In Opal by Jo Ann Kiser, Opal Beauleigh grows up beside Sarvis Creek in Kentucky with one ambition: becoming an artist. At fifteen, marriage to Wendell Ferguson takes her away from the home she knows, while his search for work carries their family farther from...

Valley High, Mountain Low by Ann Crawford tells the story of Mariella, who, after being married to her handsome, non-monogamous husband for more than a dozen years, decides she has had enough. During COVID-19 in 2020, she sneaks out of their lavish house in the...

Inside Henry Cato by Katharine English opens in present-day Manhattan, where a silver-haired man in a bespoke suit, Henry Cato, listens to the city’s footsteps from his studio, believing that his success story began in darkness. The story flashes back to 1960s rural Kansas, where...

In Tessa Kinsela’s An Unconscious Choice of Chaos, fourteen-year-old Ashley Kelly starts Year Nine certain that every small decision can set off a much bigger result. She trusts the routines of her Queensland home and expects Landon State High School to feel just as familiar....

Hillbilly Monk’s Brisket Wisdom by Billy Monk brings us a really wild premise that perfectly blends rural American life with some heavy psychological exploration. The book follows Billy, an eccentric Oklahoma man who spends his days smoking meat, running an illegal still, and rambling about...

C.L. Rosario's Angel Letters of Esther follows Esther Consuelos, a Cuban-Italian Formula One publicist, and a lonely New York writer, Jan Luis Larose, who meet at the 2025 Miami Grand Prix. They discover their parents nearly fell in love in Ostia decades earlier. Believing their...

Do Not Go Gentle by Allen Shay follows the adventures of two men in the twilight of their lives. John Eastman has had a successful career as an attorney. But now that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, John wants to live the rest...

In Sean Esson’s The Flour Girl, Frankie Jones wakes up in an alley with searing pain, a corpse for company, and no memories. An unblinking, smirking stranger called Salvius delivers the verdict: Frankie is dead, and purgatory is not a place for mindless waiting. Salvius...

Anna Lamnari’s The Last Labor is set in the legendary Mycenaean age, when Herakles returns to Mycenae believing ten years of punishment have bought back his life. King Eurystheus has other plans. After rejecting two completed labors, he orders his cousin to steal Hera’s golden...

Michael’s father has recently passed away, and his brother Roy delivers one final request from their dad: an old shoebox full of family memories. Nothing in the shoebox appeals to Michael except an old dictaphone and some tapes. There’s nothing remarkable on the tapes, but...