March 8, 2025
This week’s novels feature characters and families with unforgettable voices as they struggle in the world: a writer known for her inventive investigations of the trans experience returns with her second book; a gritty Midwestern family story is both funny and touching; a chameleon-like writer reaches back to a historical setting in 1930s Nebraska; a feisty young Muslim woman with a sharp tongue searches for love; and a gifted filmmaker and playwright turns to fiction by using her extraordinary family lore to illuminate Belgian history.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Stag Dance
By TORREY PETERS
Published by RANDOM HOUSE
Detransition, Baby was an unexpected success in 2021. Now here are three stories and the title novella from Peters that are just as imaginative and raucous as her debut. In the first story, “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” set during a contagion, our trans narrator looks for black-market estrogen made from mutant pigs. “The Chaser” follows two roommates in a boarding school who enter into a relationship. The novella takes place in a logging camp filled with lumberjacks attending a dance. Peters, the first trans woman nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, explores sexual identity with flamboyant language and a driving pace.
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The Antidote
By KAREN RUSSELL
Published by KNOPF
With a cover featuring a beautiful Dorothea Lange photo of a Dust Bowl farm, Russell’s enchanting historical novel is set in the 1930s. She has always infused her writing with a sense of the bizarre, which works on many levels. Climate disaster gives her story a contemporary resonance and frames her novel. From the 1935 Black Friday dust storm to a biblical flood, her main characters navigate life in Nebraska. They include a Prairie Witch nicknamed Antidote; a farmer whose property miraculously escapes devastation in the storms; and his niece who captains the girls basketball team. Infusing reality with her special brand of magic, Russell once again has given us a book for all readers.
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The Trouble Up North
By TRAVIS MULHAUSER
Published by GRAND CENTRAL
Mulhauser’s (Sweetgirl) new novel takes place in his usual setting: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His characters leap off the page and call to mind TV series like Ozark and Bloodline. This dysfunctional family is always on the verge of slipping off the edge of propriety, legality, and cash flow. With money troubles and spats among the siblings, addiction problems, patriarch Edward’s medical condition, gambling issues, stolen boats and trucks, some serious cases of arson, and family secrets, these characters are truly memorable. Guns are involved when nothing else will do.
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Place Brugmann
By ALICE AUSTEN
Published by GROVE 33
In her debut fiction, Austen uses one apartment building in Belgium to tell a story of its residents during the Nazi occupation. The building was actually inhabited by Austen’s family, lending even deeper resonance to her novel. She paints a vivid portrait of the world during WWII with a cast of fifteen characters among eight apartments. Their first-person narratives bring us into their idiosyncrasies and their behavior in times of crisis. It is quite an accomplishment—full of pathos, suspense, and drenched in humanity—as we watch the characters battle the new world in which they find themselves.
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Liquid
By MARIAM RAHMANI
Published by ALGONQUIN
This is not your usual thirtysomething rom-com—but if that’s your sweet spot, it will still do the trick. Our young protagonist is a queer Muslim woman on the cusp of becoming a grownup. She faces early disappointments regarding how to go forward after becoming a mostly unemployed, single post-graduate. “My career had gone nowhere. My love life was nonexistent. And as for sex—here I was home alone on a Saturday night…” With the help of a friend, she pours her energy into making a science out of dating, with a spreadsheet of possibilities and a goal of 100 dates. But her father’s illness back in Tehran calls her home to reassess.
