Fiction Five: Buzzworthy literary fiction

Get a jump on 2025’s literary awards by checking out some of these highly anticipated new releases, which are sure to make a list or two. This month’s fiction features a pregnant woman navigating a natural disaster, a blood-soaked solid bar of gold, a hodgepodge of fantastical characters in the Dust Bowl, secrets unearthed on a sinking island, and a future world where robots can be your servant, neighbor or family.

Tilt by Emma Pattee

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city in chaos, she realizes there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career and her anxiety about having a baby. She’s determined to change her life if she can just make it home.

"An epic natural disaster adventure story starring a pregnant woman on a mission. A nuanced, stark, tender portrait of a marriage. A tale of destruction and loss punctuated by surprising moments of empathy. Emma Pattee’s debut novel Tilt manages to be all of the above, and more. Equal parts heart-wrenching and life-affirming, this riveting book made me laugh, cry, and think. I couldn’t put it down." — Helen Phillips, author of Hum and The Need

Universality by Natasha Brown

An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding a young man who was nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar. She pieces together a story that connects an amoral landlord, a heretical columnist and a radical anarchist movement. Though she solves the mystery, her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers: Who wrote it? Why? And how much of it is true? 

Through a voyeuristic lens and with a simmering power, Universality focuses in on what we say, how we say it and what we really mean.

“I think that is the book everyone will be reading and talking about in 2025. Brave, wry, cool, and thrilling, Universality is the kind of fiction that makes you sit up and feel alive.” — Andrew O’Hagan, author of Caledonian Road

The Antidote by Karen Russell

Set in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, The Antidote tells the story of five characters whose fates become entangled during the Dust Bowl. We follow a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets. A Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse. The farmer's orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief. Lastly we follow a talkative scarecrow and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

“The Antidote is an achingly gorgeous book about dust, memory, basketball, murder, yearning, photography, and the way the land holds both the memory of what went before and the dreams of what may come. Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange.” — Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the family.

During the worst storm the island has ever seen a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life their suspicion gives way to affection. They finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts too. However, Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. When she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other, finally putting the tragedies of the past behind them to create something together.

“At once a gripping mystery, an exquisitely written ode to the natural world, and a taut, psychological thriller, Wild Dark Shore is a triumph. Charlotte McConaghy is masterful in her ability to show the intricate connections between place and the human heart, and Wild Dark Shore shows her at the height of her powers. Breathtaking.” ― Hannah Kent, international bestselling author of Burial Rites

Luminous by Silvia Park

This tale is set in a future unified Korea where robots have been integrated into every part of society. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo. He was warm, sensitive and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan. She is now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm. Embarrassingly, Morgan is dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, 11-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash they form an unlikely bond. Yoyo is unlike anything she’s seen before.

"[Luminous] is a spectacular debut, taking place in a thoroughly imagined, vividly written future. Harrowing but full of heart, a work of enormous ambition and brilliance with an ending that fully justifies the title and brought me to tears."— Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves