Camara Lundestad Joof’s piercing memoir I Talk about It All the Time concerns the particularities of systemic racism in Scandinavia. Joof, who is a queer Black Norwegian Gambian woman, writes in Nynorsk—“the much less used of two... Read More

With elements of magical realism, Tathagata Bhattacharya’s rollicking satirical novel "General Firebrand and His Red Atlas" covers the machinations of political alliances and regimes. On the Indian subcontinent, the guerrillas of Sands... Read More

A local healer falls in love with a dashing nobleman in "A Kingdom to Claim", Sian Ann Bessey’s romantic epic set in medieval Wessex. Aisley, who helps out with her sick sister, is upended when she loses her father and finds out that... Read More

In Ann McMan’s romance novel "The Black Bird of Chernobyl", a misanthropic mortician meets her match in her new bubbly community outreach colleague. Lilah runs her family’s mortuary and prefers to stay in the morgue over interacting... Read More

Nick Rees Gardner’s scathing short story collection captures lives of not-so-quiet desperation in the Rust Belt. These linked stories vivify Westinghouse, Ohio, an imaginary depressed Midwestern town wherein some people’s only... Read More

In Suzanne Kamata’s novel "Cinnamon Beach", a man’s death brings together the grieving women in his family for a summer of self-reflection and discovery. To spread the final portion of Ted’s ashes, his family gathers along the... Read More

Atsuhiro Yoshida’s novel "Goodnight Tokyo" delves into the nighttime activities of a disparate group of Tokyoites. For her latest assignment as a prop procurer for film sets, Mitsuki must secure loquats off-season. Enlisting Matsui’s... Read More

Written in her middle age, the essays in Jennifer Brice’s memoir "Another North" cover her perspectives on place, selfhood, and life in general. Alaska, with its massive scale and minus-fifty-degree winter temperatures, molded and... Read More