FEBRUARY 2026
HE'S THE DEVIL
by Tobi Coventry
Available from Abrams Books
Sign-up deadline for this title: January 15, 2025
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'Wild, playful, fantastically written, this book will crawl into you like a parasite and you’ll love every minute of it.' ―Virginia Feito, author of Mrs March
An exhilarating, darkly comic debut novel about a do-gooder whose world is turned inside out when his new roommate―who might be possessed by the devil―moves in.
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At once a visceral, unhinged, and comic novel about the roommate generation, He’s the Devil is a tantalizing literary thriller exploring possession and obsession, friendship and betrayal. Tobi Coventry’s debut is propulsive, funny, and touching, marking the arrival of a bold new literary imagination.
Simon has always been a good guy, a charmer. He’s consistently employee of the month at his bougie restaurant job, neurotically tidy, and generally tries to do right by everyone. And his dark parts? He keeps those well-hidden. But when his best and only friend Josh moves out of their shared apartment, Simon’s world starts to fall apart when his new roommate Massimo moves in. Because Massimo has brought something―or someone―with him. He might just turn out to be the roommate from hell….
Strange things start to happen. Weird noises come from Massimo’s room, smells of earth and spoiled meat drift through the halls, lights flicker, and Simon’s nights fill with disturbing and alluring dreams. Meanwhile, across the city, murders are being committed, bodies torn apart from the inside. Massimo and whatever he’s unleashed begin to awaken Simon’s wild and exciting and horrifying inner self.
Whatever this new friend is could be the end of Simon―or a completely new beginning.
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MARCH 2026:
BLACK BAG, by Luke Kennard (Zando)
Sign-up deadline: February 15, 2026
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"[A] delightful and dark picaresque . . . Kennard entertainingly pokes and prods at conceptions of identity, whether in sexual relationships or online personae. It’s a hoot.” —Publishers Weekly
An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime—sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag—to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong?
In Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr. Blend’s students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own—in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag?—and the actor’s childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . .
A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.
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