BOOKLOVES

Some books announce their intentions in the first line. The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis opens with its narrator shuffling her absent mother’s tarot deck and asking the ancestors for guidance, and in that single image you already have the whole novel: a girl clinging to borrowed wisdom because she has not […]

Some thrillers open with a body. Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard opens with a property viewing, which, in the middle of an Irish housing crisis, might be the more frightening scene. A woman drifts through a crowded open house, hiding in the shuffle of desperate buyers, and wonders which of them will be the […]

A trio of childhood friends navigate the cut-and-thrust of adolescence during the Napoleonic Wars in this richly fulfilling Regency-era Shakespeare adaptation. Three childhood chums and their friends in 1814 England try to find their path in life during a tumultuous time of war against both Napoleon and America in Road to Glory by J.E. Brady.  […]

A coastal tale about how healing is not a destination but like the tide itself—a continual return to love, community, and wonder Kellye Abernathy returns readers to the windswept shores of Dipitous Beach in Indigo, the Deep, the third installment in her Yellow Cottage Stories. Blending magical realism with environmental adventure, the novel follows a […]

What happens to Cinderella after midnight, after the wedding, after the story stops caring about her? Fishbone Cinderella by Elizabeth Lim asks that question across three generations of women, and answers it with a novel that is part historical saga, part magical realism, and part aching mother-daughter love story. This is Lim’s first book written […]

The fate of an abandoned baby ignites a chain reaction of rage, vengeance, and redemption in a Virginia coal mining community on the edge of extinction. In Stacy Dean Campbell’s mesmerizing novel, Where the Heathens Rage, the cry of a newborn infant shatters the stillness of Little Black Mountain as long-held secrets threaten to crack […]

Content Warnings: child loss and abuse A swirling and fast-paced medico-legal mystery where judgment and justice collide Dr. Amelie Nadeau is a pathology fellow assigned to carry out an AI-assisted review of medical cases. She’s supposed to explore whether the tool can accurately spot anomalies and figure out which will require additional evaluation. In a […]

Some books want to impress you. This one wants to hand you a slice of peach pie, point you toward the horizon, and remind you that kindness is a survival skill. Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst is the third book in the Spellshop series, following The Spellshop and The Enchanted Greenhouse, and it […]