Sarah Gerard 166 pages Two Dollar Radio (2015)

Read this if you like: Experimental literary fiction

tl;dr summary: Bulimic woman struggles with co-dependent relationship, astronomy, veganism.

See the book on Bookshop

Gwendolyn Kiste 250 pages Trepidatio Publishing (2018)

Read this if you like: Atmospheric horror, Rust Belt narratives, sympathetic monsters

tl;dr summary: The girls of Denton Street rusted in the summer of 1980 and survivor Phoebe Shaw is back 30 years later to find out why.

See the book on Bookshop.

Kerstin Hall 436 pages Tor (2021)

Read this if you like: Unique magic systems, religious dystopias tl;dr summary: Young Acolyte living on a floating city is caught up in the intrigue of her cannibalistic magic sisterhood.

Read the full summary on Bookshop

Chris Tarry 128 pages Red Hen Press (2015)

Read this if you like: Kelly Link, Raymond Carver, Haruki Murakami tl;dr summary: Quirky merger of cryptids and fantasy with real-world settings and emotions.

Read the full summary on Bookshop

Monica Byrne 608 pages Harper Voyager (2021)

Read this if you like: Maya civilization, anarchist utopias, long-view fiction tl;dr summary: A story across three timelines spanning 2,000 years, from a dying dynasty in the Maya empire to a nomadic far-future civilization and a teenager on vacation in Belize in the middle.

Read the full summary on Bookshop

Valerie Valdez 416 pages Harper Voyager (2019)

Read this if you like: Antihero starship captains, space romps, galaxy-scale worldbuilding

tl;dr summary: The misadventures of Captain Innocente and her crew, combining all the fun and action of sci-fi adventure pulp with relatable characters and next-level worldbuilding.

Read the full summary on Bookshop

Christine Rice 361 pages University of Hell Press (2016)

Read this if you like: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Alan Heathcock’s Volt

tl;dr summary: Life in New Canaan, MI is shitty, and lots of different characters tell you why.

Read the full summary on Bookshop

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I read The Epic of Gilgamesh for the first time only in my early thirties. It’s not long; about half of the 125-page copy I have is scholarly background and analysis. The actual myth is around 60 pages—and it casts a massive shadow for such a small text, if for no other reason than its status as the earliest surviving epic, believed to date from around 2,100 BC. For context, The Odyssey was written in the 8th century BC, and theologians believe the earliest Bible books were written between 1,500 and 1,000 BC.

Whether you realize it or not, a lot of Western cultural myths today owe their origin to Gilgamesh, either directly through plot points (e.g. the Bible’s story of the Flood) or indirectly thanks to the idea of the heroic epic. If you’re a genre writer, especially, Gilgamesh should be required reading at some point in your life. I’ve broken down what I found to be some of the most unique aspects of the world and tale below.

Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor 401 pages Harper Perennial (2015)

Read this if you like: The Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Borderlands, Terry Pratchett

tl;dr summary: The surreal world of Night Vale finally arrives on the page, in all its terrible, absurd beauty.

Read the full summary on Bookshop

Haruki Murakami 400 pages Kodansha International (1985)

Read this if you like: Unicorns, cross-genre experiments, simulated worlds

Tl;dr summary: Part surreal fantasy, part sci-fi detective story, all wonderfully bizarre—and masterfully constructed.

Read the full summary on Bookshop