The Cruiseshipseries prints literary fiction — novels and story collections we've read in the margins of our own lives, three, four, five times, and still find something to underline.
We publish eight to ten books a year, on purpose. Every manuscript that reaches our catalog has been read in full by every editor on staff — not sampled, not summarized. We argue about sentences. We keep the ones that survive the argument.
We're not chasing trends or franchise potential. We're looking for the kind of literary fiction you press into a friend's hands and then have to buy yourself a new copy of, because you're not getting that one back.
Three siblings return to their late father's print shop and find the manuscript he never let anyone read.
Twelve linked stories set across one waterlogged coastal town, one month apart, one year apart.
A translator loses the ability to read in her first language and finds a strange freedom in it.
A hostage negotiator's daughter narrates her mother's retirement, one exit strategy at a time.
A regional theater's second-string actor gets one real shot, the same week his marriage ends.
"A novel about the manuscripts we bury in our own families — and the ones that refuse to stay buried."
Marchetti spent six years on The Long Correction, rewriting the middle third alone four separate times. It's the rare debut that reads like a fourth or fifth book: patient, exact, unafraid of quiet. This is the title we're leading with this season, and the one we'd hand you first if you walked into the office today.
We read unagented and agented submissions alike. Query with the first ten pages and a one-page synopsis — no pitch decks, no comp-title arms races. If we want more, we'll ask.
We open our general queue twice a year, in March and September. Response time runs six to ten weeks; if you haven't heard from us by twelve, feel free to nudge.