Books to Look For

Rouge

Awad Mona · 2023

Madonna in a Fur Coat

Sabahattin Ali · 2021

Stolen Magick: a 90's heist story

J.L. Vampa · 2023

The Bayou

Adrian Powell

The Little Friend

Donna Tartt · 2011

Sin Eater

Megan Campisi · 2020

Girls Against God: A Novel

Jenny Hval · 2020

The Exhibition of Persephone Q

Jessi Jezewska Stevens · 2020

"A triumph of tone and intelligence. Percy Q's perspective is skewed and searching at once, and through her eyes, we see afresh not only New York's post-9/11 landscape but also the world of art, and love, and the process of becoming." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances Percy is pregnant. She hasn’t told a soul. Probably she should tell her husband—certainly she means to—but one night she wakes up to find she no longer recognizes him. Now, instead of sleeping, Percy is spending her nights taking walks through her neighborhood, all the while fretting over her marriage, her impending motherhood, and the sinister ways the city is changing. Amid this alienation—from her husband, home, and rapidly changing body—a package arrives. In it: an exhibition catalog for a photography show. The photographs consist of a series of digitally manipulated images of a woman lying on a bed in a red room. It takes a moment for even Percy to notice that the woman is herself . . . but no one else sees the resemblance. Percy must now come to grips with the fundamental question of identity in the digital age: To what extent do we own our own image, and to what extent is that image shaped by the eyes of others? Capturing perfectly the haunted atmosphere of Manhattan immediately after 9/11—and the simmering insanity of America ever since—Jessi Jezewska Stevens's The Exhibition of Persephone Q is a darkly witty satire about how easy it is to lose ownership of our own selves.

The Passion

Jeanette Winterson · 2007

<p>The New York Times –bestselling author interweaves the destinies of Napoleon's cook and an enigmatic Venetian woman in this "arresting, elegant novel" ( Publishers Weekly ). A faithful soldier of the Grande Armée, Henri is given the honor of serving meals to Napoleon himself. After all, Henri is short—and no one over five-foot-two ever serves the emperor. But when following his revered leader brings him to near-starvation in Russia's frozen winter, Henri is disillusioned and desperate for escape. The web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, Villanelle has long been acquainted with the advantages of dishonesty. Trust hasn't been her strong suit since her heart was stolen—literally—by a noblewoman she once loved. Soon these two will meet their shared destiny in the chaotic carnival that is early 19th century Venice. In The Passion, Whitbread Award-winning author Jeanette Winterson delivers a "historical novel quite different from any other" ( Vanity Fair ). "Recalls García Márquez... Magical touches dance like highlights over the brilliance of this fairy tale about passion, gambling, madness, and androgynous ecstasy." —Edmund White<br></p>

The Adult

Bronwyn Fischer · 2023

An addictively gripping coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction   Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.   And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora’s perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and care­fully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to  suspect Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threat­ens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually coming to know.   With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free one­self from the expectations of others. Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.

The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) (Penguin Classics)

Henri Alain-Fournier · 2007

<p><b>'I read it for the first time when I was seventeen and loved every page. I find its depiction of a golden time and place just as poignant now as I did then' Nick Hornby<br></b><b><br><i>The Lost Estate </i>is Robin Buss's translation of Henri Alain-Fournier's poignant study of lost love, <i>Le Grand Meaulnes</i>.</b><br><br>When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house - and his love for the beautiful girl hidden within it, Yvonne de Galais - his life has been changed forever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries the reader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence. <br><br>Robin Buss's translation of <i>Le Grand Meaulnes</i> sensitively and accurately renders Alain-Fournier's poetically charged, expressive and deceptively simple style. In his introduction, <i>New Yorker </i>writer Adam Gopnik discusses the life of Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the First World War after writing this, his only novel.<br><br>If you liked <i>Le Grand Meaulnes</i>, you might enjoy Gustave Flaubert's <i>Sentimental Education</i>, also available in Penguin Classics.</p>

The Princess of 72 Street: Novel

Elaine Kraf · 1979

A Long Time Dead

Samara Breger · 2023

GIRL MESS: a Katabasis in verse

Kim Rashidi · 2024

Dante's Inferno, but for the girls.<br/>I open my mouth, swallow myself whole / I am inside the beast, the machine of a girl<br/>A ritualized traverse into the underworld, GIRL MESS is a way back into the body. The feeling, pulsing, tragicomic body. This atmospheric story, guided by a whimsical psychopomp, follows a girl’s peculiarities as she navigates uncanny rooms with strange creatures and even stranger memories. Loosely following the stages of spiritual alchemy from calcination to coagulation, the girl evolves past the nightmares of ageing and comes to understand what it means to live a wondrous life.<br/><br/>***<br/>GIRL MESS is a cabinet of curiosities, a kaleidoscopic experience, and a decadent feat of imagination. Conceptually playing with the notorious demonization of girls' interests, this novel in verse is a lyrical exploration of the human condition through the trials and trepidations of girlhood. Poetically bold and idiomatically subversive, the pages of this book journey into a celestial realm of introspection to form a connection with the psyche. Pulling on occult threads and alchemical traditions, these poems take inspiration from Rashidi’s dreams and mediations and are aided by Jungian analysis.

Blue Hunger

Viola Di Grado · 2023

Fruiting Bodies: Stories

Kathryn Harlan · 2022

Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction<br/>One of Vulture's Best Books of the Year<br/><br/>This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay.<br/>In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters―mostly queer, mostly women―on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis.<br/>In “The Changeling,” two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,” Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,” a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,” an anthropologist is drawn into a magical―and dangerous―gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body―until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home.<br/>Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

Sunburn

Chloe Michellq Howarth · 2023

<p><b>** Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2024 **</b><br><b>** Shortlisted for the 2024 Book of the Year: Discover Award by the British Book Awards **<br>** Shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction **<br>** Longlisted for the Diverse Book Awards 2024 **<br>** An <i>Evening Standard</i> 'One to Watch in 2023 **<br>** An <i>Independent</i> ‘Best Romantic Summer Reads' **<br>** A Book of the Month pick for <i>Diva</i>, <i>Irish Examiner</i>, <i>Novellic </i>& <i>Sainsbury’s Magazine</i> **<br>** A Most Anticipated pick for <i>PinkNews</i> & <i>Queer on the Street</i> **</b></p><br> <p>It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.</p><br> <p>Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.</p><br> <p>Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.</p><br> <p>But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. Neither will be easy, but only one will offer her happiness.</p><br> <p><b><i>Sunburn</i> is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp. An atmospheric sapphic love story and coming-of-age novel with the intensity of Megan Nolan's <i>Acts of Desperation</i>, the long hot summer of André Aciman's <i>Call Me By Your Name</i> and the female friendships of Anna Hope's <i>Expectation</i>.</b></p><br> <p>‘A tender and heartfelt coming-of-age tale’ – <b><i>Heat</i></b></p><br> <p>‘A compassionate take on the push and pull between what's expected and what is felt’ – <b><i>Herald</i></b></p><br> <p>‘A deeply moving, heartfelt love story’ – <b><i>Daily Mail</i></b></p><br> <p>‘Lucy tells her story in a true, compelling voice, with an eye for minutiae, quaint apercus, and confidences that make her account moving and convincing’ – <b><i>SAGA Magazine</i></b></p><br> <p>‘Tender and poignant... Ideal reading for the last month of summer’ – <b><i>Diva</i></b></p><br> <p>'Intense and all-consuming - like the first love it describes - <i>Sunburn</i> transported me to the heart of summer and the heady days of late adolescence. I won't soon forget Chloe Michelle Howarth's addictive, lushly written debut' - <b>Laura Sims</b></p><br> <p>'Capturing all the intensity of first love, blended with the claustrophobia of small-town life, this debut, inspired by real experience, is tender and raw' - <b><i>The Bookseller</i></b></p><br> <p>'A beautiful coming of age love novel written with an insightful poetical prose, rich with religious allegory and texture which underscores the transformative, spiritual power of first love explored' - <b><i>Scene Magazine</i></b></p>

The God of Endings: A Novel

Jacqueline Holland · 2023

<p><b>“A new kind of vampire story, and the result is a surprising and spellbinding tale.” —Laura Moriarty, <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>The Chaperone</i></b><br><b><br>“Great for fans of <i>Interview with a Vampire </i>and<i> The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue</i>.” <i>—Library Journal </i><br><br>Suspenseful and enchanting, this breathtaking debut spans history, weaving a story of love, family, history, and myth as seen through the eyes of one immortal woman.</b><br><br>Collette LeSange has been hiding a dark truth: She is immortal. In 1834, Collette’s grandfather granted her the gift of eternal life and since then, she has endured centuries of turmoil and heartache. <br><br>Now, almost 150 years later, Collette is a lonely artist running an elite fine art school for children in upstate New York. But her life is suddenly upended by the arrival of a gifted child from a troubled home, the return of a stalking presence from her past, and her own mysteriously growing hunger for blood.<br><br>Combining brilliant prose with breathtaking suspense, Jacqueline Holland's <i>The God of Endings </i>serves as a larger exploration of the human condition in all its complexity, asking us the most fundamental question: is life in this world a gift or a curse?</p>

Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Nwabineli, Onyi · 2024

Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Xochitl Gonzalez · 2024

<p><b>REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK </b>• <b><i>New York Times</i> bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death<br></b><br><b>A Best Book of 2024: <i>Kirkus, TIME, NPR, Goodreads, Electric Lit</i></b> <b>and more!</b><br><br>“<b><i>Anita de Monte Laughs Last</i> is a cry for justice. Writing with urgency and rage, Gonzalez speaks up for those who have been othered and deemed unworthy, robbed of their legacy." </b><i><b>―The Washington Post <br></b></i><br><b>"<i>Anita De Monte Laughs Last </i>by Xochitl Gonzalez asks some big questions, like who in art or history is remembered, who is left behind or erased and WHY. I have goosebumps just talking about this story." <i>―</i>Reese Witherspoon</b> <b><br><br>1985. </b>Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. <br><br>But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.<br><br>Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, <i>Anita de Monte Laughs Last</i> is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.</p>

House of Hunger

Alexis Henderson · 2022

Juniper and Thorn

Ava Reid · 2022

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories

Mariana Enriquez · 2022

“The beautiful, horrible world of Mariana Enriquez, as glimpsed in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, with its disturbed adolescents, ghosts, decaying ghouls, the sad and angry homeless of modern Argentina, is the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”—Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian<br/><br/>SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • FINALIST: Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ray Bradbury Prize, Kirkus Prize • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, New York Public Library, Electric Lit, LitHub, Kirkus Reviews<br/><br/>Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.<br/><br/>Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

All's Well: A Novel

Mona Awad · 2022

From the author of Bunny, which Margaret Atwood hails as “genius,” comes a “wild, and exhilarating” (Lauren Groff) novel about a theater professor who is convinced staging Shakespeare’s most maligned play will remedy all that ails her—but at what cost?<br/><br/>Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now, she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.<br/><br/>That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.<br/><br/>With prose Margaret Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged…genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is a “fabulous novel” (Mary Karr) about a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.

Literature and Evil (Penguin Modern Classics)

Georges Bataille · 2012

'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Brontë's <i>Wuthering Heights</i>, Baudelaire's <i>Les Fleurs du Mal </i>and the writings of Sade, Kafka and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.

Natural Beauty

Ling Ling Huang · 2023

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.<br/><br/>Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.<br/><br/>Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.<br/><br/>A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.

Death Goes Dancing

Allan, Mabel Esther · 2014

White Oleander

Janet Fitch · 2006

Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (Modern Classics)

Sylvia Plath · 2018

When Devils Sing

Xan Kaur · 2025

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Carmen Maria Machado · 2017

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel

Olga Tokarczuk · 2020

Shit Cassandra Saw: Stories

Gwen E. Kirby · 2022

“Kirby has mastered the art of short fiction…A stunning collection from a writer whose talent and creativity seem boundless.” —NPR “Kirby takes joy in subverting the reader’s expectations at every turn. Her characters might be naïve, even reckless, but they aren’t about to be victims: They’re strong, and brave, and nearly always capable of rescuing themselves.” —New York Times Book Review Margaret Atwood meets Buffy in these funny, warm, and furious stories of women at their breaking points, from Hellenic times to today. Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers. Gwen E. Kirby experiments with found structures--a Yelp review, a WikiHow article--which her fierce, irreverent narrators push against, showing how creativity within an enclosed space undermines and deconstructs the constraints themselves. When these women tell the stories of their triumphs as well as their pain, they emerge as funny, angry, loud, horny, lonely, strong protagonists who refuse to be secondary characters a moment longer. From "The Best and Only Whore of Cym Hyfryd, 1886" to the "Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories," Kirby is playing and laughing with the women who have come before her and they are telling her, we have always been this way. You just had to know where to look.

Death in Her Hands: A Novel

Ottessa Moshfegh · 2020

"[An] intricate and unsettling new novel . . . Death in Her Hands is not a murder mystery, nor is it really a story about self-deception or the perils of escapism. Rather, it's a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art." -Kevin Power, The New Yorker From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds an ominous note on a walk in the woods. While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate. With very little to go on, she invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. Oddly, her suppositions begin to find correspondences in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to fade into menacing certainty. As her investigation widens, strange dissonances accrue, perhaps associated with the darkness in her own past; we must face the prospect that there is either an innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one. A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, and the stakes have never been higher.

Catherine House: A Novel

Elisabeth Thomas · 2021

“[A] delicious literary Gothic debut.” –THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, EDITORS' CHOICE<br/>“Moody and evocative as a fever dream, Catherine House is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step.” – THE WASHINGTON POST<br/>A Most Anticipated Novel by Entertainment Weekly • New York magazine • Cosmopolitan • The Atlantic • Forbes • Good Housekeeping • Parade • Better Homes and Gardens • HuffPost • Buzzfeed • Newsweek • Harper’s Bazaar • Ms. Magazine • Woman's Day • PopSugar • and more!<br/>A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.<br/>Trust us, you belong here.<br/>Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.<br/>Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.<br/>Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories

Flannery O'Connor · 2019

An essential collection of classic stories that established Flannery O’Connor’s reputation as an American master of fiction―now with a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff In 1955, with the title story and others in this critical edition, Flannery O’Connor firmly laid claim to her place as one of the most original and provocative writers of her generation. Steeped in a Southern Gothic tradition that would become synonymous with her name, these stories show O’Connor’s unique view of life―infused with religious symbolism, haunted by apocalyptic possibility, sustained by the tragic comedy of human behavior, confronted by the necessity of salvation. These classic stories―including “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “Good Country People,” and “The Displaced Person,” among others, are sure to inspire future generations of fans and remind existing readers why she remains a master of the short story.

Beasts

A young woman tumbles into a nightmare of decadent desire and corrupted innocence in a superb novella of suspense from National Book Award–winner Joyce Carol Oates. Art and arson, the poetry of D. H. Lawrence and pulp pornography, hero-worship and sexual debasement, totems and taboos mix and mutate into a startling, suspenseful tale of how a sunny New England college campus descends into a lurid nightmare. “A small gem.... Oates does not disappoint, nor does she waste a word.”—The Washington Post Book World Oates often takes on sensational subject matter ... yet rarely has she done so with the churningly quiet understatement of ... Beasts.”—Los Angeles Times “A cunning fusion of Gothic romance and psychological horror story, and one of her best recent books.”—Kirkus Reviews “Oates’s new novel is a slim one, but it packs a serious punch.”—Associated Press “Delicious ... Beasts is something of a jeu d’esprit noir.... The novella length is exactly right for it.”—The New York Review of Books

Cursed Bread: A Novel

Sophie Mackintosh · 2023

WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION NOMINEE • Best Book of the Month: The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Book Riot, CrimeReads • An elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village, by the Booker Prize–nominated author of The Water Cure<br/><br/>"Intoxicating, sumptuous, and savage.”—Alexandra Kleeman, acclaimed author of Something New Under the Sun<br/><br/>Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population.<br/><br/>In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse--but who was the predator and on whom did they prey?<br/><br/>Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

Women Without Men

Shahrnush Parsipur · 2000

Mina

Kim Sagwa · 2018

“Kim Sagwa is South Korea’s young, brilliant, fearless writer.” ― Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War<br/>“She doesn’t know what to do, and that amounts to a state of torture.”<br/>Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non- stop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn’t talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina’s brother, whom she’s developing a serious crush on. And Crystal’s starting to lose her grip.<br/>In this shocking English debut, award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue and a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist―at once powerful, vulnerable, and utterly confused. As one bad decision leads to another, this promising life spirals to a devastating climax.

Sleepless Nights

Elizabeth Hardwick · 2019

Sally Rooney: 'High intelligence and beauty.' Margo Jefferson: 'Extraordinary' Rediscover a lost American classic in this kaleidoscopic scrapbook of one woman's memories, with a new introduction by Eimear McBride. I am alone here in New York, no longer a we ... First published in 1979, Sleepless Nights is a unique collage of fiction and memoir, letters and essays, portraits and dreams. It is more than the story of a life: it is Elizabeth Hardwick's experience of womanhood in the twentieth century. Escaping her childhood home of Kentucky, the narrator arrives at a bohemian hotel in Manhattan filled with 'drunks, actors, gamblers ... love and alcohol and clothes on the floor.' Here begin the erotic affairs and dinner parties, the abortions and heartbreaks, the friendships and 'people I have buried'. Here are luminous sketches of characters she has met that illuminate the era's racism, sexism, and poverty. Above all, here is prose blurring into poetry, language to lose - and perhaps to find - yourself in. Society tries to write these lives before they are lived. It does not always succeed.

The Taiga Syndrome

Cristina Rivera Garza · 2018

Fairy tale meets detective drama in this David Lynch–like novel by a writer Jonathan Lethem calls “one of Mexico's greatest . . . we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.”<br/><br/>A fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down—that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one’s senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective’s quest into a territory overrun with the primitive excesses of Capitalism—accumulation and expulsion, corruption and cruelty—though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well. That sometimes leaving everything behind is the only thing left to do.

The Year of the Witching

Alexis Henderson · 2020

A young woman living in a rigid, puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning, feminist fantasy debut.   In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet's word is law, Immanuelle Moore's very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement. But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood. Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.

The Feminine Macabre: A Woman's Journal of All Things Strange and Unusual

Amanda R. Woomer · 2021

In a world where the paranormal seems to be dominated by men, get to know thirty women in the paranormal field in THE FEMININE MACABRE. From folklore and death culture to tarot, dark history, ghosts, and more, these women share their experiences, research, and theories but with a feminine twist. Explore Volume One of THE FEMININE MACABRE with a foreword by psychic medium and "good witch," Patti Negri, featuring the works of Chris Amandier, Mary Becker, Amy L. Bennett, Kjersti Beth, Sarah Blake, Ivy Boyd, Amelia Cotter, Mallory Cywinski, Courtney Eastman, Claire Goodchild, Penny Griffiths-Morgan, Michelle L. Hamilton, Cindy Heinen, Patty Henderson, India Hopwood, Jennifer Jones, Allison Jornlin, Alex Matsuo, Heather Moser, Celeste Mott, Courtney Mroch, Hilary Opiel, Barb "Shadow" O'Rourke, Amanda Paulson, Claidi Rose, Sarah Stream, Laura Sutcliffe, Vanessa Walilko, Anastasia Washington, Cherise Williams, and Amanda R. Woomer.

Friends of the Museum

Heather McGowan

O Sinners!

Nicole Cuffy · 2025

In this “engrossing” (Los Angeles Times) novel that sweeps from present-day California to the Vietnam War and back, a grieving young man is drawn into the orbit of a charismatic cult leader who forces him to reconsider why people give up control—and what it takes, ultimately, to find one’s place in the world. ONE OF THE SEASON’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS: Time, Rolling Stone, Vulture, Men’s Health, WNYC, Electric Lit, Feminist Book Club, Lit Hub “A gorgeously written literary excavation of belonging and belief.”—Emma Donoghue, The Boston Globe Faruq Zaidi, a young journalist processing the recent death of his father, a devout Muslim, takes the opportunity to embed himself in a cult known only as “the nameless,” because its members refused to label themselves. Based in the California redwoods and shepherded by an enigmatic Vietnam War veteran named Odo, “the nameless” adhere to the 18 Utterances, including teachings such as “all suffering is distortion” and “see only beauty.” Faruq, skeptical but committed to unraveling the mystery of “the nameless,” extends his stay over months, as he gets deeper into the cult’s inner workings and alluring teachings. But as he gets closer to Odo, Faruq himself begins to unravel, forced to come to terms with the memories he has been running from while trying to resist Odo’s spell. Told in three seamlessly interwoven threads―Faruq’s present-day investigation, Odo’s time as an infantryman during the Vietnam War alongside three other Black soldiers before the formation of the movement, and a documentary script that recounts the clash between “the nameless” and a Texas fundamentalist church―O Sinners! examines both longing and belonging. Ultimately the novel asks: What is it that we seek from the people we admire and, inevitably, from one another?

The Unworthy

Agustina Bazterrica · 2025

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos. From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe. But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened? A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

Hungerstone

Kat Dunn · 2025

A compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the queer novella that inspired Dracula.<br/><br/>"A dark, sensuous, gothic story of female appetite, ravenous desire and insatiable rage. A blood-drenched, glittering jewel of a novel that I absolutely devoured.” ―Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne and Atalanta<br/><br/>It’s the height of the industrial revolution and ten years into Lenore’s marriage to steel magnate Henry, their relationship has soured. When Henry’s ambitions take them from London to the remote British moorlands to host a hunting party, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into their lives. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night. Carmilla, who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . .<br/><br/>As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk.

Voice Like a Hyacinth: A Novel

Mallory Pearson · 2025

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal El-Mohtar · 2020

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Jeanette Winterson · 1997