by Zak Salih
Zak Salih's searching, incisive debut novel finds two gay millennial men making sense of their place in the culture, the struggle and each other's lives circa 2015, not long after the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States--and not long before the shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub. Sebastian, a high-school art history teacher, quails at hookup culture and mentors LGBTQ students whose freedoms he wishes he had enjoyed growing up.
Meanwhile, Oscar, a friend of Sebastian from childhood, cruises
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by Elvira Navarro, trans. by Christina MacSweeney
Elvira Navarro was listed as one of Granta's "Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists" in 2010. The 10 surreal, occasionally humorous and tender stories in Rabbit Island are sublime walks through a melancholic blood-flecked dreamscape.
An author seeks an "aura of serene iciness" for her writing, while a paw slowly grows from her earlobe, in "Strychnine"--an autobiographical warning to Navarro's audience. In the titular "Rabbit Island," a man alters an uninhabited island, with gruesome consequences. The result
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by Neal Shusterman
National Book Award winner Neil Shusterman's Game Changer is a brilliantly mind-bending YA work of speculative fiction that tells the story of Ash Bowman, high school football player and "subjective locus" of the entire universe.
Prior to his paradigm shift, Ash's life is nothing out of the ordinary--a "sturdy," white defensive lineman with a passion for football, he's good but not quite as good as his Black best friend Leo, the team's star wide receiver. Then Ash delivers a heavy blow to an opposing team's
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