MOTHER DOLL, my second novel is coming soon with Abrams/Overlook! (March 12, 2024). It has gotten starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly!

PRESS:

-Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2024 Preview (The Millions), Spring 2024 Adult Preview: Literary Fiction (Publishers Weekly).

*”Apekina’s keen portrayals of morally complicated women transcend any gimmickry, and her depictions of Petrograd in the early 20th century feel startlingly present. Like the Russian nesting dolls that inspired it, this novel reveals layer after layer of poignant delights.”―KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

* “Apekina turns the multigenerational family saga on its head with this sharply original and surprisingly witty tale of a young woman in contemporary Los Angeles, her dying grandmother in New York City, and their ancestor in revolutionary Russia. The result is a provocative vision of a world in which past and present are not as neatly separated as they appear.”―PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW

“Imagining the afterlife has resulted in unforgettable recent novels like George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo. Apekina’s hallucinatory use of occult communications transforms historical facts and emotional trauma into a phantasmagorical fable of Zhenia’s and Irina’s spiritual journeys. Balancing raucous hilarity with embedded pain, it may be the year’s weirdest one-of-a-kind read.”―Barbara Conaty, LIBRARY JOURNAL

“Profoundly poignant and deeply moving, garnished with chortles and cackles along the way, Mother Doll is a novel whose heartbeat reverberates beyond its written words.”―Greg Mania, STYLECASTER, Most Anticipated Books of 2024

Delightful . . . This is an intergenerational family novel that manages to be mesmerizing in every storyline. A compelling combination of Russian Doll and Search Party.―Marissa Higgins, CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS “10 Books to Read When You Want To Feel Better About Your Dysfunctional Family.”