In Linda H. Codega’s debut novel, Motheater, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox is on a mission to prove that White Rock, the large mining company Bennie worked for until her recent firing, is behind a string of mysterious miner deaths in the small Appalachian town of Kiron, Virginia. While that might suggest a book with a bone to pick over environmental destruction and corporate greed, an early plot twist makes monsters of mountains and helpless victims of those who mine them. As the novel opens, Bennie is grieving the loss of her best friend, Kelly-Anne. Both Black women, both White Rock employees, they became fast friends when Bennie moved to mostly white Kiron with her long-term boyfriend, local boy Zach Gresham.

Luu has produced a searing reminder of the danger of uncritically accepting the dominance of English.

In English folklore, Owd Hob has many names and takes on many forms.

Like Vo’s previous works in the Singing Hills Cycle, the worldbuilding in this book has a dreamlike quality to it.

When does the genocide end?

Abigail Nussbaum 2024! So much to talk about, so little space. In books, Julia Armfield’s Private Rites combined climate fiction, dysfunctional family drama, and folk horror, and convincingly argued that they are one and the same. Sylvie Cathrall’s A Letter to the Luminous Deep told a cod-Victorian epistolary tale of scientists exploring the secrets of a water planet, and falling in love along the way. Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time plucked a premise out of fanfic and turned it into a disquieting meditation on racism and immigration. Holly Gramazio’s The Husbands took a high-concept rom-com premise and used it to ponder the pitfalls of the quest for The One.

Part Two of our reviewers’ look back on 2024.

Part One of our reviewers’ look back on 2024.

The Brightness Between Us manages to capture not only vast temporal and spatial discrepancies but also those of gender and class.

Given certain circumstances, how capable are we of evil?