Is Merilyn Simonds’s "Refuge" a fictional memoir, a historical novel, or an exploration of the causes and results of seeking refuge? It’s all three, as it turns out, and a mystery besides. Questions hover over ninety-six-year-old... Read More

"Vic City Express" tackles the migrant crisis in Greece with an unusual perspective. A traveler to Athens endures a racially charged diatribe from a fellow train passenger who decries the influx of foreigners in Vic City, the working... Read More

Micah Perks’s "True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape" contains plot twists inside of plot twists. Interconnected short stories reveal how characters’ inner battles to find love and to be loved create a world of conflict,... Read More

Beautifully reconstructing three days in Paris, Ersi Sotiropoulos traverses the complex hallways of the poet Constantine Cavafy’s mind in What’s Left of the Night. A poignant meditation on the origins of an individual’s art, the... Read More

Insider observations become the way to resurrect a doomed community in "Report from a Place of Burning". The accounts of a widow, adulterer, mother, detective, prophet, and widower merge into a comprehensive report of the town, where... Read More

Tova Reich’s "Mother India" relies on Meena to tell her family’s story through its women’s stories, from her mother’s to her daughter’s to her own. Born into a famed rabbinical family in Brooklyn, she’s now a lesbian... Read More

In his atmospheric, evocative "The Perfection of Things", Peter Nash uses a small canvas to frame far larger themes. Neurasthenic American professor Adam Rebeira has come to Petrópolis, Brazil, in hopes of finishing a... Read More

Dana Green’s "How to Carry Scars" is a poetic, intense meditation on what it means to be a daughter in a dangerous, hurtful world. This is the story of Olivia, a girl caught between circumstances. An obsession with photographs consumed... Read More