by Isabel Piazza Risi

In The Squimbop Condition, the newest novel from David Leo Rice, the New School alumnus crafts a surreal story of myth, madness, and an everlasting quest.

While first ideated as a series of interconnected short stories, The Squimbop Condition threads together years of writing into a complete fable-like narrative. The novel follows two brothers, Jim and Joe Squimbop, as they slip and slide through time, realities, and history. From Hollywood to Europe to Dodge City and all around the globe, the bizarre duo reshape reality in their endless mission to bring about the Golden Age in this sometimes-slapstick,

Interview by LIT Books Editor Jonathan Kesh

While reading Fools for Love, the new collection of short stories from New School MFA professor Helen Schulman, it won’t take long until you see names begin to reappear between stories.

While comprised of separate, standalone tales, the full collection blends together into a much more interconnected world, and follows a number of different New Yorkers from different corners of the city over multiple generations. As hinted by the collection’s name, unsustainable relationships and characters with dysfunctional ideas of love abound. The title story follows a web of bohemian partnerships in the heyday of the East Village,

Interview by LIT Books Editor Jonathan Kesh

Like plenty of great ghost stories, Stuart Pennebaker’s debut novel Ghost Fish begins as an extremely grounded tale. That it continues to feel realistic in its natural, interior way, even when a spirit entrenches itself into the story, is what makes it especially unique.

Ghost Fish follows a young twenty-something named Alison, who recently arrived in New York in hopes of a fresh start after a series of family tragedies left her isolated and entirely on her own. In particular, Alison is heavy with memories of her nearly twin sister — they were almost a year apart,

Interview by Mal Ward

In Laurie Sheck’s, Cyborg Fever, she transports readers into a meditative state of profound thinking, focused on humanness and its complexity in the age of technology and AI. The novel centers around Erwin, an orphan named after the physicist, Erwin Schrödinger. After a year-long fever dream, he experiences hallucinatory-like visions that begin by observing Funes (of Jorge Luis Borges’s story, “Funes and the Memorious”) meticulously researching on a computer.

The array of facts that Funes discovers introduces us to Austrian physicist, Ludwig Boltzmann, and the theory of entropy,