Sympathy is created for these disparate and complex characters in a way that is worth savoring. Set in the late 1990s, Heather Bell Adams’s Marantha Road takes a seemingly standard setup of Southern poverty literature and burnishes it... Read More
No relationship is easy to maintain, but this story is a heartfelt exploration of the ways in which relationships are absolutely necessary. Danielle M. Wong’s "Swearing off Stars" details the life of Lia Cole, an American studying... Read More
Brutal honesty wins out over artifice in this story of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sometimes, despite the best preparations we make: levees break, defenses fall. Such vulnerabilities are an overarching theme of C. Morgan... Read More
The material may be dark, but Skinner’s deadpan delivery keeps it funny. In his short story collection, "A Thousand Distant Radios", Woody Skinner showcases a deft sense of humor, a distinctive voice, and clever, imaginative premises.... Read More
Throughout these stories, emotional storms gather in original, biting scenes. In China Girl: And Other Stories, Ho Lin examines the unease of living with memories: some brutal, others fleeting, each written with impressive foreboding.... Read More
In Hunter’s poetic post-apocalyptic novel, meditations on what has been lost are heartrending in their clarity. Poetic and succinct, Megan Hunter’s "The End We Start From" is an etiological exercise for a climate-changed world—a... Read More
Halasa’s prose is revelatory. Wholly authentic and profoundly insightful, Mother of all Pigs, by Malu Halasa, is a captivating look at the lives of a Middle Eastern family. A butcher by trade, Hussein Sabas specializes in offering... Read More
"Bulwark" is a spooky thriller—a melodrama with horrors and chills. Brit Lunden’s supernatural thriller "Bulwark" lifts the veil on eerie happenings in a small town. A year after the mysterious kidnapping of his daughter, Sheriff... Read More