What do a clergyman's dangerous voyage aboard a ship with mysterious human cargo and an ambitious officer's internal battle to rationalize her superior's orders have in common? They are short stories in Carmelo Rafala’s unusual collection. Read along and be enthralled as a soldier finds...

The Color of Our Names by Mahitab Mahmoud follows the lives of four characters trying to navigate identity, faith, and secrecy between Egypt and the United States. Fareed, a 34-year-old man still living with his conservative family in Alexandria, finds fragile moments of freedom at...

Keith Landry’s The Garden Detectives is set at Riverview condominium, where the annual rush for garden plots coincides with the arrival of Cletus Hughes, whose confident manner quickly secures him a place among the residents. Bridge nights, committee meetings, and seasonal gatherings knit the community...

In The Iron Tithe by Robert W. Riley, we meet Knight Commander Cedrik Theramond, who serves as the King’s Shield and has the grueling charge of collecting mandatory grain levies. The crux is that these come from famine-struck villages to supply the King's army of...

Adrian Cox's The Fall follows Raymond Cutter, a former Los Angeles police detective in the 1920s. After being pushed out of the force because of his sexuality and buried in debt, his life falls apart. He ends up working as a private investigator, accepting rough...

Tristan Martin’s The Elements follows four young women in New York as they meet through Hip-Hop and its different forms: rapping, breakdancing, DJing, and graffiti. Natasha is a shy teenager who keeps her rhymes private and works up the nerve to perform on stage. Christina...

Traveler by Alien Vega is an inspirational, emotional rollercoaster of a read. Josef finds himself in deep contemplation about the meaning of life when a feeling nudges him to check out the attic. There, he discovers a book from his grandfather’s collection that tugs at...

“This was the pattern—hope, creation, corruption, destruction. Always the same ending.” Painful failure and seven frightful creatures torment an aged Creator in The Lord's Canvas by Stephen Wayne. The story unfolds in an endless void, where nothing exists save a canvas of creation waiting to...

“She knew she was good. And it appears the good are not rewarded. The good are damned.” This statement rings true in The Curses We Keep, a novella by Dakota J. Miller. The story begins in darkness as an old hag drags a rope...

The Devil in the White Mountains by Mark Smeltz tells a terrifying story set in the Himalayas. Lt. Col. Grant Morrison is serving in the British Raj when he's sent to the Himalayas. A remote village is under siege by a man-eating leopard, and Morrison...