Book of the Day Roundup: January 12-16, 2026
Nadezhda in the Dark
A Novel in Verse
Yelena Moskovich
Dzanc Books
Softcover $17.95 (204pp)
978-1-938603-51-8
A passionate couple from different sides of the Soviet divide avoids discussing their inevitable rifts in Yelena Moskovich’s sultry, wrenching novel-in-verse, Nadezhda in the Dark.
During a “black-milk,” mournful winter, as Russia invades Ukraine, the Ukrainian Jewish narrator and her Russian beloved, Nadya, trouble the night away, side by side. Both carry wounds from their Soviet childhoods; both have lost friends to homophobia, war, and sadness. Their love, while at times fractious, is a ferocious counter to ingrained hatred. Still, “it’s hard to dance / when there are guns / in the air.”
In some ways, Nadya and the narrator understand each other intimately, in a manner that transcends national and cultural divides; between them are “centuries of Slavic love / and death.” But they also have difficulty making their “childhood pain compatible.” Indeed, there are elements of herself that the narrator cannot share with Nadya, including the particulars of her intergenerational trauma, which she’s sure that those raised on Soviet antisemitism cannot fully understand.
Thus, to reckon with the parts of her that are lonely, even beside the one she loves, the narrator sifts through poems, music, and literary references, including a version of Cinderella that incorporates Baba Yaga lore, letting these snippets of her culture feed and center her. A nonbeliever, she clings to her Jewishness, too:
a grudge like mine could be
a way of believing …
my eyes still hold
fossil tears,
pebbles of the promise
and the hum of winds over a seamless oceanic void
Weaving together blistering revelations, historical indictments, and evidence of entrenched defiance, the novel’s blunt and lovely verses encapsulate the internal warring that occurs throughout its one determinative night. There’s a sense of inexorability to its movements, which are at the same time underlain by the certainty that love itself, even when it is fleeting, is a life-giving force in a world at perpetual war with its most vulnerable people.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (January 6, 2026)
The Last Quarter of the Moon
Chi Zijian
Bruce Humes, translator
Milkweed Editions
Softcover $20.00 (344pp)
978-1-57131-147-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
An elder shares her story in Chi Zijian’s reflective novel The Last Quarter of the Moon.
An unnamed Evenki woman laments the loss represented by her home’s emptiness. Her family voted to leave their mountains; modernization rendered their nomadic lifestyle all but obsolete. She resolves to live her last days in the same way she began, though, with the sky above her and the earth below her.
At the age of ninety and in a somber mood, the narrator decides to tell her family’s story. She recalls the winter night she was born and the sound of her family members celebrating a successful bear hunt. As she grows, so, too, does her understanding of the relationships around her and the regular ebb and flow of a life lived following the herd.
Observant, the narrator discusses marriages, births, and deaths with the same reverence devoted to tending to the reindeer herd that sustains their livelihood. She keeps her opinions to herself, even when recounting dark memories of abuse and child loss. She takes pains to show each member of her clan in their full humanity. The nature of her storytelling, however, means that she does offer her audience occasional asides.
The book’s four sections mirror the four seasons in the narrator’s life: her childhood and young adulthood, marriage and motherhood, her middle-aged years, and her twilight years. The enthralling prose invites close reading to absorb and parse out the intricacies of her family and its generations of inhabitants, with rich reflections on animal husbandry, Evenki customs, folklore, and history included.
The Last Quarter of the Moon is a poetic novel that memorializes a way of being centered on the bonds of family and harmony with the rhythms of nature.
DONTANá MCPHERSON-JOSEPH (December 18, 2025)
Tiny Worlds
Brittany Cicchese
Candlewick Press
Hardcover $18.99 (32pp)
978-1-5362-3652-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A tender tale about seeing the world differently and loving one another all the same, this picture book is a hug put to paper. A boy visits his grandmother in her small house that holds an even smaller world: the miniature Tiny Town the boy glued, taped, and painted together with cardboard and found objects. Grandma tries to draw him into the bigger world, but the boy seeks out a tiny world everywhere he goes—and Grandma learns to appreciate them, too.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (December 18, 2025)
A Vow in Vengeance
Immortal Desires Series
Jaclyn Rodriguez
Slowburn
Hardcover $30.00 (368pp)
978-1-63893-254-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Dark academia meets enemies-to-lovers themes in Jaclyn Rodriguez’s debut novel A Vow in Vengeance.
Fifteen years ago, as punishment for a failed uprising, a decree was made by the three immortal kings: the elves, seraphs, and druids would rotate in selecting one hundred mortals once a year; no one who is selected is ever seen again. Rune has lost her whole family to the Selection; this year, she is determined to be selected herself to get beyond the Wall and find them. It is the druids’ turn to perform the Selection, and they are the most feared immortals due to their powerful, mysterious magic.
After catching the eye of one of the druid princes, Rune is selected and delivered to her uncertain fate. Anticipating slavery or torture, she is surprised to find that the selected are expected to become immortal citizens of the druid realm—after a ruthless tenure at the Forge, an academy where they learn the druids’ tarot magic.
The book’s magic system is enchanting. The use of tarot cards as a means to channel magic is original, and care is taken to consider the traditional meanings of the cards when assigning their affiliated magic. The Devil enables illusions; The High Priestess empowers mind reading. When the rare World card calls to Rune, symbolizing her potential command over all the powers within the Major Arcana, it places a target on her back and forces her into proximity to Prince Draven, the only other person with the same abilities. A tentative alliance blooms. But there are secrets in the halls of the Forge that could bring down a kingdom, and Rune’s quest for vengeance may cost more than she is willing to sacrifice.
A powerful mortal and a druid prince become embattled allies in this tense fantasy novel.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (December 18, 2025)
The Gardener’s Wife’s Mistress
Cassondra Windwalker
Type Eighteen Books
Softcover $18.99 (216pp)
979-899894774-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Cassondra Windwalker’s contemplative novel begins with the sudden, challenging loss of a spouse.
When Hayden loses his wife, Shelly, to a sudden stroke, he struggles to manage his landscaping business and take care of himself. The stress of the loss is worsened by an investment that Shelly’s will grants him: partial ownership in a flower shop she kept secret from her husband.
After some digging, Hayden discovers that his late wife was having an affair with the shop’s other owner, Rachel. Feeling betrayed, but now invested in the safety of the homeless transgender teenagers Rachel and Shelly were housing in the back of the flower shop, Hayden decides what role his late wife’s mistress will play in his life.
The novel’s comprehensive depiction of grief creates closeness with Hayden, whose determination, aimlessness, and obsession move the story forward day by day. The chapters often describe his thoughts and rationalizations in exquisite detail, with lengthy explorations of his feelings of loss as he mourns Shelly. Hayden’s identity as a gardener informs all of this processing too. The novel implements an unending wellspring of botanical metaphors that deepen Hayden’s character, cataloging his changing relationship to life, death, and loss.
Despite the mire of grief, Hayden’s growing involvement with his small town’s transgender activism scene signposts his growth. He starts out well-meaning but ignorant, and the novel’s descriptions of trans characters’ appearances captures his initial awkwardness. Benefiting fom Rachel’s didactic advice on being an ally and the lively cast of trans youth who push him beyond his comfort zone, Hayden is forced to balance morality with proximity to the emotional wounds Rachel opens in him.
With its deliberate reflections on grief and loss, the novel The Gardener’s Wife’s Mistress evaluates endings, beginnings, and the connectedness of humans to nature.
VIOLET GLENN (December 18, 2025)
Kathy Young
