Hot News This Week
October 9, 2025
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Huge congrats to all the talented honorees, as well as our friends at Copper Canyon, Deep Vellum, and New Vessel. Winners will be crowned on November 19; learn more about the finalists via the New York Times.
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| NYPL’s Best New Comics of 2025
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| Two Dark Academia Picks
Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker (Coffee House Press): “Six friends at a Catholic school transform a cobwebby, long-abandoned house into a cultish headquarters where they can explore their darkest impulses. . . . [A] moody and unsettling novel, which draws on the internet tradition of creepypasta to explore the dark side of girlhood.”
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan (Small Beer / Big Mouth House): “A hilarious, and moving, sendup of magic school novels. . . . Brennan explores gender dynamics, diplomacy in wartime, xenophobia and the ways that deeply damaged people can learn to care for each other—all with a per-page joke rate that puts Douglas Adams to shame.”
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| Consortium Corner with Josh Brown
In the latest Consortium Corner, we’re CC’ing Josh Brown, our manager of operations and metadata. Read the full interview here, which features:
- Josh’s excellent recs for cosmic horror and Ursula K. Le Guin’s poetry
- A Beowulf readathon
- Two whimsical Star Wars tshirts
Consortium Corner is a Q&A series with staff and reps to celebrate Consortium’s 40 years of independent book distribution.
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“This is a work of art, with sparse text that invites readers to be immersed by the imagery. Thoughtful and inspiring, this is a remarkable book for celebrating diversity and introspection. I found it beautiful and quite moving.” — Meghan Bousquet, Titcomb’s Bookshop (East Sandwich, MA)
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“A truly incredible work that bends what fiction can do. Presented as an oral anthology familiar to academia, each chapter highlights the struggle, work, and revolution of particular people who were influential in creating and sustaining a network of communes in future New York City.” — Sophia Hardin, Third Place Books (Seattle, WA)
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“As we watch the cruelty with which ICE agents treat people on our streets, this book clarifies that this isn’t just about this administration, isn’t even about just this country, but is about capitalism, imperialism, borders, poverty, and war. . . . This book will haunt you and deeply alter the way you think about migration both here and throughout the world.” — Linda Sherman-Nurick, Cellar Door Books (Riverside, CA)
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“This book made me cry, it made me laugh (incredibly, thank you Granny), and I’ll be thinking about it for a long, long time to come. . . . It’s impressive in every way.” — Olivia Williams, Harvard Book Store (Cambridge, MA)
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| | White Winter
by Milena Lukesova, illus. Jan Kudlacek
Albatros Media • October 2025 • 9788000076201
★ “A timeless tale about the transformative magic of a snowstorm and imaginative play. . . . This simple, beautifully conveyed story is an installment in the ‘Poetic Vintage Tales’ series originally published in the Czech Republic in 1978.” — School Library Journal
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| | The Mongoose
by Joana Mosi
Pow Pow Press • October 2025 • 9782925114475
★ “A poignant portrait of mourning, grief, and recovery. . . . Through minimalistic black-and-white outlines of panels strategically scattered on each page, the story behind what the mongoose represents gradually emerges.” — Booklist
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| | The Mind Reels
by Fredrik deBoer
Coffee House Press • October 2025 • 9781566897372
“DeBoer, who has elsewhere written about his own battles with mental health, tells a gripping story about one young woman’s descent into illness.” — Vulture
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| | Perverts
by Kay Gabriel
Nightboat Books • September 2025 • 9781643622941
“[Gabriel] beat everyone to the finish line in the smartest, most roundabout way.” — Hari Nef, via Interview Magazine
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“Slippery yet playful and fun, what a joy it is to have [Emshwiller’s] work at hand. . . . The stories in this collection span from 1958 to 2012. ‘Her work still feels brand new,’ Kelly Link writes in the foreword, ‘inventive and rigorous, experimental and slapstick and astonishing.’” — Washington Post
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“A striking composite of literary biography, criticism, and autobiography that surely counts as one of [Özlü's] best works. . . . Despite the incessant presence of death and loss, Özlü’s books remain invigorating and bracing.” — The Nation
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“If one ever forgets what poetry is for, this newly-released collection is a reminder of its ability to renew, sooth and provoke. Mirror is a translation of a lengthy posthumous selection of Chinese poet Zhang Zao’s lifelong opus.” — Asian Review of Books
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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“Holding the Line Through Tear Gas and Censorship”: Listen to Truthout’s Movement Memos podcast for an interview between Read This When Things Fall Apart (AK Press) editor Kelly Hayes and contributors Maya Schenwar and Eman Abdelhadi, in which they discuss immigration raids and the violent repression of protesters in Chicago.
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The Untranslated put together an extensive readers’ guide for Michael Lentz’s Schattenfroh (Deep Vellum Publishing), translated by Max Lawton.
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ABA, SCIBA, PNBA, NAIBA, NEIBA, SIBA, GLIBA, NCIBA, MPIBA, and MIBA Bestseller
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz
Transit Books • May 2022 • 9781945492600
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| LibraryReads Pick for October
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Vampires at Sea
by Lindsay Merbaum
Creature Publishing • October 2025 • 9781951971229
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