WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALIST

IGNYTE AWARD FINALIST

It's 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband from Manhattan to the upstate orchard estate where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from a mysterious affliction acquired in a strange encounter: but Louise soon realizes that her husband's worsening condition may not be a disease at all, but a transformative phase of existence that will draw her in as much more than a witness.

At the bitter end of the 19th century, a loyal wife cares tenderly for her dissolute husband as he nears his death from a mysterious, gruesomely corrosive disease. Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum is a sumptuous excursion into surreal body horror and an unsparing exploration of the extreme frontiers of connubial devotion. Ruthnum delivers a uniquely unsettling Gothic love story-and it is first and foremost a love story-evoking the grisly Edwardian tales of W.W. Jacobs, William Hope Hodgson and Algernon Blackwood, while drawing in such modern masters as Barker, Del Toro and Cronenberg. Brief enough to be read in an evening, it holds certain images so grotesque that they will linger in your dreams for weeks.

- David Demchuk, Award-winning author of The Bone Mother, and RED X

A spooky story with well-rounded characters, a unique magic system, and a villain most mysterious and terrifying. -- Ryan Douglass, New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Jake Livingston

The small-town mysteries of John Bellairs are made modern with a dash of Stranger Things in this spine-tingling supernatural horror-thriller

After his father returns from treatment for addiction, highschooler Vish -- lover of metal music and literature -- is uncertain what the future holds. It doesn't help that everyone seems to know about the family's troubles, and they stand out doubly as one of the only brown families in town. When Vish is mistaken for a relative of the weird local bookseller and attacked by an unsettling pale man who seems to be decaying, he is pulled into the world of the occult, where witches live in television sets, undead creatures can burn with a touch, and magic is mathematical. Vish must work with the bookstore owner and his mysterious teenage employee, Gisela, to stop an interdimensional invasion that would destroy their peaceful town.

Bringing together scares, suspense, and body horror, The Grimmer is award-winning author Naben Ruthnum's first foray into the young adult genre. This gripping ride through the supernatural is loaded with vivid characters, frightening imagery, and astonishing twists, while tackling complex issues such as grief, racism, and addiction.

No two curries are the same. This Curry asks why the dish is supposed to represent everything brown people eat, read, and do.

Curry is a dish that doesn't quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta's Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford's Heat, Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters. Following in the footsteps of Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands, Curry cracks open anew the staid narrative of an authentically Indian diasporic experience.

For fans of Yellowface and American Fiction, A Hero of Our Time is a vicious takedown of superficial diversity initiatives and tech culture, with a beating heart of broken sincerity that the Toronto Star calls a powerful, unexpected reading experience.

Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinson's quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education.
Osman, obsessed by Olivia's ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia's twisted past. But at every turn, he's stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confronts an enemy who may simply be too good at her job to be defeated.

A Hero of Our Time cracks the veneer of well-intentioned race conversations in the West, dismantles cheery narratives of progress through tech and streamlined education, and exposes the venomous self-congratulation and devouring lust for wealth, power, and property that lurks beneath.