It’s a great pleasure to present the fiction finalists for the Kirkus Prize. Together with this year’s jurors—Christine Bollow, co-owner of Loyalty Bookstores, and Kirkus reviewer Jeffrey Burke—I spent months reading the books that received starred reviews and discussing them over spirited Zoom calls. The six finalists are wildly different but share a commitment to telling a great story while playing with language and form.

Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet (Simon & Schuster, March 5): A young man who went from Cuba to Miami on a raft. An orca who’s spent most of her life at the Seaquarium. The movie Scarface. Moby-Dick. Somehow, Crucet combines these disparate elements into what our review calls an “unclassifiable and unforgettable” novel. As Ismael Reyes tries to forge an adult life for himself, his role models come from pop culture, but the dangers are real.

James by Percival Everett (Doubleday, March 19): In Everett’s audacious reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, Jim—the enslaved man who travels the Mississippi River with Huck—is revealed as James, who can write, argue with Voltaire, and speak in elevated English. This enthralling novel can be read on its own, but Everett has made it a necessary companion to Twain’s masterpiece. “One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him,” says our review.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich (Harper, Oct. 1) Kismet Poe is in high school, and two boys want to marry her. Her mother is a trucker who hauls sugar beets, and her charming father stole money from their church. “The Red River cuts a vivid track through the hardscrabble lives that anchor Erdrich’s surpassing North Dakota fiction,” says our review. “In this tender and capacious story, love and tragedy mingle along the river and into the world.” (See our interview with Erdrich on p. 14.)

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Atlantic Monthly, 2023): Over the course of Lynch’s frightening novel, one woman tries to preserve her family as Ireland devolves into a police state. Eilish’s labor-unionist husband has been taken away, and her son has been called to military duty. Lynch makes every step of this near future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific. Our review calls it “captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.”

Playground by Richard Powers (Norton, Sept. 24): Two boys bond over board games and fall in love with the same girl. One becomes a tech multi-millionaire, the other moves to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There’s an elderly scuba diver, too. Powers explores the computer revolution and the beauty of aquatic life in what our review calls “an engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.”

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe (Morrow/HarperCollins, June 11): When Margo, a college freshman, gets pregnant with her English professor’s baby, she decides to keep it. One thing leads to another and she’s posting videos on OnlyFans, a porn site, and taking marketing advice from her pro-wrestler dad. Thorpe’s exuberant novel has “terrific characters, rich worldbuilding, deep thoughts about fiction and morality, a love story, and a happy ending,” according to our review.

Please join us for a livestream of the Kirkus Prize ceremony on the Kirkus Reviews YouTube page, Wednesday, Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.