Jeff Nesbit’s Autocrat is satirical, grotesque, and timely; it follows a narcissistic reality TV host named Rex Vanner who launches and wins the 2015 presidential campaign. But his leverage is a network contract, and what he succeeds in summoning is the darkest impulse in the...

In Bob Van Laerhoven’s The Long Farewell, in 1934, Dresden, fifteen-year-old Hermann Becht's family is affected by Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. His father, Hans, serves the Nazi movement with growing devotion, while his mother, Marina, a Belarusian refugee who escaped revolutionary Russia, believes Germany...

“For once in her life, she’d encountered a really attractive guy her age, whom she’d love to date. Why did he have to be a jewel thief?” Why indeed, but that's life for Nancy Norman, the protagonist of Marilee Dahlman's novel, The Night Nurse And...

Catherine Mathis’s Leonor is set in 14th-century Portugal, where Leonor Teles de Meneses lives far from power under the control of her husband, Lord Pombeiro, after marriage takes away the freedom she once enjoyed in her mother’s household. Everything changes when she enters the court...

Logos of Cain by Seth W. James follows Francesca, a former high-ranking government director who is now a wanted woman after a very public scandal. Beside her is Cain, a professional mercenary who makes a living taking on the dangerous jobs that no one else...

Mitchell and Michael, twin brothers, were child prodigies. In Charter Road’s Play with My Heart, Mitchell is hailed as being perhaps the greatest violinist in the world, while his twin brother, Michael, is one of the best pianists. Their father promoted the boys’ talents, wanting...

Talisman by Tom Catalano is not your usual time travel story. Archaeology student John Shaw is on a dig in Antigua with a team from the University of Chicago, led by the brilliant Professor Henri Rutherford. On the last day of the disappointing trip, they...

In Joshua Becker’s Soul Mission, Ephraim Saltzburg teaches Spanish in Milwaukee while living with mental health issues that detach him from his wife Rachel, their young son Ari, and the ordinary rhythm of daily life. After horrifying visions connected to the Holocaust death camps begin...

When Lynn Davenport hears about the Veritas cruise, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to bond with a father who has been anything but that to her. She did not expect that, shortly after boarding the vessel with several other passengers, she would be...

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...