Check This Out with Rachel Barenbaum

A Southern Black family drama unfolds as long-held secrets about a beloved son surface, shaking the foundation of a Mississippi town.

Based on a strange historical anecdote, this novel tells the story of five sisters in18th-century England whose neighbors become convinced they’re turning into dogs.

With Ruben we see a genre-blending, speculative historical novel about revolution and empire, following two families across alternate timelines of the Salvadoran civil war. Plus, a look into the publishing world with Zibby Owens. 

“Romantasy” titles from indie presses, along with their enormous fan bases on BookTok, are reshaping the publishing landscape. Jennifer Armentrout is proving that the next giant of fiction doesn’t need a giant publisher. This is the sixth book in the Blood and Ash series- all published by a tiny Indie press that is taking publishing by storm.

Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey involving kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail.

A novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.

A coming-of-middle-age novel full of humor and grief. When Abe Jacobs is faced with an unthinkable diagnosis, he follows his fragile hope for a cure to the Mohawk Rez where he grew up. In his family’s hands, Abe just might find hope.

A young Stanford graduate caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. All she can do is try to walk home. We follow her journey across a transformed city as she reflects on her life and re-considers hope for the future.

In this debut novel, two sisters are betrayed and violently estranged. They must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love and home versus the outside world. An exploration of family bonds in a story of sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

A coming of age novel about working-class female friendship, set in the schoolyards, nightclubs, and alleyways of a gritty, post-industrial town in Yorkshire, England. Three girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are, but as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.

Three star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student. Their secrets, and the secrets of their parents, threaten to shatter their entire community in a novel of race, class, and privilege.

Inspired by a true story, “We Would Never” is a gripping murder mystery and an intimate family drama. It explores the issues of loyalty, betrayal, and the blurred line between protecting and forsaking the ones we love most.

When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, a Florida-based lawyer and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War is consumed by memories of his younger sister who went missing during that conflict. “A Season of Light” explores the shaky promise of the immigrant American dream and a family struggling with intergenerational trauma.

Two brothers are living off the grid on the edge of Yellowstone. In dire straits and desperate for money, they accept a dangerous proposition that permanently alters their lives and their relationship to each other. 

A novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire. “Mutual Interest” explores the lives of “three queer misfits turned business titans” during the Gilded Age with immersive period detail and compelling emotional stakes.

“Homeseeking” follows Haiwen and Suchi, two separated lovers through six decades of Chinese history. War, famine, and opportunity take them from Hong Kong, to Taiwan, New York, and LA. This debut novel is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance and time.

It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn, the only guest who isn’t there for the big event.

A novel about depression, love, the ways women make themselves small, and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this is a story of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961. An exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.