July 26, 2025
There are many versions of a horror story, as three of the books this week confirm. We propose: a wild ride into the near future in Japan involving AI; a poetic, pulsing novel about the horrors of war in one elongated sentence; and a shocking novella of domestic horror from a favorite Austrian writer. We balance these subjects with short fiction filled with comedic irony about technology, science fiction, and modern life; and a memorable debut about two close friends whose lives we follow from their New England upbringing to the tantalizing glamour of big-city life in New York.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Angel Down
By DANIEL KRAUS
Published by ATRIA
Kraus returns with a novel set in the Argonne during WWI that captures the senselessness of war, replacing the ugliness of mud and entrails with a subdued beauty. Cyril Bagger and a few rag-tag soldiers are sent to retrieve a fallen comrade heard shrieking in the forest. (One soldier, 14-year-old Arno, lied about his age to join up.) But what they find is a fallen angel (a miracle?) who then destabilizes the dynamics of the men trying to survive. In a single run-on sentence, each paragraph starting with “and,” Bagger conveys the irrationality of simultaneously trying not to lose your mind or your limbs or your life. It is a moving 300-page prose poem.
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Killing Stella
By MARLEN HAUSHOFER
Published by NEW DIRECTIONS
Translated by Shaun Whiteside
“I have to write about her before I begin to forget her. Because I’ll have to forget her if I want to resume my old peaceful life.” Our narrator Anna is stuck in a marriage with a serially cheating husband, but to rock the boat with confrontation would be to compromise the all-important outward appearances of a happy family. Anna relates the events building up to the tragic demise of Stella, who they’ve agreed to board for a school year’s duration. A naïve beauty, Stella inevitably catches the eye of husband Richard. This psychologically penetrating 1958 novella, taking the form of a confession, is a little gem—a welcome rediscovery from the brilliant Austrian writer Haushofer.
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Seesaw Monster
By KOTARO ISAKA
Published by OVERLOOK
Isaka is perhaps best known for the novel on which the movie Bullet Train was based. His penchant for Tarantino-like violence tinged with glee—and a bit of Murakami whimsy thrown in—is given the full treatment. His new novel is set in 1980s Japan and a future decades later when AI and surveillance make the world a dangerous place. Our protagonists are salaryman Naoto and the women who drive the action: his wife and his mother who have a stormy relationship and a history of undercover work. On the surface the novel is cleverly compelling, but Isaka’s provocative ideas about the future give this wry thriller a greater depth. And, naturally, it’s in development at Netflix for the screen.
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An Oral History of Atlantis
By ED PARK
Published by RANDOM HOUSE
Park has surprisingly never published a short-story collection—until now! These sixteen pieces include four unpublished ones. “Two Laptops” presents a divorced man who buries himself on the internet and spies on his ex-wife, who left him for a woman. In one standout, “Weird Menace,” an aging actress and her director are watching a screening of the B-list sci-fi movie they made years ago as they reminisce about the ridiculousness of the plot and commiserate on their aging. It’s a riot. The names Tina and Hannah abound. A playful sense of the absurd prevails in each, making you think and then think again.
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Lonely Crowds
By STEPHANIE WAMBUGU
Published by LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
The unforgettable protagonists of Wambugu’s splendid debut provide an astute portrait of coming-of-age and how independence, while part of maturity, can threaten the mutually reliant bonds of friendship. “We become adults and have to decide, with what we’ve been given, what we want to become,” says the author about the central question of her novel. Ruth, the driving force, and Maria experience a transmuting relationship over a decade which takes the two young Black girls from a small, religious town in Rhode Island to the ’90s NYC art world where their attachment is strained by different levels of success. Wambugu explores, in the words of Sheila Heti, “how should a person be.”
