Thanks to A.A. Knopf for the free advance copy of this book.

Vincent is the bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a luxury hotel on a remote island in British Columbia. She's been looking for a way out of this small town, and one night when the hotel's owner, financier Jonathan Alkaitis, slips her his number, her life changes drastically and a chain of events affecting a wide network of people is set off.

THE GLASS HOTEL weaves together the stories of many people across many cities, sliding back and forth in time from the rural childhood Vincent and her troubled brother Paul experienced to offices high above Manhattan as a Ponzi scheme collapses.

Mandel creates a world that feels shrouded in fog, like reality is just out of focus. Many characters ruminate on the idea of parallel universes and potential alternate paths for their lives, some of them finding they lose track of which reality is true. And the book's universe shifts a bit for the reader, too, as a few characters from STATION ELEVEN also appear - with slightly altered lives - in THE GLASS HOTEL, adding further to the exploration of a world of sliding doors. It's an intimate yet wide-ranging meditation on how each action we take, small or large, causes us to cross paths (or not) with others, unknowingly taking our own futures into our hands each day.

Thanks to Riverhead Books for the free advance copy of this book.

In the American West at the tail end of the gold rush, Lucy and Sam find themselves orphans when their Ba dies. As they set off to bury him and flee their small mining town, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD looks back at the path their family took to arrive in this dire position.

This book is filled with ghosts, with longing, with love. Overflowing with beautiful, haunting images, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD is a meditation on the safety and the pain of family.

In this book, characters that at first seem cartoonish are slowly revealed to had simply slid down a slope of bad decisions - decisions that affect the rest of their family in ways they won't know until much later. Each person tries so desperately to hold on to their sense of self and home, with each member of the family defining home differently.

Additionally, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD isn't widely marketed as a queer book, but queerness runs deep in the story. Sam, while they don't have the words for it, is some variety of trans or gender nonconforming, which shapes both Sam and Lucy's lives quite dramatically. It was incredible to see a queer person in a historical setting where they are usually completely erased.

Thanks to Catapult for the free advance copy of this book.

Peaches, California, can't escape the drought. But the town's inhabitants, including 14-year old Lacey May, once saw their pastor Vern bring rain when all seemed lost. If they just believe in him and follow his instructions to the letter, more rain will come, right? No matter what Vern tells them God has chosen for them?

GODSHOT is a deeply engrossing look inside the mind of a young girl slowly realizing the world she grew up in isn't what she thought it was. Between her alcoholic mother, senile grandmother, and all-controlling pastor, Lacey May begins to see the cracks in the beliefs she has built her life on, and we are all along for the ride as she begins to push back.

The atmosphere in this book practically seeps out of the pages - more than once I found myself craving a glass of water while reading about Peaches residents relying on soda and canned fruit as Pastor Vern insisted they wait for God to deliver water.

Books with as many horrific events in them as GODSHOT (dm me for content warnings, I don't want to accidentally post spoilers) often come across as voyeuristic or gratuitous but this book walks that line without crossing it, I think partly due to Lacey May's naivete. This tack, I think, makes the book all the more compelling - we've seen these stories before and therefore don't need the gory details, but we want to be sure that Lacey finds her way out. I would have gladly spent more time with Lacey and the town of Peaches - given that this is Chelsea Bieker's first novel, I can't wait to see what she'll do next.

Elwood is a young black boy from Florida who has spent his life watching the Civil Rights movement from afar. Just as he is about to begin college, he is swept up in a mistake that costs him that goal and instead sends him to the Nickel Academy, a reform school for problem boys. Upon arriving, Elwood finds there is little education to be had at Nickel, but rather a long, horrifying gauntlet of physical and emotional torture.

Do you ever finish a book and think to yourself, "what the hell am I supposed to say about that? How could I ever write anything that do justice for what I just read?" Yeah. THE NICKEL BOYS is awful and touching, stomach-turning and gorgeously written. The plot is totally straightforward until it's not, and that's where I cried. A whole lot. There's just no way for me to write anything worthwhile or coherent about this story, except to tell you not to put it off like I did and to read it immediately.