From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth. Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best. Then one of them is murdered. It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in. If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen. We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.

Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink. Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.