Isabel Banta’s debut novel redefines the narratives of some of the most famous pop icons of the ‘90s and 2000s. It reimagines the superstars we idolized and hated, oversexualized and underestimated, and gives them the fresh, multifaceted story they deserve.
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THE DEADING
Under The Dome by way of The Last of Us, as told around a beach bonfire with Stephen Graham Jones, Nicholas Belardes’s debut novel is an eco-horror book for our modern day. In a small, seaside town, what starts as a simple social media phenomenon gives way to a horrifying truth. People are not just, “deading,” aka taking disturbing pretend photos of their corpses: they are actually dying and returning. . . different with an agenda all their own. As the surrounding wildlife is strangely transformed by an unnatural contagion and the town comes under quarantine, those few who have not been infected and changed must find a way to survive, escape, or die trying. At points claustrophobic and haunting, soulful and melancholic, The Deading lyrically explores the disintegration of society, the horror of survival and adaptation, and the unexpected solace found through connections in nature and between humans.
HEADSHOT
An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition.
A PAIR OF WINGS
A riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation, and found freedom in the air. A few years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields when an airplane flew right over their heads. Without even thinking, she spread her arms out and pretended she was flying. She knew there was freedom in those wings. The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the great migration, moving to Chicago as a single woman. But in 1920, no one in the U.S. will train a Black woman to fly, so 26-year-old Bessie learns to speak French and bets it all on an epic journey to Europe as she begins a quest to defy the odds and gravity itself. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, Bessie is molded by battle-hardened French and German combat pilots, who teach her death-defying stunts. Bessie’s signature majestic loops, spiky barrel rolls, and hairpin turns, just like her hardscrabble journey, are spellbinding. While she finds there is no prejudice in the air, Bessie must wrestle with many challenges: She nearly dies in a plane crash, one of her brothers seems to be crumbling under the weight of Jim Crow, and as she grapples with tough truths about Binga, Bessie begins to wonder if the freedom she finds is the air means she must otherwise fly solo.
THE EYES ARE THE BEST PART
My Sister, The Serial Killer meets Crying in H-Mart in this debut psychological horror novel by Korean-American author, Monika Kim. Ji-Won’s life falls apart in the wake of her Appa’s affair and subsequent departure from the family. When the obnoxious, womanizing George enters her life, courting her Umma and pushing into the family, Ji-Won begins to dream of eyes, brilliant blue eyes, eyes just like his. And along with those eyes, a terrible hunger. A brilliantly inventive, subversively feminist novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
(Putnam)
SUMMARY
A propulsive and piercing debut, set ten years before the events of Shakespeare’s historic play, about the ambition, power, and fate that define one of literature’s most notorious figures: Lady Macbeth.
Scotland, the 11th Century. Born in a noble household and granddaughter of a forgotten Scottish king, a young girl carries the guilt of her mother’s death and the weight of an unknowable prophecy. When she is married, at fifteen, to the Mormaer of Moray, she experiences firsthand the violence of a sadistic husband and a kingdom constantly at war. To survive with her young son in a superstitious realm, she must rely on her own cunning and wit, especially when her husband’s downfall inadvertently sets them free.
Suspicious of the dark devices that may have led to his father’s death, her son watches as his mother falls in love with the enigmatic thane Macbeth. Now a woman of stature, Lady Macbeth confronts a world of masculine power and secures the protection of her family. But the coronation of King Duncan and the political maneuvering of her cousin Macduff set her on a tragic course, one where her own success might mean embracing the very curse that haunts her and risking the child she loves.
HOW TO SOLVE YOUR OWN MURDER
For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, How To Solve Your Own Murder is an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate… Now it’s up to her great-niece to catch the killer.
FREEDOM IS A FEAST
In the tradition of Isabel Allende’s career-launching debut, The House of the Spirits, a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause—and receives a late-life chance at redemption: “a tour de force” from “the new master” (Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene).
Venezuela, 1964. Stanislavo, a zealous young man whose vision is clouded by his high ideals, turns his back on his family and privilege to join an underground communist movement. During his first mission, Stanislavo meets Emiliana, a fellow revolutionary. Though it seems to be love at first sight, their budding romance is cut short by a single mistake with disastrous consequences.
Forty years later, the landscape of Venezuelan politics is drastically changed, as well as the trajectories of Stanislavo’s and Emiliana’s lives. When a young boy is accidentally shot on the eve of President Chavez’s re-election, Stanislavo is forced to confront his past missteps and the ways those actions have ricocheted into the present. With epic scope and unflinching intimacy, Freedom is a Feast is a story about sticking to one’s beliefs even at the expense of pain and chaos in one’s personal life, about how the generations below us can suffer for our misdeeds, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.
IF THE TIDE TURNS
Set during the Golden Age of Pirates and the shadowy aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials, Rachel Rueckert’s vivid literary debut is an alchemical blend of high-seas adventure, star-crossed longing, the captivating real life of pirate Sam Bellamy, and timeless questions about social justice and freedom, stirred into the emotionally satisfying tale of a young woman’s determination to charter her own course . . .
1715, Eastham, Massachusetts: As the daughter of a wealthy family, Maria Brown has a secure future mapped out for her, yet it is not the future she wants. Young, headstrong, and restless, Maria has no desire to marry the aging, mean-spirited John Hallett, regardless of his fortune and her parents’ wishes. As for what Maria does want—only one person has ever asked her that question.
Samuel Bellamy, an orphaned sailor searching for work, meets Maria by chance, enthralling her with talk of far-flung places and blasphemous ideals. But neither is free from the social order into which they were born. When Sam is banished from Maria’s parents’ home after asking for her hand, he vows to return a wealthy man, and Maria promises to keep the faith until then.
Sam is drawn into piracy and discovers a brotherhood more equal and fulfilling than any on land, despite its dangers. Beguiled by the chance to both fight for justice and make a fortune to bring home to Maria, Sam is torn between duty to his crew and his desire to return. Maria is determined to stay strong in her conviction in Sam, but as rumors swirl and her position in Eastham turns perilous, Maria is forced into an impossible decision—
If The Tide Turns strips away kitschy, whitewashed portrayals of pirates and Colonial America while yanking Maria from the shadow of Sam Bellamy’s famed history to give her voice and agency. Its meticulously researched, authentic historical details fully bring the past into the present, as do the questions it demands we confront: How do we support—or suppress—women’s intuition? What does freedom mean? How rigid is economic mobility in reality? What does it look like to stand up to oppression? Is change really possible? Where does treasure truly lie for us at the end of the day?
THE SWITCH
Two couples. One twisted game of love and obsession. A dark domestic thriller about the dangerous secrets that come to light when a wild fantasy turns sinister. . .