Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2027

“An eye-opening look at life in the hardscrabble region of Southwest New Mexico through the trajectories of a pair of Hispano twins, Robin and Cruz. Robin is raised by his aged grandparents on a bare subsistence ranch and Cruz stays with their negligent parents in a small Colorado town. Of course, their paths diverge: Robin, is attracted to a Laguna Pueblo girl who has aspirations of higher education that rub off on him; Cruz, who has an endless run of good luck, runs with a rough crowd eventually leading to involvement with drugs. With zig-zagging time shifts and an unidentified narrator, the tale tightens as the wrong twin is imprisoned for a crime the other committed, putting the legal system’s glaring deficits on display. Who knew that this tale of teen age love, tenderness, and violence would turn into a courtroom thriller?”

“A beautiful novel of love, friendship and obsession; it looks at how far we will go for the ones we love. Deep in the high desert of New Mexico, two brothers living similar lives but have completely different lived experiences. Elegant, lilting, and full of well-written prose, All These Deep Arroyos will stir your soul and open you to a world that has only ever been whispered about. If you love the bold truth of a Susan Straight novel and the brilliant prose of a Cormac McCarthy piece, then you will love Matt Baca's debut.”

“This dual-timeline coming of age has everything I want from a deep dive into the 2000s-era online persona: messy and uninhibited and, quite often, an intentionally unlikable character figuring life out. It’s not all nostalgia and rose-colored glasses. Rather, it’s an excavation of just how identity-forming social media, especially early social media and chatrooms where lying was the norm and protections were nonexistent, really could be.”

“Few have as exquisitely written about the fissures between our emerging sexual self and our intellectual, the emotional impact, as Georgia Elander does in This Is My Idea of Fun — a coming of age novel that achingly portrays the dichotomy as complicated by a new digital age that society has unwittingly thrust on an entire generation. Filled with heart and hope, a young woman discovering the boundaries of her desire, knitting together the diverse aspects of her physical and psychological selves.”

“Translators make good novelists! Not just because they know language so well, but because they understand culture differently. See: Lin King, who delivers a funny, messy, fascinating look at J-Pop, cultural appropriation, obsessive fandom, and modern fame. Not only is this a rollicking read, it’s an educating one as well. Get ready for this to break out.”

“There’s something about writing in the nuances that translators are so, so good at, and King delivers brilliantly. Rina is gifted, both academically and aesthetically, and living abroad — maybe doing sociological research, maybe engaging in cultural immersion, maybe accidentally acting as a perfect lens into Japanese social norms, cultural appropriation, parasocial relationships, and fandom culture while falling deeper into her own anime obsession. Rina is, in short, a fascinating mess. Funny, smart, and impeccably brazen, Weeb shows just how deranged our desires can make us.”

“A spectacular rollercoaster of a read, a great sexual thriller and a stirring campus novel in the lineage of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Notes on a Scandal. Anne Meredith took my breath away with the high-wire act of delivering a convincing portrait of what an act (or really several) of feminist revenge might have looked like in a time before cellphones or #MeToo. Vivid, funny, steamy, and unputdownable.”

“Funny and sexy and sharp, Jaded is a fresh take on the campus novel, #MeToo, and feminist retribution. Meredith takes the character tropes — a charming and needy professor, the artist wife he cheats on, and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl — and turns them on their head, making each character so much more than their assigned roles, subverting expectations and delivering a tight, wickedly enjoyable story.”

“An evocative portrayal of the late 1980s at a rural college campus in upstate New York. Sharp, funny, and sarcastic with painterly prose, this novel explores the ripple effects of decisions made both in the heat of the moment and in the cold clarity of self-interest. There are no winners or losers in this game of life, only survivors.”

“Jessie Wong, a very repressed first-generation Asian American, has just lost her much older brother and idol, Tommy, to a motorcycle accident in faraway New York City. At Tommy’s funeral, only one friend — a fellow chef — showed up, bearing Tommy’s passport and a handwritten cryptic list of his favorite dishes. Overcome by her grief and ignorance of her brother’s life, Jessie defies her parents and embarks on a quixotic trip guided by the list to discover traces of her brother’s 10 missing years. Her journey takes her from NYC to Germany, Paris, and finally Senegal before going back home to Oregon for a quasi-reconciliation with her newly enlightened parents. A touching coming-of-age novel, best read on a full stomach.”

“A total joy, sure to nourish your heart and soul as much as any good meal. I've been longing for another book that gets the joy of food — and the polyphonic expressions of it — as right as Kitchens Of The Great Midwest and this does it. It's also a novel that envisions a better world than this one, a world in which the brutal excesses of kitchens and domineering chefs is instead a world of strong but welcoming encouragement. A world in which food can inspire, can elevate, can save a life and mourn one too.”

“For readers of Bryan Washington and Kitchens of the Great Midwest, this is one of those bittersweet novels steeped in family dynamics and food rendered so palpably I could lick the page. The best food and its preparation creates community, which is everything Jessie needs and hasn’t known to ask for. We watch character after character create and riff on what they know of food and Jessie’s brother, each of them necessary to her understanding of him as a whole, while Tam weaves big themes — love, grief, regret — into sumptuous, meaningful dishes and then plates them exquisitely. By the end, all the reader must do is eat.”

“Most of us have experienced stage fright at one point in our lives but we don’t expect it to be part of the baggage of professional actors. Such Stuff tells a different story. In an almost breathless interior monologue our actress begins her preparation, in her dressing room, to slip out of her life and into her role as Miranda. But for today’s performance there are special difficulties: it’s her birthday and the first anniversary of her father’s death. As the warning announcements accelerate up to the curtain call, we seem to witness her psychological unravelling. Will she shed her psychic burdens in time to become Miranda?”

“A stunning debut, one that captures the experience of working in the theatre better than anything I’ve ever encountered. The half-hour before curtain is always a swirl of energy and thought, but Morrish so thrillingly depicts that swirl in a Woolfian stream as a young actress navigates her birthday and the anniversary of her father’s death and the possibility of big things on her horizon. I've been in these rooms. If you've ever wanted to know what it’s like to be an actor, to be an artist, to be a human being in this maddening world, this is the novel for it. We are such stuff as are made on, and Morrish proves just how much our little lives can contain. Quite possibly the best novel I have read in years.”

“Such Stuff may seem like a quiet novella but it simmers with so much. Anyone that has dealt with grief can connect with the anxiety, contemplation and waves of emotion found here. The theatre is the perfect scene to experience the beauty of a found family that we all need then loss enters our life.”

“A profoundly moving meditation on grief and how it infuses even the smallest moments after. The past is woven into the present, grief in the warp upon which the weft of daily routines become the fabric of our future. Readers will breathe this book in, it will inhabit their blood and bones, reading ‘such stuff’ is to realize that we all walk in poetry.”

“I lean into weird and am excited by authors that write in a new and different direction. I completed this novel-in-translation in one sitting, and I am delighted. Esther's love of pigs is only matched by her yearning for a child. With Kafka-esque absurdity, we watch Esther grow up in her parent's butcher shop in a small town, grow into a butcher herself, and seek an inseminator in order to reproduce. At turns grotesque, darkly funny, and profoundly heartbreaking, there is a lesson buried deep if we are willing to look.”

“Esther is hungry. She’s insatiable, even, pursuing every one of her wants — to become a butcher, to find a man who can father her kid, to become a mother. Niskavaara hands us prose like a straight-edged knife, so precise you don’t see the cuts, only to become a serrated blade, its images and absurdities snagging the reader’s heart as readily as it rips through Esther’s vacuum-sealed world. The effect is poignant, mining the psychology of an insular community where quiet passions can drive one to madness, where if you look too closely at the viscera of life, you miss the animal of it. Perfect for fans of Tender Is the Flesh and the weirdos who think ‘weird girl lit’ simply isn’t that weird.”

“This collection examines our very humanness and our desire to find our place and people. I consumed every word of these stories and wish I could experience them again for the first time. An amazing debut from a rising talent.”

“Get lost and found in this world of short stories. The people here are often lonely but they may find a little strangeness helps. O’Malley will leave you curious, touched, and more.”

“These stories ache to be devoured, a raw tension hovering over every line, each sentence already sucked clean as a bone. The simplicity of each story’s opening and their easy, tight language are the perfect oppositional force to the utter strangeness, discomfort, and eerily fantastical aura of the entire collection. Even when you know a turn is coming, the story’s heart is surprising, the center of it bleeding into the rest and demanding the reader rethink everything they thought they knew.”

“I love a novel that uses an interesting structure to the fullest, and Perri’s debut excels at it. Each chapter is another August, following three unlikely friends from their meeting (August 1987, heading into their freshman year of college) to more or less the present. It’s a big, heartfelt summer read, the perfect thing for the beach and for your book club!”

“Celeste Perri’s heartfelt debut on friendship, first love, and found family will have its place on the shelf next to Sally Rooney and Lily King. Three college friends, Maude, Conner, and Gideon, meet every August to pick blueberries on Gideon’s family farm. One summer, as unrequited love boils to the surface, everything changes as relationships implode. Years later, a young woman appears at the farm searching for answers. As the past catches up, will the friends ever find out what really happened that one summer?”

“I absolutely LOVED this debut novel by Celeste Perri and believe you will too! Every chapter is told from one of three friends’ perspectives while picking blueberries and playing through the previous years personal life events. They take in and observe all that happened to them in love and life and friendship. Starting on the first day of university and spanning the years till a stranger arrives and throws their memories (and beliefs) into a tailspin — all are left wondering what is the truth…”

“August, the shoulder season between Summer and Autumn, where we harvest the bounty on display in September — that quietly matured in July while we were at the beach. In a series of Augusts we walk with Gideon, Connor, and Maud as they nurture, and then harvest from, their relationships with each other. This novel quietly explores the interdependencies of friendship through catalyst and crisis over the span of 30 years, with quiet surprises along the way that the reader never anticipates.”

“A plunge into the life of a translator, over the course of a few very difficult years. It's a terrific memoir on the storytelling front, but also a thoroughly compelling look at the craft of translation — how it can change your life, your relationship to language, how the creative process works through language itself. Combined with its short punchy structure, this should open a whole new swath of readership to Vergnaud and her exceptional international work.”

“In the age of easily accessible AI, what is the purpose of a translator? Input a paragraph of X and within seconds a paragraph of selected language Y appears. Literary translator, Vergnaud, sees her work of capturing another person’s words as a ‘miraculous symbiosis’ in this intimate and compelling reflection on ‘memory, madness, and motherhood.’ Despite the challenges and distractions in her personal life she has an unshakable belief in the power of the pen, reading, and the possibility that a new story may actually change YOU.”

“A young kid grapples with his maybe-queer identity all while jumping around the space time continuum, and figuring out that being messy isn't necessarily bad. I loved this wild and wacky fun time travel adventure that's full of heart and family support.”

“Mission Berg has problems. Well, maybe it’s all the same problem, or related somehow? His beloved Grandma has just died, his family keeps claiming they see him places that he swears he hasn’t been, and he’s getting bullied at school. And then he realizes that he can travel through time…and accidentally drags a few of the bullies along with them, where they get stuck. He’s got to set things right before he gets snatched up by the shady government operatives who are determined to stamp out his abilities. Mission's Guide To Time Travel is a zany read with lots of heart, perfect for fans of Stuart Gibbs.”

“A tender, multi-generational story told in verse about the important work of keeping our

loved ones alive through the stories they tell us and the lives they lived. Mina is a young

person that we’ve all been. I loved reading her family’s story.”

“Limitlessly Mina is a lyrical story of a girl navigating girlhood, body acceptance, race and culture, and the loss of her beloved grandmother. Mina's grief is raw and real and relatable, as are her reactions to the stressors in her life. It's a beautiful example of a ‘windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors’ book for kids to see themselves and others in.”

“This is a true adventure story! It's a great conversation starter on how technology consumes our everyday lives and how that impacts children. At the same time, this book is a celebration of our natural world and a plea to make sure we save and respect it at all costs. I truly loved every minute I spent reading Wildlands.”

“Kids who love Hatchet or Alone will eat this adventure up! It's a utopian-set survival situation with a focus on conservation and animal well-being. I loved the sibling dynamic that felt extremely realistic (if I were suddenly stuck in the middle of nowhere with my younger sister, it would drive me up the wall) and I loved seeing how the kids figured out how to stay alive without all of the previously relied-on technology. I honestly couldn’t put it down.”

“A pacey, futuristic tale of adventure and survival, starring two sisters who are lost in the wilderness of a huge natural preserve, with only their wits and each other to help get through it! Kids will love their relationship, the struggles they face, both internal and with the incredible creatures and situations they encounter, and how they follow their guts and their hearts to do what's right in the moment for each other. Loved every minute of this story!”

“Wildlands is set in an all-too-believable near future in which natural spaces and animals are disappearing from the earth. Two sisters get lost in the middle of a rare nature preserve; they must face survival in a place where humans are forbidden. The girls bicker in a sisterly way, must face their own shortcoming and secrets, and find themselves in greater danger from humans than from nature. It's a gripping read with the right amount of peril and family drama for middle grade readers and fans of Hatchet.”

“I loved everything about this novel-in-verse! A great representation about how body dysmorphia affects young children and how learning to give voice to your anxieties can help kick start the healing process.”

“A gorgeous, emotional novel-in-verse about learning to take up space and do what’s right for you, despite familial or peer pressure to do otherwise. Shah expertly portrayed the way that the trauma of familial expectations can manifest through generations, and also showed (especially through Sumati’s relationships with her sister and aunt) ways that those cycles of hurt can be broken. A powerful and heart-wrenching read.”

“A stunning debut novel told completely in verse. Pearl Beach nails that feeling of being thirteen, going on fourteen, and wanting to cling to your childhood while still being treated like a grown up. It captures the feeling of a summer vacation with your family and loved ones and how it feels to be on the precipice of everything changing, and just how scary and exciting that can be.”

“A sweet summer story about a girl having a hard time shifting from kid to teenager; changes in friendship and annual traditions are hard to deal with, especially at that age! All the while she's trying to get to know her elusive grandmother who is a Holocaust survivor. She learns that teenagers struggle with similar problems and life changes no matter the century. I loved seeing an intergenerational relationship bloom between the girl and her grandmother.”

“Pearl Beach perfectly captures the awkwardness of that time between being a kid and a teen, especially when your peers are growing and changing at different rates. There are a lot of middle grade stories that tell Holocaust stories, but the Australian setting and way that Billie and her Great Aunt Edith grow to understand each other through sharing stories makes this one unique. An action-packed and emotional novel-in-verse that beautifully showcases intergenerational relationships.”

“This book is going to make so many people feel so seen and so understood. Overflowing with hope, feeling, and understanding, these characters feel like friends I knew in high school, just trying to hold it together until graduation. I loved watching Analeigh and Drew define their relationship on their terms, despite their many attempts to sabotage themselves. A romance like I’ve never read before!”

“From a heartwarming, enemies-to-lovers, ace-spec (asexual and aromantic spectrum) romance to just two high school seniors struggling under the weight of societal and parental expectations and grief, Not Your Typical Love Story will allow so many readers to feel seen and understood. It's also a perfect reminder that not everyone's definition of happily ever after looks the same.”

“Being on the ace spectrum is often confusing, always nuanced, and half of us self-identifying people are still trying to figure everything out. This is the first story I’ve seen that so boldly features a love story between two ace-spec characters, and it feels achingly accurate. They like each other, they are very close (even more-so online), and they refuse to fit in the usual boxes of what a loving relationship means to the world. All while dealing with skepticism within the queer community, self doubt, and general misinformation; it's a stressful existence for these two teens who are just trying to be themselves. This not-so-typical love story astounded me. I need to protect Analeigh and Drew at all costs.”

“An old family prophecy, magic, and a queer love story. This book has it all and more! A wonderful commentary on the opioid crisis and message about healing communties.”

“This is so outside my typical genre but I absolutely devoured it. Sierra’s voice immediately grabbed me — she’s spiky and angry (with good reason), but eventually willing to have her sometimes misguided assumptions challenged and to learn and grow. A supernatural mystery and a queer love story combined with an all-too-real examination of the ongoing addiction crisis made for an intense and gripping read. Perfect for fans of Andrew Joseph White’s queer horror.”

“Sierra’s graduating from high school and can’t wait to leave her hometown holler, located in the backwoods foothills of the Appalachia mountains. The town and its people have been decimated by a toxic mix of pills, addiction, and the folk magic that her abusive family can harness from the earth. Sierra’s determined to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding her dark inheritance in this thrilling, dangerous and unforgettable coming-of-age story.”

“Stunning. A semi-autobiographical story of a trans girl surviving and then thriving through the ’90s. Emotion bleeds through the art on the page and while it's good to see how far we've come since for protecting trans youth, we still have a long way to go. Extremely relevant both historically and currently.”

“Simply put, we need this book. Debut graphic novelist Veronica Casson gives us the powerful story of Heather, a trans girl coming of age in the ’90s amidst a community that doesn't support her. However, rather than feeling defeated, Heather — and the reader — journey into self-acceptance and found family. It's a beautiful story throughout. I can't wait to see what the author does next!”

“Feast Of Hearts swept me away from its first scene and never stopped the action. Expertly plotted, the revelations were perfectly timed and surprising, keeping the mystery and romance moving along and adding just the right level of depth and spice for a YA novel. I couldn't believe this was a debut and can't wait to recommend it to the teens at the store and in my life!’

“Set in a world of magic, pegasi, and secrets, Feast of Hearts is a fantastical world to slip into. A low-born girl, Epona, winds up having magic when she shouldn’t and is offered the chance to study with the magical elite students. Every day she has to prove herself worthy to the other students, the faculty, the Emperor, but mostly to herself. Will she be able to complete her education without being sent home or more importantly imprisoned? The only hope she has is to be the best in her class to keep the evil Emperor at bay, although another student, the Emperor's son, may have something to say about that.”

“A powerful look at what happens when parents only see their children as props to be used as they see fit and not as real people. Honest and infuriating, I Don’t Belong To You will make you want to scream with its accurate portrayal of mommy bloggers and the absurd influencer culture as Miracle gets dragged along as collateral damage. Eldest daughter core in the best-worst way. I loved it.”

“This is a book about perspective. What we owe people about ourselves versus what we owe ourselves. It’s also a queer love story and a complicated family story. In short, it's unlike anything I've ever read. Miracle is unwillingly navigating the liminal ‘too gay’ or ‘not gay enough’ existence through the worst possible lens: the internet. This book was extremely thought provoking and made me question everything alongside Miracle. Is she doing too much? Is her anger justified? Are others justified in their anger? How do you extract your own identity from a moment-to-moment-lifetime documented for the world to see? We don't get easy answers. Every aspect of Miracle's story is nuanced and complex and conditional. I never knew where things would go (that’s a compliment). It will make you think about every single comment you write or post you like going forward.”

“Influencers are everywhere on social media, most of us are all aware of that fact. What I wasn’t aware of was the effect they might have on relationships or relatives that they post about. We see blurred faces on those under eighteen, but once they become cognizant that their lives are public without their consent, what can they do? The author of I Don’t Belong To You has a possible answer to that question. Her novel follows the teenage daughter of an influencer who is just trying to live her life in an authentic (and not public) way.”

“Imagine every tantrum and embarrassing moment being posted on the internet for the world to see — by your own mom! This is Mira’s story. As the eldest daughter of a famous influencer, she has been in the spotlight well before she was aware. As a teen, she is starting to realize the implications of a lack of privacy. A perfect book club read!”