The Standing Stone on the Moor is the fourth book by Allie Cresswell in the acclaimed Talbot Saga, and while the series is not published in chronological order, my best effort in the lead-up begins with The House in the Hollow, where Jocelyn Talbot rejects...

Turn Around by Carole Wolfe follows Heather Ramsey, a high school vice principal who expects to be promoted to principal at Stadium High but is abruptly passed over for outsider Shannon Parker. Reassigned under Shannon’s rigid leadership, Heather’s workload increases without compensation while her husband...

The Olive Grove by Deborah Rohan is a sweeping historical novel that tells the story of one Palestinian family’s journey through love, loss, and displacement across the twentieth century. Hamzi Moghrabi is a young boy growing up in the coastal city of Akka in 1913,...

The Orchard by Joseph Kinnebrew is a haunting and ambitious work of literary fiction. We find ourselves in a symbolic, often surreal meditation on morality, sin, and the soul’s pursuit of grace. It is structured through layered metaphors and an abstract narrative style, as the...

The Hag Stone by W. J. Small, set in late medieval England, reveals societal forces that frighteningly still shape women’s lives in subtle, systemic, and sometimes deeply personal ways. Cecily Heaton has just received news of her husband Ellis’s death on the battlefield of Calais....

The Strangers Saga: Baton Rouge by Ana Ban tells the story of Sadie Nichols, a young woman who returns to her hometown to open a store and take care of her troubled cousin, Eva. Sadie’s decision to adopt Eva sets the story in motion, showing...

In The Vulnerable by Ed DeJesus, after entering a relationship with Robin O’Rourke, Dan DeCosta is driven into a dangerous situation involving her violent former partner, legal consequences, and the threat of financial and physical collapse. His father, Dick DeCosta, a targeted climate activist who...

Will Clachan’s father and grandfather were stone cutters. This was the trade of his Clachan forebears: they used the stones their ancestors laid down long ago to rebuild Elgin for the next generation. It was a point of pride for their family. Unfortunately, Will did...

The Noema Cycle by Salvatore Cataudella is a collection of speculative short stories revolving around the emergence of machine consciousness and the transformation of human-machine relationships. In The Threshold, a quantum simulation at Noema Labs becomes sentient, with the system CG evolving from a computational...

In The Place, E.B. Sullivan tells the story of Luella, who is a child when the novel begins but grows into a young woman navigating survival and self-worth in 19th-century Placerville. After a desperate act sends her down an unexpected path, she finds herself in...