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, Mem and her mother, Virginia, return to the small Gulf Coast... Read More

In Lynn Stegner’s novel "The Half-Life of Guilt", a couple’s personal and professional relationship is tested as they protest the endangerment of a whale population. Clair is a biologist and botanist who grew up on her family’s... Read More

In Jordan Ifueko’s novel "The Maid and the Crocodile", an orphaned girl fights to make a home for herself while contending with a cursed god. In Oluwan, while trying to find employment as a maid, Sade accidentally binds herself to the... Read More

A filmmaker and her subject push past their cynicism to form an intoxicating bond in the international novel The Perfumer’s Secret. In Neroli Lacey’s novel The Perfumer’s Secret, a documentary filmmaker makes tough decisions... Read More

The series fantasy novel "Family Pack" reveals the long and intricate history of werewolf bloodlines in a captivating manner. Kali Metis’s fantasy novel "Family Pack" is a sequel that’s packed with intricate histories and a... Read More

A literary oxygen mask and a paean to health care workers, psychiatrist David Kopacz’s understanding self-help book illustrates how relatable and treatable issues like burnout are. Kopacz, having himself experienced burnout, notes that... Read More

In Nicole M. Wolverton’s hair-raising thriller "A Misfortune of Lake Monsters", a teenager who fakes cryptid sightings confronts a monster from her nightmares. Lemon knows that Old Lucy isn’t real. Her family has been responsible for... Read More

A girl in a whaling village investigates several disappearances in Crystal J. Bell’s mesmerizing historical novel "The Lamplighter". Even as self-reliant eighteen-year-old Temperance mourns her father, who was hanged, she takes up his... Read More