James Han Mattson’s REPRIEVE launched this week to a cascade of wonderful press. The novel was named a best book of October by Lambda Literary, The Millions, CrimeReads, Entertainment Weekly, PopSugar, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and more, and was chosen by Literary Hub as the Scorpio pick for its Astrology Book Club. Mattson also sat down for an interview with Entertainment Weekly to discuss his writing process while working on the book. He told EW: "Some avid horror readers may be disappointed by the fact that this book isn't a gore fest…But I think all of my writing is going to be tinged with darkness in some way." William Morrow published the book on October 5, 2021.

In a piece for Elle magazine’s Shelf Life, Jonathan Franzan recommends GOLDEN GATES by Conor Dougherty. He selected the title as the book that “currently sits on [his] nightstand,” saying: “I’m halfway through and seriously admiring [GOLDEN GATES]…Dougherty has a gift for making complex policy problems both clear and compellingly readable, and for rendering his characters with unsentimental sympathy. However much attention the book got when it was published, last year, I’ll bet it didn’t get nearly enough.” Penguin Press published the book on February 18, 2020.

THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING by David Graeber and David Wengrow was featured on Lit Hub’s “New and Noteworthy Nonfiction to Read this October.” Lit Hub Editor in Chief Jonny Diamond writes: “Graeber and Wengrow aren’t messing around…THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING is full of provocative reconsiderations of how, exactly, civilization has come to be.” Farrar, Straus, and Giroux will publish the book on November 9, 2021.

SCIENTIST by Richard Rhodes received a starred review from Booklist. They rave: “No disrespect to Hank Pym, Marvel Comics’ shrinking scientist and Avenger, but the real “Ant-Man” is Edward O. Wilson, the world’s preeminent myrmecologist (expert on ants) and conservationist superhero. Esteemed biographer and historian Rhodes warmly portrays Wilson as an ambitious and accomplished biologist, a passionate and influential advocate for identifying all life forms and preserving half of Earth as natural habitat, and a prolific, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer…His many admirable attributes include a genuine inquisitiveness, sense of wonder, and deep concern for all life, from insects to people, and our planet.” Doubleday will publish the book on November 9, 2021.

BTTM FDRS by Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore was featured on New York Magazine’s The Strategist’s “The Best Graphic Novels and Memoirs, According to Experts.” Leigh Hurwitz, the outreach librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library, calls the book an “Afro-futurist horror-comedy” that deals with “gentrification, urban blight, housing, and race,” adding: “You will want to stay in this book forever.” Fantagraphics published BTTM FDRS on June 25, 2019.

In conjunction with the recent publication of his debut memoir, SLONIM WOODS 9, Daniel Barban Levin sat for interviews with Salon and NYLON to discuss the process of writing the book and the necessity of telling one’s own story. Salon calls the memoir “an intense tale of coercion, humiliation, gaslighting and physical torment. It's also one of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.” Meanwhile, NYLON raves: "[A] disturbing, extremely vulnerable and extraordinary account of what happened to Levin and the emotional and psychological fallout.” Crown published the book on September 7, 2021.

Maxim Loskutoff’s debut novel RUTHIE FEAR was named the 2021 High Plains Book Award winner for Fiction. He was previously honored in 2019 in the Short Stories category for his debut collection, COME WEST AND SEE. The judges praise the novel’s titular protagonist: "Ruthie Fear, who only once leaves Montana, has seen more of the world than you or I or most of the world’s fictional characters. She understands life’s too-short sweetness and its dark monsters; she is both a complete original and utterly believable.” The Billings Gazette, meanwhile, calls RUTHIE FEAR “one of the most powerful and resonant novels of 2020,” and Loskutoff “a brilliant and thoughtful writer.” W. W. Norton & Company published the book on September 1, 2020.

DEAR CYBORGS author Eugene Lim’s next book, SEARCH HISTORY, published this week to much fanfare. The Washington Post offered an excellent review, calling the novel “an authentic expression of a mind striving to comprehend the inexplicable cruelties of the universe and humanity’s most proper response,” adding: “Fans of Haruki Murakami’s melancholy, oneiric tales will also delight in Lim’s assault upon consensus reality.” Granta featured an excerpt from the book on its website, and Lim sat down for a Q&A with Poets & Writers. When asked about the most challenging part of writing the novel, Lim said: “Even if there are many things going on in it, I think at its heart this novel is a book about grief. And writing about that subject while enduring its wound makes you doubt yourself, makes you wonder whether one is being honest or honoring or insensitive or sentimentalizing. I wanted to articulate and be honest to the emotion of grief but also I wanted it to be both original and transformed by and into fiction—not so that the emotion was made into mere artifice but so that the artifice and strong emotions could stand together without either feeling manipulated or made false by the other.” Coffee House Press published SEARCH HISTORY on October 5, 2021.

Christopher Sorrentino's memoir NOW BEACON, NOW SEA has received further critical praise. The Chicago Review of Books deem it an “ambitious balancing act of summary and scene that painstakingly reveals an unsettled mind doing the work of reconfiguring its understanding of the past,” and The Los Angeles Review of Books writes: “With an excoriating candor, with empathy enough to give you gooseflesh, [Sorrentino] gleans exciting new clues in that never-ending mystery, the lives of the artists.” Catapult published the memoir on September 7, 2021.

ON FREEDOM by Maggie Nelson received a rave review in The Boston Globe. Alden Jone writes: “ON FREEDOM proves that Nelson continues to do us a great service as a critic, which is to herself digest, and sometimes wrestle with, copious amounts of literature and theory…to integrate this material into a relatively short book, in an accessible, felicitous voice all Nelson’s own. There are no hot takes in ON FREEDOM. While hot takes are satisfying, they rarely finish the job. If you want to get your hands around something as vast and slippery as freedom, you are going to have to get comfortable moving through an ideological briar patch. ON FREEDOM offers navigation tips, but Nelson’s call to action is a journey that readers must take on their own.” Nelson also sat down for interviews with The Philosopher, The Yale Review, and The Believer. The Believer writes: "[O]ver the last decade, Maggie Nelson’s writing has become one of the guiding intellectual lights for artists of all disciplines…Like much of her writing, [ON FREEDOM] is a document of Nelson’s love of reading, and it brims with fascinating morsels of knowledge gathered from across disciplines, especially philosophy and contemporary art…[Nelson] remain[s] a sovereign thinker.” Graywolf Press published the book on September 7, 2021.

THE SWANK HOTEL by Lucy Corin published this week to a flurry of praise. The book was featured on various must-read lists for October, including Chicago Review of Books (“Long whispered about in writer’s circles as a one of a kind talent, Lucy Corin’s latest novel seems poised to finally break her out big.”), Alta, and NYLON (“[T]antalizingly gloomy [and] surreal. Intrigue!”). Graywolf Press published the novel on October 5, 2021.

THE 22 MURDERS OF MADISON MAY author Max Barry’s IT CAME FROM CRUDEN FARM was curated by award-winning editor and Locus magazine critic Jonathan Strahan for THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION VOLUME 2, which published this week. Tor calls the collection “[a]n assemblage of future classics” and “a must-read for anyone who enjoys the vast and exciting world of science fiction.” Gallery/Saga Press published the collection on September 28, 2021, and G.P. Putnam’s Sons published THE 22 MURDERS OF MADISON MAY on July 6, 2021.