Hot News This Week
August 21, 2025
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| The New York Times profiled multi-hyphenate artist and “lavish tinkerer” Tristan Duke in print on August 10. One of Duke’s recent projects is the subject of Glacial Optics, his “sumptuous, just-released Radius Books monograph,” which features photographs of Arctic glaciers captured through lenses made of their own ice.
Read more about “this latter-day magus” who “just keeps blowing all our minds.”
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| Read This Next: a Swoony Novel about a Maybe-Saint
In addition to being an Indie Next pick this month, Little World by Josephine Rowe (Transit Books) is garnering strong media attention.
In a review for the Washington Post, critic Talya Zax says it’s “the kind of concise, precisely sketched novel that you can read in one sitting, coming away with a sense of having been briefly but profoundly transported.”
Elsewhere, in the New York Times Book Review, Opinion editor Mary Marge Locker writes, “Little World is a swoony, atmospheric, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it short novel” about “the body of a child, incorruptible in death—‘a maybe-saint, a novitiate, a fledgling?’—who becomes a holy figure to those who encounter her.”
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“After the death of her only child, Anna’s life splits into two hemispheres: Life Before and Life Beyond Lou. Her fractioned narratives whirl clockwise and counter between adoring/grieving poles, gravitating the story towards the equatorial Life Behind the Life Beyond Lou, where she can crash her own way into the harsh rocks of recovery.” — Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA)
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| | Root Rot
by Saskia Nislow
Creature Publishing • March 2025 • 9781951971250
“Lovely, dreamy, and full of dread. Really enjoyed it and looking forward to seeing more from Saskia Nislow!” — Nino, Astoria Bookshop (Astoria, NY)
“Saskia Nislow captures the ethereal quality of transness in a story I just had to gobble in one go. This book is vividly psychedelic, including mycological language at every turn.” — Adelaide, Hive Mind Books (Brooklyn, NY)
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“From sweet anecdotes about how fellow bands helped them out on tour, to stories from younger musicians about how they were inspired by Die Kreuzen’s prolific style, this labor of love is a vital read for all music fans, no matter your preferred genre.” — Kathryn Brostowitz, Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI)
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“This novel is just SO good—intense, mournful, exhilarating, very moving and staggeringly beautiful. . . . It is about queer joy, grief, loss, love, and desire (with hot sex scenes that are real, raw, steamy, and chaotic).” — Ed Devereux, Unabridged Bookstore (Chicago, IL)
“Charlie Porter has a distinctive voice—one I hope to be reading for years to come.” — Adam Possehl, Powell’s Books (Portland, OR)
“This book has shaken me to my core . . . it is as impressively crafted as it is unique. Yet its story, so familiar.” — Charlie Jones, A Room of One’s Own (Madison, WI)
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“Growing up is weird! Sometimes you feel too old for the little kids, and too young for the big ones. You’re stuck somewhere in the wobbly middle. . . . Jonah’s wild imagination and creative escapes had me laughing throughout.” — Kassandra McKenna, Watermark Books & Cafe (Wichita, KS)
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★ “A visual treat guaranteed to entrance budding mathematicians. . . . This geometric primer is an immaculately balanced combination of geometric information, ‘I spy’ elements, and interaction.” — Kirkus Reviews
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| | Little F
by Michelle Tea
Feminist Press • October 2025 • 9781558613560
★ “A comical, tender, queer coming-of-age, where the journey is the destination. . . . Tea’s sincerity and generosity toward her characters will be a balm. It’s a pleasure to see the world through Spencer’s eyes.” — Kirkus Reviews
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| | Vaim
by Jon Fosse, trans. Damion Searls
Transit Books • October 2025 • 9798893380217
★ “This is unforgettable. . . . Nobel winner Fosse centers this spectacular story of loneliness, love, and death on three linked characters living in small-town Norway.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | Saint Consequence
by Michael M. Weinstein
Alice James Books • August 2025 • 9781949944747
“Wildly honest but also hopeful . . . Weinstein’s poems explore what it means, and whether it is even possible, to love the body in space. Any space, any landscape.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
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“Whether you’re tackling your first script or returning to the page after a few misfires, this book is built to get you over the finish line, with structure, support and a sense of momentum.” — Emmy Magazine
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| | Delicious Hunger
by Hai Fan, trans. Jeremy Tiang
Tilted Axis Press • June 2025 • 9781917126021
“An almost unreal atmosphere, populated by individuals navigating complex emotions; a rainforest awakens from a slumber, enshrouding the comrades within it in the lush cloak of camaraderie, splintered by bullets and bombs.” — Jacobin
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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With Heart Lamp (And Other Stories) now well stocked, revisit author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi’s interview with WBUR’s Here and Now about winning the International Book Prize and depicting the lives of Muslim women in Southern India.
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ABA, PNBA, SCIBA, SIBA, MIBA, GLIBA, NAIBA, MPIBA, NCIBA, and NEIBA Bestseller
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz
Transit Books • May 2022 • 9781945492600
🌙 Collector's Edition 🌙
coming in hardback this September, with a new intro by Carmen Maria Machado
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Little World
by Josephine Rowe
Transit Books • August 2025 • 9798893380163
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