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 Under the RadarJanuary 2026 |
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And I'll Take Out Your Eyes
by A. M. Sosa
An insultingly good debut following a queer Chicano's cannon-shot into adulthood amidst familial turmoil and the suffocating violence of Stockton, California in the early 2000s (Ruth Madievsky). Cría cuervos y te sacaran los ojos: Raise crows and they'll take out your eyes. Since the age of seven, Christian has been under the thumb of a curse. He reads its dark signs everywhere: in his bedridden mother's wilting plants; in his brother's estrangement; in his father's eager fists and glassy stare. He reads it in his nightmares, in Stockton's soundtrack of sirens and gunshot. Above all, he reads the curse in the mirror, watching himself turn into the crow his father always predicted he'd become. Maddened by the city's heatwaves and his own unthinkable desires, often high and drunk, Christian rips through his neighborhood, desperate to escape not only the city but the monster of his pain. But even when he leaves, the curse follows. Can Christian ever be absolved? Or is he condemned to be consumed by the same violence as his father? And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is a defiant, shattering portrait of self-discovery in the face of violence, mental illness, and other dark inheritances. In a lyric, circuit-bending onslaught of ragers and laments, A. M. Sosa delivers a redemptive story--and an unforgettable debut.
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Bitter Honey
by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström
1978. A scholarship draws Nancy from Gambia's warmth into Stockholm's frigid winter. When her friendship with charismatic scholar Lars blossoms into something more, she thinks she may have finally found her place. But there's more to Lars than his charming persona, and Nancy is about to discover the danger of being drawn into his world. 2006. Tina has had her taste of fame as Sweden's sweetheart pop princess, representing her country at Eurovision. But beneath her glittery faðcade, she's uncertain who she really is. Her mother Nancy seems desperate to keep the past under wraps, but will the unexpected appearance of Tina's father--a man she has long thought dead--help open the door to self-discovery?--
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The Dinner Party
by Viola Van de Sandt
Franca left the Netherlands behind to start her new life in England with Andrew. Andrew, whose parents lived in South Kensington but had a flat their son could borrow nearby. Andrew, an old-fashioned British gentleman who encourages her not to work but to instead focus on her writing. Andrew who suggests a dinner party with his colleagues to celebrate their big upcoming launch. A dinner party that Franca must plan and shop and cook and clean for. A dinner party during a heatwave when the fridge breaks, alcohol replaces water, and an unexpected guest joins their ranks, upending the careful balance between everything Franca once was and now is...--Provided by publisher.
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The Great Work
by Sheldon Costa
In the post-Civil War Pacific Northwest, Gentle and his nephew hunt down a legendary giant salamander in an attempt to resurrect Gentle's best friend using alchemical knowledge--
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If the Dead Belong Here
by Carson Faust
When a young girl goes missing, the ghosts of the past collide with her family's secrets in a mesmerizing Native American Southern Gothic--
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Lightbreakers
by Aja Gabel
A Belletrist Book Club Pick One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall: LA Times, Harper's Bazaar, LitHub, The MillionsRiveting . . . Lightbreakers is a marvel. . . propulsive and unforgettable.-Washington Post You will love this genre-busting book. . . A beautiful meditation of grief, time, and love. -Samin Nosrat What would you give to relive the past? Maya, an artist, and Noah, a quantum physicist, share an insatiable curiosity about the world. But their happy marriage has a shadow over it: Serena, the child Noah had with his first wife, who died before she turned four. When Noah is invited by the Janus Project to unravel the secrets of time travel, he jumps at the opportunity. At a laboratory deep in the Texas desert, he begins participating in a dangerous experiment that could result in something he thought impossible: seeing his daughter again. Meanwhile, Maya embarks on a journey back to her own past in Japan, and to a formative lover who once shattered her heart. As Noah and Maya grapple with hope and despair, new information emerges that the experiments might not be exactly what they seems. A heartachingly moving novel, Lightbreakers plumbs the mysteries of human connection, and explores how to love in a world where time is both a healer and a thief.
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Mothers
by Brenda Lozano
When the kidnapping of a little girl shocks the Mexican capital, the lives of two very different women become forever intertwined. Gloria Felipe lives a comfortable upper-class life with her husband and five children. Nuria Valencia comes from a working-class background and has been desperately trying to get pregnant in order to save her marriage. After traditional methods produce no results, she subjects herself to horrific fertility treatments designed and administered by men, and ultimately tries to adopt but is rejected on the basis that a woman in her early thirties is too old to adopt a baby. Failed time and again by the system and about to lose hope, she is presented with an opportunity that seems almost too good to be true--
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Psychopomp & Circumstance
by Eden Royce
Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled to within an inch of her life by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she's capable of more than simply marrying well. When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother's wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp-the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt's unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death--
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Sister Creatures
by Laura Venita Green
Forthcoming from the publisher of Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger Captivating and sublime... and centered on a cast of women bound to their roots in unexpected ways, this is a book that interchanges the tender and the cruel, the weird and the real, with breathtaking ease. -Jinwoo Chong, author of I Leave It Up to YouIn the muggy, insect-ridden town of Pinecreek, Louisiana, college dropout Tess Lavigne is watching two bickering siblings while their parents are away. Her listless day drinking is interrupted when someone emerges from the woods behind the house. Filthy and feral, the daughter of religious fundamentalists, the girl known in town as Sister Gail convinces Tess to take her in for the night. The strange events of that evening will set the course for Tess's future, and Sister Gail's ultimate fate. Meanwhile, other residents of Pinecreek try to cobble together a future from what little they have, their lives intersecting in small and not-so-small ways. Sisters fight to define independence for themselves (and from each other), while two young women on a bicycling trip wonder what their relationship promises, or threatens. Throughout, a deeply unsettling presence connects the characters to the buried secrets of Pinecreek: the ominous Thea, a malevolent shape-shifting entity whose rage and despair stems from a tragic history of misogyny, maternal loss, and stolen ambitions. As time marches forward, so does Tess, creating a new path for herself while accepting what can never be entirely left behind. At times atmospheric and eerie, and at others all too real, Sister Creatures is about manufacturing resilience from nothing but the bonds that tie us together.
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The Tortoise's Tale
by Kendra Coulter
Snatched from her ancestral lands, a giant tortoise finds herself in an exclusive estate in southern California where she becomes an astute observer of societal change. Her journey is one of discovery, as she learns to embrace the music of jazz and the warmth of human connection. The tortoise's story is enriched by her bond with Takeo, the estate's gardener, who sees her as a being with thoughts and feelings, not just a creature to be observed. The tortoise's mind and heart are further expanded by Lucy, a young girl who names the tortoise Magic and shares a friendship that transcends species. Together they witness the estate's transformation into a haven for industry titans, politicians, and rock stars, each leaving their mark on the world and on Magic's heart--
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