Catherine Marshall-Smith’s The Resilience of Red Thread follows twenty-one-year-old Emily Miller, who finally musters up the courage to leave her abusive husband, Lee. Lee keeps violating his restraining order, and when a hornet’s nest threatens Emily’s home, she hires an exterminator named Jake Clayton, a...

The House That Fire Built by Kirk Glaser is a collection of narrative poems that tells a story about family trauma. It follows a man who inherits his father’s house and moves in with his wife and daughter. His father died of cancer and left...

The Baggers by James Hale is a story about the gangs in Saint Albans, Kanawha County. The streets of Saint Albans are ruled by the Baggers, most of whose members are young adults who commit theft and other petty crimes. An older generation of scavengers...

The Art of Being Let Go by Amulya Veldanda Vadali aims to comfort anyone who has ever lost their job. After an hour's drive to the office, a tired, hardworking woman is told she is being let go. She is given a generic layoff speech...

Tales from the Texas Timberlands, Volume 2 by J. Andrew Rice features five interconnected stories set in East Texas. It shows ordinary folks whose character, persistence, and everyday values end up shaping the next generation. The first tale, “Sawmill,” follows the dauntless Berry brothers who...

Deborah J. Brasket’s This Sea Within follows Lena, a young journalist who goes to San Balanque to connect with her heritage and to follow a story. What begins as a chance to learn more about the country soon brings her inside the world of the...

Chris Wind’s This Is What Happens is a rare gem. A fifty-five-year-old woman feels stuck, wasted, and wounded. All she wants is to return to a cabin on a lakeside one final September to go through journals written for thirty-five years and unravel the mystery...

“You can only sell your integrity once, so you better get a good price for it,” are the opening lines of Diana Colleen’s provocative, revolutionary, and speculative thriller, They Could Be Saviors. The most consequential news of the century is brought to the world by...

The Scent of Home by Marco Magiolo is a quietly moving novel told by the most unlikely narrator: a street dog named Dexter who once had everything and lost it all. The story opens in a busy city, where Dexter survives by his wits —...

When Georgia Thayer, a medical social worker in Columbia, South Carolina, urges her sixteen-year-old foster daughter, Tessa, to attend a nighttime party hosted by her classmate, she has no idea how much trouble awaits the kids. Working the night shift, Georgia is shocked when Sara...