Sarah Wang Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Sarah Wang is an accomplished published author.

She is the author of her debut novel, New Skin. Sarah has written for a variety of publications and her writing has been featured in places such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, London Review of Books, The New Republic, McSweeney’s, Harper’s Bazaar, n+1, BOMB, The Believer, and more.

In addition to writing herself, Sarah also instructs students on the discipline of creative writing at Barnard College. She is a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Center for Fiction Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow. She has also received the Nelson Algren prize for fiction and won a Barbara Deming Award.

Sarah resides in New York City.

New Skin is a 2026 novel by Sarah Wang. There are a lot of new books out there to choose from, so how do you know which one is right for you? Sometimes it pays off to try a new author since you’re able to witness a fresh new voice in writing and expand your world.

Whether you’re reading it on your own or in a group, this is a fascinating new book to try out that may lead to trying other new works and a cascade of new and interesting stories in your world from fresh voices in fiction.

This story follows along with a mother and daughter pair who are completely enmeshed. They are simultaneously close friends as well as enemies. When they get addicted to plastic surgery, it ends up warping their lives and sending them into a dangerous spiral.

Linli Feng is 26 years old and for all of this time has been doing her best to try and get out of the orbit of her mother Fanny. They’ve been estranged for three years but after this time is up, it seems that the estrangement is not going to last.

Linli has been recently accepted into a prestigious graduate program but before she can even feel excited about it she finds that Fanny’s most recent medical catastrophe has pulled her back. Now she has to go home in order to care for her.

It’s been decades now that Fanny has had a terrible obsession in her life. She has been addicted to getting plastic surgery for years and has not even been doing it or going about it in legitimate ways. Instead, Fanny has been pursuing getting bargain procedures that take place in the basements of the bootleg beauty industry that exists in LA.

But of course, there is always a price to pay for trying to cut corners, and that applies more than double in the world of plastic surgery. Fanny’s face has been disfigured and after years of mistreatment has entered a stage of revolt that is exceptionally dangerous. It’s getting infected and risks being collapsed again, all thanks to her pursuit of the procedures and black market injected substances that are clearly less than reliable and are not at all tested for safety.

As Linli makes her way through the family finances and does her best to manage her mother’s medical care, it turns out that Fanny has yet another secret hiding. Fanny has been able to secure a spot on the reality television competition America’s Beauty Extreme, where plastic surgery addicts with botched procedures are competing to get reconstructive surgery. All of this is happening in front of a fascinated television audience, of course.

Linli does her best to try and save her mother from the subculture of plastic surgery addiction. She can’t go back in time and keep her mother from botching her face, but she can at least try and do what she can now. In the midst of all of it, she is going to have to at last look at the reality of American success at the center of their relationship. Can she rescue her mother or is everything already far too gone? Will Linli end up choosing herself in place of sacrificing her goals and future for her mother? Read New Skin by Sarah Wang to find out!