Don Hunter’s short story collection Return to Spinner’s Inlet, about life on an island in British Columbia, celebrates what holds people together. Though these are lighthearted stories, the collection begins and ends with funerals,... Read More

Feeling more than a little lonely in his lighthouse by the sea, Caspian sends out a hopeful message in a bottle, casting it far into the crashing waves. He waits with patience through the seasons until an intriguing reply prompts him to... Read More

A neighborhood in the East Bronx is the subject of "Parkchester", a fascinating study by former Parkchesterite Jeffrey S. Gurock. Built by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1940, Parkchester at first served as an idyllic alternative... Read More

Simon Bajada’s enticing and inspiring cookbook "Baltic" is an ode to a region that, though influenced by outsiders, remains all its own. Bajada presents the post-Soviet cuisines of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as diverse and... Read More

There’s something a little mysterious at work in Hebe Uhart’s "The Scent of Buenos Aires", but it’s the ordinary mystery of other people. These thirty-eight short stories function like a panopticon, each dipping into one person’s... Read More

Camden is an anthropomorphized cat attending high school. He grapples with his sexuality and how to reveal it to his best friend in Jon Allen’s graphic novel "The Lonesome Era". Camden inhabits a late-1990s American Rust Belt town that... Read More

Nina Allan’s exquisite and strange "The Dollmaker" is a postmodern fairy tale, both whimsical and aching in its appeal. Andrew felt lost among his contemporaries until he discovered that he had a gift for fashioning discarded and... Read More

"If You Did What I Asked in the First Place" collects humorous, bite-sized personal essays about marriage, motherhood, and occasional medical emergencies. Lori B. Duff’s book "If You Did What I Asked in the First Place" is full of... Read More