Reba Leiding
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The Shadow King
Mengiste’s (Beneath the Lion’s Gaze) tale of Ethiopian women warriors is fascinating and tension-filled. Her prose style is to show rather than tell, with short, cinematic chapters dense with imagery and sensory detail. Descriptions of the fog of battle are exquisite and horrific, all the more remarkable for being told from a woman’s point of view. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/4/19.]
PREMIUM
Mostly Dead Things
Taxidermy as a through-line may be off-putting for some, but it grabs the reader like a horror novel; it’s gruesome and yet civilized, resulting in a lifelike, if kitschy, work of art.
PREMIUM
Dawson's Fall
NBCC finalist Robinson (Sparta) paints her characters as nuanced products of their time and avoids unrealistic heroics. A scattering of 19th-century newspaper articles, family letters, and data provides context and veracity for this work of fiction but also connects the Reconstruction era's racism, voter suppression, and violent gun culture to present-day societal divides. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 11/26/18.]
Walking on the Ceiling
A poetic yet intellectual novel; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 1015/18.]
PREMIUM
Lost Children Archive
The shifting sensibility from observer to child to child migrant gradually pulls readers inside the migrants' nightmare journey to create a story that, if fragmented, feels both timely and intelligent. [See Prepub Alert, 8/27/18.]
The Water Cure
This image-laden and lyrical first novel, its short chapters interspersed with brief, disturbing messages from women from the mainland, imagines a societal breakdown that has inflicted most of its harm on women, which seems both frightening and inevitable, offering a dark, extended metaphor on toxic male/female relations. [See Prepub Alert, 7/9/18.]
PREMIUM
This novella-length story is thought provoking on multiple levels, with insights into primitive and modern societies, and coming of age in the face of family violence. [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/18.]
Ghost Wall
This novella-length story is thought provoking on multiple levels, with insights into primitive and modern societies, and coming of age in the face of family violence. [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/18.]
PREMIUM
Scribe
More epic prose poem than sf, this slender, affecting meditation on grief and death, with a flavoring of Appalachian folklore stirred in, will appeal to readers of literary fiction and finely crafted prose.
PREMIUM
Donkor's dense descriptions of life in Ghana and London capture the dazzling disorientation of a young village girl on her own. Compelling female characters abound; it's surprising to discover a young male writer who so successfully inhabits a female point of view.
Housegirl
Donkor's dense descriptions of life in Ghana and London capture the dazzling disorientation of a young village girl on her own. Compelling female characters abound; it's surprising to discover a young male writer who so successfully inhabits a female point of view.