“The company engineered desire and sold it as experience.” But in Tobacco City, a novella by author Ricardo Novaes, the company did much more than that: it disguised a hellish dystopia as success. Meet Matheus Reis, a power-hungry corporate cog ravenous for advancement no matter...

“How could I have been so obtuse, so neglectful that my dying son hated me until the end?” For Joe Fredericks, the protagonist of Wayne Feinstein's novel, Turning, it took little effort to be such a sleazeball. Joe is the definition of success in one...

In The Second World by Jake Korell, Flip Buchanan grows up inside a Martian colony where power is exercised through ceremony, media displays, and corporate rituals. While adults hold authority in public, Flip builds his real life with his friends Pepper, Rizz, Pockets, and Cheese,...

Therein Lies the Pearl by Catherine Hughes is one of those historical novels that I devour with great pleasure. Set in Normandy and England in the eleventh century, in the years leading up to the Norman Conquest in 1066, it focuses not so much on...

“This was the pattern—hope, creation, corruption, destruction. Always the same ending.” Painful failure and seven frightful creatures torment an aged Creator in The Lord's Canvas by Stephen Wayne. The story unfolds in an endless void, where nothing exists save a canvas of creation waiting to...

J. Timothy Damiani’s The Dementia Diaries examines the complexities of love and loss through the eyes of a psychiatrist grappling with early-onset dementia. The story follows Dr. Will Newman as he moves from a prestigious academic career to a role at F.R.E.S.H., a state mental...

In The Walker by Robert E. Kearns, Mr. McCabe has retired at the age of 61. He had given his life to one company where he had worked all his life. He is a shy person who has never married, so he is all alone....

The Day the Devil Went on Trial by Ian Pear is a sharply imaginative novel that blends satire, theology, and modern life into a compelling story. From the opening scenes, where the Devil introduces himself at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, the book establishes a tone...

A family holiday goes horribly wrong for Olympia Blunt when aliens invade Earth, killing millions of the planet's inhabitants, including her parents, and take her and several other human survivors to work on their home world of Borgomom. Olympia initially refuses to bend the knee,...

Tales of the South China Sea by Fred G. Baker follows Alex, Diego, and their crew as they work as pirates and smugglers in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s. Alex, a calm and skilled leader, teams up with Diego, a loyal Spanish-Filipino captain, and...