Julia Phillips & Alix Ohlin

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls – sisters, eight and eleven – go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Julia Phillips’s powerful debut novel, Disappearing Earth (Knopf), enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. In her gripping, unforgettable new novel about art, ambition, sisterhood, motherhood, and self-knowledge, Alix Ohlin traces the rich and complicated lives of two indelible women. Dazzlingly insightful and beautifully crafted, Dual Citizens (Knopf) captures the unique language of sisters and makes visible the imperceptible strings that bind us to the ones we love for good.