Hot News This Week
July 23, 2026
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| Two comprehensive, glowing reviews just dropped for Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s Trilogy About the Boy (Biblioasis), an Icelandic saga set in a 19th-century fishing village at the edge of the world. The final installment in the trilogy, The Heart of Man, published in June.
“Translated by Philip Roughton with finesse and rhythmic beauty, they have the mythic, twilit quality of Scandinavian legends,” writes critic Sam Sacks in the Wall Street Journal.
“The books depict plenty of action—voyages on foot across brutal subarctic terrain, a boy’s tormenting passion for two young women—that seems destined to stick with you for years to come,” says writer Salvatore Scibona in the New Yorker. “But there’s something in the reading experience itself that really gets its claws in you and promises to stay, a spiritual charge, daring you to live as though you meant it.”
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| PW’s Fall Comics Preview, Illustrated by an Arsenal Pulp Graphic Novelist
Publishers Weekly profiled graphic novelist Lucas Harari, who illustrated the cover of their fall comics and graphic novels issue.
Lucas Harari is the author-illustrator of The Case of David Zimmerman (Arsenal Pulp Press), co-written with his brother, Arthur Harari, the Oscar-winning co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall. One of PW’s top ten adult comics for fall, The Case of David Zimmerman is a “psychologically astute riff on the body swap plot” (PW starred review), and its film adaptation, The Unknown—directed by Arthur Harari and starring Léa Seydoux—debuted at Cannes Film Festival this spring.
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| Ripening and Aging: 2 Books from Bestselling Authors
“In the tradition of Angela Carter, Marina Warner, Emma Donoghue and Helen Oyeyemi, Blackie wants to reclaim these stories from the Disneyfication of the past century.” Sharon Blackie was profiled in The Guardian for her new book, Ripening: Why Women Need Fairytales Now (Global Book Sales / September Publishing). Blackie’s “manifestos for a better way of living,” like word-of-mouth hit If Women Rose Rooted (2019), have earned a cult audience drawn to her “beguiling mix of memoir, mythology and eco-feminism.”
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| | This Vital Absence
by Sophia Veltfort
Deep Vellum / A Strange Object • November 2026 • 9781646054480
“Weird girl lit meets an intensely personal diary from your early twenties. Both disarmingly honest and unexpectedly heartfelt, this is a book that has carved out a permanent place to call home in my heart.” — Ramona Flores, White Whale Bookstore (Pittsburgh, PA)
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| | Mer de Glace
by Malgorzata Lebda, trans. Mira Rosenthal
Fitzcarraldo Editions • November 2026 • 9781804272138
“Reminiscent of the nomadic zen monks, this collection is about travel, but much more about the small shifts that make up a season, and intimate observations of the places the poet lays her head. A beautiful and serene little book.” — Ryan Connell, Magic City Books (Tulsa, OK)
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“Fantastic follow up to Real Hero Shit that really gets into the meat and potatoes of the characters! And What a cliffhanger! That same high-fantasy drama, humor, and sexiness that made me fall in love with the first given the depth it deserves!” — Phoebe Santalla, Left Bank Books (St. Louis, MO)
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| | The Blackout
by Luis Amavisca, illus. Francesc Rovira
NubeOcho • October 2026 • 9791388132001
“With its sweet narration and charming pictures, this read-aloud gem is a reminder that analog days can be the best days.” — Amanda Grell, Pearl’s Books (Fayetteville, AR)
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★ “Visits to dozens of national borders and border crossings explore ways in which they both divide and connect us. A powerful message, paired to art that rewards closer looks.” — Kirkus Reviews
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| | The Tunnel
by William Gass
Deep Vellum / Dalkey Archive Press • April 2026 • 9781628976366
Back in stock!
“His prose is voracious, voluptuous. He refuses to find anything unsayable. This beautiful if dubious ambition reached its expressive apotheosis in his great big book The Tunnel, first published in 1995 and newly reissued by Dalkey Archive Press. . . . The Tunnel is a masterpiece of implication. It is also a nightmare of failed escape.” — Sarah Nicole Prickett, Bookforum
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“The first retrospective work to be published after her death, and it is a well-deserved tribute. . . . What really makes this collection sing is the text of the interviews with Lake, both because they allow her to define her own world, and they give us context for the content of the poems and lyrics.” — Bay Area Reporter
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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| FICTION
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz (Transit Books)
ABA, SCIBA, PNBA, MPIBA, NCIBA, GLIBA, SIBA, and Indie Press Top 40 (#3) Bestseller
We Were Forbidden by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz (Transit Books)
Indie Press Top 40 (#16) Bestseller
Stitched by Eli McCann (Torrey House Press)
Bookshop.org Bestseller
NONFICTION
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“It hurts when you grow up and you leave your family. You have to actually break something to go out into the world.” Jaque Jours spoke to Publishers Weekly about her debut picture book, The Muéganos (Transit Children’s Editions), which School Library Journal reports is among the top library holds this week.
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For CrimeReads, Michael Seidlinger, author of Brokeula (CLASH Books), wrote about six novels that invert horror tropes.
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