New novels in 2023

Michelle Brafman’s Swimming With Ghosts

Michelle Brafman’s Swimming With Ghosts

Superstition Review
Swimming With Ghosts (Keylight Books, forthcoming June 13th, 2023) | Michelle Brafman

In Michelle Brafman’s forthcoming novel Swimming With Ghosts, published by Keylight Books, she explores the darkness and humor of children’s competitive swimming. Themes of family secrets, obsession and friendships shine through the lenses of childhood and the feuding families of the characters.

I really enjoyed Swimming with Ghosts, for the excellent characters, unusual plot inside the world of local competitive swimming, the fine writing, and the frequent insights and humor. I raced right through it.

ANNE LAMOTT, author of Bird by Bird

Michelle Brafman’s writing has been featured in Lilith Magazine, LitHub, and San Francisco Book Review. She has received numerous awards for her fiction, including a Special Mention in the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story prize, and first place in the Lilith Magazine Fiction contest. In 2019 she received the Excellence in Teaching Award for creative writing. Swimming With Ghosts will be her third published novel after Bertrand Court (2016) and Washing the Dead (2015).

Swimmers and readers rejoice! Michelle Brafman’s Swimming with Ghosts is proof that the most important events in life happen at the pool. Fast-paced and frequently hilarious, we unsuspectingly float on the novel’s wry, quirky humor until we’re suddenly over deep water, gazing into the depths of our need for purpose, friendship, and love. Anyone heading to a pool or beach this summer should have a copy of Swimming with Ghosts in their swim bag.

DAVID MCGLYNN, author of A Door in the Ocean

Swimming With Ghosts releases June 13th, 2023 and can be pre-ordered here. Learn more about Michelle Brafman’s writing and teaching by visiting her website. Her short story “Brain Freeze” was featured in Superstition Review issue 13.

At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Bookstore Events

Superstition Review
The cover of Tara Ison's novel "At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf." Description: The background of the image is presumably the French countryside. There are small houses and farms. The center of the cover is darkened, as though a pillar of smoke is rising there.
At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (Ig Publishing, 2023)

Join award-winning author Tara Ison at the following bookstore events! There, she will be discussing At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf, her new novel set in World War II France. Centered around Danielle, a Parisian Jewish girl who’s gone into hiding as a Catholic orphan, this book reveals how some lies can grow so large, we deceive even ourselves.

February 22 – Washington DC – Politics and Prose, in convo with Susan Kelesinko Coll, 7 pm

February 24 – Los Angeles – Vroman’s Pasadena, in convo with David L. Ulin, 7 pm

February 25 – San Francisco – Book Passage, Ferry Building, in convo with Meredith Hall, 3 pm

March 2 – Phoenix – Changing Hands, Phoenix, in convo with Devoney Looser, 6 pm

March 9 – Boston – Brookline Booksmith, in convo with Doug Bauer, 7 pm

March 16 – Flagstaff – Brightside Books, in convo with Nicole Walker, 6 pm

March 22 – Chicago – International House at University of Chicago, 6 pm

A Jewish girl comes of age in Vichy France, relentlessly deformed by the spiritual rot of her era… Ison is unflinching in her depiction of the self-inflicted corruption that replaces the character’s moral core with a twisted version of Christianity, brilliantly illustrating the epigraph from Solzhenitsyn: ‘To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.’…Free of sentiment but not without hope of redemption, this is a suspenseful and chilling story.

Kirkus

Tara Ison is the author of The List (Scribner), A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, Inc.), a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Rockaway (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press), featured as one of the “Best Books of Summer” in O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2013. Her essay collection, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, was the Winner of the PEN Southwest Book Award for Best Creative Nonfiction. She earned her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College and has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Goddard College, Antioch University Los Angeles, and UC Riverside Palm Desert. She is currently Professor of Fiction at Arizona State University. To learn more, visit her website.

Superstition Review is also pleased to announce an upcoming interview with Tara Ison about At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf.

At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf will be released February 21st. To pre-order it, go here.