Part awakening, part trial by fire, "The Alchemy of Noise" is a timely social novel that unfolds with tenderness and cruelty. A story on fresh beginnings marred by police brutality, "The Alchemy of Noise" tests the limits of love.... Read More

In this coming-of-age crime novel, suspense and tension run high, and chapters often end on cliffhangers. In B.K. Mayo’s "The Water Tower Club", true-to-life characters face the dark side of their small town with fear and conviction.... Read More

The Land that Shivers is an absorbing novel about lives derailed by government corruption. In The Land that Shivers, Ebele Ufondu’s riveting novel of contemporary Africa, the dangers and disasters of living in a failed state are etched... Read More

Centering on an excruciatingly passionate love story, Louise Beech’s "The Lion Tamer Who Lost" is a rich literary text that includes family tragedies, unexpected discoveries, and second chances, all considered against the vibrant... Read More

Holly Ringland’s piquant debut, "The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart", is alternately airy and precise. It occupies a space somewhere between a fairy tale and a modern tragedy. Alice is born by the seaside. She drinks salt air and spends... Read More

Audrey J. Whitson’s haunting "The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning" is set in western Canada’s Majestic, Alberta—a town plagued by drought and a bleak economy, hardly able to live up to its imposing name. Elderly... Read More

In her novel "The Gifts We Keep", Katie Grindeland layers revelations over misunderstandings to spin a complex and ultimately unsustainable web of secrets between a family, their neighbor, and the ten-year-old girl who comes to stay with... Read More

Linda LeGarde Grover’s poignant "In the Night of Memory" explores loss and belonging among an Ojibwe family in northern Minnesota. It’s 1977, and two sisters—three-year-old Azure and four-year-old Rain—are taken from their... Read More