New Releases from August to October 2025
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People with No Charisma
From the International Booker Prize– shortlisted author of What I'd Rather Not Think About comes a darkly humorous novel about multigenerational family dynamics and individuality in Dutch suburbia.
An unnamed narrator grows up overshadowed by her unconventional mother, an ex–Jehovah’s Witness and former television star with an inferiority complex. Her father is the head of a psychiatric institution, whose only form of parenting is to offer his daughter the same life advice he dispenses to his patients. Reserved and somewhat aloof, he chooses not to intervene when his wife obsesses about charisma, calorie counting, and turning their daughter into a child prodigy.
Their daughter strives to meet her mother's expectations and bond with her father while secretly worrying she lacks the drive or charisma to do anything significant with her life. When her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she begins to address their generational trauma, forge a new relationship with her father, and discover life on her terms. In twelve chapters—each reflecting a different phase of life—Posthuma expertly dissects a fraught family history, exposing the absurdity that often lies at the heart of life's most poignant and challenging moments.
The Knowing
“Soul medicine for the smartphone weary … Life-affirming. Brilliant.”
—Matthew Quick, New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook
From the author of A Room Called Earth, a brilliant new novel about the mess that comes before salvation.
Camille lives in the country.
She’s forgotten her phone.
She’s taking the train to work.
She’s got period pain.
She can’t escape herself … or her toxic boss, Holly. And it’s Valentine’s Day.
The Knowing is a day in the life of a woman who goes to work as usual while dreaming of more.
Kataraina
“[A] devastating, beautifully written tale imbued with Maori culture and language.”
—Gregory Brown, The New York Times for Auē
The much-awaited follow-up to the award-winning international bestseller Auē.
In Auē, eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in motion the ensuing tragedy, which resulted in Stu’s death. Aunty Kat was at the center of events, but, silenced by abuse, her voice was absent from the story.
In Kataraina, Kat and her whānau take over the telling. As one, the family recounts her childhood and the time when she first began to feel the greenness of the swamp in her veins—the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of generations of tīpuna that came before her; the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the day he was killed.
Unflinching in its portrayal of intergenerational trauma and violence, tender in its harnessing of the hope that future generations represent, Kataraina is a stunning novel that confirms Becky Manawatu as one of the most talented and powerful writers working in Aotearoa/New Zealand today.
Art on Fire
A darkly comic and compelling satire of the art world from the author of The Disaster Tourist.
An Yiji’s career had been stalling for some time when a representative of the illustrious Robert Foundation offers her a spot on their all-expenses-paid artist residency in California. The residency has launched many famous artists’ careers, so she knows she can’t waste this opportunity. Still, she feels reluctant to accept, and with good reason: the Foundation’s patron is a small dog named Robert, known for both his talent as a photographer, but also his arrogance. Moreover, the offer comes with a condition: on the last day of the residency, one of An’s paintings must be incinerated, and Robert gets to select which one.
When An reaches California, she finds the state ablaze with wildfires, but at the foundation all is calm. She navigates awkward dinners with Robert, tries to find inspiration while being bombarded with sponsors who all want their business to be the subject of her art, and despairs at the prospect of her work being set on fire. Was coming to California a huge mistake?
The Devil Takes Bitcoin
From the author of Tokyo Vice comes the wild, true story of cyber-era commerce, crime, cold-hard cash, and one of the greatest heists in history.
Even in hell, Bitcoin talks. This modern take on an old Japanese saying still holds true. Cryptocurrency was supposed to do for money what the internet did for information, but it didn’t work out that way. Its virtual existence unleashed real-world chaos—especially in the homeland of its mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Tokyo was the center of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, until that company collapsed with nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin gone missing. It might be the greatest heist in history. If it was a heist.
So what really happened? The Devil Takes Bitcoin tells the true story of the humble-to-hot commodity, from the former geek website that launched the boom to an inside world of absent-minded CEOs, hucksters, hackers, cybercrooks, drug dealers, corrupt federal agents, evangelical libertarians, and clueless techies. You’ll discover Bitcoin’s connection to the infamous Silk Road, learn why hell has nothing on Japan’s criminal justice system, and get the lowdown on the high cost of betting with the Devil’s dollars. All of this for less than the price of a single Bitcoin.
Thunderhead
“Winona is a compelling character, full of life and humor, and Miranda Darling draws you into her life so thoroughly that Thunderhead becomes a powerful and gripping experience of the insidious and subtle effects of coercive control.” —Midwest Book Review
A brilliant work of feminist fiction, this sharp, powerful novel follows one woman’s struggle to free herself from the confines of contemporary domesticity.
When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that “tiny tornado of little hands and feet”, wake up—she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.
On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise.
And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …
Jente Posthuma
Jente Posthuma is a Dutch writer whose first novel, People With No Charisma, was published in the Netherlands to critical acclaim. Her second novel, What I’d Rather Not Think About (2020) was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature. The English-language translation by Sarah Timmer Harvey was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. The translation rights of What I’d Rather Not Think About have been sold in more than fifteen countries. Posthuma’s third book Witch! Witch! Witch! (2023) is an idiosyncratic and witty retelling of three ancient Dutch sagas. Posthuma is currently working on a memoir.
Madeleine Ryan
Madeleine Ryan is an Australian writer, director, and author. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, SBS, Vogue, The Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Vice. She is currently working on the screen adaptation of her first novel, A Room Called Earth. Madeleine lives in rural Victoria.
Becky Manawatu
Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha) is a New Zealand writer and journalist. She grew up in Waimangaroa. Her debut novel, Auē, won Aotearoa’s leading fiction prizes and became one of New Zealand’s all-time fiction bestsellers.
Yun Ko-eun
Yun Ko-eun is the winner of 2021 CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation. Her prizewinning novel, The Disaster Tourist, was nominated for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Rosetta Award, Comedy Women in Print Award, and the Dublin Literature Award. She hosts a daily radio program EBS Book Cafe in South Korea.
Jake Adelstein
Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993, writing in Japanese and English. He authored Tokyo Vice (now an HBO series), The Last Yakuza (2023), and Tokyo Noir (2024). He co-hosted the award-winning podcast The Evaporated: Gone with the Gods. A recognized expert on Japan’s organized crime, he’s reported for The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Times, Tempura, and VICE. He is also a low-ranking Zen Buddhist priest, trying hard to be kinder and occasionally exorcising hungry ghosts. Adelstein frequently appears as a commentator on Japanese crime and culture, working as a writer and consultant.
Miranda Darling
Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She read English and Modern Languages at Oxford then took a Masters in Strategic Studies and Defence from the ANU (GSSD). She became an adjunct scholar at a public policy think tank, specialising in non-traditional security threats. She has published both fiction and nonfiction.
