Hidden Gems You May Have Missed

From a global star and International Booker Prize finalist, a razor-sharp, unforgettable novel about a maid who’s seen too much and a family at a breaking point.

From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a novel set between the London stage and Sicily, about a daughter who turns her novelist father’s fall from grace into a play, and a father who increasingly fears his precocious daughter’s voice.

Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this coming-of-age novel about self-acceptance, sexual awakening, and first love set in a Nigeria on the verge of criminalizing same-sex relationships. An elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and what it takes for love to flourish despite it all.

From the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments an “eviscerating” (The New York Times) novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all. A tour de force of wit and rage, Liars tells the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

Halle Butler’s sadistically precise and hilarious novel follows Moddie as she abruptly ends her long-term relationship, moves back to her hometown, and throws herself at the mercy of her old friends. Butler singularly captures the volatile, angry, aggrieved, surreal, and entirely disorienting atmosphere of the modern era. “Butler has crafted a novel in which every character proves to be completely, uniquely crazy. Her perverse sense of humor should be studied and celebrated” (David Sedaris).

From the award-winning author of the Cash Blackbear series comes a compelling novel of a Native American woman who learns of the disappearance of one of her own and decides enough is enough.

What happens when what was once considered dystopia is now reality? This darkly brilliant debut novel explores how women shape themselves beneath the gaze of love, friendship, and the algorithm — “a fever dream for the AI age” (People).

A coming-of-age comedy. A telenovela-worthy drama. A moving family saga. All in a phone call you won’t want to hang up on.

Welcome to the Marigold Mind Laundry, where we wash away the stains from your heart. In this enriching tale — a blockbuster bestseller in Korea — the enigmatic owner of a magical laundromat that erases people’s painful memories must learn to find her own peace before she can truly help others.

A diverse group of New Yorkers are brought together by the search for a missing woman — in this electric novel of secrets, connection, and community.

A sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which a man struggles to find his place in an Iran on the brink of combusting.

From the award-winning and bestselling French author Colombe Schneck, a woman’s personal journey through abortion, sex, friendship, love, and swimming. Swimming in Paris is an immersive, propulsive triptych — fundamentally human in its tender concern for every messy and glorious reality of the body, and deeply wise in its understanding of both desire and of letting go.

A breathtaking, tragicomic debut novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia’s socialist revolution. Told through the perspective of its charming and irresistible narrator, The History of a Difficult Child is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice.

A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them. Spanning three timelines — post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York — Cinema Love is an “exceptional” and “moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.

A mesmerizing new novel from the author of Evening: The story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life. In spellbinding prose, Susan Minot has crafted a luminous novel about erotic obsession, and the hunger for intimacy, communication, oblivion. Don’t Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.

A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother’s secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter — the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.

A fierce, electrifying novel inspired by the true story of the first woman to be condemned as a witch in Ireland. A breathtaking act of imagination, Bright I Burn gives voice to a woman lost to history, who dared to carve a space of her own in a man’s world.

From the National Book Award-winning author, an extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation.

By the acclaimed author of Moxie, a funny, bighearted adult debut that is at once an ode to educators, a timely glimpse at today’s pressing school issues, and a tender character study, following a sprawling cast of teachers, administrators, and staff at a Texas high school.