January 24, 2026
The stories in this selection offer a bit of unhinged pleasure as well as discomfort. There is madness in the form of a Scandinavian asylum and in a young boy’s body being inhabited by a corgi; there is a spirit at the bedside of a dying man and short fiction from an author who surprises herself when she sees where the stories take her pen. There is also a moving debut about the haunting of a long-ago affair between a student and teacher.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Vigil
By GEORGE SAUNDERS
Published by RANDOM HOUSE
As in the Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders’s latest once again places us among heavenly characters. An unrepentant dying man, who is a climate-change denier among other heinous qualities, is visited on his deathbed by the spirit of Jill, a woman who has come to steer him toward redemption. Boone is having none of it, proud of all his alleged accomplishments as CEO of an oil company despite his reputation as a bad guy. Over the course of one night, we see the ghostly Jill turn bitter toward him. Saunders is a genius at combining absurdity with crucial questions about morality and mortality. A shining winner!
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Beckomberga
By SARA STRIDSBERG
Published by FSG ORIGINALS
Translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner
Set in a Stockholm psychiatric asylum in its last days, Stridsberg’s poignant, prize-winning novel follows a family whose lives have been transformed by the patriarch’s time there and by its closure. Jim, a suicidal alcoholic, was admitted decades before. His wife is a photographer who gallivants around the world. Their daughter, Jackie, a single mother, visits vigilantly, befriending the other patients (even having an affair with one). Jim also falls in love with another occupant. Elegantly told and based on a real institution that stood for 63 years, this is a disarming portrait of a family torn apart by the aftereffects of mental illness. It is a topic many readers may find resonant.
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One Sun Only
By CAMILLE BORDAS
Published by RANDOM HOUSE
These are twelve short stories by a French-born writer who is a skillful and entertaining observer of modern life. In the poignant title story, a divorced father of a famous artist observes how his son and daughter have dealt with the death of their beloved grandfather. In “Understanding the Science,” six Chicago friends at a dinner party mock people who talk about “the journey” of self-discovery. Bordas has said, “I like an elephant in the room,” and it is a theme throughout the pieces. (Here, the elephant is their friend’s cancer remission.) Bordas has expressed, “none of the stories seeks to simplify the experience of life.” And that is what makes them so relevant.
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The Hitch
By SARA LEVINE
Published by GROVE/ROXANNE GAY BOOKS
Here is a fun palate cleanser: Rose is a dedicated anti-racist feminist entrusted with watching her young nephew for a week while his parents are on an (unacceptably elitist) eco-holiday. Rose makes him food from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest (the sequel to the iconic ’70s Moosewood Cookbook) and they take her Newfie Walter to the local dog park. When Walter gets in a fatal tussle with a corgi (a “dwarfish anatomical disaster”), the deceased corgi takes up residence in Nathan’s body. Now Rose really has problems—compounded by her failing yogurt business. Levine, who gave us the equally zany Treasure Island!!!, provides a hilarious antidote to the winter blues.
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Discipline
By LARISSA PHAM
Published by RANDOM HOUSE
Pham’s debut novel is an elegant, tension-filled meditation on the stories we tell ourselves for survival. It is also an astute portrayal of the life of an artist and the ways in which a vocation shapes a personal narrative. Christine is in art school when she becomes a student of the charismatic “old painter.” Their ensuing relationship causes her to reject art completely, but the experience continues to plague her. Later, she writes a novel in which the protagonist kills her mentor. After years of silence, he reaches out to invite her to his Maine cottage. Pham’s portrait à deux is poignant and taut—is it finally time to settle some scores?
