The daily realities of war-torn Sudan are recorded in the detail-heavy novel "Nyasala". Hugo Jackson’s novel "Nyasala" focuses on the struggles and persistence of a few exemplary individuals within Sudan’s complicated war zones. As... Read More

The poems of Cassandra J. Bruner’s "The Wishbone Dress" are a torrent on the page, attesting to the traps and triumphs of womanhood, to the liberation of self-naming, and the peace and harmony that come from acknowledging that no two... Read More

In busy Beijing, everyone is connected. So a writer discovers when he’s tasked with telling the billionaire Qin’s enmeshed story in Jonathan Tel’s deliciously tangled Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao. In the book’s opening... Read More

Death has never been quite so uplifting as it is in "Welcome to the Pine Away Motel and Cabins", Katarina Bivald’s feel-good novel about a friendly ghost who’s determined to repair relationships from the not-far beyond. Henny always... Read More

The winkingly endearing stories of Nancy McKinley’s "St. Christopher on Pluto" function like a scrapbook, capturing life in a small Pennsylvania town through connected anecdotes that span decades. Before their neighborhood Halloween... Read More

Marty Chan’s fascinating "Metamorphosis" takes place in a steampunk, alternate reality version of early twentieth-century New York City, wherein interdimensional travelers and Earth’s natives clash. Ehrich Weisz, a former demon... Read More

In Tina May Hall’s intoxicating "The Snow Collectors", a mournful mystery unfolds in an icy town, at the juncture where the past meets modernity. Not long ago, Henna lost her parents and twin sister to the storm-swept sea. In her... Read More

Amid the phantasmagorical developments of Marian Womack’s "The Golden Key", which include spiritualism, changelings, and cracked doors between worlds, a parable against privilege arises. At the turn of the twentieth century, three... Read More