Brooklyn-based Slice, our latest Journal of the Week, features work by new writers next to interviews by legendary authors–and proves you can be a successful literary magazine without kicking the competition.

A bookish fifteen-year-old breaches taboos in the small New England town of Wick. Poet Rebecca Wolff’s masterful first novel is an Appalachian folk ballad rendered gothic–full of sex and ghosts, mixing caution and temptation, obsessed with origins but somehow timeless.

Bulgarian-American author Miroslav Penkov’s debut short story collection East of the West (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) comes at a time when his native country’s literary star is on the rise in the west. In this auspicious moment, Penkov delivers a heck of a book.

The appeal of Jo Ann Beard’s coming-of-age novel In Zanesville transcends both age and gender.

Michael Rudin presents Hobart, our latest Journal of the Week. The journal’s ability to curate badass, cutting-edge narratives has helped this modest upstart grow out of Founding Editor Aaron Burch’s bedroom into a full-on web/print literary journal and publisher.

Sharon Harrigan on the peril of reading George Saunders. Among them, the inability to leave home without encountering Saundersian absurdities.

Germany’s literary superstar Günter Grass is obsessed with the past. His second memoir, The Box, challenges readers to distinguish between fact and fiction in latter half of the author’s life. His unconventional approach might undermine the memoir form, but the result is a compelling account of Grass’ compulsion to write.

Reading Kathe Koja’s latest novel is akin to spending an evening in a Victorian-era opium den designed by Tim Burton and hosted by Baz Luhrmann. Magic, opium, and…puppets…await.

In The Cat’s Table, Ondaatje returns to Sri Lanka as the story follows three boys who, along with a cast of eccentrics, make their way from Colombo to England. By turns adventurous, mysterious, and wistful, the novel traces the search for belonging amidst strangers and strange lands. Charlotte Boulay considers Ondaatje’s latest beautiful offering in the context of his larger body of work.

After waiting impatiently for Daniel Orozco’s debut story collection, J.T. Bushnell finds that it exceeds all expectations. Bushnell calls these stories “full of satire and absurdity and insight.”