Ava von Krause is certain that Otto, her older, larger-than-life brother, didn’t really die four years ago, despite having been on the phone with him when a hail of bullets blew him away into the Hudson. Convinced that he somehow survived and went into hiding, Ava has absconded from Princeton with her tuition money (and her eccentric best friend, Priscilla the nun) to stage an off-Broadway show about him, knowing he’s too much of a narcissist to miss his own mythologizing.

As Priscilla plays her on the stage, Ava skulks the theater’s secret passages, hunting (and being haunted by) her brother’s ghost. With Otto nowhere to be found, the opportunity for catharsis quickly becomes a tangle of memory and obsessive delusion—both over her complicated family history and the play’s chaotic production cycle: Who was Otto? What really happened to him that night he called? And how has his depressed, twenty-two-year-old sister managed to put on such an elaborate production? The audience is eager to find out—but not nearly as eager as Ava herself.

Magnesium Dawn, a 75,000 word literary novel, is Sinclair Cabocel’s thesis project for Columbia University’s MFA program.

Centuries after the Great Blot smothered the sky in black, humanity survives in Solstice: a dense, stratified city built beneath the Electric Sun. Every good denizen worships the fusion reactor suspended far above. Inquisitor Argus has kept the rest in line with his revolver and righteous tongue—until a botched arrest uncovers a conspiracy to destroy the city’s holy light.

Left with days to thwart an elaborate heretic plot, Argus clashes with underground cults, surface-dwelling powerbrokers, and, most disturbingly, his own doubts. Even Phoebe, his precocious young apprentice, has more questions than he has answers. Solstice’s theocracy has held humanity together on a dark, long-dead world, but is that enough to justify the faith’s violent oppression? The last time Argus searched for the truth, he was left half-blind. The fate of Solstice may hinge on him seeking it once more.

CHURCH OF THE ELECTRIC SUN is a 110,000-word sci-fi novel blending the climatological and religious themes of Claire North’s Notes from the Burning Age with the fast-paced noir vibes of Alastair Reynolds’s Halcyon Years.

Natalie, Oxford University’s cheeriest sweetheart, is dead, and nobody is talking about it. Not Mae, the obscenely rich industrial heiress she’d called her best friend. Not Lucas, the gloomy, reviled savant she’d briefly dated. And definitely not Braddock, the self-absorbed president of the Student Union, who’s been running for reelection on the insistence that Oxford is safer than ever.

When a flock of psychotic geese settles under Folly Bridge, however, the trio of despondent scholars immediately suspects them to be a punishment for their silence. The birds’ campaign of carnage and ceaseless honking begins driving them and their peers mad, and once sleep and study become impossible, strange alliances and unhinged intrigue become the norm. Lucas and Braddock, who would have otherwise never rubbed shoulders, strike up a tenuous fellowship to deal with the avian menace. As Braddock’s girlfriend, Mae can’t help but observe the budding friendship with apprehension. There’s a reason why Lucas is a pariah on campus, and Braddock’s privileged status quo might be too fragile to survive any challenge to his power.

Plus, if the growing madness unearths the truth about Natalie’s mysterious death, the trio could face a reckoning far beyond a bunch of obnoxious birds; their lives—and Oxford itself—might be shattered beyond repair.

Folly Bridge (95,000 words, Literary Fiction) is a highly accessible Secret History for the new century. Fusing the interpersonal politicking of Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood with the unsettling dark academia vibes of Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You (along with a dash of Saltburn’s aristocratic antics), this novel is a timely and tragicomic examination of privilege, power, and human connection in post-Brexit England.

Felicity never expected the board of directors to summon her. Out of Albion Financial’s hundred thousand employees, she might be the most disenchanted by the bank’s fall from grace after four scandal-ridden years.

Their directive sounds simple: Fetch Gordon Pender. Felicity knows the disgraced former CEO locked himself away in Avalon, a luxury penthouse, years ago—she brought him there the night the board betrayed him. They’re convinced that only she can bring him back.

Considering she had been Pender’s executive assistant at the height of his power, they’re probably right. Felicity had the only close-up view of the man whose uncompromising integrity brought Albion through the Great Recession unscathed. The years, however, have worn those glorious memories thin. The only promise he ever broke is how she came to spend the prime of her life in debt and spreadsheets. Worse yet, Pender is now drowning in booze, pills, and mistresses. He hasn’t left the apartment since he arrived, and he’s facing too many internal crises to deal with the ones at his former company.

Mending a man takes time, and Albion Financial is only weeks away from collapse. Buck-passing businessmen are scrambling to cash out. Ravenous regulators are scraping at Albion’s every scab. Only Pender could possibly piece his bank back together, but first, Felicity needs to piece him back together. The fate of those hundred thousand employees isn’t all that’s at stake. With a dying mother and dreams of her own, she can’t afford to take the fall.

These works are not being queried:

Être: The Follies of a Peninsular Existence: A disillusioned young loner chases the ghost of his ex-lover across the collapsing European Union.

An Inquisition of Everything: A suburban nihilist examines what it means to believe in nothing after a demonic, clairvoyant artist paints his best friend’s imminent suicide.