Carlene Bauer’s latest novel GIRLS THEY WRITE SONGS ABOUT was named one of the “Best New Books of 2022” by People Magazine, who praise it as “a fantastically vivid story about feminism and friendship.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the book on June 21, 2022.

IN SENSORIUM by Tanaïs is one of NPR’s Best Books of 2022. Book critic and Desi Books podcast host Jenny Bhatt writes: “All our perceptions, interpretations and emotions are filtered through our five senses and stored as sense memories. American Bangladeshi Muslim writer, perfumer and entrepreneur Tanaïs’ IN SENSORIUM shows how these sense memories can evoke our most powerful emotional responses across time and space. With bold and lyrical language, this singular sensorium is structured like a perfume with base, heart and head notes. It interlaces South Asian history with personal history, diasporic longing with homeland love, and ancestral trauma with present-day crises. Well-researched explorations of eroticism in ancient religions, the violence of British colonialism and South Asian patriarchal cultures, and capitalism-induced environmental damage are synthesized artfully with intensely personal revelations about love, sex, liberation, selfhood and healing.” Harper published the book on February 22, 2022.

THE STARS ARE NOT YET BELLS by Hannah Lillith Assadi is one of NPR’s Best Books of 2022. Author and editor Leland Cheuk writes: “Hannah Lillith Assadi’s second novel, THE STARS ARE NOT YET BELLS, is vastly different from her dazzling debut, SONORA. While SONORA was a contemporary, coming-of-age story centered on female friendship, THE STARS ARE NOT YET BELLS is a historical romance, spanning generations. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Elle, the novel’s elderly protagonist, looks back on a lifetime of compromises in love and health. Assadi’s sharp and impressionistic sentences elevate a familiar premise into an exhilarating reading experience.” Riverhead Books published the novel on January 11, 2022.

VERY COLD PEOPLE by Sarah Manguso is one of NPR’s Best Books of 2022. Writer and book critic Kristen Martin writes: “VERY COLD PEOPLE may follow a girl’s coming-of-age in the 1980s and 1990s, but it is less a traditional bildungsroman than a study of whiteness and its ravages. Set a fictional town in Massachusetts obsessed with its colonial history and rigid class structures and unfolding in sharp vignettes, this is a haunting book about the loneliness of growing up in a place where you are acutely aware you don’t belong, but pretend that you do in order to survive.”
Hogarth published the novel on February 8, 2022.

AN IMMENSE WORLD by Ed Yong debuted at #2 on both the Print Hardcover Nonfiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction New York Times Bestsellers lists for the week of July 10, 2022. The book also received a rave review from the Sunday Times in the UK. Reviewer James McConnachie writes: “Ed Yong is a gifted British science writer. His first book, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES, was an infectiously exciting deep-dive into the microbiome — the world of resident microbes hidden inside our bodies. His coverage of Covid for The Atlantic magazine won him a Pulitzer. His new book aims to open our eyes to another unseen world...Yong calls his book a ‘call for humility,’ and it did fill me with a certain awe. But it goes further. Subtly — Yong is never heavy-handed — it prompts a radical rethink about the limits of what we know — what the world is, even. It is quite a book. And, I felt, putting it down, quite a world.” AN IMMENSE WORLD was subsequently featured as The Times’ Book of the Week, where Rhys Blakely provides equally generous praise: “Beautifully written and painstakingly researched, the book is brimming with [fantastic] observations...This is perhaps the highest compliment one can give to Yong: this fantastic book leaves you wondering what else is left to be discovered.” Random House published the book on June 21, 2022.

Carlene Bauer's GIRLS THEY WRITE SONGS ABOUT received a rave review from The New York Times. Molly Young writes: “The evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar is fond of the term homophily — ‘love of the same’ — to describe why certain people strike up friendships…The two women of Carlene Bauer’s glittering novel GIRLS THEY WRITE SONGS ABOUT define homophily. Charlotte and Rose are brave and reckless, self-critical and stylish…The novel’s pockets of sentimentality are offset by streaks of viciousness, accurately reflecting how we tend to remember our pasts: happy times bathed in a distorting glow, miserable times diminished and disowned...GIRLS THEY WRITE SONGS ABOUT is a love story about two friends, but it’s also something thornier — a narrative about the cycles of enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment that make up a life.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the novel on June 21, 2022.

VOICE OF THE FISH by Lars Horn was featured in a stunning piece in The Atlantic titled "Where to Turn When You Feel ‘at Odds With Being Human,’" alongside Alexis Pauline Gumbs' UNDROWNED. Alana Mohamed writes: “In the new essay collection VOICE OF THE FISH, Lars Horn wonders 'how common [it is] to feel completely at odds with being human,' and uses a long-standing fascination with marine life to reimagine the body’s potential...VOICE OF THE FISH attempts to undo ideas of what is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ by teasing out the expansiveness of marine life…Horn and Gumbs ultimately turn to a different, more spiritual plane to reimagine the dichotomies between human and animal. In the process, they challenge us to think anew about the way our bodies can, or might be able to, move through the world.” Graywolf Press published the book on June 7, 2022.

Rebecca Rukeyser sat down for a Q&A with Lit Hub to discuss the themes in her debut novel, THE SEAPLANE ON FINAL APPROACH. Interviewer Tony Tulathimutte writes: “Like her two dads, Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, [Rukeyser’s] always had a knack for details so disgusting they become attractions…but her real talent is much subtler: her ability to coax out the sinister and squeamish side of the seemingly ordinary through close inspection.” Doubleday published the novel on June 7, 2022.

On the day of its highly-anticipated release, Tomi Obaro’s DELE WEDS DESTINY received praise from The New York Times. VIRTUE author Hermione Hoby writes: “[A] loving and lively debut novel…I was carried smoothly through the travails of these women…[and] Obaro’s unadorned style [comes] into its own.” Knopf published the novel on June 28, 2022.

Book Riot featured Kendra Allen’s forthcoming memoir FRUIT PUNCH — which they called a “stunning work of nonfiction” — on its list of “22 More Great New Books to Read in 2022.” Publishers Weekly also included the memoir in a longlist of the most anticipated memoirs of Fall 2022. Ecco will publish the book on August 9, 2022.