Festival: At Trails End by John Strother starts with Conrad Becker, the new editor of the Trails End Tribune, aiming to revive the newspaper. Given the previous editor and a divided community due to the Cumberland Research Center's arrival, it could prove challenging. The band...

Get yourself a healthy dose of the surreal and absurd with Amir Shaheen's F*** My Brain! This short story collection opens with a story about an immigrant physicist in Norway who invents a time machine to stop a far-right politician from spewing hateful ideology, only...

Witty Tales is a collection of funny stories by Barbara Cohea. Most of the stories are about animals and awkward situations. Some of the tales are connected, such as You Young People Are So Cute and Bar Hoping, about getting older. The stories have nonsensical...

Where the Hell is Myra Atkins? by Lu Erickson is a hilarious mystery. Myra Atkins, owner of a private detective agency, has disappeared. Esther Humperstone, her secretary, and Henry, the latest employee, are on the trail, and both are learning how to be private detectives....

Fins is an action-packed sharksploitation novel by Gene Helfman. A series of seemingly random shark attacks in a marine reserve along the California coast causes panic and chaos among the general public, leaving people puzzled by their behavior. To an outsider, it looked like revenge...

In Murphy’s Luck 4: Jinx vs. Fate by Benjamin Laskin, Murphy Drummer and an invite to a secret group makes him a target for powerful people. His young daughter Phaedra, a talented little baseball player, is persuaded to join a minor league team, while twin...

In Invention Is a Mother, Rob Brownell tells a hysterically funny story about a lazy young adult with serious responsibilities in the tech world. Shaughnessy is a fresh engineering graduate who is not too eager to take on adult responsibilities. While patiently waiting for “great...

When Salvator Slocum gets a message from his boss requesting to see him immediately, he expects to get chewed out for once again managing to show up late at the office. What he is not expecting from Burt Leathers is to be made the new...

Zero Sum Conclusion by Thomas Lopinski is a dystopian tale set after the Second Civil War reformed the American government. A scoring system based on demeanor and the Solid Start Initiative eliminated poverty and debt. After the death of Edgar’s wife, a doctor put out...

Textbook Follies by Cory J. Schulman begins with an introduction to Roy C. Luschman at his college graduation. Roy projects a very different and characteristic assessment of his worth when surrounded by celebrating classmates. When entering the world of real estate, the focus is on...