As a 12th grader, she’s unable to avoid inquiries about her post-graduation plans. But Emiko, who lives in a small coastal town in British Columbia, is doing her best to deflect any talk about her future. Rather, she focuses on her shifts at Aunt Mitsuko’s café, festive celebrations like Obon and New Year’s Day, treating […]
Before tech took over San Francisco, before cellphones but after the terrible reign of AIDS, there were the gleeful revels of the ’90s. Tradowsky’s ornate novel is a love letter to a foggy, analog metropolis lit up with nightlife and art, queer friendship and desire, movie houses and day jobs, and 20-somethings aching to define […]
Darby Andrews is on the brink of marrying Jackson when something in her heart makes her write a letter to the one that got away. Resigning herself to her fate, she puts the letter aside, only for her sister Dahlia to send it—setting the stage for her long-lost love Leo Graham to reappear and help […]
Roughly a year after the nuclear meltdown that precipitated the events of Godspeed, Cedar Key (2024),the remaining few hundred residents of the titular locale—about a quarter of its former population—are slowly rebuilding their economy and infrastructure. Despite damage from nuclear fallout and extreme weather, the locals have managed to start breeding chickens again and have even […]
The Parkiets—mother Rikla, father Joseph, and two sons, Sevek and Henek—emigrated from Warsaw to Paris in 1931. Binem, aka Bernard, the narrator, was born in 1933 after the move. They’re poor but hardworking and close-knit. Joseph was a furnisher finisher by trade. They found a place in an ancient apartment building that surrounded a large […]
The day has arrived to select little Jojo’s kente, a Ghanaian cloth known for its striking patterns. Kente has a rich cultural history; as Daddy says, it all began many years ago, when, according to lore, two hunters saw the spider Ananse spinning a beautiful web and asked him to teach them. Mummy, Daddy, baby […]
It’s the start of summer, and Jill’s family has decided to celebrate by going on their annual boating trip to Lake Koda. The day starts with laughter as the kids soak in the sun, water ski, and build sandcastles. All seems perfect, and after lunch at their favorite cove, the group splits up for a […]
It’s been approximately a decade since vampires crawled from the grave and destroyed most of human civilization in a brutal, blood-soaked uprising. Orphaned twins Ripley and Ruby Clemmons were rescued from the Open—the wasteland between human enclaves where monsters roam free—by a man named Barnett who took them to Vaille (North Carolina’s biggest human compound) […]
A family urn is stolen and three armed gangsters set off to retrieve it. They trace the urn back to two thieves who live in a three-story, six-unit apartment building in a small town, but complications quickly arise, and what could have been a simple task quickly spirals out of control. As they drive into […]
Ungashick takes the story of Operation Overlord and the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France and maps its lessons about strategy and logistics onto the business world to highlight leadership principles. D-Day, the author writes, “was the greatest combined amphibious-airborne invasion in history and the most complex military operation ever executed”; analyzing that operation, he stresses […]