A raw, profane, systems-minded dystopian novel about extinction, memory, control, and the ugly cost of calling survival “salvation” Salvation Reigned starts with an alarm bell: “Our clock is a countdown.” Travis James Peterson’s debut brings a former data scientist’s imagination to a violent and profane dystopian future where survival has become its own kind of […]
Artful and insightful—an accompanying character study and prequel to a timeless classic Classics are classics because they go on resonating generation after generation, and they continue to offer ground for succeeding writers to build upon. From Aeschylus to Madeline Miller, people have been reimagining and adapting the heroes of Homer, for example, for over two […]
Three teenagers walk into a police station the morning after a barn party. Two bodies were left behind in the dark. Every one of them swears they are telling the truth, and every one of them is lying about something. That is the deceptively simple hook of Killing Sadie by Rachel Peterson, a young adult […]
When ethical issues test a robot’s fundamental programming, it spawns a thoughtful exploration of self-discovery. Tessa (aka Tessaract 256) is an advanced robot model, designed as a Cranial Augmentation Technician that can surgically heal human minds, even enhance intelligence. She lives with a robot assistant and companion, Tucker. Tucker is a mechanical dog, but she […]
A richly imagined Dickensian prequel that breathes luminous life into the Ghost of Christmas Present—and the generous soul who became him. In The Ghost of Christmas Present: The Spirit of the Frozen Thames, the second volume of Scott A. Johnson’s Ghosts of Christmas Trilogy, Johnson answers one of Dickens’s most tantalizing unanswered questions: who was […]
Some romances announce their intentions in the first chapter. This one does it in the first text message, when a lovestruck third baseman admits his heart trips over itself every time his sister’s best friend pops up on his phone. Just for the Plot by Meghan Quinn is the second book in the Bay Area […]
Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier on August 25, 2026 Genres: Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological Pages: 368 Format: ARC Buy on Amazon Goodreads Twenty-five years ago in Seaside, Washington, a charming drifter named Sam met three inseparable teenage girls at the local amusement park. Days later, one of them was found dead, her body […]
Another Grumpy Iguana tale as sweet as sweet potato fries Sweet Potato is different. While her brothers are out playing games about eating as many bugs as they can, all Sweet Potato wants to eat are mangoes and sweet potato fries. And while her family is sleepy in the sun, she wants to go on […]
A sometimes raw, always luminous exploration of motherhood, martyrdom, and women’s untold stories By the time the unnamed protagonist of Book of Hours goes into labor, the reader has followed her through more than 100 pages of distinctly female bodily unease, from an adolescent eating disorder to adult fertility struggles sharpened by the dehumanizing […]
What do you do with a thriller that hands you the killers before the first chapter even begins? That is the gamble at the heart of Getting Away With Murder by Shari Lapena, her tenth stand-alone novel, and it mostly pays off. The prologue puts you on a pitching sailboat twelve miles off Manhattan, watching […]