New Books In Literature

A young man comes of age and crosses continents in search of an identity--and a cause--at the dawn of the Spanish Civil War in a thrilling, timely, and emotional historical saga. New York City, 1929. Young Theo Sterling's world begins to unravel as the Great Depression exerts its icy grip. He finds it hard to relate to his parents: His father, a Jewish self-made businessman, refuses to give up on the American dream, and his mother, a refugee from religious persecution in Mexico, holds fast to her Catholic faith. When disaster strikes the family, Theo must learn who he is. A charismatic school friend and a firebrand girl inspire him to believe he can fight Fascism and change the world, but each rebellion comes at a higher price, forcing Theo to question these ideologies too. From New York's Lower East Side to an English boarding school to an Andalusian village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Theo's harrowing journey from boy to man is set against a backdrop of societies torn apart from within, teeteri

In this NBN interview, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Toronto author Alice Fitzpatrick about new her mystery, A Dark Death (Stonehouse Publishing, 2025). This female-led literary detective novel has been delighting readers.  About A Dark Death: Kate Galway is looking forward to a quiet summer working on her latest novel at her home on Meredith Island. For a place hardly anyone has heard of, her sleepy Welsh island is attracting a lot of visitors, including a conman posing as a psychic and group of archaeology students who believe they’ve unearthed evidence of a Roman temple. Part-way through the dig, however, the students make an even more startling discovery: a body ritualistically laid out in their trench. While intrigued by the murder, amateur sleuth Kate decides to leave this investigation to the professionals. However, when she learns that both the island mechanic and her university friend’s son are prime suspects, she and artist Siobhan Fitzgerald feel they have no choice but to get involved. More

NBN host Hollay Ghadery interviews Christy Climenhage, the author of the highly-anticipated science fiction thriller, The Midnight Project (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) Julie E. Czerneda, author of To Each This World, calls this novel “an absolute triumph.”  About The Midnight Project: In this near-future science fiction thriller, Christy Climenhage has created a frighteningly real world on the verge of collapse. As disaster strikes, the two friends need to decide whether to cling to their old life or to let go and embrace a new path for humanity. When enigmatic billionaire Burton Sykes walks into Re-Gene-eration, a bespoke reproduction assistance clinic run by Raina and Cedric, two disgraced genetic engineers struggling to get by, they know they have a very unusual client. When Sykes asks them to genetically engineer a way for humanity to survive the coming ecological apocalypse, Raina is tempted. Bees are dying, crops are failing, and she knows her research is partly to blame. Could she help in some way? Though

Kevin Nguyen, My Documents (One World, 2025) Kevin Nguyen is the author of the novel New Waves, published in 2020. He is the features editor at The Verge, where he publishes award-winning stories about labor, business, and policing, and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He lives in Brooklyn. Recommended Books: Annelise Chen, Clam Down Tash Aw, The South Ian Penman, Eric Satie Three Piece Suite Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they are an expression of the zeitgeist of a particular era. They reveal much about the hopes, values, and aspirations of the society that produces them, as well as that society’s vision of its place in the wider world at large.Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society (AUC Press, 2025) by Dr. Yasmine Motawy examines a new wave of Egyptian picture books that was published in the current century to see how these books responded to larger societal trends and transformations in Egypt, as well as to explore the ideologies that lie behind them. Dr. Motawy argues that a host of factors, including the growth of gated communities and international schooling, the proliferation of lucrative literary awards, returning Gulf migrants, television dramas, and nationwide reading advocacy initiatives helped give rise to a new kind of children’s picture book in Egypt.Dr.

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads. Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression. In Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings (Harper, 2025), Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life. She charts

Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word (Routledge, 2023) explores the role of divine love in the Quranic commentary of the Moroccan Sufi scholar Aḥmad Ibn ʿAjība (d. 1224/1809). Through close textual analysis of Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis al-Baḥr al-madīd—The Abundant Ocean—and drawing on his other Sufi writings the book illuminates the scholar’s theory of divine love, drawn from his scholarly antecedents, to elucidate its role and the scholar’s impact on the wider field of Quranic scholarship. This close analysis is supplemented by a comparative approach focusing on several other eminent and influential Sufi commentaries. What is displayed is that Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis connected theoretical works on the concept of divine love to their practical application, a breakthrough in Sufi literature. The study situates Ibn ‘Ajība’s thought in theological and historical perspective, engaging with his mystical approach which integrates his theory of divine love with other Sufi doctrines in a

Just Willa (Cave Hollow Press, 2025) is a family chronicle of rare beauty-more than reminiscent of Willa Cather in capturing the regional flavors of America-stretching over a span of decades through an intimate focus on the life of one woman. In it, Helen Sheehy gives us a character of indomitable spirit who fuels and anchors her family with love and bravery. We meet Willa Hardesty in 1964, while she's burning trash in a barrel and thinking "this is hell." Angry and frustrated, she finds some items she had long forgotten, and remembers that she had once been happy. In the ensuing chapters Willa's life unfolds like a tapestry, beginning in 1927 when she's eleven, about to accompany her mother on a train ride from Oklahoma to Missouri. Just Willa shows us a world filled with people and struggles both realistic and relatable-a world that is beautiful, despite its hardships. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.

When Leah Lax was asked to write an opera to celebrate local immigrants, she began by spending a year listening to accounts of upheaval, migration, and arrival told her in confidence by people from around the globe. She felt she had discovered America, found its great beating heart. In interludes between the astounding and powerful stories in Not From Here: the Song of America (Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie, 2024), Leah uncovers the lost history of her Jewish family and finds a larger context for her own story. "In a way," she writes, "we Americans are all immigrants." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ana Hebra Flaster was six years old when her working-class family was kicked out of their Havana barrio for opposing communism. Once devoted revolutionaries themselves but disillusioned by the Castro government’s repressive tactics, they fled to the US. The permanent losses they suffered—of home, country, and loved ones, all within forty-eight hours—haunted her multigenerational family as they reclaimed their lives and freedom in 1967 New Hampshire. There, they fed each other stories of their scrappy barrio—some of which Hebra Flaster has shared on All Things Considered—to resurrect their lost world and fortify themselves for a daunting task: building a new life in a foreign land.Weaving pivotal events in Cuba–US history with her viejos’—elders’—stories of surviving political upheaval, impossible choices, and “refugeedom,” Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town (She Writes Press, 2025) celebrates the indomitable spirit and wisdom of the women warriors who led the family o

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with one of Canada's most beloved novelists, Catherine Bush, about her debut collection of short fiction, Skin (Goose Lane Editions, 2025).  In Skin, Catherine Bush plunges into the vortex of all that shapes us. Summoning relationships between the human and more-than-human, she explores a world where touch and intimacy are both desirable and fraught. Ranging from the realistic to the speculative, Bush’s stories tackle the condition of our restless, unruly world amidst the tumult of viruses, climate change, and ecological crises. Here, she brings to life unusual and perplexing intimacies: a man falls in love with the wind; a substitute teacher’s behaviour with a student brings unforeseen risks; a woman becomes fixated on offering foot washes to strangers. Bold, vital, and unmistakably of the moment, Skin gives a charged and animating voice to the question of how we face the world and how, in the process, we discover tenderness and allow ourselves to be transfo

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with co-editors and poets, Connor Lafortune and Lindsay Mayhew about their anthology, A Thousand Tiny Awakenings. A Thousand Tiny Awakenings (Latitude 46, 2025) is a collection of poems and creative non-fiction that explores the creative voice of those eighteen to thirty years of age. A new generation with a desire to dismantle the restrictive systems that define the past, but not their future. A Thousand Tiny Awakenings offers a glimpse into how a new generation perceives the world and how they use their own power to shape the future. Connor Lafortune is from Dokis First Nation on Robinson Huron Treaty territory of 1850 in Northeastern Ontario. He works primarily in Life Promotion, harm-reduction, mental health, and Indigenous education. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree at Nipissing University with a Double Honors Major in Indigenous Studies and Gender Equality and Social Justice. He is currently in the Masters in Indigenous Relations at Laurentian Universit

NBN host Hollay Ghadery interviews fellow rural Ontario author Daryl Sneath about his 2024 novel, In the Country in the Dark (Signature Editions).  When Landon and Joy meet they feel an instant connection and quickly become inseparable. One day shortly after they've met, they take a trip to view The Hart Farm, an idyllic property located in a remote area. It's perfect, with room for Landon to set up his carpentry shop and Joy to have an art studio. The real estate agent feels complete disclosure of the property's tragic and potentially violent past is necessary but Landon and Joy decide ignorance is bliss and ask to not be told the details. They're in love and smitten with the farm and decide on the spot to buy it.As they spend their days creating art, reading, cooking for each other, listening to music, and making love, they can barely believe their good fortune. However, when the heat of summer--as well as their initial infatuation--begins to wane, Landon and Joy realize how little they know about each oth

NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kingston, Ontario poet Callista Markotich about her poetry collection, Wrap in a Big White Towel. Callista’s powerful first collection is an imperative: Wrap in a Big White Towel. When the spirit trembles, when imagination shrinks from a torched world, when empathy drowns you, protect yourself, seek solace. Then emerge with ruthless honesty and clarity into the cathartic space you’ve made, speaking the names of the dead. “Unmoored, I swing / into a long black chute, a tunnel rush in / starless night, a schuss, deep, deep, // and something cool upon my lips.” Markotich’s debut is full of restless experimentation and harmony. Her inimitable poetic voice is saturated with kindness and brilliance, sizzle and pop. About Callista Markotich: Callista Markotich was a finalist for the 2023 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for Pushcart and National Magazine Awards. She is a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine. She lives in Kingston, Ontario. Learn more

Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope (Summit Books, 2025) Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction, criticism, and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer prize, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin holds a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Book Recommendations: Katie Kitamura, Audition Josh Duboff, Early Thirties Alexis Okeowo, Blessings and Disasters Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more a

Amie Souza Reilly bought an old house in the suburbs. She had just gotten remarried and was looking forward to a new start with her new husband and her six-year-old son. But immediately after moving in, the next-door neighbors began a crusade to push them out. The two brothers followed her, peered in her windows, stood in her yard, trapped her inside her car. As they broke boundary after suburban boundary, she found herself implicated in their violence. Human/Animal merges personal narrative and cultural criticism to unleash the complicated relationship between instinct and action, violence and regret. This bestiary-in-essays wrestles American colonialism, horror films, feminism, and gender studies to confront the intrusive neighbors the author could not. Ultimately, this book asks larger questions about proximity, care, and the line between human and animal. Illustrated with the author's own sketches, Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025) grapples not only with Reilly's

NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Jack Wang about his novel, The Riveter (HarperVia, 2025).  In the vein of All the Light We Cannot See, a cross-cultural love story set against the dramatic backdrop of the Allied invasion of Europe during WWII. Vancouver, 1942. Josiah Chang arrives in the bustling city ready to make a new life for himself. The Second World War is in full swing, and Josiah, like so many Canadians, wants to prove his loyalty by serving his country. But Chinese Canadians are barred from joining the army out of fear they might expect citizenship in return. So, Josiah heads to the shipyard where he finds work as a riveter, fastening together the ribs and steel plates of Victory ships. One night, Josiah spots Poppy singing at a navy club. Despite their different backgrounds, they fall for each other instantly, and soon Josiah is spending his nights at Poppy’s small wartime house. Their starry-eyed romance lasts until Poppy’s father comes to visit and the harsh reality of their situation

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Toronto author Teri Vlassopoulos, author of Living Expenses—a timely tale of reproductive health in an age of both technological and geographical distance. The novel has roots in Teri’s own struggle with infertility. More about Living Expenses:As the children of a single mother who immigrated from the Philippines, Laura and Claire have always been exceptionally close. That is, until Claire moves to San Francisco for a startup job in Silicon Valley while Laura and her husband remain in Toronto and decide to start a family. Enter the slow, hopeful, devastating process of fertility treatments. While Laura prepares for IVF, Claire has her own encounter with the fertility industry. Living Expenses interrogates the strain that can accompany even the strongest of relationships, and captures the inevitable creep of technology into all facets of its characters’ lives, from communication to reproduction. “Vlassopoulos captures the seemingly endless heartbreak, bone

In this NBN episode, Hollay Ghadery speaks with Lindsay Wong about her short story collection, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality (Penguin, 2023).  SHORTLISTED FOR THE BC AND YUKON JIM DEVA PRIZE FOR WRITING THAT PROVOKESFrom the bestselling, Canada Reads-shortlisted author of The Woo-Woo comes a wild, darkly hilarious, and poignant collection of immigrant horror stories. They’ll haunt and consume you—in strange and unsettling ways.Living forever isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Hearts can still break, looks can still fade, and money still matters, even in eternity. The ghosts, zombies, and demons in this collection are all shockingly human, and they’re ready to spill their guts. Vanity, love, and tragedy are all candidly explored as the unfulfilled desires of the dead are echoed in the lives of modern-day immigrants. Story-by-story, the line between ghost and human, life and death, becomes increasingly blurred.There’s a courtesan from 17th century China who, try as she might, just can’t manage

NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author and actor Melia McClure about her novel, All The World's a Wonder (Radiant Press, 2023). A playwright possessed by her muses, an actress desperate to succeed, and a doctor haunted by a lost love. Three people cross time and space to meet through the playwright's bizarre creative process: to create, the playwright must become her characters; to tell her tragic story, the actress must speak from the grave; to heal his harrowing past, the doctor must surrender to his patient - the playwright. About Melia McClure: Melia McClure is the author of the novel The Delphi Room and continues to delve into the eccentric as a writer, editor, and actor. As an actor, she has traversed a range of realms, from a turn as Juliet in an abridged collage of Shakespeare's classic to the sci-fi universe of Stargate Atlantis. Melia studied writing at The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University, and her fiction was shortlisted for a CBC Literary Award. Born in Vancouver, she has since tr