The real life of an airline pilot is often far removed from the public image of a glamorous superhero. Vesa Turpeinen suggests that most of the time they are just human, but sketches an unconventional and highly amusing scenario in FunkyPilot Journals. The author describes...

When a spacecraft lands at the Washington Fairgrounds, Rosaline Browning discovers gray aliens standing inside her bakery, humming at her display case and the muffins they've been eating in Baker's Dozen by Nathan Lee Trautenberg. News of the landing spreads quickly, drawing Eugene Schumaker, whose...

Colm O'Connor's Ballyloo's Finest: A Tale of Chaos and Charm is a delightful, eccentric journey into the fictional Irish village of Ballyloo, where chaos reigns. The story centers on Guard Ollie Berry, a well-meaning but often hapless officer tasked with maintaining order in a town...

In Sicko, Avril Grady tells the story of Jamie Katz, a queer man working as a scriptwriter for an adult film studio. Jamie’s life is complicated—he’s still intertwined with Paul, his twice-ex-husband who is also his boss and secret lover, and their repeated breakups and...

Jane Dougherty did not expect housesitting for her cousin, Elizabeth, to go awry in Two Hours To Bedlam, a Route 66 Mystery by J.G. Macdonald. Yet, she finds herself in a mystery far deeper than expected. When a body is discovered in a sulfur pond,...

Loner-Style Justice, a novella by Mike Marsbergen in the style of screwball comedy, hits all the right spots in delivering a great story. Joseph Tugger is an unusually big but gentle guy whose mission in life is to solve problems, especially the ones where he...

In The Second World by Jake Korell, Flip Buchanan grows up inside a Martian colony where power is exercised through ceremony, media displays, and corporate rituals. While adults hold authority in public, Flip builds his real life with his friends Pepper, Rizz, Pockets, and Cheese,...

A Brief History of Wasting Time by Gary C McAuley follows Cyrus, a man who decides that doing as little as possible will govern his days after finishing a long-postponed physics book. He stays indoors, organizes his hours around television, minor contests, and talk, then...

Ideas People by Ward Lehmann is a campus novel set in the busy, often quirky ecosystem of an academic research library. The story follows Sidney Feldspar, an electronic resources librarian at Hill City University, as he navigates the daily pressures of budgets, journal subscriptions, and...

Bastard Soldier: Earnest Medic by Michael Plotkowski follows Joe, a regular young man who joins the U.S. Army after a minor run-in with the law leaves him with few good options. What begins as an attempt to dodge trouble turns into long years of training,...