A Tiny Upward Shove, Melissa Chadburn
When Chadburn’s protagonist, Marina, a half-Black, half-Filipina woman, is murdered by a serial killer, she becomes an aswang, a mythical Filipino creature that Soriano describes as a shape-shifting vampire. “What follows is this truly stunning combination of intergenerational family history but also horror and true crime. There’s a queer love story in there. And there’s also this revenge fantasy because the aswang is out to avenge all of these women that have been killed by the serial killer. So it’s like Kill Bill, but actually feminist and written from a female point of view.” Soriano also calls out the novel’s “piercing prose.”