VERY COLD PEOPLE by Sarah Manguso was highlighted as one of the “Best Novels of 2022” by The Week magazine. Hogarth published the novel on February 8, 2022.

The Times Literary Supplement published a fantastic review for THE SEAPLANE ON FINAL APPROACH by Rebecca Rukeyser. Lucy Scholes raves: “THE SEAPLANE ON FINAL APPROACH is a jaunty, perfectly paced and exceptionally well-written coming-of-age story. It is slyly funny, with just the right touch of darkness to take the edge off.” The book was also chosen as one of the “Best Novels of 2022” by The Week magazine. Doubleday published THE SEAPLANE ON FINAL APPROACH on June 7, 2022.

A starred review in Kirkus for Laura Warrell’s forthcoming SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM calls the book
“an impressive debut novel [that] weaves storylines of lost love, coming-of-age, and midlife crisis to chronicle a Boston-based jazz musician’s reckoning with the untidy spoils of his myriad affairs,” adding: “Though this is her first novel, Warrell displays delicately wrought characterization and a formidable command of physical and emotional detail. Her more intimate set pieces deliver sensual, erotic vibrations, and, most crucially for a novel that takes its title from Jelly Roll Morton, she knows how to write about the way it feels to deliver jazz—and receive it. A captivating modern romance evoking love, loss, recovery, and redemption.” Warren was also featured as one of Publishers Weekly’s “Writers to Watch” for Fall 2022. Pantheon will publish SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM on September 27, 2022.

LIFE IS EVERYWHERE by Lucy Ives was named one of Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2022.” Lit Hub associate editor Katie Yee writes: “I’m a big fan of the up-all-night, digressive kind of storytelling. And you just know that the author who brought us COSMOGONY is going to take us through some incredible tangents/” Graywolf Press will publish LIFE IS EVERYWHERE on October 4, 2022.

THE VISITORS by Jessi Jezewska Stevens was included on The Face’s list of “10 Books to Dive Deep Into This Summer,” praised by columnist Anna Cafolla as “an unsettling and oddball novel...both a bold, imaginative play on very recent history and a trenchant prophecy of the terrifying times we’re collectively staring down the barrel of.” In an interview with The Creative Independent, Stevens spoke to the feeling that “the whole book is kind of written at 11” and her proclivity for “writ[ing] psychological fiction,” noting that her fascination as a writer “isn’t exactly interiority and psychology so much as…magic and uncanny experiences that we can’t quite place and those moments where you feel the world is just tilted one to two degrees off of where it should be.” And Other Stories published THE VISITORS on June 7, 2022.

Jordan Castro’s THE NOVELIST was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, well as one of WPR’s “8 Books to Enjoy at the Beach This Summer.” Book critic Michael Schaub writes: "Castro’s fiction debut is as meta as it gets, but that’s part of its immense charm…[THE NOVELIST is] sweet, funny and beautifully written." The book also received a fantastic review from Taylor Lewandowski for Bookforum, who notes that the book “upends the historical 'drug novel' by offering a portrait of what life looks like in recovery,” and “the narrator’s hopeful reorientation out of this simulated, technological world opens space to be present, to think of his partner, and to return home humbled by the machinations of the actual world.” Soft Skull published the book on June 14, 2022.

Liska Jacobs’s third novel, THE PINK HOTEL, published to a raft of great press this week. Esquire selected the novel as its July Book Club pick, and published an interview with Jacobs alongside glowing praise: “In this glittering satire about greed, excess, and human folly, Jacobs takes aim at our tenuous class system and sinks a kill shot.” Jacobs was also interviewed by The Orange County Register, where she discussed the inspiration for THE PINK HOTEL: “I love to write books that take place in pressure cookers, and you can’t have anything better than riots and wildfires outside a very luxurious hotel…Under lockdown, I was taping my windows closed because smoke was getting in. It was incredibly toxic. But isolated at the Beverly Hills Hotel, it was $44 salads and underwater music. It felt like a different world.” THE PINK HOTEL received glowing praise from Alta’s Monday Book Review (“THE PINK HOTEL is by turns a love story, a social satire, an elegy for the planet, a farewell to the glamour of Old Hollywood, and, above all, a morality tale…If Jacobs’s descriptions of the staff are insightfully nuanced, her depiction of the wealthy is anthropological”), and was featured as a Lit Hub must-read. Elsewhere, The Los Angeles Times published an essay by Jacobs titled “What do artists and their fans owe each other?” in which Jacobs reflects on the oft-troubled relationship between author and reader: “Every one of us is searching for what it means to be us. And, in that search, artists and their work become something for us to inhabit, to explore who we are...which can sometimes make the artist, who created from a place of need for understanding and intimacy, feel even more alone. But maybe the beauty of art is that it can serve as a bridge, a space where — even briefly — we see one another.” Lit Hub also published a piece by Jacobs “on Leaving Los Angeles, City of ‘Impermanence and Unreliability’ [and] finding Kinship with Eve Babitz and Joan Didion.” MCD published THE PINK HOTEL on July 19, 2022.

Carlene Bauer’s GIRLS THEY WRITE SONGS ABOUT was featured on The New York Times Book Review’s Shortlist round-up “‘Porn of the Self’: Novels of Female Angst.” Alex Beggs writes: “The nostalgia for late-90s New York and magazine heydays hits hard in Carlene Bauer’s GIRLS THEY WRITE SONGS ABOUT, a novel that spans a decades-long friendship that’s so intense the reader feels like an uninvited third, munching popcorn in the corner of an $850-per-month Park Slope one-bedroom....Bauer’s writing is so gorgeous, the dialogue so cutting, that I began to wonder if there was a world where people have casual conversations about ANNA KARENINA, when the last debate I had with a friend was about the benefits of zip-front sports bras.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the novel on June 21, 2022.

DARK EARTH by Rebecca Stott
Book Launches
Rebecca Stott’s DARK EARTH published to fantastic press. The book was featured on must-read lists from Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, and The Lesbrary. Danik Ellis of Lesbrary raves: “With an intimate yet cinematic scope, DARK EARTH re-creates an ancient world steeped in myth and folklore, and introduces us to unforgettable women who come to vibrant life on the page. A heart-in-mouth adventure full of moments of tenderness, this is a beautiful, profound novel about oppression and power that puts a female perspective on a historical period dominated by men’s stories.” Random House published the novel on July 19, 2022.

THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell was featured on The Million’s "Great Second-Half 2022 Book Preview." The citation reads: “Serpell’s latest novel, which follows her expansive debut THE OLD DRIFT, begins with an epigraph from Marcel Proust: 'People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.' THE FURROWS chronicles the overpowering 'aura of life' of the presumably drowned boy as he swims through the consciousnesses of those who mourn him.” Hogarth will publish the novel on September 27, 2022.