Breaking a mirror. Black cats passing in the road. Walking under a ladder. There are plenty of cultural indicators suggesting bad luck but perhaps none are more foreboding than being born on Friday the 13th. Which is exactly what... Read More

On learning that, though elderly and barren, she’d finally have the child promised to her all those years ago, the Biblical matriarch, Sarah, laughs, surreptitiously. Whether read as bitter or joyous, nervous or skeptical, it’s in... Read More

Stories of immigrants pursuing the so-called American dream and earning a fortune grace the annals of libraries, but rags-to-riches tales are actually rare, a reality driven home in James Rouman’s vivid depiction of Rejep Etaj, a... Read More

John and Delta Turner and their three children live in a shotgun house in a low-income neighborhood in New Orleans. By working two jobs and quietly enduring the bigotry he confronts every day, John manages to save enough money to move... Read More

Stephen Cline teaches writing and literature in Hawaii. He drew on his interest in sailing, expertise in music, and knowledge of Celtic history and literature to write Echoes Over Water. The novel depicts two groups of sailors traveling... Read More

“When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.” In Hillary Jordan’s dystopian novel When She Woke, Hannah Payne is a Red, a criminal. Chroming—the genetic altering of skin... Read More

Although a decade has passed since Sunetra Gupta’s last novel, this lucid and mesmerizing masterpiece shows she has used every minute of that time wisely. Told in memories and fragments, it chronicles the history of a group of friends... Read More

An ancestral home that is both haven and cage becomes the focal point for this searching exploration of adultery’s place in marital landscapes. Echoing Ethan Frome, Vinegar Hill, and even The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,... Read More