Thanks to “forever” plastics, the earth has reverted to sand and dust. Dylan has been raised by her scientist mother in a pod under the sea, and longs to escape the loneliness of being confined. The only friend she ever had was a pen pal from Mars, who disappeared. With great effort, she’s escorted onto land, to the place of her mother’s employment where she becomes the groundskeeper.

It’s 1940 and Gaby’s parents and sister succumb to Typhus after staying in France to care for Gaby and Sabine’s dying grandmother. The war is in full swing and Gaby can’t get home to Poughkeepsie, NY. Her aunt lives in Ireland, which stayed neutral during WWII, so she heads there. But the aunt has just died, and 18-year-old Gaby makes her way to the remote manor of her aunt’s husband’s relatives, where she’s hired as a servant.

Today I talked to Benjamin Resnick about his novel Next Stop (Simon and Schuster, 2024)

The Truth Against the World (Square Tire Books, 2023) is a brilliant literary fantasy about a divided, dystopian America on the verge of war. Shane, a former Irish combat soldier with a murky past, wants to save his young friend Georgie O’Halloran, who turned his stories of Celtic history and folklore into a beautifully illustrated book.

In her new novel Pigs, Johanna Stoberock has written a lyrical fable about an island that receives all the world’s garbage. That garbage, both physical and psychological in the forms of dreams and memories, is consumed by six enormous, voracious pigs.

A nameless young woman from This Place, and a nameless young man from That Place are stuck together when That Place, the occupying force, imposes another curfew on This Place.