Debutiful’s Adam Vitcavage recommends noteworthy debut books for readers to discover each month.
Continue reading “12 noteworthy debut books to read in April 2026”12 noteworthy debut books to read in April 2026
Category: Recommendations
5 Novels about Women and Space, Recommended by Eliana Ramage
There are not a lot of books about women in space! Roughly 100 women have been there (out of roughly 700 total—roughly because there is disagreement on where “space” begins). Now compare that to the roughly 8 billion of us alive today. And yet, astronauts loom large in our collective imagination.
To the Moon and Back, my debut novel, is about the singular dream of Steph Harper: to become the first Cherokee astronaut, no matter what. But over my own more than decade writing this novel—while reading all the space books I could find—stories of people on earth loom large.
Steph’s story isn’t hers alone. It’s about the complex women she might leave behind—a celebrity activist younger sister, an ex-Mormon college girlfriend, and a devoted mother harboring a painful secret. To the Moon and Back is, at its heart, the story of one astronaut’s love for life on earth.
To love and understand space, I no longer think of it as a question of just women in space – but also women and space. How, in literature and in life, does space touch us? What does that touch teach us about ourselves and our world?
I read books about girls and women who are scientists and stargazers. Who lay awake worried about extraterrestrial life, or about the future of life on our own planet. I wondered, how does space challenge our understanding of time and…well…space? What does it say about our responsibility to this planet, and to one another?
In compiling this list, I hope to share not just books about women astronauts, but books about what space might mean to women on earth.
Continue reading “5 Novels about Women and Space, Recommended by Eliana Ramage”Five Books that Search Inside the Haunted House, recommended by Emma Cleary
When I was writing Afterbirth and someone asked me what it was about, I would usually give them the same, succinct answer: it’s a queer literary horror novel about sisters, monsters, and art. Or I might ask, “Do you like horror movies?” It’s a story about a fledgling artist, Brooke, who feels compelled to watch a lot of them, until the horror crawls out of the screen and takes up residence in her life.
I’ve always been interested in what drives us to seek out horror, and there have been numerous books written on the subject, such as Anna Bogutskaya’s Feeding the Monster. One idea is that horror helps us to process our fears inside a container—as Brooke’s ex-girlfriend, a horror cinephile, argues in my novel. The monsters of Afterbirth are capable of shifting the walls of our homes and burrowing deep inside the bodies we inhabit, but I think its most frightening moments happen between people, within our most intimate relationships.
What follows is an eclectic list of books about being in the grip of some other entity—whether by invasion, possession, or a bond we can’t escape. In these stories, intimacy twists into the uncanny, a lover slowly dissolves, the language of a long-dead poet bewitches the mind, and a house swallows up its occupants. Mothers, sisters, wives, lovers—these are the relationships that haunt. There is an emotional and physical weight to being intertwined with the people or things we love, and there’s also a shared sense that we are searching for something—some lost meaning, a ghostly sort of contact—inside the haunted house.
Continue reading “Five Books that Search Inside the Haunted House, recommended by Emma Cleary”6 Books Where Landscape is an Equal Character, recommended by Nancy Foley
Deep landscape, symbolic landscape, landscape imbued with uncanny qualities—this is the foundation for the kind of story I love, one that uses earth’s time and space to build its magic. Below are six books that I return to often for inspiration and for pleasure.
Continue reading “6 Books Where Landscape is an Equal Character, recommended by Nancy Foley”5 fantasy books about coming-of-age in your 20s, recommended by U. M. Agoawike
What do bildungsroman, and—dare I say—shōnen have in common? They tend to focus on teenagers (at least to begin with) because that’s kind of the whole point of coming-of-age. These stories showcase the internal journey of a character as they grow, transition, and mature into adulthood—however it is you define adulthood. But you never really stop growing up, in a sense, so what about those who have already reached the so-called pinnacle of adulthood? Those who feel cursed to a later sort of maturation where you’re simultaneously too old to not have your shit together but too young to face the world you were meant to have prepared for in the coming-of-age you missed out on. An adultescense, if you will. If that sounds a little targeted—believe me, it is, but only because I get it.
With the 2020s having essentially stunted the growth of a generation, many readers in their 20s, and even 30s, don’t feel like adult-adults. As Millennials used to say (don’t quote me on the slang though), adulting is hard. We may not have to tame dragons or slay ancient evils, but struggling with shitty jobs, ill-fitting romantic relationships, and a world that does not want us to succeed feels almost as difficult. Put simply: this decade hasn’t just cooked us—we’re fried, mentally and physically. So why not seek out books that recognize, commiserate with, and lay out the cold hard facts of that reality in fantastical settings?
The thing about being in your 20s these days is that it’s like being a teenager except double the stress and pass it on. In my case, I chose to pass it on to the characters of Black as Diamond.
An epic fantasy set in a dark but hopeful world, Black as Diamond is as much about the literal journey to break a curse as it is about self-discovery—or, rediscovery in your twenties. The story centers on Asaru—a dour, standoffish, and socially inept warrior—sent to find his missing brother, who winds up summoned by Wren, a reckless healer playing with dangerous magic. Now inextricably bound, the pair are forced on the run as they attempt to break a fatal curse—or die trying.
Throughout the story, characters undergo deferred self-realizations: Asaru as he battles the curse consuming him, Wren as he struggles with the weight of his mistakes, Palenisa as she tries to atone for a choice she never wanted to make, and Rishé as obsession threatens to overwhelm her common sense. When writing Black as Diamond, it was important for me to craft characters who make a right mess of things and deal with the same types of consequences you would find in most coming-of-age tales. Because, as stated earlier, you never stop growing up.
I once saw a post in the endless scroll of Tumblr that argued mid-life crises actually take place in your twenties because of the nature of modern life and the mess that goes on when you’ve been of age for years but your mind still lags catching up to that fact. While I can’t say I agree with that sentiment today, I’m sure it’s one a few characters from the books below would understand completely.
Continue reading “5 fantasy books about coming-of-age in your 20s, recommended by U. M. Agoawike”Seven Books That Walk the Borderlands Between Human and Non-Human, Recommended by Jarod K. Anderson
I have a lot of fun questioning distinctions, definitions, and binary thinking in my debut contemporary fantasy novel Strange Animals. What is the difference between monster and animal, science and magic, humanity and nature? What happens when such questions stop being academic and show up in the aftermath of a fatal accident to trade you an acorn for the moment of your death? Boundaries that once seemed black-and-white start to become much less trustworthy.
My love of slippery categorization was especially clear when we discussed my novel’s defining characteristics and the word “creepy” was paired with “cozy,” and “fantasy” stood alongside “nature-writing.” I’m perfectly happy with this. Most ideas that feel true to me carry at least a hint of paradox; many of the characters I love in fantasy and sci-fi are the same.
As a lifelong nature-nerd, I can feel a tingle of kinship resting my hand on a patch of moss or watching a gray catbird flit through the branches of my neighbor’s black walnut tree. That feeling of kinship hints at a broader, unifying characteristic of life that transcends both diversity of form and our many methods of survival in this big, strange, living world we share.
So, narrow portrayals of humanity’s essential place in the universe feel kinda superficial to me, especially in the context of Earth’s breathtaking biodiversity and the many enduring mysteries of our interconnected planet. I think that’s one reason I’ve always been drawn to speculative fiction; these are stories that can sniff out truths beyond the restrictive confines of bare fact.
Give me stories in which “human” is a fluid concept and non-human doesn’t mean lacking agency, personality, or dignity. In this vein, here are seven books that explore and complicate definitions of humanity and personhood by visiting the outer boundaries of such terms.
Continue reading “Seven Books That Walk the Borderlands Between Human and Non-Human, Recommended by Jarod K. Anderson”12 noteworthy debut books to read in March 2026
Debutiful’s Adam Vitcavage recommends noteworthy debut books for readers to discover each month.
Continue reading “12 noteworthy debut books to read in March 2026”16 debut books to discover from February 2026
Here are the debut books that caught Debutiful’s eye this month. We think readers will find plenty to love among them.
To see our curated list of standout titles, check out our “12 noteworthy debut books to read in February 2026.”
Continue reading “16 debut books to discover from February 2026”7 Collections of Prose Poems Recommended by D.S. Waldman
My students often have difficulty with the idea of a prose poem. How do we define it? How is it a poem and not just prose? And in truth, I rarely have satisfying answers for them. Part of what I love about the prose poem is its aversion to tidy definition. It’s mysterious and amorphous. It’s a you know it what you see it sort of thing.
Prose is the everyday form; we encounter it not just in novels and textbooks, but also in our group chats, Instagram captions, emails, MTA service disruption alerts, the little pamphlets in the waiting room at the gastroenterologist. And the prose poem, to me, uses that approachable, everyday form and charges it with the ancient, underlying current of capital-p Poetry. There’s no formal trickery—no linebreaks, no rules or received forms—just the spoken voice, laid across the page, bound by nothing but that timeless lyric contract, the direct channel to the gods.
These seven are among my favorite collections of prose poems, books I keep within an arm’s reach of my desk. They represent a range of what the prose poem is capable of, from frank retellings to criticism-infused confessionals to strange, elliptical leaping lyrics. In all of them, though, we are welcomed into what I think is a more intimate relationship to the speaker, their voice unburdened by form and convention, free and ready to tell you something surprising.
Continue reading “7 Collections of Prose Poems Recommended by D.S. Waldman”Eight books about coming of age in a war zone, recommended by Ashraf Zaghal
The following works of literary fiction explore coming-of-age in war zones across different geographies and historical moments. My aim is to reveal glimpses of shared human experiences beyond political or socio-economic contexts. Amid constant violence, fear, and mistrust, the young protagonists in these stories confront loss and moral ambiguity far earlier than they should. Childhood habits and innocent practices are disrupted by displacement, scarcity, and grief, leading to rapid, unstable growth. These stories linger not on battles, but on interior lives and intimate rituals.
Continue reading “Eight books about coming of age in a war zone, recommended by Ashraf Zaghal”