Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize, Paul Yoon, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?Etna (Scribner, 2026) is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times. Paul Yoon is the author of five previous works of fiction: Once the Shore, a New York Times notable book; Snow Hunters, winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, an NPR Best Book of the Year; Run to Earth, a Time Must-Read Book of 2020 also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and The Hive and the Honey, winner of the 20th annual Story Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Recommended Books: Maria Stepanova, The Disappearing Act Johnathan Buckley, One Boat Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maineʼs inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writerʼs creative process—most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of Kingʼs enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King’s writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we’ve closed the book?Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works—The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, ʼSalemʼs Lot, and Night Shift—to reveal how he crafted his language, story lines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King’s margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth, 2026)—authorized by Stephen King himself—is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it’s also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them. Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. Her academic books include Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England; her popular writing has appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and includes a humorous Bard-themed cocktail book, Shakespeare Not Stirred. She is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast. Recommended Books: Ben Lerner, Transcription Libby Edwardson, We Sent Them Down Singing Daniel Mason, Country People Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A dazzling novel about a community where an upcoming film production brings their past into sharp focus--and nobody's version is the same. In Derry, the locals are already in a twist about the arrival of Hollywood actress Monica Logue to research her role for a show about the Troubles--and then she goes missing. Everyone has a story to tell--about Monica's possible whereabouts, and about the historic events that brought her here in the first place: the show's screenwriter, desperate for this last shot at success; the grieving mother whose story he's adapting; the ex-IRA member who knows the price of survival; the local psychic who's seen too much ... Prestige Drama (Cardinal, 2026) brings to life a chorus of characters as they locate themselves in Monica's disappearance, and in the truth about their own history. From the author of the acclaimed memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, Prestige Drama is heartbreaking, hilarious, and profound, an indelible portrait of a community both obsessed with its past, and desperate to forget it. SÉAMAS O’REILLY is a writer and author who has worked as a columnist for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner. He is Features Editor of London satirical magazine, The Fence and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. His memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died topped the Irish Times Bestseller List for seven weeks, and won Best Biography at the 2021 Irish Book Awards. Séamas currently lives in Walthamstow, London with his family. Recommended Books: Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling Susannah Dickey, Into the Wreck Jonathan Wilson, The Power and The Glory: A History of the World Cup Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a changeling in this story—but who?Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. Even her mother worries about the timing. But Madeleine’s ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom’s elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world.Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn’t paying attention? Is the real Maud dancing in the half-light with the fairies and the foxes? Did the gray cat hide her behind the hedge?Meanwhile, the world around them continues in its humdrum ease. Tom works toward a promotion, urging Madeleine to connect with other moms and keep in touch with her colleagues. Her parents travel from abroad to meet the baby, but Madeleine is unnerved by her father’s new obsession with genealogy and DNA tests. Interrupted by visions, panicked at her lack of maternal feelings, shut out from her old life, she frantically searches for answers. But the old stories end in sorrow and bloodshed. And fairies do more than kidnap babies.A riveting portrait of madness, motherhood, the myths that haunt us, and the families who keep us tethered, Emily McBride’s Queen Mab (FSG, 2026) asks us to reconsider what is real and how we might see a truer picture of ourselves through the darkness. Emily McBride is a Canadian-born editor, writer, and translator living in Barcelona. Her work has been published in The Nation, The Rumpus, and The Stinging Fly. Queen Mab is her debut novel. Recommended Books:  Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star  Helen Garner, The Children’s Bach Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.A gripping novel about ambition, parents and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men (Random House, 2026) traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again. Julie Buntin‘s debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. Recommended Books: Dur E. Aziz Amna, A Splintering Chloe Benjamin, The Understory Louise Kennedy, Stations Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, a New York Times Notable book of 2018, and the story collection Cool for America, longlisted for the 2020 Story Prize. His essays and stories have appeared frequently in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's, as well as in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Times Book Review and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his family. Recommended Books: William Demby, Love Story Black Morgan Meis, The Drunken Silenus Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this debut story collection Patchwork Dolls (Blair, 2026), Ysabelle Cheung weaves an eerie fabulism with tales that cross continents, technology, and time. Set in Hong Kong and America--between the present day and an uncannily altered future--this story collection warps the familiar rules of our world to ask: what does it mean to be Asian and a woman--living under the specter of state and technological surveillance--or trying to break free from it? In the title story, a young woman of color realizes she can make her fortune by surgically selling her facial features to whiter, wealthier clients. In "Please, Get Out and Dance," a group of rebels escapes a city that is literally disappearing around them--building by building, person by person--to migrate to a new home beneath the ocean, defying their government's mandate. "Herbs" follows an elderly widow who, when the clones of her dead husband start to appear uninvited in her home, must grapple with her memories. In each of these stories, Cheung tilts the world just slightly off its axis to bring together a haunting meditation on what it means to survive within our increasingly digitized and mechanized world. Ysabelle Cheung is a writer and art critic based in Hong Kong. Her Fiction has appeared in Granta, Slate, and The Rumpus. She was awarded the 2023 Aspen Words Fellowship and was in residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in 2024. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Artforum, and Lit Hub. She is the co-founder of a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong called the PhD Group. Recommended Books: Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life Sayumi Kamakura, Applause for a Cloud Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, that’s about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?By the end of Unferth’s wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 (Graywolf Press 2026) is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers’ Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Recommended Books: Victor Pelevin, Omon Ra Jean Stafford, A Mother in History Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, an epic and enthralling account of six Syrians fighting for a better world, in the tradition of classic works by Philip Gourevitch and Katherine Boo.In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew a brutal dictatorship. For the next eighteen months, many of the citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.Days of Love and Rage (Viking, 2026) details the powerfully intimate narratives of the men and women who led this struggle, and who experienced the highs of camaraderie and the lows of betrayal. Among them: a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, and a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality.Anand Gopal immerses you in the world of a single city in the throes of revolution, and lays bare the danger that inequality poses to democracy. But this book transcends the particulars of one terrible conflict to tell the broader story of rising authoritarianism in our times. Days of Love and Rage has the force, sweep, and artistry of a great novel, and is ultimately a story of our enduring human need for dignity and hope. Anand Gopal is a writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of No Good Men Among the Living and writes about democracy, inequality, and conflict. Recommended Books: Loubna Mrie, Defiance Walter Ang, Orality and Literacy Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Canon (Viking, 2026), two unlikely heroes embark on quests to win God’s favor in this outrageously entertaining, profoundly heartfelt novel that announces an ingenious new voice in the tradition of Chain-Gang All-Stars, No One Is Talking About This, and Martyr!Yara can’t comprehend why God has chosen them to slay Dominic, the ruthless leader of the army of Bad Guys. Cast out by their family and reeling from a destructive relationship, Yara has never felt weaker—but with nothing left to lose, they strike a deal. Abandoning their solitary days of embroidery and obsessive cleaning, Yara reluctantly embarks on a perilous odyssey designed to prepare them for the daunting mission ahead.Meanwhile, Adrena, a disillusioned prophet with a terrifying secret power, is determined to become the hero of this story. Desperately seeking the glory of God’s approval and the promise of heaven, where she hopes to reunite with her beloved mother, Adrena must first persuade Harpo, the leader of the Good Guys, that her plan is God’s will.As their journeys unfold in a series of unforgettable adventures, Yara and Adrena are propelled toward each other and transformative revelations about life, death, and destiny in this intensely captivating, irreverent epic from a singularly brilliant new voice in fiction.  Paige Lewis is the author of the poetry collection Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019) and the novel Canon (Viking Press, 2026). They co-edited Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance (Sarabande Books, 2023) with Kaveh Akbar. Paige teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.Recommended Books: Tom Lin, Babylon, South Dakota Layli Long Soldier, We Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices