Daniel DiFranco’s intimate novel "Panic Years" follows a twelve-week tour of everywhere-but-nowhere, through tiny clubs, on filthy stages, and across long stretches of highway. Life as a gigging musician is rough. Twenty-eight-year-old... Read More

Walter Mosley’s unconventional novel "John Woman" follows a renegade history professor with a dark secret. Cornelius Jones is the biracial son of a brilliant black man from Mississippi and an Italian-American woman. When his father... Read More

The experiences and disquieting realizations of black women come through "Training School for Negro Girls", in which Washington, DC, and its surroundings are treated with tension and tenderness. Spanning girlhood to adulthood, these... Read More

The stories that make up Octavio Solis’s "Retablos" are as taut, riveting, and immersive as the sunrise in a red rock desert. Be forewarned—they’re addictive. Retablos are brightly painted scenes on flattened pieces of metal... Read More

"Buddhism for Western Children" is a dreamlike literary novel that journeys into the psyche of cult living from the perspective of a child. Daniel’s parents, Ray and Cleary, bring him to Avadhoot Master King Ivanovich’s farm in Maine... Read More

"Madame Victoria" is an imaginative, haunting, and insightful examination of the lives of women. Shortly after the millennium, a skeleton is discovered on the grounds of Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. It is identified as having... Read More

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