In Albertine Clarke’s The Body Builders: A Novel, Ada lives a solitary life. But when she meets a man named Atticus, she feels an intimate connection between them – yet Ada’s separation from reality grows. And after her mother takes her on a remote Greek holiday, Ada is jolted into a new, artificial environment created for her by a mysterious, potentially otherworldly force.  Ready for her first year at Stanford, Rishi, the lead character in Malavika Kannan’s Unprecedented Times: A Novel, just wants to shake the trappings of her Indian American childhood in Florida, study literature, experiment with love, and write all about it. Then COVID happens. Political discussions and growing disillusionment collide with sexual tension and responsibility – and Rishi begins to question her own story. In Xita Rubert‘s The Key Biscayne Affair: A Novel, translated by Julia Sanches, an eccentric Spanish philosophy professor relocates to Florida’s Key Biscayne with his two children, a boy and a girl. Soon his seemingly fun, innocent antics tip into recklessness, putting his daughter’s innocence at risk as she becomes an accomplice to his erratic behavior. This is a tender, disorienting, and deeply disquieting coming-of-age story disguised as a psychological thriller. Moderating is ’Pemi Aguda, author of One Leg on Earth: A Novel and a 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer fellow.

Buy The Body Builders: A Novel

Buy Unprecedented Times: A Novel

Buy The Key Biscayne Affair: A Novel