In When They Came Home by Terri Lewis, we follow Milton, a standard American farm boy whose life is split in two after he gets shipped off to the battlefields of Europe in 1918. He survives the fighting, but the terrifying sights and sounds follow...

In Mitchell Hadley’s The Book of Revelations, at age eight, Nan Jaffe loses her parents after one frightening night in Indianapolis. She is taken to Illinois by her grandparents, who rename her Robin and sever her past. Years later, she lives in San Francisco as...

In Michael O’Neill’s Lilli’s Question, an idealistic seminarian encounters a young girl, Lilli Geisler, on a bus while backpacking through Europe. Their brief connection ends in Madrid, where Lilli asks the question that would haunt him throughout his life: “Why be a priest?” Jim McGann’s...

Green by Chuck LeGrande follows a quiet teen named Jamie, who flees his home in Queens after a confrontation with his father, carrying nothing but a hidden draft board letter and a book of drawings. His aimless wandering brings him to the rough edges of...

Nothing Left to Lose by Len Joy is a moving, multi-generational tale of love, loss, reconnection, and family. When Clover Lane was just a young teenager, she ran away and headed to the bright lights of San Francisco, to Haight-Ashbury, where the anti-war, summer-of-love, hippie...

Anne Shaw Heinrich's House of Teeth is set in the small town of Poulson, where the ending of one marriage begins pulling several families into the same orbit. Judy Saunders spends years trapped in a bitter relationship with truck driver John, while he quietly builds...

The Inheritance by Paul Peters is a moving look at how a person can rebuild their life after hitting absolute rock bottom. The story follows Jacob Steele, a young man who comes home from military service as a very broken person. But instead of finding...

In Baseball, Birthday, and Ten-Cent Beer by Gregg Sapp, Solomon Zuch loves baseball, and his favorite team is the Cleveland Indians. The Indians' management runs a lottery for home games to pick birthday boys to serve as honorary ballboys. Plans were made for the entire...

Intrinsic by W.H.B. is a literary saga that follows the fall and redemption of Christopher Franklin. We meet Chris in the middle of his shift as a New York City taxi driver, steering his 2004 Ford Crown Victoria through Lower Manhattan, but he is a...

In Tom Strelich’s Mustard Seed, after President John F. Kennedy is assassinated, selected American families are secretly transported into Mustard Seed, a vast underground city beneath the hills outside Bakersfield that is built to preserve civilization during an expected nuclear war. Gill Hill grows up...