March Publications 2025

 March 2025 Publications

Soft Burial by Fang Fang, translated by Michael Berry

Publication March 18, 2025; Columbia University Press, NetGalley

Genre: historical fiction, literary, mystery and thriller

I just love novels that involve amnesia in all its various manifestations. Readers on Goodreaders gave this one 4.30 stars. 

Description: Fang Fang’s Soft Burial begins with a mysterious, nameless protagonist. Decades earlier she was pulled out of a river in a state of near-death; upon regaining consciousness, she discovered that her entire memory had been erased. 

The narrative follows her journey through recovery as she takes a job as a housekeeper in the home of a powerful cadre, marries the doctor who saved her, and starts a family of her own. 

As the story unfolds, the protective cocoon of amnesia that her subconscious wove around her begins to give way, revealing glimpses of her previous life and the unspeakable trauma that she suffered.

By the same author and translator, The Running Flame has the same release date in March and the same publisher, Columbia University Press. I was approved to read the ARC by NetGalley.

Genre: literary fiction, adult fiction, women's fiction

Description: 

“She knew that if she didn’t say her piece, that flame would never be extinguished; even after death, it would continue raging.”

The Running Flame opens with its protagonist in prison awaiting execution, desperate to give an account of her life.  The novel draws loosely from interviews the author conducted with female death row inmates in a Chinese prison. Equal parts social critique and domestic horror, The Running Flame is a gripping, propulsive narrative that shines a light on the struggles of poor women in China’s countryside.

About the author: Fang Fang graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Wuhan University in 1982. She has published nearly seventy novels, novellas and essay collections, in many different languages.

Stories from the Edge of the Sea by Andrew Lam, March 25, 2025; Red Hen Press, NetGalley 

At times humorous and ecstatic, other times poetic and elegiac, the fourteen pieces in Stories from the Edge of the Sea explore love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California. 

Andrew Lam is a writer and an editor with the Pacific News Service, a short story writer, and, for 8 years, a commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” He co-founded New America Media, an association of over 2000 ethnic media organizations in America. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Lam came to the U.S. at age eleven. He degrees are from San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley.