The Basilisk Stare begins with Daniel Susskind presenting what initially looks like a nonfiction investigation into artificial intelligence and the disappearance of an old friend. He explains that the leaders of major technology companies believe they may soon create AI systems capable of outperforming human beings at almost every intellectual task, and he argues that […]
The novel is narrated by Mina, a forty-five-year-old Iranian American woman living alone in Edinburgh, where she has deliberately constructed a small, low-cost, low-ambition life after years of elite education, corporate work, marriage, bereavement, and psychological collapse. At the beginning, Mina believes she may finally have discovered happiness through chemistry. A new antidepressant, mirtazapine, dramatically […]
The novel follows twenty-five-year-old Carson Brant, a lifelong Brooklyn resident whose life has almost completely stalled after the death of her mother from cancer. Her father died when she was a child, so her mother’s death has left her effectively without family, alone in the deteriorating brownstone where she grew up. She works part-time at […]
Second Nature is narrated by Bodie, a boy of almost fourteen who has spent his entire life inside an isolated forest community called the Veil. At first, Bodie does not understand his society as oppressive. To him it is the whole universe: strange, beautiful, ecologically elaborate and saturated with religion. The community believes humanity almost […]
Baby Queen is a Southern crime novel centred on Natalie “Nat” Link, a thirtysomething entrepreneur who has returned to her family’s Alabama honey farm and is trying to turn its declining beekeeping business into a cosmetics company. What Nat does not initially understand is that the respectable family business has always had another side: her […]
This novel by Eli Rallo begins with a prologue, that introduces best friends Penelope “Penny” and Eden in the eighth grade. Penny has always been the bold one, while Eden is anxious to have her first kiss, so Penny decides to walk her through it and teaches Eden how to kiss. From the beginning, their […]
Patricia Cornwell’s Rapid and Fatal opens on Good Friday with Virginia chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta called to the Alexandria mansion of billionaire security magnate Adam Quilton and his wife, Mimi. Both have collapsed and died while eating Chinese takeout from Fen Palace. The scene initially looks like an extraordinary double allergic reaction: Adam and […]
Hollywood, Ending follows two young actors, Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie, whose friendship and eventual romance develop while they make and promote a prestige film about Andy Warhol. What begins as a backstage Hollywood story gradually becomes a novel about childhood abuse, ambition, celebrity, trauma and the uncomfortable way the entertainment industry turns people’s most […]
This is a surreal science-fiction satire set during the fourteenth month of an alien invasion of Earth. Its central human character is Margaret Wiggle, a recently separated Florida woman who has moved back into her parents’ home, while its first-person narrator is Angus, a young extraterrestrial cadet assigned to observe her. What initially looks like […]
Alexander Sammartino’s Gallo follows the rise, collapse and strangely qualified redemption of Tom Gallo, an ageing professional bodybuilder who spends most of his life trying to turn his body into proof that he matters. Structured across 2005, 2010 and 2023, the novel presents bodybuilding as art, addiction, faith, self-punishment and performance, while showing how Gallo’s […]