New Books in Literature

The Innermost House: A Memoir (Bright Leaf, 2024) is a stunning account of year-round life on the windswept shores of Cape Cod, threaded with meditations on memory, forgetting, and identity. About The Innermost House, Publishers Weekly writes, “Salt air and the limits of memory animate this heartrending debut. . . . Readers will be captivated.” Shelf Awareness calls the book “Enthralling” adding that “Blakeley is an evocative writer who captures the lush beauty of a ‘half feral’ childhood spent immersed in the natural world while never losing sight of the precarity and violence that permeated it.” Foreword Reviews calls the book “a distinctive memoir with a keen sense of place and renewal.” Raised in a nineteenth-century saltbox house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Cynthia Blakeley was both surrounded by generations of immediate and extended family and isolated by the mysteries locked inside her affectionate yet elusive mother and short-fused father. While she and her sisters and cousins roamed the Outer Cape—drinking in the dunes, swimming in kettle ponds, and dancing in Provincetown—Blakeley also turned to the inner world of her journals as she contended with her own secrets and memories. Over-identifying with her unconventional and artistic mother, Blakeley felt certain that the key to understanding her mother’s drinking and distractions, her generosity and easy forgiveness, was the unexplained absence of two of Blakeley’s half-siblings and their connection to her mother’s unhappy first marriage. Blakeley kept her distance, however, from her disciplinarian father. Though he took his daughters sailing and clamming and beachcombing, he was the chill to their mother’s warmth, the maker, not the breaker, of rules. Slipping through these dynamics in that small house and evocative landscape, Blakeley eventually crossed the bridge and left home, only to return later in search of the family stories that would help her decode her present. Blakeley’s captivating memoir moves fluidly through time, grappling with the question of who owns a memory or secret and how our narrative choices not only describe but also shape and change us. In this insightful and poignant account of tenacious year-rounders on Cape Cod, Blakeley contends that making sense of ourselves is a collaborative affair, one that begins with understanding those we came from. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Mariah Rigg speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Target Island,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. “Target Island” is a story from her short story collection Extinction Capital of the World, out August 5 from Ecco; both focus on the islands of Hawai’i. Mariah talks about the process of writing and revising this story and the collection as a whole, and why reflecting contemporary Hawai’i is important to her work. Mariah also discusses playing with time and narrative flow in her stories, and working on a new project—her first novel. Mariah Rigg is a Samoan-Haole who was born and raised on the island of O‘ahu. She is the author of the short story collection Extinction Capital of the World, which is forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins on August 5th. Her chapbook, All Hat, No Cattle was published by Bull City Press in 2023. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Oregon Literary Arts, VCCA, The Mount, and Lambda Literary, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In fall 2025, she will be a visiting fellow at Mount Holyoke College. ­­Read Mariah’s story “Target Island” in The Common at thecommononline.org/target-island. Order her story collection in all formats from Ecco/Harper Collins. Learn more about Lucas at www.mariahrigg.com. Follow Mariah on Instagram at @riggstah. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her new debut novel All That Life Can Afford is the Reese’s Book Club pick for April 2025. Her writing appears in The New York Times, Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews author and academic James Cairns about his collection of essays, In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025). In 2022, the Collins Dictionary announced that its word of the year was “permacrisis,” which it defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.” Have we reached a breaking point, arrived at the moment of truth? If so, what now? If not, why do so many people say we’re living through a period of unprecedented crises? Drawing on social research, pop culture and literature, as well as on his experience as an activist, father and teacher, James Cairns explores the ecological crisis, Trump’s return to power amid the so-called crisis of democracy, his own struggle with addiction and other moments of truth facing us today. In a series of insightful essays that move deftly between personal, theoretical and historical approaches he considers not only what makes something a crisis, but also how to navigate the effect of these destabilizing times on ourselves, on our families and on the world. James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism and the Journal of Canadian Studies. James’ essay “My Struggle and My Struggle,” originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis’s Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Greg Rhyno about his new mystery novel, Who By Water (Cormorant Books, 2025).  After barely surviving her last case, Dame Polara trades her part-time detective gig for the safer — though no less chaotic — life of a single, working mother, picking up toys instead of picking locks, chasing after her two-year-old instead of chasing crooks. But when her ex-husband inexplicably drowns, and Dame becomes the prime suspect in his murder investigation, she must work alongside the woman who ruined her marriage to unravel the mystery of the man they both loved. Dame’s sleuthing takes her to dive bars, industrial ports, and eventually, Toronto Island, where her ex spent his final days with a community of secretive and temperamental artists. As she comes closer to the complicated truth, Dame realizes that in order to clear her name and protect her family, she’ll have to re-examine everything she thought she knew about the people she loved and left behind. About Greg Rhyno: Greg Rhyno is the author of Who by Fire, first of the Dame Polara Mysteries, and To Me You Seem Giant, which was nominated for a ReLit Award and an Alberta Book Publishing Award. His writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Hobart, Riddle Fence, The Quarantine Review, and PRISM International. He completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Superhero violence and graphic action sequences are prevalent on the screen and on the page, but this book takes an alternative route with practical guidance, frameworks, and tools for incorporating the principles of peacebuilding and nonviolence into compelling fiction. By mapping a path less travelled but just as vital in divisive times, in n A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Peace: Crafting Nonviolent Heroism (Bloomsbury, 2025) Dr. Gabriel Ertsgaard shows writers how they can enact nonviolent heroism in their characters, model civil resistance in their stories, and create worlds around a mythos that champions redemptive nonviolence. With concepts applicable to writing for fiction, drama, the screen, and narrative poetry, A Fiction Writer's Guide to Peace deconstructs the necessity for violence in popular works, explores key concepts in peace studies, and helps writers establish their own peace poetics. Focused around the narrative craft techniques of character arcs, campaigns, duels, and worldbuilding, the book features numerous creative writing prompts and examples from key works. These include films such as Trading Places, Selma, Lage Raho Munna Bai, and Frozen and literature ranging from Shakespeare's plays to Dickens' A Christmas Carol to Julia Quinn's Bridgerton novels. A timely and important expansion to any writer's toolkit, A Fiction Writer's Guide to Peace allows storytellers to understand the complex dynamics of, and the damage caused by, violent perspectives and actions, giving them a way into considering nonviolence as powerful and preferable. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A writer at Dateline NBC tries her hand at a different kind of mystery, perfect for fans of Chandler Baker’s Whisper Network, where a cynical TV news producer sells out her principles to rise to her network’s top job, and comes face-to-face with what appears to be her idealistic teenage self.Everleigh Page is on the cusp of greatness. Executive producer of an award-winning primetime news magazine, she’s just been offered a role never attained by a woman at her network: president of the news division. It will be her job to shape coverage of world events and mold the journalists of tomorrow.Too bad in order to get here she’s sold out most of the principles she held as an idealistic young reporter. Too bad she’s just, at the direction of her boss, fired two of her best staffers and killed an important investigative story that could save lives. As a woman, she knows, you have to play ball to get to the top. Even if it means bending your moral code or breaking up with your boyfriend. Sean may be the love of her life, but his large, complicated family has started taking up too much of her time.Her younger self wouldn’t recognize her. Or will she?When a college reunion takes a mystical twist, Everleigh finds herself defending her choices to the toughest critic in the world and confronting a crucial question: can she possibly right all the wrongs she was willing to tolerate just an hour ago? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

From the bestselling author of Born Survivors, a novel inspired by the powerful true story of a man who risked everything to protect children in Auschwitz. Fredy built a wall against suffering in their hearts . . . Amid the brutality of the Holocaust, one bright spot shone inside the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. In the shadows of the smokestacks was a wooden hut where children sang, staged plays, wrote poetry, and learned about the world. Within those four walls, brightly adorned with hand-painted cartoons, the youngest prisoners were kept vermin-free, received better food, and were even taught to imagine having full stomachs and a day without fear. Their guiding light was a twenty-seven-year-old gay, Jewish athlete: Fredy Hirsch. Being a teacher in a brutal concentration camp was no mean feat. Forced to beg senior SS officers for better provisions, Fredy risked his life every day to protect his beloved children from mortal danger. But time was running out for Fredy and the hundreds in his care. Could this kind, compassionate, and brave man find a way to teach them the one lesson they really needed to know: how to survive? The Teacher of Auschwitz shines a light on a truly remarkable individual and tells the inspiring story of how he fought to protect innocence and hope amid depravity and despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

From the mind of acclaimed reporter Gary Baum comes In Pursuit of Beauty (Blackstone, 2025), a striking debut novel that examines the nature of truth and allure in our modern world. What would you endure to fulfill your dreams? What would you do to have the perfect body? For Dr. Roya Delshad, the answers are anything and everything. A sought-after Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Roya is also the highest example of her craft. She's had every inch of her own body sculpted, one procedure at a time. All to escape a painful and lonely past. But when Roya gives the gift of beauty to those who can't afford the cost, the media labels her "the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive," and she soon finds herself pleading her case from inside a prison cell. Hoping to resurrect her reputation and obscure a trail of unhappy clients, Roya tells her story with the help of the blithely handsome Wes Easton, a journalist and failed screenwriter who agrees to ghostwrite her memoir. In a twistingly tense pas de deux, Wes struggles to tell fact from fiction, and Roya seeks to explode his notions about aspiration and desire, sending their collaboration off the rails. A bold, stylish, and provocative thriller about surfaces and their hidden depths, In Pursuit of Beauty explores what it means to become exactly who you once yearned to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

What if our society’s deepest prejudices weren’t about race, gender, or sexuality—but height? In his groundbreaking allegorical novel, acclaimed Jordanian author and activist Fadi Zaghmout imagines just such a world, crafting a powerful meditation on discrimination and desire that speaks directly to our contemporary debates about identity and inclusion. The Man of Middling Height (Syracuse University Press, 2025) follows a short dressmaker whose life is upended when she meets Tallan, a man whose middle height places him outside the rigid tall/short binary that governs their society. As their forbidden romance blossoms, they must navigate a world where height determines everything from social status to romantic possibilities. Through their story and those of surrounding characters—including a short person in a polyamorous relationship with two tall partners, and a tall activist who scandalously loves another tall person—Zaghmout deftly reframes contemporary discussions about gender identity and sexuality through the lens of height discrimination. Fadi Zaghmout is a Jordanian author and sexual freedoms and body rights advocate. He has published five novels, including The Bride of Amman, Heaven on Earth, Laila, and Hope on Earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Alexis von Koniglow about her new novel, The Exclusion Zone (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025).  About The Exclusion Zone:  She would harness fear. And this terrifying place would help her do it. Renya, a scientist who studies how people react to fear, flees a troubled marriage to conduct research on the scientists working in the “exclusion zone” around Chernobyl. In the eerily silent forests surrounding the research station, she finds more is haunting her than the dangers of radiation exposure. As she gathers data from her colleagues and probes historical records of the Chernobyl disaster, unsettling questions rise to the surface. Who is funding her research? Why are all the scientists’ findings off? And what do those who stalk the ruins of the abandoned city nearby want? In this atmospheric tale, Alexis von Konigslow deftly weaves the struggles of women in science with the impact of politics, both past and present, on people and on the environment. Part ghost story, part literary thriller, The Exclusion Zone is a mesmerizing story that reminds us all to listen to our hearts as well as the earth. ABOUT THE AUTHORAlexis von Konigslow is the author of The Capacity for Infinite Happiness. She has degrees in mathematical physics from Queen’s University and creative writing from the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto with her family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature