Hot News This Week
May 28, 2026
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“I spent the first day of 2026 reading Richard Siken’s poetry collection I Do Know Some Things and was blown away by his intimate account of learning to write again after a stroke,” notes service editor Jennifer Harlan.
“BookTok made the Belgian novelist and Holocaust survivor Jacqueline Harpman a posthumous sensation for I Who Have Never Known Men,” writes senior editor Emily Eakin. “Now comes We Were Forbidden—three novellas, newly translated by Ros Schwartz and packaged as a single book, that promise more dystopian literary surrealism from a master who’s belatedly getting her due. Count me in!”
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| Roger Rosenblatt on “How to Be Old”
“If you fail to follow these rules, I’m not saying that you are doing anything morally wrong. Only that you will suffer.”
Per BroadwayWorld, Rosenblatt celebrated his work at an event with Alan Alda and Joy Behar. He previously appeared on Alda’s podcast, Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda, for a conversation about aging well, and the episode re-aired this week to mark the upcoming publication of More Rules for Aging.
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| Two “Terrific” Mysteries on NPR’s Fresh Air
“If Khatibi shows us characters caught in the tragic flames of history, Fruttero and Lucentini look at human folly with a cool, almost ancient amusement at what strange, funny creatures we all are.” This week on NPR’s Fresh Air, critic John Powers recommended “two terrific novels” from Bitter Lemon Press in a segment on mysteries in translation.
The End of the Sahara is “a kaleidoscopic murder mystery by the Algerian writer Saïd Khatibi. . . . Superbly translated by Alexander E. Elinson, the book’s set in a provincial city on the edge of the Sahara in 1988 Algeria.”
By the “legendary” Italian team of Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, An Enigma by the Sea is a “witty, erudite and socially astute” mystery that’s “deliciously translated by Gregory Dowling.”
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| Consortium Publishers’ New Imprints
Consortium publishers have added several new imprints to their lists recently, and we’re thrilled to welcome their titles to our catalogs.
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CAEZIK / Showrunner Press
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Denpa / Glacier Bay Books
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Global Book Sales / Wilton Square
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“Incredible!! A dystopian novel about a mother and her son . . . this book is incredibly tender and sweet about the relationship between them. Also rather whimsical at times when we are in the young son’s point of view. Brought me to tears. I loved this book a lot.” — Annie Tate Cockrum, First Light Books (Austin, TX)
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| | Bury Your Dead
by Ana Paula Maia, trans. Padma Viswanathan
Charco Press • August 2026 • 9781917260343
“Afraid I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the best book I’ve read all year. . . . I gasped AUDIBLY during several scenes, and swam late into the night aboard this slim, 128-page novella. Cormac McCarthy can eat his heart out—not even No Country for Old Men beats the horrors of life as a roadkill-remover in the remote, underresourced, unknown outskirts of somewhere in Brazil.” — Spencer Ruchti, Third Place Books (Seattle, WA)
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“One of our best contemporary feminist thinkers.” — Meagan Gamble, Beaverdale Books (Des Moines, IA)
“Add this one to your list of important queer feminist nonfiction reads. Lewis’s essays regarding the politics of femininity offer a thoughtful perspective you’ll be itching to discuss with peers.” — Manda Barker, Raven Book Store (Lawrence, KS)
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“Boykoff really knocked it out of the park with this one. . . . [He] sets the stage for exactly how this year’s World Cup is the perfect opportunity for Trump and America to use sportswashing to cover up the heinous actions this administration is engaging in daily. This is the ideal primer for consciously engaging in the World Cup this summer.” — Katey Salogar, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
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“An off-kilter and astounding tragicomic triumph. Striking a delicate balance between satire and sorrow, Lewis dignifies and gives voice to a cast of characters burdened by secrecy and exile, all while indulging in the undeniable absurdity of the system in which they are entangled. . . . A remarkable, rueful piece of work.” — Bryan Seitz, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
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★ “O’Connor offers a lucid and chilling view into the rise of fascism in Germany with this story of a psychoanalyst and his Jewish wife. . . . [A] timely historical narrative. It’s a knockout.” — Publishers Weekly
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★ “A riotous crossover of literary fiction meets romantasy . . . Plastic, Prism, Void is a trans romance for fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War and other innovative fiction. Violet Allen is an engaging talent to watch.” — Shelf Awareness
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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, PNBA, MPIBA, SIBA, SCIBA, NCIBA, MIBA, NAIBA, and Indie Press Top 40 (#4) Bestseller
Riverwork by Lisa Robertson (Coach House Books)
Indie Press Top 40 (#38) Bestseller
NONFICTION
Dog Days by Emily LaBarge (Transit Books)
Indie Press Top 40 (#32) Bestseller
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“Elaine Feeney is one of my favorite Irish writers. She’s so good on class and rural living and sort of the silent burdens that women endure . . . some of the best writing I have ever read.” Author Douglas Stuart recommended Elaine Feeney’s Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way (Biblioasis) as one of his “Foyles Four” picks for Foyles Bookshop.
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“Anna Badkhen contemplates the fundamentals of the human condition . . . with a wisdom, heart, and expansiveness reminiscent of Barry Lopez.” Orion Magazine featured Anna Badkhen’s To See Beyond (Bellevue Literary Press) in a roundup of new environmental nonfiction.
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“I love books like this: a big fat blend of personal writing and literary criticism and theory and experiments in form that leave you in awe of the author’s brain.” Critic Maris Kreizman wrote about Emily LaBarge’s Dog Days (Transit Books) for her Maris Review newsletter.
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“Midwestern Death Trip is a bumpy, open-road personal reckoning that mows through the Midwest—from small-town dive bars to ghosts of her past—in search of answers in a blood-red Cadillac.” Page Six featured Meaghan Garvey’s Midwestern Death Trip (County Highway / Panamerica) among their summer beach read picks.
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“As his prison-appointed psychologist, I met regularly with ‘Bernard’ between 2011 and 2021 at one of France’s most specialized high-security psychiatric facilities.” The Daily Mail published an exclusive excerpt from Nathalie von Zelowitz’s I Ate His Heart: Interviews with a Cannibal, translated by Jon von Zelowitz (Feral House).
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