Ty Hersey’s Sacred Technologies follows Willow Dinn, an engineering student in Midbell, where every invention is declared a gift from Roh, the god worshiped as humanity’s sole Creator. Creating outside Church-approved designs is treason. A year after Willow’s father was executed for founding an outlawed...

In Kenneth Bliss’ The Prodigy and the Telepath, we meet a young psionic named Eric D’Tra’val who’s overwhelmed by personal grief while also dealing with unpredictable, painful bursts caused by his psychic powers. His path intersects with Sarah, a newly awakened telepath who is similarly...

After an alien force attacks Earth’s massive orbital shipyard dubbed the Forge, a few Interplanetary Security Alliance (ISA) officers and other survivors escape aboard the test ship Cosmic Explorer. A senior crew member promotes Ryan Anders, a newly commissioned ISA officer, to captain and places...

Adéwálé Àjàdí’s Afrilition presents a Pan-African manifesto for the twenty-first century built around the author’s term for an African future consciously created by Africans themselves. Written directly to his grandchildren as representatives of posterity, the book treats Africanness as a global belonging that connects the...

William Ian Grubman’s Paris After the Storm is set in Paris in 1947, where Émile Rothstein serves as Director of Restorations at the Louvre as thousands of artworks stolen by the Nazis await return to their owners. When a Renoir Émile repairs disappears from the...

A murder charge forces two childhood friends to confront a past neither has completely left behind. In The Sorrows of Gathering by D. A. Dorwart, successful San Francisco attorney Rebecca Martin receives an unexpected call from Nolan Gathering, the boy who was once her closest...

Some time ago, Joanna Potepa promised herself she would travel abroad before turning forty. But when the time came, she didn’t have the money or anything planned to make that trip. So she went with her husband and daughter to a border crossing, where she...

From Your Hands to My Heart by Jill Pietroburgo tells the story of the parents' nurturing touch and its lasting power as a child grows up. Written from a son’s perspective, he recollects his life from infancy through old age. Each page captures different wonderful...

Teresa Anne Power’s Each One Blooms is a lovely, slow-paced story about the beauty of differences. A tender-hearted gardener walks through the park with a basket full of bulbs. When a group of children stops him, they ask what’s inside. What follows is a poignant...

Jennifer J. Lehr’s Love’s Cauldron: Reclaim Your Wild Feminine, Book 2 – Savior follows a lifelong search for spiritual wholeness through the author’s experiences of family trauma and recovery. Raised in a household where her father’s anger shaped daily life, she enters adulthood searching for...

In Rosemary’s Way, Spring Courtright recounts the years in which changes in her mother Rosemary’s memory begin reshaping their close relationship. Repeated questions about an upcoming honeymoon first raise concern, leading to medical appointments as Rosemary thought about the future as she watched her own...

Yance Wyatt’s The Watersmith centers on Jack Calloway, a handyman trying to stay sober while navigating one family heartbreak after another in the Tennessee Valley. He finds an old moonshine still his grandfather hid behind a lone cabin, and he and his rebellious teen son,...

Some picture books tell big stories. Others begin with a very small question. How Many Days? by Codie Carlson, beautifully illustrated by Morgan Huff, falls into the second category, and I found its simplicity especially touching. A little girl asks how many days her father...

Anthony Flood’s Christian Individualism follows the life of Otis Q. Sellers, an Ohio-born Bible teacher whose ministry moved from Baptist Fundamentalism into Christianity outside denominations. After receiving Christ in 1919, Sellers entered Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, a path that leads to the pastorate at...

Soccer to the Max by Bibi Belford centers on Sandburg Zaproski, an eleven-year-old fifth-grader who is crushed when his dream summer trip to his grandparents’ Texas ranch is canceled. His sister Millay needs medical checkups, so his parents send him to the Grand Premier Youth...

Songs of Yeak and Kinnari Book 1 by Som Phin is the first installment in the Khmer Legend of Love and Destiny series. At the dawn of the world, a Kinnari and a Yeak warrior joined forces to stabilize chaos and bring order. Thus, the...

Written and illustrated by Allie Compeau, Where Do Pirates Poop? is an energetic, deeply silly discovery of pirates’ bathroom logistics. The narrative opens with a boy’s unfiltered curiosity about the practical, unglamorous bathroom situation of the pirates: “Where do pirates poop?” From there, he starts...

The Robokid is a science fiction novella by Thomas Chiang. At just fourteen, Eric Miller is already a gifted programmer. After his father gifts him the latest version of the popular family robot, RoboKid, Eric can't wait to personalize its attributes, and he names it...

Sometimes the people closest to us are the ones we understand the least. In A Thousand Touches by David Shams, Cyrus Soltani is preparing for his senior year of high school in Bardstown, Kentucky. Soccer has been the center of his life, and several colleges...

The Burnout Imperative opens with Patrice Bonfiglio breaking down in tears during a flamenco show in Madrid. That turning point, along with a later health scare, forces her to face years of ignored exhaustion and stress hidden beneath her image as a driven, successful hedge-fund...