Is Merilyn Simonds’s "Refuge" a fictional memoir, a historical novel, or an exploration of the causes and results of seeking refuge? It’s all three, as it turns out, and a... Read More

“The note said: Wally, I will not live in a tarpaper shack the rest of my life. Love, Bette.” That’s what ten-year-old Lulu Parsons discovered on the kitchen table the day... Read More

Julie Bird is distracted from a blonde stranger gesticulating from the shore when a whale appears, headed for the beach. Soon, it becomes clear that the big blue wants to beach... Read More

Hitchins’s mix of raw emotion and salty hilarity works beautifully. It takes a special kind of person to write a play-by-play description of masturbation that is... Read More

The teenage years are fraught with perils—usually the small, humiliating kind. Fifteen-year-old Jacob wears his adolescence like a hair shirt, in the hilarious YA romance For... Read More

The point of view of a bipolar child offers an accurate portrayal of a child’s thought patterns, both rational and delusional. Based on a true story, Heather Clark’s second... Read More

Rarely is the impetuousness of youth undertaken with thoughts of legacy. In "Obit" by Anne Emery, one man’s political devotion becomes his children’s ultimate terror. The... Read More