October 25, 2025
Horror in Utah; time travel in the Swiss mountains; escape into solitude in Ireland; and escapist fiction about a New England family mark the four novels in this week’s grouping that will take you away from your troubles. In addition, a sparkling new collection of essays by one of the best critical thinkers of our time rounds out the selection. Ghosts are involved in two of the novels, perfect timing for Halloween reading.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Wreck
By Catherine Newman
Published by Harper
Anyone who read Newman’s delightful novel Sandwich will be happy to revisit those characters in Wreck, which takes place two years later—and is just as delectable. For narrator Rocky, back home in Western Mass, two episodes converge in the middle of a sleepless night: The appearance of a worrisome rash (the sort that is either nothing . . . or something terminal) and a tragic train accident, which she hears from her bed. The two events set in motion a novel filled with both laugh-out-loud lines and tears—a family story pierced with the love, and neuroses of daily life. Our edition includes an essay exclusive for independent bookstores.
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Tom's Crossing
By Mark Z. Danielewski
Published by Pantheon
It has been a quarter of a century since Danielewski published his instant cult classic, which has been compared to Ulysses and Moby-Dick. Once again, he has written an ambitious epic. Set in small-town Utah in the 1980s, Tom’s Crossing is an experimental Western, admired by Stephen King, that is just as mind-blowing and even longer (1,200+ pages) than Danielewski’s last outing. The story begins when a couple of brave young boys, one terminally ill, decide to rescue two horses from slaughter—but that is only the beginning. If you like immersive, dizzying fiction that challenges in the most entertaining way, this is your next book.
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Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
By Claire-Louise Bennett
Published by Riverhead
Bennett plunges us once again into worlds beyond our comfort zone. Her fascinating new novel takes us deep inside the mind of our narrator, a woman who has chosen a solo life in the Irish countryside, recounting memories of past relationships. There is Xavier, an older man with whom she no longer wanted to have sex: “Kiss me. Get it over with. It’s not going to be pleasant and it’s about time we found that out.” And a former A-level teacher who reaches out to say he’s read her novels. The writing is dreamy, often funny, describing erotic adventures (see Molly Bloom) and her complex experiences with intimacy from which she has now retreated.
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Dead and Alive
By Zadie Smith
Published by Penguin Press
Smith focuses her critical eye on writers she admires who have recently passed, like Joan Didion (from whom she once borrowed a cigarette) and Toni Morrison; artists like Kara Walker; and timely topics like the dangers of technology and our imperiled planet. As always, these thirty essays from the last ten years give evidence of her sharp eye and wry humor. She structures her collection into sections titled Eyeballing, Considering, Reconsidering, Mourning, and Confessing. It is a wonderful book to have by the bedside when you need to engage with a wise, curious, and enlightening mind. Some regard the essay as her strongest form.
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The White Octopus Hotel
By Alexandra Bell
Published by Del Rey
This is an enchanting novel, set in 2015, about a withdrawn young woman who works at a London auction house. Unexplained events surround Eve as she is visited by a phantom white rabbit, haunted by family tragedy, and marked by a mysterious floating octopus tattoo. Her favorite musician, Max Everly, who flourished in the ’30s and fought in WWI, is also unnerved by something that happened in his past. When a frail man claiming to be Max comes to visit Eve at work, everything shifts. “Some sorrows seem like too much for any one person to bear.” Bell crafts a magical story of time travel to a ghostly Alpine Swiss hotel where these two damaged souls connect.
