September 27, 2025
This week we have historical fiction about a sexually charged relationship between a Dutch painter and her servant; a child made of wax in Denmark; a keenly anticipated gothic fantasy by a writer of Harry Potter fanfiction; an engrossing narrative set in a nail salon; and a prize-winning French poet’s highly inventive novel combining real life and virtual existence. The lives of these extraordinary and otherworldly characters will leap off the page and burrow into your brain.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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I Am You
By VICTORIA REDEL
Published by SJP LIT
Redel introduces us to the Netherlands in the late 1600s where Gerta lives with her family. She longs to be a painter and flees to Delft to assist a famous artist by preparing her paints—an exact and complex process. Gerta disguises herself as a boy and the relationship between artist and servant is off to the races. The author’s exactitude in time, place, the lavish lifestyles of the rich, and the business and science of art is riveting—as is the journey of Gerta/Pietra from a willing servant to brilliant still-life painter in the courts of Amsterdam and London until the famous beautiful, talented Maria has passed. A knockout.
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Pick a Color
By SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA
Published by LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
Thammavongsa turns to fiction with a novel about a nail salon owner and former boxer leading an anonymous life. She labors away in a boring job catering to rich ladies who can’t decide what color to paint their fingers and toes. All the workers wear the same name tag (“Susan”), contributing to the anonymity of this sort of work. With language and class barriers galore, Thammavongsa manages to create not only a sharp cultural commentary but a tender and quite witty portrait of a hidden world.
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Alchemised
By SENLINYU
Published by DEL REY
There is an enormous amount of buzz surrounding this publication. The author is renowned for their fanfiction e-book, Manacled, which reimagines Harry Potter’s story after he dies. This publication is the first of their work to be issued in print, a dark magical fantasy about Helen, a budding alchemist who has survived a devastating war and is in danger of losing her memories to a necromancer. We meet her as a captive awaiting her fate: “[She] remembered that she’d been placed there as a prisoner, kept preserved, but someday, someone would come for her.” It is a thrilling narrative, exploring the psychological cost of war as Helen attempts to survive against the odds.
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The Endless Week
By LAURA VAZQUEZ
Published by DOROTHY, A PUBLISHING PROJECT
Translated by Alex Niemi
It’s hard not to start with ‘wow.’ This is an astonishing piece of fiction from France. Vazquez is a celebrated poet living in Marseilles and her command of prose, concept, and structure in this wildly unique novel is immediately apparent. The basic, almost plotless story centers around two siblings and an online pal searching for a lost mother—but let yourself sink into the language and strange juxtapositions of images. (“When a voice finishes a word, it disappears…” “Some robots wear heads like ornaments…” “A head doesn’t just fall off, it can’t fall off….”) Comparisons to Kafka and Beckett have been tossed around, but you must read it for yourself. Is this imagined world real or virtual? Does it matter? Vazquez is a virtuosa.
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The Wax Child
By OLGA RAVN
Published by NEW DIRECTIONS
Translated by Martin Aitken
The Devil features in Ravn’s startling latest supernatural novel. Here’s a taste of it: “I am a child shaped in beeswax…. I have this shaft-like longing for the woman who made me…” Needless to say, this inhuman doll has a unique narrative voice put to great use in a fictional retelling of actual trials from 17th-century Denmark. The woman she refers to is Christenze Kruckow who has been accused of witchcraft. Ravn says she “constantly tries to test the boundaries” to see what a book can accomplish. Based on true accounts and other fascinating mystical elements from Ravn’s extensive research, the novel is a winner and another jewel in the crown of this author, whose fiction has a well-deserved cult following.
