For readers of Nightbitch and We Ride Upon Sticks, this strange and sexy novel of queer love in a small town is an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life are monsters ready to possess us all. In the valley at the intersection of three towering mountains sits Cadenze, an ugly, remote town with little to its name. It's filled with tourists in the summer and dead the rest of the year, when most of its residents surrender to a sleepier existence. Except, that is, for whatever is lurking in the caves... Angelina Sicco was born and raised in Cadenze, and for many generations, so was every member of her family. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother's heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot, queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. But on the night of a family party much like every other, Angelina runs into Patrick's ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, who's back in town for a spell. Perhaps enticed by Jagvi’s arrival, an ancient evil lying dormant in those caves is awakened, and soon Angelina’s small, contained world begins to shatter. As the monstrous force grows bolder, it infiltrates Angelina’s life. It talks with her dog’s mouth; it guzzles on her memories; it controls Angelina from the inside. Only Jagvi’s touch repels it — the final trigger for a secret, passionate romance. But this monster feasts on all the passion, heartbreak, and mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco’s life has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And what will it cost her?

Call Me By Your Name meets Elena Ferrante in this debut coming-of-age novel about a young girl who spends summers working at her family’s timeworn Italian agriturismo, the tragedy that rends her life into “before” and “after,” and her romance with an American girl, which has unexpected consequencesTo ten-year-old Leo, life is a collection. She spends her mornings tidying the rooms of her Nonna Tina’s timeworn Italian agriturismo, carefully accumulating the curious bits of left-behind detritus from guests—a pearl earring, a lock of hair. Her nights are suffused with gathering the stories that flow from her father’s lips—liquor-spun tales of Odysseus and the Trojans in secret battle. But when an accident rips the gentle membrane of Leo’s childhood, she is left vulnerable to the pains and pleasures of growing up. Years later, in a sultry summer not unlike the many that came before, the agriturismo is the only thing that remains the same. Nonna Tina has grown older, Leo’s brother Max is intractable and mercurial, and the curiosity Leo so loved to feed as a child has turned into something more confusing. When she meets Dolores, an American girl made brilliant by Leo’s perception of her, she can’t help but gather all the experiences first love promises, while shedding parts of the past she no longer fits into. Embroidering the atmospheric yearning of Call Me By Your Name with the precise, elevated prose of Elena Ferrante, Sofia Montrone’s jaw-dropping debut revels in the exuberant highs and awkward lows of girlhood and captures the universal experiences of trying to hold on to what is elusive, to deny what cannot be faced, and to say what cannot be said.

Emerson (Emmy) Hartwell has waited for a spot on an NHL roster since she became a professional hockey player, and this season, she’ll finally get a chance to showcase her talents with the struggling D.C. Stars. Maverick Miller is the best player in the league, but he’s never had a winning record. Team captain and desperate to turn things around, he agrees to play nice with the fiery new left-winger even though they’re total opposites. After a night where the tension between them reaches a tipping point and they fall in bed together, Emmy and Maverick vow it was only one time. Just once to get it out of their systems so they can play better and help their team. It doesn’t mean anything. She doesn’t date hockey players. He’s a notorious playboy who doesn’t date. Period. Except… what should’ve been just once happens again, then again. They tell each other their friends with benefits arrangement is only for the season, but despite facing off on the ice, behind closed doors, the pair is nothing but fire.

A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K. Patrick In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of “matron.” Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite—an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made. Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K. Patrick’s bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.