Novels by Susan Choi and Giovana Madalosso, short stories by Mariana Enriquez and Etgar Keret, and a cross-genre book by Marie NDiaye

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Louisa and her father are making their way down the breakwater, each careful step on the heaved granite blocks one step farther from shore. Her mother is not even on the shore, for example seated smiling on the sand. Her mother is shut inside the small almost-waterfront house they are renting, most likely in bed. 
—From Flashlight, a novel by Susan Choi (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025). 

I'm kidnapping a child. I try to push this thought away, but it keeps coming back as we go down the elevator, say hi to Chico, pass the gates. We do these things every day, go downstairs, say hi to Chico, pass the gates, step on only the black tiles or the white on the sidewalk. But today it's different even if we're not doing anything different, because I know the white army stares at me. Mrs. Fernanda made up this moni­ker, the white army. And she's not wrong, we really look like an army, especially this early in the morning, when they're all in the piazza in their white nanny uniforms . . . 
—From The Tokyo Suite, a novel by Giovana Madalosso, translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato (Europa Editions, 2025). Originally published in Portuguese as Suíte Tóquio (Todavia, 2020). 

[Silvia] was our "grown-up" friend, the one who took care of us when we went out and who let us use her place to smoke weed and meet up with boys. But we wanted her helpless, ruined, destroyed. Because Silvia always knew more: If one of us discovered Frida Kahlo, oh, Silvia had already visited Frida's house with her cousin in Mexico, before he disappeared. 
—From "Our Lady of the Quarry," a story from The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, a collection of short stories by Mariana Enriquez, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Hogarth, 2021), pp. 13-25 in the paperback. I first read "Our Lady of the Quarry" when it was published in English in The New Yorker in December 2020. This book was originally published in Spanish as Los peligros de fumar en la cama by Editorial Anagrama in Barcelona, Spain (2017). 

His Tinder profile said his name was Oshik, he was thirty-eight, married with no kids, looking for a serious relationship. Dorit, who wasn't new to online dating, had never come across such an unusual line, and he sounded so square and had such high cheekbones and enormous blue eyes that she was curious enough to give it a try.
—From "Gondola," a short story by Etgar Keret, which was included in his new collection, Autocorrect, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen and Sondra Silverston (Riverhead Books, 2025). "Gondola" appears on pages 11-22 of the hardcover. My other favorites from this collection were the title story, "Autocorrect" (71-77), "Director's Cut" (107-108), and "Earthquake" (151-159). 

Evening has come, and the Garonne is rising hour after hour in the dark.
          We all know the river can rise nine meters above its banks before it overflows, thanks to the levees surrounding the village.
—From Self-Portrait in Green, a short, cross-genre book by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump (Two Lines Press, 2014, 2023). Originally published in French as Autoportrait en vert (Mercure de France, 2005). 

Fiction by Elena Ferrante, Kiara Brinkman, Rumena Bužarovska, and Hiromi Kawakami, and poetry by Louise Glück and José Antonio Rodríguez

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Day and night come
hand in hand like a boy and a girl
pausing only to eat wild berries out of a dish
painted with pictures of birds.
—From Winter Recipes from the Collective, poems by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). This section is from "Poem," pp. 3-4. My favorite poem in this collection is "The Denial of Death," pp. 5-11.

Don't misunderstand me, I love a good poem
Like half my Facebook friends, one that transports you
To a corner of the soul you didn't know was there
Because you couldn’t find the precise metaphor,
Even if you felt it, like that time my parents saw
A local news story of an older woman asking for help
With an ailing husband, and I volunteered to drive them . . .
—From "Shelter," a poem by José Antonio Rodríguez, The New Yorker (April 6, 2020), pp. 48-49.

Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents, newly married, had bought at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri, in Rione Alto. Everything—the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a frigid February, those words—remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story . . .
—From The Lying Life of Adults, a novel by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2020).

Ronan's mother made him and his brother practice acting bad so it would look real when the nanny from the TV show came. The boys practiced punching at each other and biting, fighting over broken plastic toys that neither of them played with anymore. Their mother said that this was her chance to be discovered. National fucking TV.
        Ronan, she said, let me see you do a temper tantrum.
        I'm tired, he told her—because he was ten, too old for tantrums. It wouldn't be realistic.
—From "If You Can Hear Me Thinking," a short story by Kiara Brinkman, One Story, Volume 6, Number 1 (April 20, 2007).

Nenad lay down on his bed and turned his face to the wall, whimpering quietly now. He didn't react when I touched him. I sat on the side of the bed and gave him a lecture on stealing. I told him that if he stole things, he'd wind up in jail. But since he didn't react to either my caresses or my words I left him there and went to the living room. Gene was sitting staring at a blank TV screen.
        "Maybe you shouldn't have beaten him so hard," I said. "He's really upset."
—From My Husband, stories by Rumena Bužarovska, translated from the Macedonian by Paul Filev (Dalkey Archive Press, 2019). This segment is from "Genes," pp. 33-54.

A white cloth was lying at the foot of a zelkova tree. When I walked over and picked it up, I saw a child underneath. 
—From People from My Neighborhood, stories by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen (Soft Skull Press, 2021).