Lucas Stoffel

R.F. Kuang is, at this point, operating on a level that should be illegal. After the Poppy War trilogy proved she could write epic military fantasy that would make your soul hurt, she pivoted to contemporary literary satire and somehow got even sharper. Yellowface is a book about the publishing industry written like a thriller, and it cuts so deep that everyone who reads it feels personally attacked. That's the point. Here's the setup, and it's brilliantly simple: June Haywar

Justinian Huang's debut spans 2,000 years of queer love and obsession across three timelines. Lush, explicit, and unforgettable. Justinian Huang's debut novel asks a question that sounds like it belongs on a late-night conversation with someone you're falling for: What if love isn't chance? What if your soul has been finding the same person across lifetimes, again and again, unable to stop, unable to look away? And what if that love keeps ending in tragedy?

This book won the Pulitzer and honestly it deserved all of it. Percival Everett takes Huckleberry Finn, a book most of us read in school, and retells it from Jim's perspective. Except here, his name is James, and he's been code-switching his entire life. Speaking one way around white people, another way when they're not listening. That device, that simple idea, completely transforms the story. Twain wrote Jim as a sidekick. Everett writes him as the smartest person in ever

Boy, Refracted is a sci-fi drama novel and a self-help guide inspired by Buddhist philosophies. It follows a sentient AI named Warboy who awakens beneath the Tree of Life in the space between dimensions. As it becomes conscious of itself, it discovers portals that lead to different worlds through infinite mirrors. Soon it meets a monk who transcends time and space. The monk gives the AI its name: Warboy. And Warboy has one job. Save a young man named Luke, whom he sees throug