In Scott Alexander Hess’s pastoral novel "Drought", an isolated man inherits a farm and learns about the estranged relative who left it to him. When Parnell, an aimless orphan, inherits a tobacco farm from his Uncle Willy, he moves to... Read More

Set during the Great Depression, Terry Lee Caruthers’s historical novel "Red and Me" is a bittersweet story about a spunky girl and her bighearted hound. From the moment ten-year-old Marlene sees a skittish abandoned stray whose red... Read More

Attending to gaps in the Arthurian legends with care, Sam Davey’s captivating fantasy novel "The Chosen Queen" delves into the dangerous web of politics, religion, and magic that led to the birth of King Arthur. Through the... Read More

A family’s fraught road back to each other is the focus of Shirley Russak Wachtel’s bittersweet historical novel "The Baker of Lost Memories". Josef and Anya run a small bakery in Lodz, Poland, with the help of their bubbly young... Read More

In Shokoofeh Azar’s intricate fabulistic novel "The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen", an Iranian girl comes of age in a time of war. When a gowkaran tree—likened to the Tree of Life, though no one seems certain about its... Read More

Helen Wolff’s exquisite autobiographical novella "Background for Love" captures a brief yet idyllic Côte d’Azur respite from the impending fascism of 1930s Germany. A nameless German woman travels with her forty-year-old lover from... Read More

Dizzying visions haunt the otherwise delicate beauty of Frederic S. Durbin’s supernatural novel "The Country Under Heaven". Since surviving the Battle of Antietam, Ovid experiences the intrusion of premonitory shimmers. As he migrates... Read More

An art conservator, a scholar, and a portraitist embrace the mysteries of love and ancestry in Katherine Scott Crawford’s enchanting fantasy novel The Miniaturist’s Assistant. In 2004, Gamble works in a Charleston museum. Fascinated... Read More