Hot News This Week
January 9, 2025
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| The National Book Critics Circle announced their prize category longlists for the first time, and several titles from Consortium publishers are nominated for the 2024 NBCC Awards. Finalists will be named later this month and winners crowned at the ceremony on March 20. Congrats, all!
- Intervals by Marianne Brooker (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
- Little Seed by Wei Tchou (Deep Vellum / A Strange Object)
- Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, translated by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter)
- A Muzzle for Witches by Dubravka Ugrešić, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać (Open Letter)
- Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger (Transit Books)
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New and Upcoming Releases
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| Read These Next: 2 Italian Mystery Novels
John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, named The Lover of No Fixed Abode as his favorite mystery novel of 2024. “Shimmering with wit and bursting with an insider’s knowledge of Venice, The Lover of No Fixed Abode builds to a solution so unexpected that not one person in a million will guess it,” says Powers, declaring it a “minor classic.”
Translated by Gregory Dowling, The Lover of No Fixed Abode is by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, a legendary Italian crime novelist team. Next month, Bitter Lemon will publish Dowling’s translation of another novel by the duo, Runaway Horses, a murder mystery set at a famed Italian horse race.
The Lover of No Fixed Abode
by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, trans. Gregory Dowling
Bitter Lemon Press • February 2024 • 9781913394905
Runaway Horses
by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, trans. Gregory Dowling
Bitter Lemon Press • February 2025 • 9781916725034
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| Most Anticipated Books for 2025
Some excellent upcoming titles from Consortium publishers are featured on recent preview lists: browse selections below, and peruse Consortium’s Spring 2025 catalogs for more.
- 8114 by Joshua Hull (CLASH Books)
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“I won’t shut up about this book. . . . This book is incredibly relevant and, in my opinion, will only become more so in the coming years. Sophie Lewis neatly outlines past and current ‘enemy feminisms’ or non-liberatory feminisms that hinge on the oppression of others.” — HP Petersen, Books Inc. (Mountain View, CA)
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“A glimmering achievement in genre-defying memoir. . . . Crisscrossing the genres of poetry, personal essay, theory, and visual art, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show is as raw and captivating as it gets.” — Stevie Billow, East City Bookshop (Washington, DC)
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| | If Nothing
by Matthew Nienow
Alice James Books • January 2025 • 9781949944693
★ “Unflinching and tender, this volume affirms Nienow’s distinctive poetic gifts.” — Publishers Weekly
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★ “A dazzling achievement. . . . Weaving themes of loss, memory, and transformation, Holland-Batt stuns in this powerful volume.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | Shadow Reader
by Imtiaz Dharker
Bloodaxe Books • August 2024 • 9781780377094
★ “An exquisite and complex vision of exile, immigration, and adopted homelands. . . . This spectacular collection astonishes.” — Publishers Weekly
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★ “Brandon Shimoda hauntingly, brilliantly spotlights an expansive community of descendants—including himself—confronting the aftermath of the unjustified incarceration of Japanese Americans.” — Shelf Awareness
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| | Out of the Blank
by Elaine Equi
Coffee House Press • February 2025 • 9781566897174
★ “These endlessly quotable, epigrammatic poems articulate the human experience with the ethereality of a harp and the coy trill of a cymbal. Equi’s linguistic dexterity and innovation are nonpareil.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | The Gone Book
by Helena Close
Little Island Books • April 2025 • 9781912417445
★ “Powerful. A skateboarder in Limerick contends with his long-absent mother’s return to town with her new partner and young daughter. . . . [A] taut, emotionally authentic story.” — Kirkus Reviews
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| | Calm
by Susan Baker
Neem Tree Press • April 2025 • 9781911107934
★ “In her page-turner, debut author Baker evokes dystopian despair reminiscent of classic titles. . . . A gripping examination of our human need to feel.” — Kirkus Reviews
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★ “Awad’s deeply felt sophomore collection reverberates with lines as hard and true as rock. . . . It is the hurt—and Awad’s bravery in facing it—that lends these poems their remarkable power and vividness.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | What Is Mine
by Jose Henrique Bortoluci, trans. Rahul Bery
Fitzcarraldo Editions • October 2024 • 9781804270851
“In narrating the recent history of his country alongside the life of his truck driver father, Bortoluci gives us a bird’s-eye view on national history as informed by one man’s lived experience.” — The Nation
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| | The Lady of the Mine
by Sergei Lebedev, trans. Antonina W. Bouis
New Vessel Press • January 2025 • 9781954404304
“A story full of both striking beauty and unsettling violence. . . . Taut with paradox and stacked with symbolism, Lebedev’s novel resists surface readings.” — Jewish Book Council
“The Lady of the Mine in Antonina W. Bouis’s magnificent English translation highlights Russia’s efforts to sow division within the Donbas in 2014, delving into the region’s legacy of atrocities.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“Visionary in how [Lebedev] renders the historical horrors.” — Financial Times
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| | A Day With Mousse
by Claire Lebourg, trans. Sophie Lewis
Transit Children’s Editions • October 2024 • 9798893389067
“[Mousse] has his routine dialed in. Every day is full of sweet rituals. . . . This is his life, a surreal and simple watercolor dream. Until one day it’s disturbed by Barnacle, an aptly named walrus who moves into Mousse’s bathtub.” — New York Times Book Review
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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Composer Patrick Shiroishi released an album inspired by Brandon Shimoda’s The Afterlife Is Letting Go (City Lights Publishers): learn more and listen here.
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Last month, critic Ron Charles featured Traci Brimhall’s “lovely collection” Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press) in his Washington Post newsletter.
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ABA Bestseller
Loving Corrections
by adrienne maree brown
AK Press • August 2024 • 9781849355544
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