Fallow

Sarah Anderson

Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world’s first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind. Natalie knows one truth: there is no such thing as a good job. As the clock ticks away at the call center where she logs complaints of workplace harassment, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled. Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot program, pitched as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity. She will be their in-house surrogate, delivering seven babies in ten years and enabling their executives to have motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated. For years, her every need is met: stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock health care. Between deliveries, she takes time off—a fallow period, with no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free. But just as she’s about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything. Natalie is pulled into an entirely different kind of social experiment, one that raises new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, what she can expect from the world, and what she can offer to it. Woundingly funny and genuinely moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.

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The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman: A Novel

Deesha Philyaw

A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by PEN America, Lit Hub, BookPage, and Ms. Magazine The wife of a popular and powerful megachurch pastor upends her charmed “rags-to-Rolex” life when her secret past comes roaring into the spotlight—in this "funny and juicy and sexy and delicious peek behind the pulpit" (Samantha Irby) from the acclaimed and beloved author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. From the moment Scharisse Freeman ditched her humble roots and married a megachurch pastor fifteen years her senior, she’s been labeled too brash and too “of the world” by church folks who grudgingly accepted her into their fold, and too holy by her estranged childhood bestie Petra. Schar doesn’t have many allies, but that hasn’t stopped her from building an enviable business empire spanning books to clothing to branded products, and living the comfortable life her husband's power affords her. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Schar gets the final bit of validation she’s always dreamt of: a coveted invitation to participate in the First Lady USA pageant. This is her chance to be accepted by the other pastors’ wives—First Ladies—who are “like Jesus’ disciples if they had been a group of mean girls.” Finally, blissfully, the ice between Schar and the other First Ladies begins to thaw. But as the pageant nears, a sensational scandal breaks with Schar at its center, and her carefully curated life implodes. Schar faces down shame and terrible secrets from her childhood and is reminded that in the eyes of the church, optics can matter more than the truth. Unflinchingly funny, frank, and packed with surprising turns, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman exults in the luscious, messy pleasure of finally feeling free. "Deesha Philyaw has already established herself as one of the greatest short story writers, but in The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman she cements herself as the most soulfully entertaining writer of her era." - Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and Long Division

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On the Calculation of Volume I

Solvej Balle

Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.”) Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs. The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating. Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”

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The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life—Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

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Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures)

Donna J. Haraway

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

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The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF

R.T. Samuel

An anthology of weird, fantastic, supernatural, Dalit futurist, & magical realist fiction by writers from South Asia and the diaspora. This book features a mix of original English short stories and works in translation, as well as a few comics/graphic narratives. Some are by well-known superstars of Dalit and Bahujan literature, others by emerging or newly-emerged authors. The list of writers includes: Bama, Dalit feminist icon and author of the groundbreaking novel Karukku (1992). Her brand new story "Kurali" is about a group of villagers who put on a sound & light show for some ravenous ghosts. (Translated from the Tamil by Meena Kandasamy.) Mimi Mondal, whose fiction has twice been nominated for the Nebula Award, who co-edited a Hugo-nominated and Locus Award-winning anthology on the work of Octavia Butler, and who has written adventures for Dungeons & Dragons. (She also interned at Blaft, once upon a long, long time ago...!) Gautamiputra Kamble, Marathi-language author of Parivrajak, a fable about two wanderers on a journey to a forbidden mountain. (In translation by Sirus Libeiro.) Gogu Shyamala, Telugu-language author of Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But.... (2012). Her new story is "The Mysterious Ladder." (In Translation by Divya Kalavala.) P. A. Uthaman (1961-2008), Malayalam-language author of Chaoli, for which he posthumously won the Kerala Sahitya Academy Award for best novel in 2008. We'll be including his story "The River Didn't Know, Either", about a magical family heirloom. (In translation by Mridula Makkuni.) Neerav Patel (1950-2019), founder of the Gujarati Dalit literary magazine Kalo Suraj ("Black Sun"). His story deals with caste oppression among the robots. (In translation by Gopika Jadeja.) Tamilmagan, Tamil-language author of the science fiction novel Operation Nova and the collection Amila Devathaigal ("Acid Angels"). His story in this anthology is about a far-future Indian city where something very strange has happened to the agrarian class. (In translation by Nirmal Rajagopalan.) Sumit Kumar, founder of the independent comics publisher Bakarmax, and creator of the graphic novels Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari and Kashmir ki Kahani. Archita Mittra, whose work has been published or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, Locus Magazine, Reactor, and Strange Horizons, among other venues. She is an Ignyte Award finalist for Best Critic while her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Goutam Mandal, a Bengali science fiction novelist and thriller writer who has also translated Japanese yokai stories into Bengali. (In translation by Ipsa S. and Pratiti Ketoki.) V. Chandrashekar Rao Sahej Rahal Rahee Punyashloka Kunal Lokhande Subash Thebe Limbu Nabi Haider Ali Esther Larisa David Snehashish Das Hameedha Khan Aswathy K. Raj Gouri Gitanjali Joshua Prachi Singh Shivani Kshirsagar Yukti Narang Sudarshan Devadoss & M.K. Abhilash Yeswanth Mocharla

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The Balancing Act: Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself

Nedra Glover Tawwab

From the bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a guide to understanding healthy dependency—to bring our relationships back into balanceI need some space.Why are you so distant?You want more than I can give.Every relationship in our lives – from love and close friendship to extended family and our wider social circle – is a balancing act. If we give too much, we begin to lose ourselves. If we protect ourselves too much, we lose the closeness we all need. Getting the balance right is how we find more connection, authenticity, and joy.The Balancing Act is a roadmap for finding that balance. With her signature blend of clarity and compassion, therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab sheds light on healthy dependency, and how to achieve it. Along the way, she unpacks buzzwords and trending topics including codependency, attachment styles, inner family systems, and more – offering practical advice for recognizing our needs, navigating conflict, and finding more harmony with the important people in our lives.Whether you’re yearning for more trust with a spouse or partner, more clarity with a best friend or sibling, or more agency in how you show up in the world, these insights will help you reevaluate, reset, and relate better.

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Too Sensitive: Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply

Sasha Hamdani

From Dr. Sasha Hamdani, the psychiatrist and ADHD expert with more than one million followers on Tiktok as @thepsychdoctormd, comes an eye-opening guide to an overlooked form of anxiety.Overdramatic. Emotional. Too sensitive. These are some of the labels applied to people whose responses to seemingly low-stakes scenarios—an unanswered text, a hint of sarcasm—feel disproportionate. Soon the spiraling ensues, and what began as a miscue becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.The question Why? For board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Sasha Hamdani, this was personal. She had always struggled with emotional sensitivity, and in her work with patients—particularly women like her with ADHD—she saw brilliant, confident people beset by crippling feelings of rejection. Now, in Too Sensitive, she shares the urgent message she wishes someone had told It’s not you, it’s your biology.Emotional sensitivity begins in the nervous some of us are more attuned to subtle social cues. This can be both a superpower and a curse—but it is, ultimately, a manifestation of a chemical conversation taking place in the brain and body.For some people, this hypersensitivity takes the form of rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD). Those with RSD experience interactions with an overwhelming intensity. In Too Sensitive, Dr. Hamdani offers practical tools for managing emotional sensitivity in everyday life.Eye-opening, perspective-shifting, and infused with compassion, Too Sensitive is a must-read guide for anyone hoping to transform emotional sensitivity from a source of pain into a powerful tool.

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Butter

Asako Yuzuki

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story, and translated by Polly Barton. There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought? Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan

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Bonds of Hercules

Jasmine Mas

Don’t miss the highly anticipated sequel to the viral sensation, Blood of Hercules. Pre-order your hardcover edition today! I've awakened my powers, and things are not well. When I turned twenty years old, I discovered I had horrifying secret powers, got trapped into marriage with my enemies, accidentally joined a cult, and signed up for a bloodthirsty Gladiator Competition. To make matters worse, my terrifying husbands are trying to seduce me, and my old mentors are acting really strange. Now, someone is killing Olympians—and it’s not Titans. Things are spiraling out of control. I’m fighting for my life and drowning in secrets. It doesn’t help that Titans are mutating and getting stronger. Chthonics are also revolting against Olympians and ghosts from my past are coming back to haunt me. Everybody better beware. Things are about to get very messy. Get ready for Bonds of Hercules from bestselling author Jasmine Mas. Perfect for readers who love: • Kickass Heroine • "Who did this to you?" • Extreme Enemies to Lovers • Morally Gray Alpha Heros • Greek Myths and Gladiator competitions

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Interesting Facts about Space

Emily R. Austin

Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she’s not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her. As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself. Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.

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Sky Daddy

Kate Folk

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges her true passion, taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant, because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could. . . . Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes. Nor can she reveal her belief that it’s her destiny to “marry” one of her suitors, uniting with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of. Both subversive and unexpectedly heartwarming, Sky Daddy hijacks the classic love story, exploring desire, fate, and the longing to be accepted for who we truly are.

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Piano Stories

Felisberto Hernández

Felisberto Hernández, the Uruguayan composer, pianist, and writer, died in 1964, impoverished and neglected, yet he had stamped his exotic and delicate imaginings on a generation of magical realists, including Garcia Márquez, Cortázar, and Italo Calvino. "My stories have no logical structures," Hernández wrote, and indeed they proceed in a most uncanny fashion. Concatenations of images, skeins of sensations, startling metaphors like raids on the unconscious—these are the pathways through Hernández's fluid and animistic world. People and things, memory and fantasy are form-shifting aspects of one another: a statue stops taking its "role" seriously in order to spend time "playing with the pigeons"; a splashing Italian fountain foretells the astonishing part that water will play in a bereaved woman's life; curtained windows haunt a room as though they were twin maids dressed alike in lace and drapery; a man greets his wife by saying, "I always forget to bring a lens and have a good look at the plants in the greens of your eyes. I know how you get your complexion, though: by rubbing olives in your skin." Though logic is not imposed on his stories from without, there is nothing arbitrary about Hernández's gentle surrealism. These tales unfold with the authority of dreams of childhood reveries, ready at any moment to take over from the rigorous banality we work so hard to enforce. Hernández's ear for the hidden language of the world is always strange and surprising. The delicious secret of his work is here revealed to English-language readers for, amazingly enough, the very first time.

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At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

Kij Johnson

A sparkling debut collection from one of the hottest writers in science fiction: her stories have received the Nebula Award the last two years running. These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy. Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar. Contents: The Man Who Bridged the Mist (2011) Wolf Trapping (1989) The Empress Jingu Fishes (2004) The Bitey Cat (2012) Chenting, in the Land of the Dead (1999) My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in my Spouse's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition (2007) Schrödinger's Cathouse (1993) Names for Water (2010) Fox Magic (1993) Spar (2009) The Horse Raiders (2000) 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (2008) At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2003) The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change (2007) The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles (2009) Ponies (2010)

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Butter

Asako Yuzuki

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story, and translated by Polly Barton. There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought? Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan

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Thoughts Be Bloody

Auden Patrick

A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them together: this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene. A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls. Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets, Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web. The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first. This twisty, queer, dark academia is a brand-new take on the questions that haunt Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

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I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

Irene Solà

Dawn is breaking over the Guilleries, a rugged mountain range in Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, and demons. In a remote farmhouse called Mas Clavell, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed. Family and caretakers drift in and out. Meanwhile, all the women who have lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of stories unspool, and the house reverberates with raucous laughter, pungent feasts, and piercing cries of pleasure and pain. It all begins with Joana, Mas Clavell’s matriarch, who once longed for a husband―“a full man,” perhaps even “an heir with a patch of land and a roof over his head.” She summoned the devil to fulfill her wish and struck a deal: a man in exchange for her soul. But when, on her wedding day, Joana discovered that her husband was missing a toe (eaten by wolves), she exploited a loophole in her agreement, heedless of what consequences might follow.

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The Sirens

Emilia Hart

A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine 2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever. 1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies. A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.

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A Deadly Education

Naomi Novik

Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly. A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

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