[Borne] insists that to live in an age of gods and sorcerers is to know that you, a mere person, might be crushed by indifferent forces at a moment’s notice, then quickly forgotten. And that the best thing about human nature might just be its unwillingness to surrender to the worst side of itself.
”Laura Miller, New Yorker
on Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
A. G. Lombardo's wildly entertaining debut reimagines the 1965 Watts Riots as an Homeric journey through rioting cops, burning streets, CIA conspiracies and the potentially fatal semiotics of race and oppression in America. Along the way, we also run into Godzilla, Elijah Muhammad, the greatest taggers in the history of Los Angeles freeway art and a deadly fortune cookie war.
”Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill
Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a completely riveting world; when I looked up from its pages, regular life seemed boring and safe and modern like one big iPhone. This book captures not just a lost New York but a whole lost way of life.
”Miranda July
on Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin
Crosley is a literary addiction. There is no substitute. She is curious. She is smart. She is hilarious and edgy and generous and impossible to stop reading.
”Heidi Julavits, author of The Folded Clock
[Ullman is] a strong woman standing up to, and facing down, ‘obsolescence’ in two different, particularly unforgiving worlds—modern technology and modern society.
”J. D. Biersdorfer, The New York Times Book Review
on Life in Code by Ellen Ullman
Rich is a talent with a full head of steam, and he possesses that quality I admire most in any novelist—a mind for details that is equal parts percipient and original . . . His authorial vision is both a delight and a terror to behold.
”Maxwell George, Oxford American
on King Zeno by Nathaniel Rich
A MOODY YARN THAT CANNILY MERGES PUNK-ROCK WORLD WEARINESS AND REAL-WORLD CRIMINALITY.
”Kirkus Reviews on Safe by Ryan Gattis
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
on Whiskey by Bruce Holbert
A brilliant, unflinching account . . . Singular and powerfully strange . . . It is hard to imagine a more insightful account of mass grief and its terrible processes. This book is a future classic of disaster journalism, up there with John Hersey’s Hiroshima.
”Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
on Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
Fucking incredible. Hamilton has created both an unsparing psychological portrait of a generation—a generation that could just about see a new world through the tear gas—and a poetic, searing depiction of a revolution betrayed.
”Molly Crabapple on The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton
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
on Ultraluminous by Katherine Faw
ROBIN SLOAN TAKES READERS ON A WILDLY GEEKY, FLOUR-DUSTED RIDE THROUGH THE STRANGE HIERARCHIES OF THE BAY AREA FOOD AND TECHIE COMMUNITIES IN HIS SECOND NOVEL, SOURDOUGH.
”Shelf Awareness on Sourdough by Robin Sloan
An addictive dive into dangerous, extreme obsession. A must-read.
”Julia Crouch, author of Her Husband's Lover