I hope everyone's Saturday is off to a good start. Here's what we've up to at Necessary Fiction this week:

Monday we published Rosalia Scalia's review of Country of Under, a novel by Brooke Shaffner and winner of the 1729 Book Prize. We're grateful to have Rosalia adding another review to those she's written in our pages. And if Country of Under sounds like a novel for you, we encourage you to order it directly from the publisher, Mason Jar Press, because they — like so many presses — have been impacted by the recent closure of SPD.

And on Wednesday we shared the final story in our series of nature-themed fiction, "Detectives" by Samantha Peale. This is the first time we've published Samantha's work, but we encourage you to seek out her novels, stories, and essays elsewhere. And we hope you've enjoyed the month of nature stories.

Finally, I have had the privilege of knowing and working alongside our fiction editor Lacey Dunham for a long time, even before she joined me at Necessary Fiction, and I know that she is as brilliant in her own writing as she is in finding great fiction for our website. So I am absolutely thrilled to share the news that her debut novel The Belles is forthcoming from Atria Books. Congratulations, Lacey!

Thanks for reading,
Steve Himmer