In Minrose Gwin’s rich coming-of-age novel "Beautiful Dreamers", a precocious girl navigates the tense atmospheres of 1950s Mississippi. After her father abandons her family,... Read More

J. Drew Lanham’s "Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves" is a stunning amalgamation of literary prose and poetry. Biology connects Lanham’s two worlds of wildlife and Black... Read More

Subtle moments of realization reveal the fault lines in otherwise average lives in Halle Hill’s emotional, devastating short story collection "Good Women". Often centered in... Read More

In Robert Maynor’s engaging novel "The Big Game Is Every Night", a broken leg changes the life of a teenage boy in the rural American South, leaving him to navigate the... Read More

The stories of Scott Gloden’s collection "The Great American Everything" explore family relationships and social problems. Anxious parents drill their five-year-old daughter... Read More

In his pensive memoir, Matthew Vollmer investigates the blinking lights that appeared in the woods soon after his mother’s death. In 2019, Vollmer’s mother died of... Read More

In Ashleigh Bell Pedersen’s captivating coming-of-age novel "The Crocodile Bride", eleven-year-old Sunshine lives with her father, Billy, in the bayou town of Fingertip, in a... Read More

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips’s gritty short story collection "Sleepovers" is bold in exploring rural life in the US South. Its entries reflect upon family, childhood,... Read More

A family grapples with prejudice and impending loss in Carter Sickels’s historical novel "The Prettiest Star". In 1980, Brian ran away from his conservative hometown and... Read More

In Mark Barr’s engrossing historical novel "Watershed", personal and social changes lead to tension in a rural Tennessee town where a post-Depression federal dam project... Read More

Jessica Handler’s based-in-truth historical novel "The Magnetic Girl" is all atmosphere and electricity. It centers on Lulu, the daughter of a Civil War defector and the... Read More

"Whiskey and Ribbons" is an absorbing delight, illumined by richly described relationships and thoughtful explorations of life’s central questions. The tale of a young police... Read More