This insightful, darkly humorous novella starts in an unexpected place for a coming-of-age story: with a murder. But as the story unfolds, the crime itself recedes into the background as we learn how the events–and people–surrounding the murder come to affect both the protagonist, 13-year-old Zinnia Zompa, and her mother. The result is a haunting examination of how others’ choices and behaviors can affect us, perhaps indelibly.

Gerry Wilson is a seventh-generation Mississippian, and she says of That Pinson Girl, “In this novel I return to the myths of my childhood and the rural landscape of north Mississippi. I was born in Pontotoc, a little town nestled in the red clay hills of north Mississippi, thirty miles from William Faulkner’s Oxford and far from just about everywhere else.” Wilson’s prose style is straightforward, but the questions and complexities that run throughout That Pinson Girl will be familiar to those who have read Faulkner. It is appropriate that an early draft of the novel was a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition. 

In this deeply moving and transcendent novel, art–specifically, the work of Henri Matisse–is far from just a diversion, or some relic of the past enjoyed primarily within the confines of a museum or the pages of a book. Instead, for the protagonist, it becomes an increasingly vital way of connecting with others, and of forging a greater understanding of herself. 

Although it’s set in the Gilded Age, this witty and engaging novel explores issues that continue to be deeply relevant, while offering an entertaining and inspiring read. (The novel can be preordered now, and its launch is planned for  October 3rd.)

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary is a beautifully crafted novel that blends elements of fairy tales, magical realism, and historical fiction. Set mostly in a small, nineteenth-century French town, it follows the family of Henri Blanchard, who craft a unique kind of musical device. The writing is lyrical and imaginative, bringing a fully formed world to life with vivid descriptions and characters, and the plot unspools as smoothly as thread from a bobbin.

This debut novel, which won the 2020 Acheven Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction, is a heartfelt and sympathetic portrayal of an all-too-dangerous experience for many gay youth, the fraught negotiation of early romantic interest. Though marketed as young-adult fiction, The Complicated Calculus (And Cows) of Carl Paulsen explores themes that will interest readers of all ages.