In the febrile heat of an Australian summer, a girl learns that whole worlds lie beneath her hometown and family’s careful facades. Martine Murray’s novel "The Last Summer of Ada Bloom" travels landscapes that are metaphors to... Read More

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s novel "Starling Days" is a gentle treatise on the anatomy of sadness, wherein the many manifestations of modern melancholy raise questions about what it truly means to be “okay.” Mina wants to silence the... Read More

The faithful girls of a struggling California town are asked to sacrifice an ungodly amount in Chelsea Bieker’s "Godshot", a blazing novel about the messes made when blind faith metastasizes into madness. In the heat of a deep Central... Read More

Buried beneath The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires’s mounds of Southern-style humor and horrific plot twists ripples a coming-of-age story featuring the least likely of heroines. When real, imagined, and metaphorical... Read More

Though it is set in turbulent times, "Beyond the Ghetto Gates" is a timeless coming-of-age story. A teenager’s world is upturned as she’s pulled between her timeless desire and her sense of family duty in Michelle Cameron’s... Read More

With twists, loyalty between friends, and its cast’s cleverness, the middle grade fantasy The Eye of Zeus hits all the right notes. Action-packed and empowering, Alane Adams’s The Eye of Zeus combines plucky modern characters with a... Read More

"Urban Playground" is an entertaining introduction to San Francisco thanks to the charm, sense of wonder, and joy of its participants. In "Urban Playground", San Francisco attorney and journalist Katie Burke delves into the hopes and... Read More