Month: May 2025

Zee Carlstrom’s debut novel, Make Sure You Die Screaming, is a blistering, unfiltered fever dream of queerness, grief, and rebellion. Reading it feels like getting into a stolen car with a stranger who smells like regret and gasoline—and then realizing halfway through the ride that they might be your only shot at truth. Equal parts […]

In Raven Leilani’s debut novel “Luster,” we meet Edie, a 23-year-old Black woman whose life seems perpetually on the verge of collapse. Working a dead-end publishing job, failing at her artistic passion, and tumbling through a series of questionable sexual encounters, Edie represents a brutally honest portrait of millennial struggle infused with the particular vulnerabilities […]

Megan Clawson’s third novel, “Kilted Lovers,” delivers a heartfelt tale of unexpected romance set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Scottish Highlands. Following her successful debuts “Falling Hard for the Royal Guard” and “Love at First Knight,” Clawson maintains her talent for royal romances while adding greater emotional depth to her repertoire. This time, she […]

Ashley Winstead’s debut novel, In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, delivers a chilling exploration of ambition, obsession, and the dark underbelly of college friendships. Set against the backdrop of the elite southern Duquette University, Winstead masterfully weaves a tale of murder, betrayal, and the devastating consequences of unchecked desire. Through her protagonist Jessica Miller’s […]

Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family is a genre-defying, darkly hilarious crime novel that doubles as a scorching critique of wealth, power, and the dysfunctions stitched into the fabric of family. Stylish, provocative, and disturbingly intimate, the novel masquerades as a confessional memoir from an imprisoned young woman who—ironically—is not guilty of the murder […]

Maxym M. Martineau’s House of Blight is a hauntingly immersive gothic fantasy that breathes new life into familiar tropes through its profound emotional stakes and exquisitely slow unraveling. The first novel in The Threadmender Chronicles duology, it presents a world where magic is both a blessing and a burden—and where healing might kill you faster […]

Morgan Dick’s debut novel “Favorite Daughter” is a riveting exploration of family dysfunction, addiction, and the possibility of redemption that manages to be both darkly humorous and deeply moving. With razor-sharp prose and unflinching honesty, Dick introduces us to half-sisters Mickey and Arlo, two women who’ve never met but are unwittingly thrown together by their […]

In Hell Bent, the second installment of Leigh Bardugo’s Alex Stern series, the gates of Hell are not merely metaphorical—they’re real, and Galaxy “Alex” Stern intends to walk through them. Set in the cloistered, elite, and arcane world of Yale’s secret societies, this sequel escalates everything Ninth House began: the mystery, the horror, the urgency—and […]