It is easy to forget that as recently as twenty-five years ago, America’s drinking habits were anything but crafty and adventurous. We were a Bud country, we liked our cocktails old-school, and the little wine we drank was of the Gallo... Read More

Jill Baguchinsky’s outwardly lighthearted "Mammoth" comes with an important message. Natalie is a plus-size high school junior who blogs about fashion and paleontology. An opportunity for a summer internship at the Mammoth Site in... Read More

Somewhere in between destiny and chance, a man who has bitterly withdrawn from the world receives an invitation to rejoin it in Kim Hooper’s "Cherry Blossoms". Thirty-four-year-old sardonic Jonathan Krause plans to commit suicide after... Read More

Intensely dark and sardonic, "Sommelier of Deformity" is also, paradoxically, an uplifting and redemptive story. Buddy Hayes, a self-described troll who spends most of his time alone, is both arrogant and self-deprecating. He limits his... Read More

"Small Moving Parts" is an emotive, atmospheric, and memorable tour de force. Not to be missed. In 1958, on a summer’s night in Bufort, Texas, two strangers’ destinies collide. Harley Cain, an ill WWI veteran and rancher, and Dodger... Read More

Emotional but never sentimental, "All the Castles Burned" contrasts privilege with working-class struggles for a gripping story of human resilience. "All the Castles Burned" by Michael Nye is a coming-of-age story that is as painful as... Read More

Flor Edwards’s "Apocalypse Child" is an engrossing account of growing up within the strangely insular Children of God cult. Followers of the cult, founded in the late 1960s by David Berg, accepted his twisted interpretation of... Read More