The Indie Next List

“Ottessa Moshfegh is a modern-day Camus. A woman finds a note in the woods that proclaims someone is dead. Murdered, in fact. She investigates between dog walks and early evening naps but soon facts, memories, and suppositions entwine and overlap until the simple act of asking a question can unravel the thread of an entire life. Ponderous, violent, forgetful, and deft, Death in Her Hands is a genre-bender that teases you into asking, Is this noir? Horror? A whacked-out farce? Or a sly literary trick? I’ll tell you what it is — absolutely brilliant.”

“Emma Straub deals with some pretty heavy topics in All Adults Here. The story touches upon latent lesbianism, transgender issues, child abandonment, and grief. It sounds like it would be a real downer of a read, but it is far from that. Staub takes serious issues and humanizes them. Her characters are intriguing as well as amiable and the family dynamics are well-mapped as well as believable. I enjoyed this book so much and I was sad when I had to say goodbye to the colorful characters. The narration was done very well.”

“Texas is not a typical setting for a novel staged at the end of the Civil War and the chaotic months immediately after. A skinny fiddle player and an indentured servant are not the typical romantic western protagonists. But the story of these two, along with a host of lovable and despicable support characters, vivid descriptions of the country and culture of Texas in the mid-1860s make Simon the Fiddler a winner. Add in the masterful voice of narrator Grover Gardner and this is an unforgettable audiobook experience.”

“Wherever you go, your anxieties go with you — even (or especially) if you go live on a boat to sail the world with your spouse and small children. Nothing will ever be the same for Juliet, Michael, and their family after their harrowing year at sea, and no reader will be the same after reading this taut, brilliant novel. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“To say I admire The Knockout Queen feels inadequate, though I do admire a great deal of it: its voice, depth, structure — you name it. But it’s more honest just to say I love The Knockout Queen; I loved reading it, I felt involved in it, and, finally, I was so moved by its ending. This is an epic tale of friendship, one where the magnitude sneaks up on you quietly — but when it strikes home, it rings so brilliantly true.”

“Nina Ross is a beautiful grifter with an axe to grind. After years of conning billionaires to let her into their mansions and then robbing them blind, she and her Irish beau go after a really big fish on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Their mark is the Leibling Family who owns a sprawling estate dating back to the 1800's. Their mansion, dubbed Stonehaven, is filled with lovely valuable antiques. But Nina has her sights set on somehow finagling her way into the heart of the family and into the heart of the house where a safe sits that reputedly contains millions and millions of dollars. Nina needs the money to pay for her mother's ongoing hospital bills, but she also wants to make the Leibling family hurt. She has a history with the family and especially with their youngest son, Benny, who was Nina's first real love. The family drove Nina away because she was deemed not good enough for the scion of this powerful family, and now she's back with a fury with revenge on her mind.”

“An astonishing look at a new widow’s attempt to make sense of her husband’s death and her newfound independence, through which she rediscovers her love of painting, forms new and profound bonds, rekindles previously dormant familial relationships, and ultimately finds peace in uncertainty. Set in Beijing and Tibet, Braised Pork is a poetic reflection on life and all of its meandering, unpredictable messiness.”

“In A Children’s Bible, the age-old war between kids and their parents, children and adults, is reimagined through the lens of Biblical devastation. The result is harrowing and, in unexpected moments, hilarious. Millet has created a story that feels both folkloric and brand new, a tale as much about environmental cataclysm as it is about fighting for the people, things, and ideas that remain right and true, no matter how high the water gets. I love Millet’s perfectly tuned sentences as much as the ambition of this novel, which I’ll continue thinking about for a long time.”

“Grown Ups is told with humor and angst (both causing laughter and anxiety) in traditional prose supplemented with emails, texts, and social media columns and comments — much like our lives today. Jenny is living in London and tethered to her Instagram as her real life is slightly falling apart. This book is filled with fantastic writing and insights relevant to the modern balance of social media life with real life. I don’t want to say too much more, other than I will miss Jenny now that I’ve finished reading.”

“I have enjoyed Molly Wizenberg’s writing for years, and this book was no exception. I loved the mix of science and research with confessional truth-telling about longing and identity. As a mother of two small children, I clung to this story of discovery. And as a human, I cherished Wizenberg’s exploration of the realization that our stories are never done being written. This book was a balm for my soul.”

“Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries has become one of my favorite series of all time, and Network Effect is a perfect addition. Murderbot is still trying to figure out what it wants after hacking its governor module. In the meantime, it spends its days protecting the humans it cares about. Of course, everything goes terribly wrong when a friend shows up to kidnap Murderbot and its humans are along for the ride. Network Effect isn’t just fun and action-packed, it’s also emotional and thought-provoking. I love Murderbot!”

“I think my favorite part of this book was the interviews that would cut in between each chapter of the book to give more details on the "history" or "events" of the story. I felt like I was listening to NPR or reading from a non-fiction field guide. It's incredibly original, humorous, and terrifying. ”

“I absolutely could not put this book down. Sue Monk Kidd has written a narrative that not only centers on women who are missing from or largely ignored in scriptural accounts, but it focuses on their voices, stories, and hardships — their everyday lives and bigger-than-everyday longings. As Kidd is writing Ana’s story, Ana herself is writing the stories of women she’s learned about and women she knows. Her determination to give them voices weaves beautifully and reverently with Jesus’ teachings about reaching out to the marginalized and the forgotten.”

“In this delicious psychological thriller, we learn what it means to take on the job of archiving a famous person’s memories as found in papers, photos, and diaries. As Kate begins the daunting task, it does not take her long to find an uneasiness creeping into her heart and mind concerning how Miranda Brand died years before. And when she begins to wonder about Miranda’s son, Theo, and his potential involvement in the death, things get very scary, indeed. This is a grand debut that will give you chills and thrills, and a chance to hone your investigative skills. Have fun!”

“Alex George has woven a beautiful tapestry of a historical novel in The Paris Hours through four colorful, intertwining threads. Each of the characters will touch your heart with their stories of love, loss, the ravages of war, and their search for answers and a path to pick up the broken pieces of their lives. Lush with descriptions of 1927’s Paris and the appearance of many famous cultural figures of the era, The Paris Hours will transport readers to a time and place they will be reluctant to leave until the last unexpected moment.”

“Hollywood Park is the kind of memoir that will turn you completely inside out before it lets you go. Within the specificity of his story, Mikel Jollett has somehow managed to make space for all of us — the intricate voice of his child and adolescent selves is one every reader will easily hear in their own head. This book is a brilliant and raw balancing of the accounts that make up a self, and I have nothing but respect for the vulnerability it took Jollett to step down from the stage he’s used to occupying as a musician and into a story that readers everywhere will hold in their hands and hearts for a very long time.”

“Astounding! In the talented hands of Anna Solomon, the lives of three women in different eras come to life with equal vibrancy. A compelling look at the roles of women through time (ancient Persia, 1970s D.C., and Brooklyn in 2016), as well as what it means to have and use power and to feel safe in a relationship. So much material here for discussion. I cannot wait to put this into the hands of our readers!”

“This book made me laugh and cry immediately after I started reading. John Moe took a hard topic and made it so much easier — taking the world of mental health and illness and making it easy to understand and connect with. It’s a great read, and everyone should have the pleasure of reading it.”

“In this ghostly story of ignoring what’s right in front of you, a group of characters try to grapple with what seems like inevitable choices. Mandel’s book is like the glass in the title: her language glitters while offering clarity and reflection, and her characters are like broken shards, mesmerizing in one light and dangerously ordinary in another. Combining the humanity and structure of Station Eleven with the brutal realism of her earlier works, The Glass Hotel is an exceptional novel.”

“This story has just... I'm gobsmacked. It was a love letter to west Texas and the women who live there. It was a pointed finger to the way sexism and racism beat people down until they, as Mary Rose says as she aimed her Winchester, "need to kill someone." The language could be as dry as a tapped oil field at times while rising at others to become as lush and colorful as a sunrise in a place where the horizon stretches forever.”