In Steven Nimocks’s Severance, Elias Reynor is an investigator with the Neural Compliance Division in 2747 SoundCore, where implants regulate feeling and public order depends upon citizens remaining within approved limits. Nine years of exceptional service have made Elias a strong candidate for promotion, with...

K. M. Cookie’s Song of Hummingbird Highway starts when Terri, a music lover, gets rid of her boyfriend. She refuses to shed a tear and cannot imagine that one impulsive night at a Santa Monica reggae club will change her life. Enter Reynold, a beguilingly...

In Paul Martin Midden’s Simple People, Ahmed Winslow has built a quiet life as a Missouri truck driver, keeping his distance from family while secretly producing counterfeit currency in the basement of his rented house. When a plan to filter the money through banks in...

Salt & Honey by Candi Miller is a well-researched historical novel set in South Africa in the 1950s and 60s. I knew very little about this piece of history, and it is exactly as sad as I thought it would be. The story follows Koba,...

In Solace Enough by Brian A. Brooks, Austin and Helen move from Texas to New York and open a photographic studio. They begin a new life after years apart and tragic losses: his mother’s death due to ovarian cancer and her family’s deaths in a...

Carrie Kabak’s Shibby Magee unfolds in two timelines, following the identical twins Isabelle “Shibby” and Isadorah “Dorah” Magee, who are like chalk and cheese. The story starts in the 1970s when the kids are abandoned by their Traveler mother, Vera Coffey. They are raised by...

Schrödinger’s Faith by Bob Seay follows Jonah, a weary high school English teacher navigating a huge personal and professional crisis in Memphis. His life is turned upside down when his school gives him a harsh choice regarding what he's allowed to teach—just when local politics...

Life had been going well for young James Fields until his father died in 1984, when James was thirteen. Bills began to pile up, and since his mother’s meager salary could only cover so much, life became a tough struggle. They moved to Oakland in...

Shakespeare’s Vengeance by Ion Parreah opens in 1929 New York, where Thomas Barese, a former actor burdened by doubt and past choices, is drawn back into the theater by an unusual, secretive acting fraternity. The novel blends historical atmosphere with psychological tension, following Thomas as...

Sway with the Wind by Amanda LaPera is the story of eleven-year-old Anne Dougherty, who is sent off to live on a ranch in the desert with her grandfather, after her parents died in a terrible accident. The land is large, empty, and harsh, and...