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Jason Stevens is growing up in picturesque, historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in the 1970s. Back when the roads are smaller, the cars slower, the people more colorful, and Washington, D.C. is way across the mountains—a winding sixty-five miles away.
 

Jason dreams of going to art school in the city, but he must first survive his teenage years. He witnesses a street artist from Italy charm his mother from the backseat of the family car. He stands up to an abusive husband—and then feels sorry for the jerk. He puts up with his father’s hard-skulled backwoods ways, his grandfather’s showy younger wife, and the fist-throwing schoolmates and eccentric mountain characters that make up Harpers Ferry—all topped off by a basement art project with a girl from the poor side of town.

Ugly to Start With punctuates the exuberant highs, bewildering midpoints, and painful lows of growing up, and affirms that adolescent dreams and desires are often fulfilled in surprising ways.

Before Love became a household name, she was Lacey Dove Bart, a determined teen with dreams of stardom. Desperate to escape her bleak small-town life, Lacey dazzles at an audition for the prestigious Newland Academy, catching the eye of mega producer Jimmy Coins. Lacey’s friend and co-performer, Carrie-Anne, believes they’re on the brink of achieving their shared dream of escaping Appalachia. But a betrayal by Lacey leaves them both reeling.

As Lacey is transformed into “Love,” the carefully controlled idol of a generation, she loses piece after piece of herself. She’s contracted for stints on Christian variety shows, toured through malls and state fairs, and even locked in a fortress-like mansion between recording sessions. With her life spiraling out of control and younger, hungrier replacements waiting in the wings, Love’s only chance at freedom is to reconnect with Carrie-Anne and seek redemption in the one authentic bond she has left. Part pop elegy, part horror story, part radical reimagining of female celebrity, Ultranatural autotunes the static of fame until it sounds like prophecy.

Uncommon Weather is an eclectic mix of character-driven stories that delivers a panoramic picture of Alaska— from the cold city streets of Anchorage to picturesque but emotionally treacherous small Alaska towns; from the rough-and-tumble commercial fishing world of the distant Aleutian Islands to a remote river in the Brooks Range, where the vast and unforgiving Arctic wilderness puts romance to a severe test.
 
Richard Chiappone’s characters hail from a wide range of socioeconomic strata, each one attempting to figure out the difficult question of how best to live among others. Odd connections abound. In the seriocomic title story, a lonely middle-aged woman, weary of her austere Alaskan life and her crumbling marriage, picks up a hockey stick and a younger man and tries to brawl her way to some better future. A man diagnosed with an apparently terminal illness is caught up in a catastrophic criminal undertaking masterminded by a precocious seventeen-year-old girl. A young boy, determined to fit in with his edgier peers, goes through a metamorphosis, becoming a strange new creature he’s never seen before. With sometimes hilarious missteps, each character stumbles in and out of predicaments that are by turns tender, heartbreaking, dangerous, and even violent.
 
Told with great empathy and often deeply ironic, wry, and sardonic humor, these stories are a counterpoint to the usual mythos, illuminating an Alaska not usually portrayed in books, on TV, or in movies.

As wryly profound as ever, Glen Pourciau solidifies his reputation as a master of American short fiction with Under, a collection of brief yet meticulously elaborated stories that deconstruct daily living as his characters see it by diving beneath their skin and surveying the electric heat bristling below. He scours their interiors for the granular details of consciousness that accrue to a person's singular point of view, shape patterns of behavior, and culminate in consequential decisions (or equally meaningful inaction). Pourciau's writing thrums with claustrophobic intelligence, untangling the knots of eccentric personalities by observing the trajectory of his subjects' thoughts and tracing them back to the source. Rarely is the root an inciting incident or narrative catalyst, but rather the self-propagating algorithm of paranoia that proves to us we have something to fear precisely because we are afraid. Pourciau's titular story begins with the narrator confessing, "A voice from within is telling me this story. It rises like protruding lumps from nowhere." More often than not, plots that start inside one's head refuse to stay there; soon, psychological disruption asserts itself in the material world, determining a character's lived experience as tangibly as an external force or outside actor. "I've been watching a patch of ground in my backyard that has been upset by something moving up from below," the narrator continues. It's no comfort, actually, that what is emerging never actually emerges; a lack of conclusive evidence means never fully disproving the possibility of the thing, either. "Nothing is buried or rising from below in my backyard. My conscience is clear, guided only by its own instinct," the narrator assures himself to no avail. "This story should be rooted out, destroyed, but talking to it doesn't make it go away. Even when silent, something insidious gnaws within it." Pourciau's ability to illuminate that something insidious is what makes his writing something marvelous. No less instructive or revelatory for their internal accelerants, these stories spotlight the small conflagrations that punctuate even our most ordinary days. In delineating the invisible machinations of each person's mind, they reveal the flammable borders of personal boundaries and the conflicts with colleagues, neighbors, and long-time friends that cast off sparks and set our small lives ablaze.

Winner of the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award in Multicultural Fiction
Winner of the 2022 Forward INDIES Silver Award for Literary Fiction
Finalist of the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award in New Fiction
Finalist of the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award

Barb Matheson doesn’t fit in: not on the Standing Rock Reservation where her mother was born; not at the mission in rural Ethiopia where she grew up; and certainly not at the Pennsylvania church where her husband preaches. Expansive and lyrical, Unfollowers is a tale of religious angst, unrequited love, and the upheaval of racial and economic privilege. Equally adrift on both sides of the Atlantic, Barb must negotiate the distance between white America and Africa, between the spirituality of her ancestors and the straight tones of evangelicalism, and between rules and grace. When a former lover crashes her daughter’s third birthday party, she’s offered the chance to find her way home to Ethiopia, leaving her to choose between a rote life in America and an improvised life abroad.

A humorous and deeply human short story collection that celebrates outsiders, dreamers, and the queer.
 
The award-winning Slovak writer Barbora Hrínová’s short stories paint an intimate portrait of people searching for happiness in a world that feels increasingly unstable and uncertain. Across the eight stories in this volume, we meet a rich cast of ordinary yet unconventional people trying to find their place in a society that often prefers conformity over authenticity. Taking us to such settings as a bustling cafe, a small village shack, a rental flat, or a psychiatric ward, Hrínová captures the texture of everyday life with piercing accuracy and a fresh, original voice.
 
Unicorns is a remarkable debut that resonates across generations. With compassion, wit, and an eye for detail, it shows us that weirdness isn’t rare—it’s a universal human experience.

“I was a monument to immigration—now I’m a border control cop.” So admits the Statue of Liberty in Giannina Braschi’s United States of Banana, a rollicking and nakedly political allegory of US imperialism and Puerto Rican independence. Illustrated by Swedish comic book artist Joakim Lindengren and based on Braschi’s epic manifesto by the same title, the story takes us along on the madcap adventures of Zarathustra, Hamlet, and Giannina herself as they rescue the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo from under the skirt of the Statue of Liberty. Throughout their quest, the characters debate far-ranging political and philosophical subjects, spanning terrorism, global warming, mass incarceration, revolution, and love. The Marx Brothers, Pablo Neruda, Barack Obama, Disney characters and more make appearances in this stirring call to overthrow empire, liberate the imprisoned masses, and build a new country rooted in friendship, art, poetry, and laughter.

A gay novel in which the rural landscapes of Bengal set the stage for a story that transcends the boundaries of tradition and love.

Mallar, a shy and introspective sixteen-year-old, finds himself drawn to Srijan, his classmate’s enigmatic elder cousin, during a fateful summer in a small-town family home. At first, Mallar’s fantasies take shape in secret sketches of Srijan. But soon, their connection becomes a complex play of mutual desire and dominance, which leads to the forging of a unique pact—a promise never to fall in love with each other.

As their lives take them from the serene landscapes of Bengal to the vibrant beaches of Chennai, the mysterious alleys of Paris, and the buzzing streets of Bangalore, the two men’s unconventional companionship deepens. With each meeting comes a new revelation, a fresh twist to their agreement, and a surprising facet of their identities. Mallar, reviving his childhood passion, embarks on a journey to establish himself as an artist. Collaborating on an art project, Mallar transforms Srijan’s body into a living canvas. But what begins as a creative endeavor quickly becomes a voyage into uncharted depths, as the canvas asks questions, challenges their resolve, and unravels hidden truths, culminating in new beginnings.

Delving into the intricate layers of two men’s lives, their fears, insecurities, hopes, and the mosaic of experiences that shape them, this novel is a testament to the complexities of human connection. One of the first openly gay novels written in Bengali, and the first to be translated into English, Sudipto Pal’s Unlove Story is a groundbreaking addition to the canon of queer literature from around the world.

Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges offers a number of developments, refinements, and defenses of key aspects of unnatural narrative studies. The first section applies unnatural narrative theory and analysis to ideologically charged areas such as feminism, postcolonial studies, cultural alterity, and subaltern discourse. The book goes on to engage with and intervene in theoretical debates in several areas of both critical theory and narrative theory, including affect studies, immersion, narration, character theory, frames, and theories of reception and interpretation. Antimimetic perspectives are also extended to additional fields, including autobiography, graphic narratives, drama and film, performance studies, and interactive gamebooks. Written by an international assemblage of distinguished and emerging narrative scholars and theorists, this collection promises to greatly enhance the study of narrative and further advance the frontiers of narrative theory.

Independent Publisher’s Book Awards, Silver Medal, Short Story Fiction

A new translation of Egon Bondy’s classic critique and parody of Communist Czechoslovakia.

Bondy's merry utopia, or rather anti-utopia, was written during the bleakest years of “normalization” in Communist Czechoslovakia during the 1970s. Once considered a cult novel of the Czech underground, Unsound Siblings is not only a celebration of the “alternative way of life” of people living deliberately outside of (Communist) state power and a mockery of the contemporary consumerist ideas of the police state, but also a light parody of science fiction, organically incorporating philosophical themes. As much as this work can also be described as “adventure literature,” evoking, for example, the scenery of a “mysterious island,” its overall message reaches the power of a religious, gospel message that it is, despite all odds, possible to live in this world after all. Unsound Siblings, first published in Czech by the exiled 68 Publishers in Toronto and circulated in samizdat copies in Czechoslovakia, later won the Egon Hostovský Prize.

When Tave wakes up alone in the hospital, she barely remembers the car wreck. Far from home, dazed, and despondent, she struggles to face the challenges of her new paralysis—all while worrying about her partner, Les, also severely injured in the accident, now cared for by her homophobic parents who refuse to allow contact.

In rehab, Tave relearns life skills and comes to recognize that her future will be completely different than she’d imagined. Where will she live? How will she find the help she needs? Can her friends rise to the occasion? Or will she be forced to move back in with her mother, putting up with endless talk of faith healers? Her one beacon of hope is Beth, her physical therapist. But Beth’s relationship problems with her own girlfriend push her toward overinvolvement—and risk damaging both her career and Tave’s recovery.

A story of courage, resilience, and love, Unswerving challenges readers’ preconceived notions of disability, of limitations, and of the inevitability of fate.

Upon its initial release in Arabic in the fall of 2014, Using Life received acclaim in Egypt and the wider Arab world. But in 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt published in a literary journal harmed public morality. His imprisonment marks the first time in modern Egypt that an author has been jailed for a work of literature. Writers and literary organizations around the world rallied to support Naji, and he was released in December 2016. His original conviction was overturned in May 2017 but, at the time of printing, he is awaiting retrial and banned from leaving Egypt.

Set in modern-day Cairo, Using Life follows a young filmmaker, Bassam Bahgat, after a secret society hires him to create a series of documentary films about the urban planning and architecture of Cairo. The plot in which Bassam finds himself ensnared unfolds in the novel’s unique mix of text and black-and-white illustrations.

The Society of Urbanists, Bassam discovers, is responsible for centuries of world-wide conspiracies that have shaped political regimes, geographical boundaries, reigning ideologies, and religions. It is responsible for today’s Cairo, and for everywhere else, too. Yet its methods are subtle and indirect: it operates primarily through manipulating urban architecture, rather than brute force. As Bassam immerses himself in the Society and its shadowy figures, he finds Cairo on the brink of a planned apocalypse, designed to wipe out the whole city and rebuild anew.