“California is a fable. A fantasy. A fiction,” Natalie Singer writes of her adopted home. “A metamorphosis.” So it was for the explorers and prospectors who first clambered over the Sierra to find it; so it remains for every wave... Read More

Another wacky adventure with Waldo Baron, better know as W.B., arrives with "The Wonderful Baron Doppelgänger Device", in which someone has used W.B.‘s parents’ latest invention to assume his identity. It’s an exciting time for... Read More

A striking and memorable new heroine emerges in the pages of Valiant’s "War Mother". Van Lente and his colleagues create a rich, futuristic, postapocalyptic world in which Ana, better known as War Mother, leads her people in a quest... Read More

Carrie Rubin’s "The Bone Curse" supplements the usual medical thriller storyline with elements of Vodou and the occult. The result is a polished, entertaining novel. Ben Oris is an endearing med student who leans heavily on science as... Read More

"The Beekeeper" is Dunya Mikhail’s haunting account of Abdullah, who devoted his life to rescuing mostly Yazidi women and children kidnapped and kept captive by the Daesh, aka the Islamic State. The book includes autobiographical... Read More

Jennifer Clair distills years of teaching cooking classes into a useful manual for becoming a more rounded home cook. Each technique receives one chapter, with numerous recipes and illustrative photographs as helpful aids. What makes... Read More

"The Moby-Dick Blues" is Michael Strelow’s outstanding fictional tale of a developmentally disabled boy, a scholar, and an original Herman Melville manuscript. The Kraft family of Massachusetts, consisting of Mother, daughter Salome,... Read More

The history of NASA hinged on a set of predetermined intervals; two seconds were everything. So shows Don Eyles in "Sunburst and Luminary", his account of helping design the guidance systems that led Apollo missions to their successes.... Read More