Identical twins Norma and Ofelia Castillo have spent their lives moving through the world as a pair, until adulthood pulls them in different directions. When Ofelia begins changing her body, Norma chooses a college in Long Beach, creating a distance that extends beyond geography. There,...

Alex Morton’s sweeping historical fiction novel, We Are Not Yours, pulls us headfirst into the dark times of a 1970s right-wing military dictatorship on the remote island of Mythos. At the heart of the story is Perdiki, a famous rebel composer who escapes state captivity...

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...

Entangled Frequencies by Long Temple follows Maya, Zaria, Imani, and Nia, four successful Black women whose lives intersect through a close group chat named Frequency. While managing high-powered careers in the city, their controlled lives are upended when they join Sync’d, a behavioral dating app...

“Sometimes being unschooled is an advantage in art: you have more freedom to unlock your emotions . . . to not know when you’ve crossed a boundary that probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Boundaries fade in Vaulted Night (A Novella of...

In Ellen Barker’s Lulu in the Loop, twenty-two-year-old Louise “Lulu” Johnson spends the summer in University City, Missouri, living in the apartment of her older sister Novelle, who has left St. Louis for a year-long academic fellowship. Lulu is about to enter her final year...

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 Samantha Kolber’s What She Stole, adult Eloise Goldstein discovers during bodywork that childhood experiences may still be stored in her body. That takes her back to seventeen, when she is caught stealing a gold sequined purse from Macy’s during prom shopping with best friend...

In Frederick Groya’s Good Intentions, Tom Rudnik is a corporate lawyer determined to build the family life expected of him after refusing his attorney father’s plans for his career. He meets Amelia Stanford, a graphic designer from rural Iowa who has built the future she...

Ursula Bloom is the editor of a gutter rag with flagging sales. Desperate to have a win, she decides to print a fake news story about celebrity children’s author Emmie Hobson. The story starts small: a doctored image of an overweight child who died 30...