackLeg Press | November 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1956907193
According to Bryan Denson, this novel is “so lyrical and lovingly drawn—and spit-take funny—that the ghost of William Faulkner might just throw rocks at his best work.”
The Last of Its Kind by Sibylle Grimbert
Translated from the French by Aleshia Jensen
Book*hug Press | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77166-955-9
In this historical novel, a “curious researcher pulls a single wounded bird from the water, unaware that he has recovered what will eventually be the last of its kind.”
The Crimson Bears by Tom La Farge
Tough Poets Press | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798218580230
This new, single-volume edition of two of La Farge’s novels, The Crimson Bears and A Hundred Doors, features a new introduction by Wendy Walker, La Farge’s wife and literary partner.
Dzanc Books | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-15-0
According to S. A. Cosby, in this crime novel Tromblay “has created a violent and wistful elegy to small-town America that cuts as sharp as an ice pick and goes twice as deep.”
Vine Leaves Press | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-178-7
In this novel, “Johnny Demos knows he must leave behind his close-knit family and their small-town Greek restaurant if he wants to pursue his dream of becoming an actor in New York.”
The Invisible Hand by Douglas Cole
Sea Crow Press | November 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961864-36-8
According to Ace Boggess, this novel features “a sequence of seemingly disparate stories that come together in subtleties and hard moments of brutal clarity.”
Vine Leaves Press | November 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-180-0
In this novel following an Australian nurse during World War II, “the death of a man she barely knew leaves a wound that refuses to heal, threatening to bind her to a life of loneliness.”
Humanimality by Rainer J. Hanshe
Contra Mundum Press | November 24, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-940625-77-5
This novel is “a hybrid monster of a book that interrogates humanity’s troubled relation with its animality, and so its relation to animals, the earth and, ultimately, the cosmos.”
Scattered Light by Martha Engber
Vine Leaves Press | November 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-182-4
In this novel, attorney Mary Donahue “discovers that to love is to risk learning who you really are and what happened to you.”
Vine Leaves Press | December 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-236-4
According to Sara Bolder, this novel “makes the case with passion, spirit and humor, for the full personhood of the elderly and disabled.”
So We Blush Less When the Phone Rings by Mark Wagstaff
Anvil Press | December 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77214-251-8
This novel imagines a future world “where differences hinge on whether we’re organic or customised, whether we’re physical creatures or a controlled visualisation.”
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
Dalkey Archive Press | December 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-466-9
In this novel, Stein “sets out to tell ‘a history of a family’s progress,’ radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships.”
Novellas
Neon Hemlock | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952086-92-2
According to Ann LeBlanc, Madden’s novella is “a powerful examination of questions of race, gender, militarism, and who gets to use your body, image, and soul when you’re strapped into a giant robot.”
Woman in the Abbey by Mike Maggio
Vine Leaves Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-129-9
In this novella, “a young woman, fleeing the clutches of an abusive father, stumbles upon an abandoned abbey on the edge of a haunted forest.”
The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas
Neon Hemlock | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952086-94-6
In this book that is “equal parts pulp caper and meta-textual academic text,” protagonist “Professor Laxman Yadav is dating Saviour, one of the world’s most famous superheroes, while also investigating possibly the most important archeological find of all time.”
Black Lawrence Press | March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781625571564
Hom’s novella “takes place during a Sunday breakfast shift as the homeless hero waits tables at a popular ‘Cash Only’ diner tucked in the Redwoods, frequented by growers, rock stars, Dreamers, tycoons, and tourists alike.”
Marisolandia by Michelle Cruz Gonzales
WTAW Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9877197-1-8
In this speculative novella, “the new Republic of California is forcing Marisol, a Mexicana woman, to marry a white man to create a homogenous race in the new nation.”
Creature Publishing | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951971-25-0
This debut novella “explores predatory family dynamics, the boundaries of bodies and home, and how individuals choose to participate in or push back against structures that would harm them.”
Postcards to Herself: A Prose Poetry Novella by Laura Stamps
Prolific Pulse Press | March 31, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-962374-37-8
This prose poetry novella is “about a woman, her love of Holly, her Yorkshire Terrier, and a very fun and interesting life.”
The Glass Garden by Jessica Lévai
Lanternfish Press | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781941360873
In this science fiction novella, “Dr. Therese Blake is a homebody archaeologist devoted to the history of planet Earth. But when her sister Lissy makes a stunning discovery near an abandoned colony on a distant exoplanet, the sisters team up to discover its secrets.”
Wizard’s Tower Press | May 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-913892-96-8
The first installment of Wiz Duos features two science fiction and fantasy novellas: The God Road by David Gullen and To Sail the Interstice by Ben Wright.
Wizard’s Tower Press | May 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-913892-98-2
The second installment of Wiz Duos features the novellas Song, Stone, Scale, Bone by Juliet Kemp and Take Me Home by E. M. Faulds.
The Bayrose Files by Diane Wald
Regal House Publishing | May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781646035953
According to Miriam Gershow, in Wald’s novella “what starts as a simple story of deception unspools into a tale of grief, love, and complicated regret.”
The Girl with the Black Lipstick by Mary Biddinger
Black Lawrence Press | July 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-161-8
In this novella set in late-90s Chicago, “creative writing graduate student Mary Van Pelt and her eccentric roommate navigate the collision between party life, domestic harmony, and academic ambition.”
The Clearing by Alexander Shalom Joseph
Middle Creek Publishing & Audio | September 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957483-35-1
This novella is a “poignant meditation on isolation, toxic masculinity, trauma, humanity’s fraught history of imposing on the land, and the disconnection from the natural world.”
A History Of Handthrown Walls by Adele Evershed
Unsolicited Press | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963115-56-7
This novella consists of “interconnected flash fiction pieces with the timeless presence of hand-built walls scattered across Connecticut.”
The Apoptotic Era by A. G. Valentine
Thirty West Publishing House | September 26, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9895422-9-1
In this debut novella “the page has turned on humanity’s utopian appetites, and a new chapter is underway—one of hunger turned inward; of collective anxiety, auto-consumption, and quantum mechanics run amok.”
Three Metamorphoses: Novellas in Verse & Prose by Amit Majmudar
Orison Books | October 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949039-62-7
This trio of novellas “recasts and transforms foundational stories from Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism in verse and poetic prose.”
Foofaraw Press | October 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798901110003
This book is a “mysterious and thrilling novella, with just a hint of science fiction, about a young police officer who makes his career solving three mysterious murders at Golden Park.”
Vampires at Sea by Lindsay Merbaum
Creature Publishing | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781951971229
According to Foreword Reviews, Merbaum’s book is a “carnal horror novella that parodies queer culture and tackles a failing relationship’s impact on a vampire’s sense of self.”
We Are Made of Scars and Starlight by Nicole Zelniker
Vine Leaves Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-173-2
Zelniker’s book is a “tender, heartbreaking novella about mental health, disability, and queer desire in the heart of the modern city.”
Young and Hungry by Bryan Kromm
Catalyst Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511345
This novella is a “modern parable of the triumphs and follies of parenthood, the motivations of becoming and being, and the wisdom of living a full spectrum life.”
SMALLTOWNNOVELLA by Ronald M. Schernikau
Translated from the German by Lucy Jones
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946604-41-5
“A previously-untranslated classic of the queer canon,” this novella “follows b, a teenaged, working-class communist who falls in love with leif, a popular jock.”
Skylighting by Charles Hansmann
Regal House Publishing | December 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036301
In this novella, narrator Nick Nacht “finds himself adrift, seeking emotional renewal among strangers in unfamiliar places” after his wife’s death.
Short Fiction Collections
North of Ordinary by John Rolfe Gardiner
Bellevue Literary Press | January 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-95427-632-1
The short stories in this collection “offer an intimate, revelatory look at our fractured society and pull us together through the power of art.”
Dispatches from the District Committee by Vladimir Sorokin
Translated from the Russian by Max Lawton
Dalkey Archive Press| January 21, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-517-8
This collection of short stories offers a “revelatory, offbeat portrait of Soviet life beyond the propaganda and state-sponsored realism.”
When We Were Hardcore by Linda Michel-Cassidy
EastOver Press | February 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958094-50-1
These short stories are “born of the mountain areas in the American Southwest, and they depict the lesser-known lives of characters who discover, reckon with, and often seek to escape the mostly rural landscapes that made them.”
To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone by Kathryn Kruse
JackLeg Press | February 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1956907124
This debut collection of short stories “spills over with people building and breaking idols to find love and survival where they can.”
The Eunuch’s Daughter & Stories by Khanh Ha
Blackwater Press | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9886158-8-0
According to Washington Writers’ Publishing House, this short story collection contains “extraordinary writing, interesting characters and a fascinating depiction of Vietnam’s history.”
We’re Gonna Get Through This Together by Z. Hanna
Modern Artist Press | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964403-00-7
In this debut collection, Hanna “writes incisively about race, class, gender, sexuality, art, and activism—exploring the forces that bring people together and drive them apart.”
Don’t Take This the Wrong Way by Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross
EastOver Press | March 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958094-56-3
According to Dana Diehl and Melissa Goodrich, the stories in this collection “are sharp-toothed, playful, trippy introspections on the mundane insanity of office-life, the gluey-soup of dating, the casual cruelty of childhood.”
There’s Nothing Left for You Here by Allegra Solomon
Four Way Books | March 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961897-44-1
The short stories in this collection are “joined by their keen attention to the lives of contemporary young women of color” and “feature an eclectic cast of characters who are as fascinatingly complex as they are deeply relatable.”
The Confines by Anu Kandikuppa
Veliz Books | March 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781949776188
The short stories in this debut collection “deliver us into the cultural expectations, hierarchies, and taboos that define and limit our lives, especially the lives of women.”
Stories from the Edge of the Sea by Andrew Lam
Red Hen Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63628-242-8
These short stories “explore love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California.”
Stories, Tales, and Fables by Marquis de Sade
Translated from the French by R J Dent
Contra Mundum Press | March 31, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-940625-72-0
The first English translation of Sade’s short works is “an introduction for those who are not yet familiar with the work of this controversial French literary innovator.”
Unsex Me Here by Aurora Mattia
Nightboat Books | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781643622705
According to Publishers Weekly, Mattia “dazzles with this genre-spanning collection of stories about queer and trans characters navigating desire and love.”
Realistic Fiction by Anton Solomonik
LittlePuss Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781736716885
According to Xtra, “Solomonik’s trans stories are not a plea for acceptance—they are bold and bizarre and tender and confrontational.”
I Love Shopping by Lauren Cook
Nightboat Books | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781643622866
This short fiction collection “invites its readers to inhabit a world just like ours, reflected through a big, benevolent funhouse mirror.”
I Have Not Considered Consequences by Sherrie Flick
Autumn House Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781637681046
This flash fiction collection “delves into the complexities of grief, desire, and a peculiar intersection between humans and bears.”
Yellow Chrysanthemum by Munmun Samanta
Prolific Pulse Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-962374-39-2
According to Nolcha Fox, this short story collection is a “treasure chest of joy and strength that springs from the neglect, abuse, betrayal, and invisibility of 20 women.”
Show Me Where the Hurt Is by Hayden Casey
Split/Lip Press | April 22, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952897-43-6
The stories in this collection are “about love and grief, anchored in brokenness—broken people, broken relationships, broken systems—and the obsessions and insecurities that prevent us from revealing ourselves to one another.”
The Sea Gives Up the Dead by Molly Olguín
Red Hen Press | April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781636282718
In this short story collection, “historical fiction, horror, and fantasy tangle together in a queer garden of love, grief, and longing.”
Beneath The Moon and Long Dead Stars by Daniel Wallace
Bull City Press | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949344-56-1
In Wallace’s flash fictions, “lives are altered in what appear to be minor moments: an unlatched lock, an old photo, a light left on too long.”
YesYes Books | May 27, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946303-05-9
The worlds created in Davis’s debut short fiction collection, set in the Pacific Northwest, “acknowledge the terror and seek the gifts of solitude, grief, and the unrelenting thirst for certainty within us all.”
The Lighthouse Keeper by Alex Haber
Gnashing Teeth Publishing | May 27, 2025
ISBN: 978-1966075042
“In a prose style that is simple, stark, yet enigmatic,” the stories in this collection “explore the space where the light becomes shadow in the American Midwest.”
Bodock: Stories by Robert Busby
Hub City Press | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9798885740517
According to Tom Franklin, Busby “has affixed his own postage stamp to the great and troubled state of Mississippi” in this collection of short stories.
Pete, the Photographer & Other Impressions by Marvin Cohen
Tough Poets Press | June 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798218678715
In this short fiction collection, “a perpetual-motion basketball player defies time, a living statue courts celebrity, an intergalactic cabbie dreams of cosmic fares, and an angelic mobster schemes his way through heaven.”
BOA Editions | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960145-49-9
This collection features “linked stories that indict the ultraconservative movement that emerged at the end of the Cold War and extends into present day.”
Destroy Me Gently Please by Max Talley
Serving House Books | June 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-947175-87-7
This short story collection follows “troubled drifters, middle-aged dreamers, unreliable narrators, and reliable procrastinators all hoping for a last shot at glory.”
Blood Work and Other Stories by Donald A. Carreira Ching
Bamboo Ridge Press | June 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-943756-13-1
The characters in these seventeen short stories “live in a Hawai‘i far removed from tourist postcards, navigating sorrow, displacement, and the weight of generational trauma.”
Inside the House Inside by Rosalind Goldsmith
Ronsdale Press | June 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781553807261
Each story in this collection is “linked by visceral imagery of the contemporary world, an intense, heartbreaking world, where lives are lost to exclusion.”
I Watched You from the Ocean Floor by Erin Cecilia Thomas
Modern Artist Press | July 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964403-02-1
This book is an “evocative debut story collection that explores the depths of grief, loss, and resilience.”
Woman of the Hour by Claire Polders
Vine Leaves Press | July 29, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-163-3
In this short fiction collection, “women play roles to find themselves, resist oblivion, break laws, swallow regrets, take revenge, follow their passions, and eat spiders.”
Graywolf Press | August 19, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-290-5
These short stories “spotlight the self-serving logic through which their characters struggle to make sense of, and take control of, the narrative of our time.”
Residents of the Deep by Marianne Villanueva
Unsolicited Press | August 19, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-956692-93-8
According to Luis H. Francia, in these short stories “we meet fantastical beings—by turns charming and nightmarish—who, when examined unsparingly, turn out to be versions of ourselves.”
On Earth as It Is in Heaven by Vishwas R. Gaitonde
Orison Books | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949039-60-3
According to David Heska Wanbli Weiden, the characters in these short stories “struggle to make sense of the customs and traditions of their new homes while also negotiating the passages of their personal and familial relationships.”
That Very Place by Mary Ann McGuigan
Unsolicited Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963115-46-8
According to Sonja Livingston, McGuigan “masterfully explores the tender space between connection and estrangement, the cost of words unspoken, and the reverberating legacy of parents who abandon and abuse their children” in this short story collection.
Four Way Books | September 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961897-52-6
In this collection of short stories, Mountford “invites readers with a balance of humor, sensuality, and compassion while spanning continents, offering intimate portraits of flawed characters caught in the crosshairs of personal and political upheavals.”
Four Way Books | September 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961897-60-1
Pourciau’s book is a “collection of brief yet meticulously elaborated stories that deconstruct daily living as his characters see it by diving beneath their skin and surveying the electric heat bristling below.”
Small Scale Sinners by Mahreen Sohail
A Public Space Books | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9859769-1-5
In her debut short story collection, Sohail asks “how—in the midst of grief or betrayal, against a backdrop of war, or even just workaday suffering—being good matters.”
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost by Edward Mullany
Publishing Genius Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-945028-72-4
“Across urban and rural landscapes, mundane routines and spiritual searching,” Mullany’s short story collection “captures the quiet moments and fleeting insights that outline our hyper self-conscious experiences.”
Earth & Earth-like Planets by Devaki D. Devi 
Abode Press | October 1, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9900598-7-0
This short story chapbook “hums with the steady pulse of Indian culture as diasporic youth create new worlds amid the weight of family expectations, shifting social norms, gender roles, and economic pressure.”
I Guess All We Have is Freedom by Genpei Akasegawa
Translated from the Japanese by Matthew Fargo
Kaya Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1885030726
“In spite of their suburban settings,” these short stories by Japanese avant-garde writer Akasegawa are “are more radical than the most cosmopolitan contemporary art.”
The Museum of Future Mistakes by James R. Gapinski
BOA Editions | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960145-86-4
In their collection of short stories, Gapinski “considers our physical relationship with our own bodies, how we process love and loss, and the fragility of identity amid moments of personal crisis.”
A Place in the World by Bill Gaythwaite
University of Pittsburgh Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780822948766
According to Manuel Muñoz, the stories in this collection are about “facing up to the ghosts of our mistakes and our fears, and how our secrets refuse to let us forget who we were and what we’ve done.”
Translated from the Norwegian by May-Brit Akerholt
Dalkey Archive Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781628976281
The stories in Poppy’s debut collection of fiction “explore moments of labyrinthine intimacy with a cold intensity that proves impossible to forget.”
Quantum Nightmares by Jose M Rodriguez
Catalyst Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511215
This collection of science fiction stories “contains the nuggets of bizarre psychological truth that help explain today’s divisive United States, where myth collides with belief and fact is hard to find.”
Call and Response: Stories of the Fantastic by Christopher Caldwell
Neon Hemlock | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-966503-14-9
According to Publishers Weekly, “Caldwell brings his all-Black, mostly queer protagonists to vivid life while exploring the collision of the natural and the supernatural” in this short story collection.
A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News by Cary Fagan
Book*hug Press | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781771669511
According to Deborah Willis, this short fiction collection “is for all of us who crave stories about interconnectedness, illuminating our attachments to each other and the more-than-human world.”
Caramelle & Carmilla by Jewelle Gomez and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Aunt Lute Books | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781951874094
This book contains both Le Fanu’s 1872 novella and Gomez’s Caramelle, which “follows two vampires who arrive at a way station on the Underground Railroad not to stalk their prey but to seek sanctuary.”
Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds by Christian Moody
Dzanc Books | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781938603372
This collection of short stories “delights in the absurd and dystopian, weaving in themes of climate change, surveillance, privacy, and technology that coalesce into a profound statement about the mysteries of the human experience.”
Unit 33: A Collection of Thriller Crime Short Stories by Dennis Dalton
Catalyst Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511307
In these nine stories, a private intelligence gathering team “serves as a catalyst for solving crimes related to the banking industry, often working with government intelligence or foreign spy agencies such as Mossad.”
Graywolf Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-361-2
Delsohn’s short stories portray “the joys and failures of community in a city and a time that has branded itself a radical queer utopia but proves much more complicated in reality.”
Vine Leaves Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 978-0-6454365-9-4
This short story collection “captures a vivid image of Jerusalem, past and present, through the eyes of its diverse inhabitants, specifically historical and contemporary migrant women artists.”
Rescue Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798988683919
In Jaffe’s short stories, “characters struggle to be perceived by others as they perceive themselves—as an authentic artist, a ‘good white person,’ a legitimate parent.”
The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe by Lauren D. Woods
Autumn House Press | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781637681091
In this collection of short stories, “childhood memories ripple through adult lives, and characters test the limits of their self-created realities.”
Other Shane Hintons by Shane Hinton
Burrow Press | October 31, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-941681-35-0
This collection of short stories “follows eight Shane Hintons (not including the author) through the forking paths of a life, where visceral Florida realism meets the surreal and the absurd.”
Are People Out There by Shane Kowalski
Future Tense Books | October 31, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9986256-1-9
Kowalski’s stories explore “the usual kinds of people and the lives, or double-lives, they lead: men who steal babies’ identities, women who become dogs to rich couples on the weekend, neighbors who build guillotines in their yards all summer.”
The Voice of Blood by Gabriela Rábago Palafox
Translated from the Spanish by M. Elizabeth Ginway and Enrique Muñoz-Mantas
University of Tampa Press | October 31, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-59732-223-2
In this short story collection, Rábago Palafox “reimagines gothic traditions through a feminist lens, using the vampire to show women as empowered rather than victimized.”
[Th]ings and [Th]oughts by Alla Gorbunova
Translated from the Russian by Elina Alter
Deep Vellum | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64605-403-9
According to Publishers Weekly, Gorbunova’s fairy tale-inspired short stories “evoke the absurdity of everyday life in post-Soviet Russia.”
Timber & Lụa by Lily Hoàng and Vi Khi Nào
Translated from the Vietnamese by Lily Hoàng and Vi Khi Nào
Red Hen Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63628-431-6
In these ten experimental short stories, Hoàng and Nào “graft the genetic material of one language (English) and the genetic material of another language (Vietnamese) to produce a new literary diasporic genre.”
Bitter Over Sweet by Melissa Llanes Brownlee
Santa Fe Writers Project | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951631-51-2
The short stories in this collection follow native Hawaiian women who are “living and struggling against abuse and despair in a world controlled by tourism’s long tail.”
Tales from Manila Ave. by Patrick Joseph Caoile
Sundress Publications | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951979-84-3
In Caoile’s debut short fiction collection, “tenants gather to swap meals and stories, workers strive to prove their worth, sons and daughters revisit their relationships with faith, patriotism, and their own parents.”
The Week of Colors by Elena Garro
Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
Two Lines Press | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949641-89-9
In this short story collection containing “the early roots of magical realism, feminist horror, and anticolonial speculative fiction,” Garro “highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color.”
Resonant Blue and Other Stories by Mary Vensel White
Type Eighteen Books | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 979-8992040579
This short story collection explores “how we can endure and overcome our personal histories, better understand our ancestral ones, and accept the unknown future ahead.”
The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories by Esther Karin Mngodo
Translated from the Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin
Hanging Loose Press | December 1, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9913377-5-5
“Whether depicting a world of spirits behind the proverbial curtain, a dystopian future in which the sun is about to expire, or a sweltering-hot present-day fish market,” this short fiction collection “pushes beyond allegory and didacticism into the rich ambiguity of lived experience.”
The Other Steve Schrader: New and Selected Writing by Steven Schrader
Hanging Loose Press | December 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798991337731
Schrader’s book of stories “offers a vivid memoir in vignettes that captures both the arc of his own life and the portrait of a shifting 20th century New York.”
Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin
YesYes Books | December 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946303-09-7
In this short fiction collection, “a ghost is passed across three generations of women as they navigate unspoken regrets and unfulfilled desires.”
Fiction Anthologies
Akashic Books | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-201-2
According to editor John Freeman, this short fiction anthology invites readers “into a variety of houses and apartments and spaces all over Sacramento, to imagine lives, not yours, or perhaps like yours, as told by some of the city’s most talented living writers.”
Unusual Fragments: Japanese Stories
Translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles, Brian Bergstrom, Margaret Mitsutani, Lucy North, and Philip Price
Two Lines Press | March 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949641-75-2
According to Alexandra Kleeman, these five short stories by Jeffrey Angles, Taeko Kono, Nobuko Takagi, Takako Takahashi, and Tomoko Yoshida “are each a little pocket universe of the eerie and uncanny, places in which to get deliciously lost.”
The Colors of April: Fiction on the Vietnam War’s Legacy 50 Years Later
Three Rooms Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-953103-57-4
Featuring Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Lam, Barbara Tran, Vi Khi Nao, and more, this anthology “speaks to the global Vietnamese experience: voices of both those who left and those who stayed, what was gained and lost” in the half century since the Vietnam War.
Dzanc Books | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-31-0
This short fiction anthology edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley is a “celebration of queer chaos from an all-queer author lineup featuring Myriam Gurba, Emily Austin, Alissa Nutting, and Francesca Ekwuyasi.”
Pelekinesis | July 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949790-98-6
This anthology edited by Meg Pokrass, Gary Fincke, and Dawn Raffel “provides recognition for outstanding literary stories of 400 words or fewer.”
Akashic Books | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-115-2
The stories in this anthology edited by Jan Karsten are “as diverse as the writers’ backgrounds, resulting in a varied depiction of Hamburg as a colorful hodgepodge of people inhabiting a lively city of millions.”
Agency 3: Novellas by Teresa Carmody, Kim Chinquee, and Allison Pitinii Davis
Baobab Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-936097-62-3
The three novellas in this collection each “describe the harrowing, soul-rattling actions and choices made by women in the pursuit of defining their lives.”
The Writer’s Workout | September 11, 2025
ISBN: 979-8264913877
The thirteenth volume of the Writer’s Games anthology series features twenty-six works of short fiction by Angela Benham, Alyssa Buchthal, Aalisha Green, j. l. hardt, and more.
That’s How It Works: 30 Years of Fiction from Hub City Press
Hub City Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-88574-064-7
Edited by Katherine Webb-Hehn, this anthology of fiction is “both a celebration of three decades of publishing from the margins and a testament to the transformative power of community in creating literature.”
An Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color
EastOver Press | December 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958094-67-9
The stories in this anthology edited by Deesha Philyaw “deftly mine the psychological landscape of their characters and highlight the complicated experiences of those living in the rural parts of the US.”
