In Mikael Carlson’s Finding Santa, days before Christmas, Santa Claus disappears from his office inside Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, Finland, after three men force him onto a private jet headed across Europe. Wyatt Huffman, a former Washington political figure now living quietly in Vermont...

In the Wake of Evil is an astounding magical fantasy prequel to Stephanie Dean’s award-winning novel The Mystic Vial. The story unfolds in the whimsical, radiantly colorful town of Snickerdoodle, where magical creatures - pixies, fairies, and gorgeous unicorns - live alongside humans. But pixies...

In This Fell Sergeant by Adam Dompierre, Lacey Matthews hires private investigator Eddie London to examine the reported suicide of her boyfriend, Johnny Sullivan, who died after falling from a balcony at the Bridgewater Hotel. Eddie expects a routine investigation until details surrounding Room 310...

Laurence Hutson’s Shattered Faces is set during the First World War, when American sculptor Anna Ladd leaves Boston for Europe after learning that soldiers with severe facial injuries are hiding themselves from families and society. In London, she studies a new process that uses sculpture,...

Vicky Oliver’s Firebrands takes place in 1908 Manhattan, where suffragist Helena James begins investigating Derrick Dupré, the wealthy fiancé of her younger sister Summer, after overhearing him discuss bomb construction shortly following an explosion in Union Square Park. Helena discovers that Derrick operates a labor...

Nursing Her Fractured Family by Louis Tong is an enthralling novel. Penny's father has just died, and from now on, she has to take care of her mother and younger sister. Penny, at twenty-four, thinks more about her sister, how to protect her from their mother, who...

“There’s no such thing as a whole, functional, fuck-up-free human. We all have our problems and things that prevent us from being perfect.” True, and that may include Nicholas Bruechle, author of the novel All Writers Are Liars. At the very least, his characters certainly...

The Sooner I Go by Heather Cumiskey is the story of Brynn Gallardo, a recent high school graduate who is still devastated by the simultaneous deaths of her boyfriend Cody and her musician parents in separate car accidents on the same night seven months ago....

In the anthology Undercity by Monte Schulz, we primarily move alongside Marco Grenelle, through a city consumed by fire after a coordinated attack forces the residents into flight. He travels with Geismar Brecht while searching for Mirés Grillet, a performer whose path leads into a...

Carry on Smartly by Wayne Westphal Barrow is a collection of six original short stories, where the characters experience moments that require immediate decisions, which define what follows. In The Kind-Hearted Stranger, a teenage real estate agent receives unexpected news and turns to Mr. Kippens,...