New Vessel Press

In this kaleidoscopic novel set in a favela of Rio de Janeiro - ''in the city of stray bullets, in the land of lost opportunities'' - a gang member runs wildly through the streets not knowing he has only seven minutes left to live. Barflies, prostitutes, immigrants, a gay couple, a taxi driver, cops, a mobster, and more populate Francisco Maciel''s first book to appear in English. Leaping back and forth across time and spiraling into the surreal, the novel coalesces around a brutal massacre. Maciel''s multiracial characters write poetry and discourse on soccer, insects, samba, and climate change. Gritty, unpredictable, and percussive, There''s No Point in Dying is translated by National Book Award winner Bruna Dantas Lobato.

After emigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s, Leah maintains her connection to Israel by writing an annual letter on the Jewish New Year to her old friends from a women''s teaching college. Composed of fifty-one letters penned between 1966 and 2016, the novel skillfully documents Leah''s high hopes and deep disappointments, from relationships, marriage, and divorce to raising two children by herself, financial debt, and professional ups and downs. Leah rarely acknowledges the injustices she has had to overcome, but her letters turn increasingly introspective, ultimately exposing the secrets that shaped her trajectory from a naive but driven social climber to an independent woman at peace with herself.