Grief won’t suffer fools. What and how we grieve is the truest thing we know about ourselves. What Catherine Owen mines from her experience of losing a young spouse to drug... Read More

In Randal Graham’s raucous, wry, and philosophical sequel to Beforelife, the divine Author’s intrepid hero, Rhinnick Feynman, returns, determined as ever to prove his... Read More

Vivek Shraya’s "The Subtweet" is a sharp, encompassing story about a creative friendship that’s promoted, and later imploded, by the kinetic energy of Twitter. Contrasting... Read More

Ironically, just as many of us have become passionate foodies who enjoy global edibles and markets that groan with produce, much of this Rabelaisian banquet has become... Read More

In Brenda Brooks’s "Honey", two friends reunite following nearly a decade of separation, resuming their relationship with a familiar, sisterly closeness that broadens into... Read More

David Elias’s "Elizabeth of Bohemia" brings Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of England’s King James I, to life. Elizabeth was married at age sixteen to Prince Frederick of... Read More

The Bocas are a developing nation’s sleepy backwater until oil is discovered. For Orbits, sudden wealth is as unreliable as happiness, though; both are a thin veneer over his... Read More

Environmental journalist Andrew Reeves labels "Overrun" “an environmental travelogue.” In it, he follows the Asian carp along its invasive path through North America. In... Read More

Is Merilyn Simonds’s "Refuge" a fictional memoir, a historical novel, or an exploration of the causes and results of seeking refuge? It’s all three, as it turns out, and a... Read More

“The note said: Wally, I will not live in a tarpaper shack the rest of my life. Love, Bette.” That’s what ten-year-old Lulu Parsons discovered on the kitchen table the day... Read More

Julie Bird is distracted from a blonde stranger gesticulating from the shore when a whale appears, headed for the beach. Soon, it becomes clear that the big blue wants to beach... Read More

Hitchins’s mix of raw emotion and salty hilarity works beautifully. It takes a special kind of person to write a play-by-play description of masturbation that is... Read More