Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh: “While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. […] A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it.”

Bluebeard’s First Wife by Ha Seong-nan (trans. Janet Hong): “Disasters, accidents, and deaths abound in Bluebeard’s First Wife. A woman spends a night with her fiancé and his friends, and overhears a terrible secret that has bound them together since high school. […] A couple moves into a picture-perfect country house, but when their new dog is stolen, they become obsessed with finding the thief, and in the process, neglect their child. Ha’s paranoia-inducing, heart-quickening stories will have you reconsidering your own neighbors.”

Ornamental by Juan Cárdenas (trans. Lizzie Davis): “A scientist recruits volunteers for the trial of a new recreational drug that exclusively affects women. Among them is ‘Number 4,’ who becomes emotionally involved with first the scientist and then his wife, a well-known visual artist in the midst of a creative crisis. The scientist is oblivious to the atrocities his new drug will bring to the city; his wife is oblivious to the superfluousness of the objects she has made her life’s work exhibiting in galleries and museums. Despite prominence as designers of artificial emotional states, Number 4’s presence in their lives pierces their complacency, gradually undoing the many certainties they’ve accumulated in their lives of ease.”