Burned By Books

Creation Lake (Scribner, 2024) is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France."Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by "cold bump"--making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her "contacts"--shadowy figures in business and government--instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past.Just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner's rendition of "noir" is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner's finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.Rachel Kushner is the author of the novels CREATION LAKE, THE MARS ROOM, THE FLAMETHROWERS, and TELEX FROM CUBA, a book of short stories, THE STRANGE CASE OF RACHEL K, and THE HARD CROWD: ESSAYS 2000-2020. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and is now three times a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Recommended Books: Cormac McCarthy, Child of God Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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 her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process (Zibby Books, 2024), Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye.The stories--which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny--will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife's funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones's characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health, and innocence.Arresting, original, and beautifully rendered, this story collection packs a punch, just the way grief does―knocking us off our feet.Mary Jones’s work has appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommend Reading, Subtropics, EPOCH, and The Best American Essays, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The Goodbye Process is a national bestseller. Originally from Upstate New York, she lives in Los Angeles.Recommended Books: Miranda July, All Fours Taylor Koekkoek, Thrillville USA Ling Ma, Bliss Montage Claire Keagan, Small Things Like These Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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 the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible--for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.She is tasked with working as a "bridge" living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machines," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry's project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how--and whether she believes--what she does next can change the future.An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time (Avid Reader Press, 2024) asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley's answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Here short fiction has appeared in Somesuch Stories, The Willowherb Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Extra Teeth, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize.Recommended Books: Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed Kaveh Akbar, Martyr Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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

Today I talked to Chelsea Biker about her novel Madwoman (Little, Brown, 2024).Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she's landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.But when she receives a letter from a women's prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel GODSHOT which was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize, named a Barnes and Noble Pick of the Month, and was a national indie bestseller. Her story collection, HEARTBROKE won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022” and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, McSweeney’s, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.Recommended Books: Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive Gina Maria Balibrera, Volcano Daughters Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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

1999: An island off the southern coast of Greece. Art historian Elizabeth Clarke arrives with the intent to acquire a rare female sculpture. But what begins as a quest for a highly valued cultural artifact evolves into a trip that will force Elizabeth to contend with her career, her ambition, and her troubling history.Disoriented by jet lag, debilitating migraines, and a dependence on prescription pills, Elizabeth turns to her charming and guileless translator to guide her around the labyrinthine island. Soon, the island's lushness--its heat and light, its textures and tastes--take hold of Elizabeth. And when she's introduced to her translator's inscrutable wife--a subversive artist whose work seeks to deconstruct the female form--she becomes unexpectedly enthralled by her. But once the nude's acquisition proves to be riskier than Elizabeth could have ever imagined, Elizabeth's and the statue's fate are called into question. To find a way out, Elizabeth must grapple with her past, the role she's played in the global art trade, and the ethical fallouts her decisions could leave behind.The Nude (Atria Books, 2024) is an evocative and intense exploration of art, cultural theft, and what it means to be a woman helming morally complicated negotiations in a male-directed world.C. Michelle Lindley’s work can be found in Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for 2024 and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and a BA in English and Art History from the University of California at Berkeley. And most recently she is the recipient of the Freund Prize for exceptional creative writing.Recommended Books: JoAnna Novak, Domestirexia Ariana Harwicz, Die My Love Rose Boyt, Naked Portrait Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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

It's November 3, 1957. As Sputnik 2 launches into space, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day. Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn't particularly happy in his job but he fulfills the role. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion with a key shot up her sleeve, is now a mother and homemaker. On this unseasonably warm Sunday, Kathleen decides not to join her family at church. Instead, she unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the deserted swimming pool of their apartment complex in Newark, Delaware. And then she won't come out.A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most (Little, Brown, 2024) masterly breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.Jessica Anthony is the author of three previous books of fiction, most recently the novel Enter the Aardvark, a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. A recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature, Anthony wrote The Most while guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge in Štúrovo, Slovakia. She Lives in Portland, Maine.Recommended Books: Patricia Highsmith, Price of Salt Stories of Shirley Jackson (the tooth and the renegade) Carson McCullers, Member of the Wedding Alice Childress, Trouble in Mind Andre Breton, Mad Love Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Gretel and the Great War Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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 December 2018, we meet Rudy Coyle, a bar owner's son from Flushing, Queens, in the throes of a major quarter-life crisis. Cut out of the family business, he gets a Hail Mary job as a night doorman in a storied Park Avenue apartment building, where he comes under the wing of the family in 4E, the Cohens.Jacob "Jake" Cohen, the fast-talking patriarch, is one of a generation of financiers who made hundreds of millions of dollars in the cutthroat taxi medallion industry in the early 2000s, largely by preying on the hopes and dreams of impoverished immigrant drivers. As Jake tries to stop the bleed from the debt crisis now plaguing his company, clawing back his assets from an increasingly dangerous coterie of Russian American associates, Rudy gets promoted from doorman to errand boy to bodyguard to something like Jake's right-hand man.By turns a gripping portrait of corruption and a tender family dramedy, Atta Boy (U Iowa Press, 2024) combines the urban cool of Richard Price with the glossy, uptown charm of Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Here is a novel richly attuned to its time and place, but with something for everyone--high-wire prose and a story wedding ripped from the headlines, social realism with the warmth, angst, and humor of its indelible voices.Cally Fiedorek is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and an alumna of The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship. Atta Boy is her debut novel. She lives in her native New York City with her family.Recommended Books: Kevin Berry, The Heart in Winter Paul Murray, Beesting Paul Murray, Skippy Dies Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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

It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the "peasants" -- ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and "bad apples" the Greens.At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.Today I talked to Megan Nolan, author of Ordinary Human Failings (Little, Brown, 2024). Nolan was born in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays and reviews have been published by the New York Times, the White Review, The Guardian, and Frieze, among others. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was the recipient of a Betty Trask Award and was short-listed for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award and long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize.Recommended Books: Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Ann Enright, Actress José Saramago, Blindness Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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

It's another summer in a small Florida town. After an illness that vanishes as mysteriously as it arrived, everything appears to be getting back to normal: soul-crushing heat, torrential downpours, sinkholes swallowing the earth, ominous cats, a world-bending virtual reality device being handed out by a company called ELECTRA, and an increasing number of posters dotting the streets with the faces of missing citizens. Living in her mother's home, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author tracks the eerie changes. On top of everything else, she's contending with family secrets, spotty memories of her troubled youth, a burgeoning cult in the living room, and the alarming expansion of her own belly button.Then, during a violent rainstorm, her sister goes missing. She returns a few days later, sprawled on their mother's lawn and speaking of another dimension. Now the ghostwriter must investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author she works for, and reality itself.A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of selfhood and storytelling, Laura van den Berg's State of Paradise (FSG, 2024) is an intricate and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, van den Berg reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which was one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her next novel, Ring of Night, is forthcoming from FSG in 2026.Recommended Books: Mariana Enriquez, Our Share of Night Octavia Butler, Bloodchild  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming 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

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family?As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. "Forget about daily life," chides her grandmother on the phone. "We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park."Back in their home countries parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly out of reach. But Asya and Manu's new world is growing, too, they hope. As they open the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?Unfolding over a series of apartment viewings, late-night conversations, last rounds of drinks and lazy breakfasts, The Anthropologists (Bloomsbury, 2024) is a soulful examination of homebuilding and modern love, written with Aysegül Savas' distinctive elegance, warmth, and humor.Aysegül Savas is the author of the acclaimed novels Walking on the Ceiling and White on White. Her work has been translated into six languages and has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Paris.Recommended Books: Hugh Raffles, The Book of Unconformities Alisa Gabbert, Any Person is the Only Self Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract 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