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This Thing Between Us
Gus Moreno, 2021
“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.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song

How to Wrestle a Girl
Venita Blackburn, 2021

The Death of My Father the Pope
Obed Silva, 2021

Breathing Fire
Jaime Lowe, 2021
EMILY BAZELON, author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration“In recent years, women inmates have joined the army of prison labor that California relies upon to fight its wildfires, whether defending the Sequoias or celebrity homes on the Malibu Coast. It is dangerous, relentless work that ultimately depends upon the arduous personal transformations that create unity and fighting spirit within each fire crew. Against the background of recent megafires, Lowe chronicles the transcendent moments of triumph and tragedy that stir ambitions of a new life, but then recounts the systemic cruelty that undermines every hope of translating their new skills and hard-won self-confidence into civilian careers. Lionesses betrayed.”—MIKE DAVIS, author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear

Until Proven Safe
Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, 2021
LAURIE GARRETT, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
Jessica Hopper; Foreword by Samantha Irby, 2021
[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.
Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Everything Now
Rosecrans Baldwin, 2021
"Los Angeles invites extreme forms of correspondence, love letters and hate mail, and Rosecrans Baldwin’s Everything Now is a lush amalgam of both. In beautiful and concise prose, he maps a sun-drenched geography that we love to hate and hate to love. With this...”
MYRIAM GURBA, author of Mean

Girl One
Sara Flannery Murphy, 2021

Living in Data
Jer Thorp, 2021
"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...”
Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack

Sorrowland
Rivers Solomon, 2021
Sorrowland is a wonderland of fantastical and frightening, magical and real, in a world refreshingly unlike ours, yet scarily the same. At the center of this world and leaping off the page is Vern: unstoppable, unforgettable, and unlike anyone you have ever seen...”
Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Hummingbird Salamander
Jeff VanderMeer, 2021
Emily St. John Mandel

The Book of Darryl
The Goggles, 2021

Second Nature
Nathaniel Rich, 2021
"[A] vividly reported survey . . . Frightening but with an undercurrent of humor, Rich's study is packed with moving insight."
Publishers Weekly

Model Citizen
Joshua Mohr, 2021
Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country “No one anywhere writes into the gap between grit and grace better than Joshua Mohr. Model Citizen dives deep into the crucible of addiction and recovery and then breathes life back into us all. How thrilling to encounter a story in which I can feel both named as well as loved alongside a narrator who I respect and admire for diving down into the depths and bringing something back for the rest of us. A ride or die book. This book changed my life.”—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge

The Recent East
Thomas Grattan, 2021
"I fell in love with The Recent East, which is absolutely spellbinding. Thomas Grattan’s writing on family, displacement, and queerness is so well wrought, intimate, and mesmerizing. This is an exquisite and profound novel. I will be pushing it in the hands of...”
Etaf Rum, New York Times-best selling author of A Woman is No Man

The Blizzard Party
, 2021
"[A] brilliant debut novel . . . Livings calls to mind the work of Michael Chabon as he brings insight into the way events and circumstances shape his characters' lives. This is one to savor."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Vibrate Higher
Talib Kweli, 2021
Common

100 Boyfriends
Brontez Purnell, 2021
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....”
Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

Pickard County Atlas
Chris Harding Thornton, 2021
Tana French, author of The Searcher "A remarkable achievement. Chris Harding Thornton reveals the soul of a region and a people haunted by the past and with only desperate hopes for the future. On every page is a detail so authentic, or an image so vivid that readers will want to pause in appreciation. An amazing debut from an author who knows her little postage stamp of Nebraska soil as well as Faulkner knew Yoknapatawpha county."

The System
Ryan Gattis, 2020

Desert Oracle
Ken Layne, 2020
“If you’re a fan of UFOs and insane heat, this is your book.”
- Kirkus Reviews, Booklist

Ambergris
Jeff VanderMeer, 2020
“Somewhere at the intersection of pulp and surrealism, drawing on the very best of both traditions, is Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris. Unsettling, erudite, and shot through with unexpected humor...Ambergris is one of my favourite haunts in fiction”
China Mieville on City of Saints and Madmen

Prefecture D
Hideo Yokoyama; Translated from the Japanese by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies, 2020

The Nightworkers
, 2020
"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."
—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads

Beowulf
Maria Dahvana Headley, 2020
"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...”
—Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed

The Last Great Road Bum
Héctor Tobar, 2020
“[A] hybrid narrative of travel, rebellion, swagger, restlessness and indignation . . . An eloquent epitaph.”
—Paul Theroux, The New York Times Book Review

Imperfect Women
, 2020
"A stunning, dark novel about who women want to be and the reality of who they are.”
—Samantha Downing, author of His Lovely Wife

Ghost Hardware
Tim Maughan, 2020

Take Me Apart
Sara Sligar, 2020
Araminta Hall, author of Our Kind of Cruelty

The Dominant Animal
Kathryn Scanlan, 2020
Gary Lutz, author of Stories in the Worst Way

dayliGht
Roya Marsh, 2020
JOSÉ OLIVAREZ, author of the PEN/Jean Stein Award–nominated poetry collection Citizen Illegal

Little America
Epic; Foreword by Kumail Nanjiani, 2020

Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Kawai Strong Washburn, 2020
Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters

Lurking
Joanne McNeil, 2020
WARREN ELLIS, author of Transmetropolitan

The Boatman's Daughter
Andy Davidson, 2020
Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts

Uncanny Valley
Anna Wiener, 2020
Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Dead Astronauts
Jeff VanderMeer, 2019
Kirkus (starred review)

User Friendly
Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant, 2019
Alexis Madrigal, author of Powering the Dream

Dictionary of the Undoing
John Freeman; Afterword by Valeria Luiselli, 2019
Valeria Luiselli

The Worst Kind of Want
Liska Jacobs, 2019
Janet Fitch, author of Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

False Bingo
Jac Jemc, 2019
as surreal as they are scary

High School
Sara Quin and Tegan Quin, 2019
Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review

Tinfoil Butterfly
Rachel Eve Moulton, 2019
Araminta Hall, author of Our Kind of Cruelty

This Is Not a T-Shirt
Bobby Hundreds, 2019
Ronnie Fieg, founder of KITH

My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You
Aleksandar Hemon, 2019
Kirkus Reviews

Aug 9-Fog
Kathryn Scanlan, 2019

Tears of the Trufflepig
Fernando A. Flores, 2019
Francisco Goldman, author of The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle

Losing Earth
Nathaniel Rich, 2019
Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Infinite Detail
Tim Maughan, 2019
Warren Ellis, author of Normal

In Our Mad and Furious City
Guy Gunaratne, 2018
Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

Seventeen
Hideo Yokoyama; Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, 2018
Publishers Weekly

The Best Bad Things
Katrina Carrasco, 2018
Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham

The Mamba Mentality
Kobe Bryant, 2018
Los Angeles Times

The Bus on Thursday
Shirley Barrett, 2018
Jennifer McMahon, author of The Winter People

CoDex 1962
Sjón; Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb, 2018
Booklist

The Golden State
Lydia Kiesling, 2018
Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Swamplandia!

Nothing Good Can Come from This
Kristi Coulter, 2018
“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...”
Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

The Mere Wife
Maria Dahvana Headley, 2018
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

So Lucky
Nicola Griffith, 2018
"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."
Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife

Our Kind of Cruelty
Araminta Hall, 2018
Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

Acid West
Joshua Wheeler, 2018
"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."
Geoff Dyer

Look Alive Out There
Sloane Crosley, 2018
David Sedaris

Whiskey
Bruce Holbert, 2018
"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."
Whitney Terrell, author of The Good Lieutenant

Graffiti Palace
A. G. Lombardo, 2018
"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."
Héctor Tobar, author of Barbarian Nurseries and Deep Down Dark

The Strange Bird
Jeff VanderMeer, 2018
“VanderMeer’s apocalyptic vision, with its mix of absurdity, horror, and grace, can’t be mistaken for that of anyone else."
Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer, 2018
Matt Bell, author of A Tree Or a Person Or a Wall

King Zeno
Nathaniel Rich, 2018
Cathleen Schine, The New York Review of Books

Ultraluminous
Katherine Faw, 2017
"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."
Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker

Catalina
Liska Jacobs, 2017
Kirkus

Ghosts of the Tsunami
Richard Lloyd Parry, 2017
Rachel Cooke, The Guardian

Kung Fu High School
Ryan Gattis, 2017
Publishers Weekly

Sourdough
Robin Sloan, 2017
“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.”
Shelf Awareness

Life in Code
Ellen Ullman, 2017
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...”
Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Safe
Ryan Gattis, 2017
Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

Arbitrary Stupid Goal
Tamara Shopsin, 2017
Miranda July

The City Always Wins
Omar Robert Hamilton, 2017
Molly Crabapple

The Last Kid Left
Rosecrans Baldwin, 2017
Karen Ann Cullotta, BookPage
