Ship of fools: Will Aitken skewers late-capitalism and upper-class pretension in The Swells
With not one but two pirate incursions, a mutiny, and other onboard shenanigans, the novel offers a fast, noisy narrative.
Where I’m calling from: Dimitri Nasrallah mines the immigrant experience for his new novel, Hotline
Set in Montreal during the 1980s, the novel outlines the full range of the immigrant experience, from heartache to hope.
Debut novel from Camilla Grudova sold to Atlantic
Grudova’s previous collection of short fiction was delightfully strange; the new novel appears to continue in this vein.
The death, rebirth, and afterlife of the author in Naben Ruthnum’s A Hero of Our Time
In his debut literary novel under his own name, Ruthnum provides a slippery, serpentine narrative that calls into question notions of identity and narrative stability.
The pathology of authenticity: Percival Everett’s satire of stereotypical Black masculinity
Everett’s novel is about a Black intellectual who finds commercial success by writing a pandering, parodic work that gets taken at face value.
Home is where the hellfire is: Chuck Wendig and Adam L.G. Nevill provide two stories of new homes that prove anything but homey
Neither of the houses in these two books is haunted in the traditional sense; the evil comes from the people and environs that surround them.
The things we carry: Michelle Berry examines the confluence of personal and geopolitical trauma in Everything Turns Away
The risk in writing a domestic thriller with 9/11 as backdrop is that the geopolitical material comes off as a gimmick rather than an integral story element.
Nic Brewer’s debut novel uses body horror as a means of interrogating the artistic process
The book uses Grand Guignol techniques to literalize the process of tearing oneself open in the act of artistic creation.
The Horror Show: James Han Mattson’s Reprieve is set in a full-contact haunted house
What could possibly go wrong?
The Horror Show: Stephen Graham Jones returns to his slasher-film inspiration with the nostalgia saturated novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw
The author returns to the slasher film saturated ground he has trod before to provide a loving homage that leans a bit too heavily on insider knowledge of the genre.