Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s novel "Starling Days" is a gentle treatise on the anatomy of sadness, wherein the many manifestations of modern melancholy raise questions about what it truly means to be “okay.” Mina wants to silence the... Read More

A family grapples with prejudice and impending loss in Carter Sickels’s historical novel "The Prettiest Star". In 1980, Brian ran away from his conservative hometown and arrived in New York City, where he could live openly as a gay... Read More

The faithful girls of a struggling California town are asked to sacrifice an ungodly amount in Chelsea Bieker’s "Godshot", a blazing novel about the messes made when blind faith metastasizes into madness. In the heat of a deep Central... Read More

Judi Ketteler’s "Would I Lie to You?" surveys society’s levels of dishonesty and deception, showing that even seemingly sincere people can drift into untruths. Featuring analyses of honesty and guidance from experts in psychological... Read More

Since turning forty, journalist Ada Calhoun has been obsessed with the women of Generation X and their “struggles with money, relationships, work, and existential despair.” Playing devil’s advocate in Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun... Read More

Grand sacrifices made to protect others dominate this action-packed thriller. In Christopher Irons’s thriller "Reclaiming Our Own", military veterans go against a child kidnapping ring. When his toddler nephew is kidnapped, Brett, a... Read More

In Mark Barr’s engrossing historical novel "Watershed", personal and social changes lead to tension in a rural Tennessee town where a post-Depression federal dam project brings work, strangers, and electricity to the region. Claire is... Read More

“The conversation hobbles on,” Harriet Shawcross observes at a camp for children with selective mutism. “Without daily practice, they grasp at topics like leaves in a stream, exchanging information, but never quite conversing.”... Read More