"Open Throat is a blinding spotlight beam of a book that I was completely unable and unwilling to put down. I am not convinced Henry Hoke isn’t a mountain lion."

"A thoroughly entertaining, mean-as-a-snake modern Western, Sing Her Down hits like a shotgun blast."

“The master writer puts on his maestro cap to give us memoir, media criticism, meditation, travelogue, history lesson, and so much more, in a style and pacing with all the brilliant nuances and hues that Latinos exemplify.”

"This book will be the talk of the genre. If you read one thriller this year, read this one."

"Weird and exhilarating and funny and sad and disturbing and scary and poignant and righteous."

"From page one, A Country You Can Leave is a riveting, exasperating, and deeply heartbreaking tale of mother-daughter strife and resilience. Asale Angel-Ajani is an explosive talent."

"Hemonites rejoice! The master is back and he has forged a remarkable tale of love and war alongside his own 20th Century Silk Road. From Sarajevo to Shanghai, every sentence, every paragraph is a sensuous and often hilarious delight. Not a Hemonite yet? I envy you...”

“If Geek Love was a misfit anthem, Toad is a misfit ballad . . . chaotic, intimate and unruly.”

"I loved this novel’s brain and heart, its hidden traps, sheer propulsion, ingenious world-building and the purity of its commitment to luminous ideas."

“It will radicalize you.”

“Shaped from foreboding, almost neobiblical prose, 40 is a fast-paced vision of a shattered American future: a place of violent factions, barbaric pageantry, remote-control rain, and angels made real. Alan Heathcock has created a speculative thriller that glitters...”

"I tore through this one like a California wildfire―an appropriate comparison, given the novel’s setting in a high-end hotel beset by fires all around. As the hotel descends into a Roman-style bacchanalia, protestors fill the streets, smoke fills the skies, and...”

"Everything I Need I Get from You will fascinate aficionados, but even for someone who’s never so much as logged on, it makes a rich and heartfelt explainer on the feelings and phenomena that thrive on the internet." 

“The witty, improbably propulsive rom-com you didn't know you were waiting for - and just the sparkling, slightly sinister love letter to New York City that New York City deserves. An effervescent delight.”

"There’s no such thing as a book you can’t put down, but this one was close."

"Familial ties and the scars of war are exquisitely examined in this luminous debut . . . A nuanced mediation on love, identity, and belonging. This story of survival radiates with resilience and hope."

"These are marvelously unpredictable stories, anchored by Fernando A. Flores’s deadpan prose and his surefooted navigation of those overlapping territories, the real and the fantastic, where so much of the best contemporary fiction now lives." 

"A work of evil genius that put me in a literal trance and didn't relinquish me until the final page. I loved every insidious second.”

“The greatest hip-hop producer of all time is getting the love and care his legacy deserves. Dilla Time is a master class.”

"A searing and unforgettable work of art. The Death of My Father the Pope is a landmark in the history of Latinx literature in the United States. This is the book we’ve been waiting for."

“As original as it is affecting. It is a meditation on grief and on what it means to belong, and there were scenes that left me genuinely creeped out, unsettled, and shaken. An existentially frightening book.”

"At turns wistful and playful, a novel of appreciation for computers' dust and guts. Like its heroine, LaserWriter II is charming, inventive, and weirdly magnetic."

“A book of extraordinary scope and extraordinary power.”

"How to Wrestle a Girl is a work of stunning grace and rhythm. In these stories Venita Blackburn reminds us she is a writer unlike any other, her stories propelled by voice and wit and harsh beauty."

"A book as humane, generous and brave as its heroines, Breathing Fire is the journalism we need now, an urgent story from our carceral front lines given to us by a writer brilliantly alert to vulnerability and strength."

“An engrossing study of the ways in which quarantines have changed social, emotional, and political life over hundreds of years, and a fascinating exploration of the perennial roles of fear, conspiracy theories, greed, and prejudice... Perfect for our time.”

[The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic] is by turns loose and warm and finicky and outraged, and its best pieces are more observant than 94 percent of the first novels that have come my way this year. 

"With a novelist's eye and a searching curiosity, Rosecrans Baldwin has created a sprawling work that explores a place and its people, as well as culture, history, geography and ecology. A feat of imagination that fed my mind, heart and soul."

"If The Handmaid’s Tale and the Marvel Cinematic Universe had a baby, the result would probably look something like this feminist sci-fi thriller."

"If Annie Dillard wrote about data, it might sound something like this. In turns insightful, hilarious, techy and humane, Living in Data is an essential book for anyone who’s wondering how exactly we got into this data mess, and thinking about how we might dig...”

“A tremendous, riveting work, sinking long, deep roots into the nightmare soil of American history in order to grow and feed something new.”

"Nathaniel Rich’s electric Second Nature . . . is a tour de force examining the influence humans exert on the world . . . The reading experience is by turns demoralizing and galvanizing, like most worthwhile things."

"Model Citizen wrecked me and then, somehow, put me back together. San Francisco was lucky to have a chronicler this generous.”

"A wonderful, immersive debut novel . . . in [Thomas] Grattan’s hands, life’s joys are magnetic." 

"Talib Kweli is a hip hop mirror ball, distributing light everywhere. For years, he's seen things, heard things—worldwide. It bodes the reader well to journey his mind and experiences in this book"

Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a symphony of sex, trouble and wisdom—as if the composer had sex with each member of the orchestra by way of getting it right. An electric prismatic genre-defying punk literary flight, Purnell is twirling here— I loved every page....”

 "Thornton has skillfully created a hyper-detailed setting of the Nebraska plains, a landscape of empty farmhouses lined with the windbreak, described right down to the native plants . . . A gripping mixture of cop procedural and a psychological story of...”

“Gripping, meticulously researched, and smartly plotted, I devoured this brilliant novel over the course of a weekend.”

“If you’re a fan of UFOs and insane heat, this is your book.”

"Absolutely brilliant . . . Each character is complex and beautifully drawn, and the ending was genuinely surprising. There’s art, theft, tight family bonds, and intricate plotting—it’s really got everything."

"Of the four translations I’ve read, Headley’s is the most readable and engaging. She combines a modern poetry style with some of the hallmarks of Old English poetry, and the words practically sing off the page . . . Headley’s translation shows why it’s vital to...”

"A stunning, dark novel about who women want to be and the reality of who they are.”

“dayliGht has a singular, potent, and persistent swagger—like if KRS-One had written Stone Butch Blues. In this tear-jerkingly matter-of-fact collection, Roya Marsh doesn’t propose an escape of past traumas but rather, sits in the cut, ponders, and comes back with...”

"[A] wide-ranging, zany collection that somehow combines the otherworldliness of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, the menacing irony of Shirley Jackson and the cold feminist fury of Margaret Atwood. Love the book or not, there’s no denying that Jemc has a gift for...”

“Perfectly observant down to the smallest details, this account of drinking, sobriety, and starting (and then restarting) a manageable life is one of those books that is deeply serious, witty, and wonderfully compelling. Nothing Good Can Come from This seems to...”

"Nicola Griffith is a brilliant creator of fierce female protagonists. With So Lucky, she fires a gritty, scary, wrathful, sometimes blisteringly funny broadside at the monsters of ableist culture."

"It’s been a long wait for Joshua Wheeler’s first book, but it would have been worth the wait even if we’d had to wait twice as long. Full of fine lines mined by a still-young writer, Acid West is worth its weight in gold."

"This is a book that’s as crazy and unpredictable as an urban uprising; it’s a phantasmagoric journey, written in precise and haunting prose, through a wounded and defiant city called Los Angeles."

"In the masterful and rueful Whiskey, the sentences and dialogue burn like 100 proof shots of the novel’s namesake: smoky, sharp, and chased with black humor."

“VanderMeer’s apocalyptic vision, with its mix of absurdity, horror, and grace, can’t be mistaken for that of anyone else."

"A sort of American Psycho from the prostitute’s point of view, a damning, often hilarious account of toxic masculinity and Wall Street money culture."

“A wild, geeky, flour-dusted ride through the oddball food and techie communities of San Francisco . . . A winning story that—like its namesake bread—carries a satisfying tang.”

Life in Code is a consummate insider's take, rich with local color and anecdotes . . . Ullman has a pure passion for computing that doesn't stop her from recognizing all the ways it can isolate and intimidate . . . Like all great writers, she finds the universal in...”