Who says the next publishing season is September? You wouldn’t think it, looking at the fiction list we have for you this August! Our publishers never nap, and wowie are we excited for another month of fantastic fiction.
Seraphim by Joshua Perry
Melville House Publishing, 9781685891138, PB, 272pp, £16.99, 1/8/2024
Set in New Orleans during the bleak years after Hurricane Katrina, Seraphim tracks a murder investigation by a defense attorney who is driven to exonerate his client at any cost. A riveting story of loyalty and grief that cross-examines an unjust criminal legal system, Seraphim combines the grit and realism of Richard Price’s Clockers with the empathy and psychological complexity of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.
Great Fear on the Mountain by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, translated by Bill Johnston
Archipelago Books, 9781953861825, PB, 250pp, £15.99, 6/8/2024
A haunting, allegorical Swiss masterpiece centered around a posse of villagers as they brave dark elements to ascend a mountain, thicketed with lore. Teeming with tension, this immersive, rhapsodic story transports readers to the Swiss mountainside, bringing to mind the writing of Thomas Mann while offering character studies as vivid and bracing as Eudora Welty’s. An existential gem infused with big questions around human pride, fear and folly, Great Fear on the Mountain is perfect for fans of Richard Powers’ The Overstory and myth-driven fiction.
The Italy Letters by Vi Khi Nao
Melville House Publishing, 9781685891305, PB, 176pp, £12.99, 15/8/2024
The Italy Letters is a slim, powerful shot of literary fantasia from one of America’s best-kept secrets. Long a cult favourite, visionary writer Vi Khi Nao weaves an unforgettable and highly distinctive story of a love affair suffused with longing, erotic passion, and heartbreak — all while painting a picture of the scabby underside of Las Vegas. This beautiful and mesmerizing novel by a queer Vietnamese American writer is a brilliant and unclassifiable work of fiction that takes the form of a series of letters written by the unnamed narrator to her lover in Italy. part of a stream-of-consciousness narrative that is by turns poignant, bawdy, funny, and disturbing — and often beautifully poetic. Perfect for fans of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.
The Muslim Cowboy by Bruce Omar Yates
Dead Ink, 9781915368386, PB, 208pp, £10.99, 22/8/2024
An extraordinary and mesmerising literary debut about the search for identity. In the aftermath of the Iraq war, an odd Iraqi man entranced by Americana and old Western movies dresses in double denim and roams a lawless landscape in search of his own Western story. Amidst the disorder he meets a young girl, and together they set out across the tank strewn desert on his trusty camel to find safety. Written with a simplicity of direction that captivates like a film, The Muslim Cowboy is an extraordinary and mesmerising literary debut about the search for identity, the struggle to reconcile conflicting values, and sacrifice as that great virtue we all must embrace in order to find meaning and purpose in a world of chaos.
Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
Verve Books, 9780857308771, PB, 160pp, £9.99, 29/8/2024
What is motherhood in the midst of uncertainty, buried trauma and an unravelling America? What it’s always been — a love song. Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an America that’s coming undone. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class. Unmoored by the grief of a recent, devastating miscarriage and Noah’s fight for his life, she worries she can no longer chase the hope of having a child, no longer wants to bring a Black body into the world. Yet her husband Asher is just as desperate to keep trying. Fearless, timely, blazing with voice, Blue Hour is a fragmentary debut with unignorable storytelling power.
Beloved by Empar Moliner, translated by Laura McGloughlin
3TimesRebel Press, 9781739128753, PB, 200pp, £14.99, 29/8/2024
Beloved is a book that explores the lightness in which the sweetest life suddenly turns upside down, a story through whose veins are running heartbreak, maturity and the loss of sexual fury. Remei, the main character of Beloved, is a prestigious illustrator in her fifties who considers herself an attractive, happily married mother. Yet one evening, sitting in the back seat of the family car, she clearly predicts that her younger husband, a principal violinist in an orchestra, will fall in love with the second violinist, the woman sitting beside him, as they head to their home to rehearse. Neither Remei’s husband nor the young woman have realised this yet. But Remei has. This devastating certainty leads Remei, a determined woman who since childhood has had to fight to survive, to a harsh realization of what it is to grow old inside.
Edendale by Jacquelyn Stolos
Dead Ink, 9781915368706, PB, 240pp, £10.99, 29/8/2024
In northeast Los Angeles, wildfires rage and coyotes stalk the neighbourhood streets. The wind blows heavy with smoke and, inside a rented bungalow on hilly Lemoyne Street, the air grows heavy with something else. Ropey closes his checking account and transfers his net worth to his sock drawer. Megan sharpens pencils and chops produce to obsession. Lyle tightens his grip on his girlfriend Egypt, whose growing dependence makes her question everything, especially Lyle. And Captain America, the cat of the house, finds his orange coat giving way to a nest of bleeding sores. As the fires burn ever closer, will the four friends wake up to their false paradise?
