Jacques Schiffrin was an influential publisher in Paris at the outbreak of World War II, but soon he had to flee the life he’d built and begin again in the United States. The story of his impressive rise, and of his unexpected second... Read More

Abbigail N. Rosewood’s compelling "If I Had Two Lives" begins in 1990s Vietnam as a young girl is brought to a military camp. The girl’s mother—an ambitious reformer who is thwarted by the corrupt Vietnamese power structure—has... Read More

Michael Croley’s short story collection "Any Other Place" finds people in the circumstances they’d do anything to avoid and traces the ties of love, loyalty, and sacrifice that bind them. Croley masters this contradictory tension,... Read More

"Mislabeled as Disabled" is a bracing call to arms that challenges the state of American education. Struggling learners are routinely failed by academic institutions, stuck in an unending cycle of underachievement, as Kalman R.... Read More

At first, Sarah Carlson’s "All the Walls of Belfast" comes across as a solid variation of a meet-cute young adult romance, but Carlson’s story has even more going for it. The book and its two main characters grapple with the history... Read More

It’s impossible to see inside someone else’s mind to achieve true empathy, but Barbara Moran and Karl Williams’s "Hello, Stranger" comes close. Born in the early 1950s, Barbara Moran felt out of place and lonely for the first few... Read More

With style, accessible writing, and a narrative of personal growth and discovery, Leigh Calvez’s "The Breath of a Whale" is both more positive and more personal than other books of its type. It is a softer take on the environmental... Read More

Bryan Walsh is a marine corps deserter, former IRA bagman, and all around hard case. Back stateside after a stint in Ireland, he’s currently employed by a local gangster and barely scraping by, spending his days rubbing out low-lifes... Read More