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 Under the RadarDecember 2025 |
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Beings
by Ilana Masad
From the celebrated author of All My Mother's Lovers, a new novel based on true events asks whether extraterrestrial life might be what ties us to one another, to history, and to reality itself.
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The Door on the Sea
by Caskey Russell
When Elåan trapped a salmon-stealing raven in his cupboard, he never expected it would hold the key to saving his people from the shapeshifting Koosh invaders plaguing their shores. In exchange for its freedom, the raven offers a secret that can save Elåan's home: the Koosh have lost one of their most powerful weapons, and only the raven knows where it is. Elåan is tasked with captaining a canoe crewed by an unlikely team including a human bear-cousin, a massive wolf, and the endlessly vulgar raven. To retrieve the weapon, they will face stormy seas, cannibal giants and a changing world. But Elåan is a storyteller, not a warrior. As their world continues to fall to the Koosh, and alliances are challenged and broken, Elåan must choose his role in his own epic story--
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Intemperance
by Sonora Jha
In this follow-up to the critically-acclaimed The Laughter-winner of the Washington State Book Award-a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections-- Provided by publisher.
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The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore
by Anika Fajardo
In the span of a year, Dolores Moore has become a thirty-five-year-old orphan. After the funeral of the last living member of her family, Dorrie has never felt more lost and alone. That is, except for a Greek chorus of deceased relatives whose voices follow her around giving unsolicited advice and opinions. And they're only amplifying Dorrie's doubts about keeping the deathbed promise she made to return to her birthplace in Colombia. Fresh off a breakup with her long-term boyfriend, laid off from her job as a cartographer, and facing a daunting inheritance of her mothers' aging Minneapolis Victorian and two orange tabbies, how can she possibly leave the country now? But when an old flame offers to housesit, the chorus agrees that there's no room for excuses. Armed with only a scrap of a handdrawn map, Dorrie sets off to find out where--and who--she came from--
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Minor Black Figures
by Brandon Taylor
New York simmers with heat and unrest as Wyeth, a painter, finds himself at an impasse in his own work. After attending a dubious show put on by a collective of careerist artists, he retreats to a bar in the West Village where he meets Keating, a former seminarian. Over the long summer, as the two get to know each another, they talk and argue about God, sex, and art. Meanwhile, at his job working for an art restorer, Wyeth begins to investigate the life and career of a forgotten, minor black artist. His search yields potential answers to questions that Wyeth is only now beginning to ask about what it means to be a black artist making black art amid the mess and beauty of life itself--
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Saltcrop
by Yume Kitasei
In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother. But then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find--and save--her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered. But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister--or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.--
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Sympathy Tower Tokyo
by Rie Qudan
In the Japan of the future, criminals are considered victims of their environment. A grand skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo is planned to house lawbreakers in compassionate comfort--Sympathy Tower Tokyo. The architect, who grapples with memories of a crime that she experienced when she was younger, turns to an AI chatbot for assistance when she realizes that she may inherently disagree with the values of the project.
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This Is the Only Kingdom
by Jaquira Díaz
When Maricarmen meets Rey el Cantante, beloved small-time Robin Hood and local musician on the rise, she begins to envision a life beyond the tight-knit community of el Caserâio, Puerto Rico - beyond cleaning houses, beyond waiting tables, beyond the constant tug of war between the street hustlers and los camarones. But breaking free proves more difficult than she imagined, and she soon finds herself struggling to make a home for herself, for Rey, his young brother Tito, and eventually, their daughter Nena. Until one fateful day changes everything. Fifteen years later, Maricarmen and Nena find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation as the community that once rallied to support Rey turns against them. Now Nena, a teenager haunted by loss and betrayal and exploring her sexual identity, must learn to fight for herself and her family in a world not always welcoming--
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The Wax Child
by Olga Ravn
An astounding, haunting tale of accused witches--a book of sorcery itself--from the celebrated author of The Employees and My Work
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What a Time to Be Alive
by Jade Chang
A deeply moving and often hilarious novel following a woman who becomes an internet folk hero in the most unexpected way, catapulting her into fame and influence just as she's finally beginning to reckon with her complicated pastLola Treasure Gold can't figure out her life. She's broke, unemployed, and back in her childhood home, a crumbling cottage in the Hollywood Hills. Worse--unspeakably worse--one of her closest friends has just died. So nobody is more surprised than Lola when a jackpot falls in her lap: she stars in a viral video, opening a surprising path for her to become a self-help guru.With the encouragement of her other best friend, Celi--still alive, thank god--Lola embraces the public interest in her perceived message. But is she a scammer or a sage? Just as Lola is telling others to be their own guiding lights, she can't seem to find hers: she's grieving; she's accused of using the notoriety of her friend's death to fuel her rise; and she's full of questions about the fate of her mother, who came to America pregnant, fleeing China's one-child policy, got deported when Lola was eight, and now has totally disappeared.Driven by an exuberant, searching spirit, Jade Chang's kaleidoscopic new novel is a deep examination of the ways we commodify belief, the power and precarity of fame, and the delicious terror of being truly seen. What a Time to Be Alive asks if we can look honestly at the world and still love it; the answer is a brilliant, resounding yes.
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