With the start of Issue 13, Philly Chapbook Review will now publish information on new literary novels and short story collections the same way we have for full-length poetry books (prose chapbooks will be covered in a monthly post). Every Tuesday, we’ll publish an update about what titles we know are releasing in the following week.
Information, including product descriptions, is provided by the publisher and not a critical judgment. If we cover the book on this site, links will be included.
The Witches of Cambridge, Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Scribner
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / eBook
By the 1950s, Cambridge, Massachusetts feels far removed from the legendary witch trials that marked its early days as a colony. Ava, a bright young woman from a small town in Maine, arrives for her first year at Radcliffe College. There, she meets Lauren, her opposite in every way—the wild and brazen daughter of a wealthy and well-established Cambridge family. But the two have more in common than they think. Both are recruited by the Lilith Society, a secret organization of witches at Radcliffe dating back to colonial times. As they learn more about their legacy, Ava and Lauren form a close bond that is put to the test as they learn to navigate their new power, friendship, and love.
While Radcliffe seems like a safe haven, the shadow of McCarthyism looms large, an ever-present threat to the flourishing creative and intellectual life in Cambridge. And as girls from the Lilith Society begin to go missing, Ava and Lauren realize the witch trials of the past may not be as deeply buried as they once believed.
Alice Hoffman is the author of thirty works of fiction, including Practical Magic, Practical Magic 2, The Dovekeepers, and Magic Lessons.
Black Arts: Stories, Megan Giddings
Publisher: Amistad
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Paperback
Over three genre-busting novels, Megan Giddings has emerged as one of the most celebrated and inspiring authors at work today. She has been compared to such luminaries as Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, and Jordan Peele, yet her voice is singular and distinctive.
Now, at long last, she presents us with a story collection that fully demonstrates the breadth and sophistication of her talent. Over the course of thirteen stories, we navigate complex family relationships, romances both troubled and charmed, and events that straddle the supernatural and the all-too-real. Among the disintegrating husbands, seductive ghosts, and artists communing with the supernatural to find their voices, Giddings establishes herself as a true investigator of modern yearning. Funny, poignant, exquisitely-rendered, and deeply moving, the stories in Black Arts further establish Megan Giddings as one of our most eagle-eyed and groundbreaking literary talents.
Megan Giddings is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. Her novel, Lakewood, was one of New York’s 10 best books of 2020, one of NPR’s best books of 2020, a Michigan Notable book for 2021, a nominee for two NAACP Image Awards, and a finalist for a 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category. Her second novel, The Women Could Fly, was named one of The Washington Post’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy novels of 2022, one of Vulture’s Best Fantasy books of 2022, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her work has received support from the Barbara Deming Foundation and Hedgebrook. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Enchantment, Riikka Pulkkinen, Tabatha Leggett (Tr)
Publisher: Scribe US
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Paperback
When seventeen-year-old Philippa’s body is found in her front yard, the police launch an investigation. Everyone close to Philippa is questioned: The elderly neighbor who discovered her body, who kept confusing Philippa with his late wife. The best friend, who hoards a secret stash of objects she’d stolen from Philippa over the years. The ex-boyfriend, still reeling from their sudden break-up months before. The woman who features, enraged, in some of the strange videos Philippa filmed on her beloved Olympus PEN camera. The older men she’d been meeting via a dating app.
Each tells a different story: she was a confidant, a fantasy, a temptation, a problem, a mystery, a mirror. But did any of them truly know her?
Enchantment is a spellbinding literary mystery that explores the uneasy terrain of girlhood, where one is always being watched, shaped, and judged by others. In it, Riikka Pulkkinen (called the “Finnish Joyce Carol Oates” by Livres Hebdo) weaves a complex story of power and identity, and the fragile boundary between truth and fiction.
Riikka Pulkkinen was born in 1980 and studied literature and philosophy at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of True, which was published in seventeen countries and shortlisted for the 2010 Finlandia Prize for Fiction. The Limit, her debut novel, was a bestseller in Finland and the Netherlands, and won the Kaarle and Laila Hirvisaari prizes. Riikka lives in Helsinki, Finland.
Tabatha Leggett is a writer and literary translator from North Wales. She is a current Iowa Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA programme and a graduate of New York University’s Fiction MFA programme, where she was an Axinn Fellow. Enchantment is her debut translation.
The Living Realm, Jordan Tannahill
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / eBook
While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw.
Along with his friends Gabor and Birgit, the man spends the long, hot summer by the lake, observing the comings and goings of their fellow nudists, as well as their beloved Elsa, a boar who lives along its fringes. He also continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself.
Written with the lyricism and erudition that have made Jordan Tannahill an internationally celebrated playwright, The Living Realm is a dreamlike novel of epic feeling, and an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world, and those we love.
Jordan Tannahill is a playwright and a novelist. His debut novel, Liminal, received France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was short-listed for the 2021 Giller Prize and adapted into a limited series for the BBC. His most recent play, Prince Faggot, ran off-Broadway for seven months in 2025. He has twice won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and his work has been presented at venues including the Young Vic Theatre and Sadler’s Wells in London, the Kitchen and Lincoln Center in New York City, the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his husband.
Switzy, Emma Cline
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / Paperback / eBook
A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting.
A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.
This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades.
His final destination is Zurich.
David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in: the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend’s house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life.
As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he’s relied on, vanish.
Emma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest, The Girls, and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. The Guest was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Cline’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories anthologies. She received an O’Henry Award and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review, and was chosen as one of Granta‘s Best Young American Novelists.
Queenie Is Working on It, Candice Carty-Williams
Publisher: Scout Press
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / eBook
She’s thirty-three, the editorial director for The Good Sis, a thriving media network amplifying the voices of Black women—a far cry from her former toxic workplace. With a great platform and a renewed sense of purpose, she’s fighting the good fight.
So when an appointment for research goes haywire and reveals startling truths about her own fertility, Queenie is confronted with a racing biological clock when she’s not even sure she wants kids in the first place. She’s sort of seeing someone, but it’s not that serious (according to him), and her mom, grandma, and aunt Maggie all mean well, but they keep asking when she’s going to settle down.
Surrounded by loyal friends who seem to fall in love with their person and get pregnant at the drop of a hat and the reappearance of an old flame she never stopped loving while being pulled into a series of confusing “situationships” that really do NOT go anywhere means that for Queenie, time is running out in all parts of her life. She’s determined to do what she thinks is best to get back on track, no matter how many mistakes it takes to get this right.
Candice Carty-Williams was born and raised in South London, by way of Jamaica. She is a novelist, showrunner, culture writer, and author of Book of the Year Award–winning and Sunday Times (London) bestselling Queenie, as well as the young adult novella Empress and Aniya, and the Sunday Times (London) bestselling People Person. In 2016, Candice created and launched the Guardian and 4th Estate 4thWrite Prize for underrepresented writers, the first inclusive initiative of its kind in book publishing. Candice is the ex-Guardian Review books columnist, has interviewed and written for i-D, Vogue, The Face, The Sunday Times (London), BEAT Magazine, Black Ballad, and many more publications. Queenie received global acclaim and was described as vital, disarmingly honest, and boldly political. It was adapted by Candice for Channel 4 and Hulu, and her original drama, Champion, aired on BBC One in the UK, and on Netflix globally.
Spoilt Creatures, Amy Twigg
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / Paperback / eBook
When Iris—newly single and living at home with her mother—meets the mysterious and beguiling Hazel, who lives in a women’s commune, she finds herself drawn into the possibility of a new start away from the world of men who have only let her down. Here, at Breach House, the women can be loud and dirty, live and eat abundantly, all while under the leadership of their gargantuan matriarch, Blythe.
But is Breach House truly the haven it seems? And just how much can Iris trust her new family? When an unforgivable transgression threatens the commune’s existence, Iris and the other women find themselves hurtling towards an act of devastating violence.
Amy Twigg was born and raised in Kent, England, and now lives in Surrey. When her debut, Spoilt Creatures, was published in the UK in 2024, Amy was selected as one of The Observer‘s Best New Novelists. The novel also won the Blue Pencil Agency (BPA) Pitch Prize and was longlisted for BPA’s First Novel Award and the Mslexia Novel Competition. Amy is an alumnus of the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course. Blackstone will publish her second novel, Milk, Bread, Teeth, in January 2027.
From Here, Zan Bockes
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
From Here is a collection of twenty-two short stories exploring the lives of people who battle a range of psychiatric disorders as they search for empathy and understanding in a complex and little understood world.
The collection opens with a frightened homeless man who meets a well-intentioned social worker. In another story, a woman explains why she amputated her hand. A teenaged girl fights anorexia, and a young man tries to care for his incarcerated mother. The last story returns to the characters in the first, examining their encounter from the social worker’s point of view.
With compassion, respect and a sense of humor, From Here seeks to describe what it means to be touched by mental illness, and how the experience can completely alter one’s path in unexpected and powerful ways.
Born in Nuremberg, Germany, and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Zan Bockes studied creative writing and psychology at the University of Iowa, then graduated with a BA in English and a BFA in creative writing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She earned an MFA, also in creative writing, from the University of Montana, publishing widely in magazines and anthologies, including The Sun, The Awakenings Review and Cutbank. She received four Pushcart Prize nominations. Her first poetry collection, Caught in Passing, was released in 2013 from Turning Point Press (an imprint of WordTech Communications). A second collection, Alibi for Stolen Light, appeared in 2018 from FootHills Press. She continues to thrive in Missoula, Montana.
Boudoir, Sigrún Pálsdóttir, Lytton Smith (Tr)
Publisher: Open Letter Books
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
Teddý lives with her parents on a farm in the Icelandic wilderness. It’s 1962, and the world is changing, although you wouldn’t know it from the stark quiet of the lava fields and mountains that mark the boundaries of the young woman’s existence. But after two chance encounters, Teddý’s dreams of a world beyond begin to crystallise, albeit in strange and unexpected ways, as we follow one woman’s life over five decades, from farm to city to the skies. Taking us from the grandeur of rural Iceland to the glossy, sticky world of 1970s air travel, via check fraud, thwarted ambition and lost astronauts, Boudoir is a novel about reinvention, dislocation, and the forceful gravity of the lives and selves we think we’ve left behind.
Sigrún Pálsdóttir is an Icelandic writer and historian. She completed a PhD in the History of Ideas at the University of Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow at the University of Iceland. She was the editor of Saga, the principal peer-reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016. Pálsdóttir’s work has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize, the Hagþenkir Non-fiction Prize and the DV Culture Prize. Her book Sigrún og Friðgeir (Uncertain Seas) won the Icelandic Booksellers’ Prize in 2013, and her second novel Embroidery (available from Open Letter, as is History. A Mess) was awarded the European Union Prize for Fiction 2021.
Lytton Smith is a poet, professor, and translator from the Icelandic. His most recent translations include works by Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Jón Gnarr, Ófeigur Sigurðsson, Bragi Ólafsson, and Guðbergur Bergsson. His most recent poetry collection, The All-Purpose Magical Tent, was published by Nightboat. Having earned his MFA and PhD from Columbia University, he currently teaches at SUNY Geneseo.
Stranger Beauty, Matthew Gasda
Publisher: Arcade
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / eBook
There are novels that describe consciousness and novels that enact it. Stranger Beauty is of the latter. With its narrative spun out of three notebooks, an embedded screenplay, and a final monologue delivered by an AI that has legally consumed a dead man’s life’s work, Matthew Gasda’s formally daring prose carries a powerful emotional resonance.
The architecture of the novel is not a stunt. Each section burrows, dreamlike, into a single psyche through repetition, contradiction, and the slow surfacing of things that were never meant to be seen. A marriage as alchemy. A brother lost to madness who emerges as the moral center of everything. And an artificial rendering of a man that speaks with more honesty than the living ever managed to accomplish.
An ambitious and original novel, Stranger Beauty is also deeply heartbreaking.
Matthew Gasda grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. A dramatist, novelist, and poet, he is the author of fifteen plays and counting, including the acclaimed underground hit Dimes Square. He lives in New York City.
The Chinese Lady, Bo Wang
Publisher: HarperVia
Publication Date: September 8, 2026
Format: Hardcover / eBook
Little Sparrow, Julia, Afong Moy, Madame Moy, The Chinese Lady, were her many names . . . but her true name has been lost to time.
In 1834 Afong Moy was brought to New York by two merchants as a live exhibit. Rising to fame as the first Chinese female in the United States, she became an oddity among curios as Americans marveled at the opportunity to observe her astonishing little feet, broken and bound to resemble lotuses.
As the story moves from 1820s Canton to P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, to Gold Rush San Francisco, three women introduce us to her many names. Her mother calls her Little Sparrow and sells her to a captain who sails her to New York. The captain’s wife names her Julia and “graciously” treats her as her own. And when she is shunted off to P.T Barnum, her fellow human exhibitions call her China. Eventually arriving in San Francisco’s Chinatown, she will at long last claim her name and her own story.
Combining archival research and brilliantly imaginative storytelling, Bo Wang masterfully fills in history’s gaps to weave a powerful narrative of survival in the face of hardship, tragedy, and betrayal. Told through the eyes of those around her; mirroring her life as an object on display, until we finally see the world through her own eyes.
Bo Wang was born in Cincinnati to Taiwanese American parents. Her childhood was peppered with stories of the Monkey King alongside those of Frog and Toad. A graduate of Sycamore Public Schools, Bo holds an A.B. in history and literature from Harvard College. She now lives in Boston with her family. The Chinese Lady is her debut novel.
All the People in My Head, George Toles
Publisher: At Bay Press
Publication Date: September 14, 2026
Format: Paperback
A gallery of strange characters who get themselves into a variety of “tyranny of chance” predicaments that are, by turns, poignant and hilarious. The tone of this book ranges widely: Edward Gorey and Shirley Jackson Gothic to Thurberesque family imbroglios and Robert Walser adventures in fairy tale wayfaring. So much can happen, for good and ill, in stories that must arrive at their destination speedily. In this singular collection of mini-narratives married with scintillating imagery, award-winning artist Robert Fleming and famed screenwriter George Toles combine their unique creative voices in a book like no other.
George Toles is a Distinguished Professor of Film and Literature at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of A House Made of Light: Essays on the Art of Film, Paul Thomas Anderson, and the forthcoming Curtains of Light: Essays on the Metaphysics of Theatrical Space on Film. He has been posting mini-narratives called Status Updates on Facebook every day since 2009. Two collections of these updates, with accompanying illustrations by artist collaborators, will be published in the next year.
Bright Stars, Kimberley Tait
Publisher: Dogstar Press
Publication Date: September 10, 2026
Format: Paperback
Cate, Teddy, Ames, and Sloane—newly minted Class of 2001 graduates—are reeling from their first heartbreaks as they enter real life, unaware that the world is on the brink of vast, irreversible change. When the Twin Towers fall on September 11th, the tragedy intertwines their lives and futures in supernatural ways, linked by an undelivered love letter.
A wistful story of fate, love, and human connection, Bright Stars is a portrait of the tragedy that dented the romantic imagination of a forgotten generation—The Last of the Innocents—just as offline life vanished forever. This novel is a time machine that will transport you back to the final days of the lost era so many of us are longing for.
Kimberley Tait is a novelist who has worked as a writer and editor for twenty-five years. Kimberley’s debut novel, Fake Plastic Love, was published by Flatiron Books. She wrote her sophomore novel, Bright Stars, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th, drawing from her experience as a Class of 2001 graduate serving on the 9/11 relief effort in New York. Kimberley is the recipient of a 2026 FAIR Artist Grant supporting artistic freedom and excellence that highlights our common humanity. Advocating for beauty, sincerity, and the human soul, she is part of a new Romantic movement rising above the age of algorithms. A Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen, Kimberley lives in New Hampshire, USA, with her family.
Don’t see a poetry title published between 9/8 and 9/14 here? Contact us to let us know!
Contents
“This language offers one possible framing through which to appreciate the law’s capacity to hope for, request, and even command commitment to a more just future.” Read two poems by Maggie Wang, our first biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Possibilities for Action.”
Chapbook Poem: I’ll Never Look This Good Again by Douglas Piccinnini
“[The poem] came out of real pressure: despair, worry, and grief I wanted to hold unflinchingly, alongside the anxiety of becoming a parent… For me the poem became a meditation on all the feeling that surfaces precisely when we’re told to feel only joy.” Read an excerpt from Douglas Piccinnini’s chapbook, House of Bad Memories, along with a few words from the poet.
“She sees herself in carbon, the element that bonds with almost anything- not because it wants to, but because it has empty spaces and things keep showing up to fill them. Notifications. Noise. Needs that never stop arriving.” Read four poems by Joely Williams, our second biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Single Mother Considers the Periodic Table.”
ADHD in a Non-ADHD World: on Undersight by Alison Hurwitz
“[Hurwitz] shares moments of angst and moments of awe. More than that, there are moments of deep recognition. She sees herself in [her sons] and, in fact, receives a later-life ADHD diagnosis of her own.” Read the full chapbook review by new contributor, Nancy Murphy.
“The woman’s head & hair are lavishly dressed. I probably leapt off the logic of the hairdresser being blind and therefore had to work on the head/body/mind rather than just hair as a surface issue of presentation.” Read two poems by Irene Cunningham, our third biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “The Blind Hairdresser.”
Flash Fiction: Nova by Kimmy Chang
“‘Nova’ is a lyrical second-person story about the narrator’s first true encounter with death…the story presents loss not as beautiful in itself, but as the place where beauty begins.” Read the first original fiction piece of the Summer 2026 issue, “Nova” by Kimmy Chang.
“To fit the nuanced, dimensional experience of dysphoria and transition into narrative…often feels flattening, falsely assured. I wanted to look at this discomfort I felt, to see what was necessary in it.” Read three poems by Joshua Zeitler, our fourth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Cobbling.”
Excerpt: “On the puzzle still inside my head” by Truong Tran
“I am trying to excavate memories. I am trying to negotiate the difficult realities of existing as a brown man in this country and within the consciousness of white America.” Read an excerpt from Truong Tran’s forthcoming book from City Lights, How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir.
“These poems try to make sense of how I arrived at a life that probably seems well thought-out, but has been one reactionary choice after another.” Read three poems by A.R. Dugan, our fifth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Sleeptalking.”
Original Fiction: Muse by Somtoo Celestine Ezioha
“What I tried to trace was the underside. How watching someone closely for long enough becomes a substitute for approaching them.” Read the second original fiction piece of the Summer 2026 issue, “Muse” by Somtoo Celestine Ezioha.