Synopsis: A move to Japan for love. Or…was it? Alone in a strange country with a broken soul, Marina built a life from scratch—experiencing typhoons, massive earthquakes, and even bicycle vandalism. She traveled widely across the country, learning to appreciate its rituals and oddities, and finding ways to cope with the Halloween crowds in Shibuya. […]
Tony Robbins meets Hesiod in this generous and sincere guide to living the good life. In Works and Days, one of our oldest surviving complete works of literature, Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet to whom the work is commonly attributed, combined agricultural knowledge with general advice on living well. Nearly three millennia on, the confined […]
A woman adrift finds timid faith in flying saucers and unfathomable encounters in this enthralling literary fiction. Joan wants to leave the past behind. With a recent history too unbearable to recollect, she focuses instead on an unexpected opportunity to make a new life for herself. A life that will soon be brimming with deep […]
Second books in romantasy trilogies usually have one job: hold the reader’s attention while the author moves furniture around for the finale. Elise Kova refuses that assignment. She opens with her heroine chained, beaten, and dragged back to the prison she barely escaped, and she does not let up for another five hundred pages. The […]
Small press, big splash There are five publishers who dominate bookstores and major media platforms. They have countless imprints, big budgets, major distribution networks, and hundreds of years of connections. Oftentimes, authors want to publish with these presses because they want to maximize exposure; they want to be read. But not every author works with […]
A fizzy, warmhearted debut that turns the mundane routines of new adult loneliness into something genuinely luminous Victor Navarro is twenty-two years old, works remotely as a web developer, and has not, by his own admission, done much with either of those facts. He shares a cramped apartment at a quaint Tustin live-work complex with […]
A wildly authentic, unexpectedly hopeful novel of the legendary parties and tested friendships of a tight-knit Navy crew When Bosner and his fellow sailors discover that two of their crew are moving into a house on Cape Henry Avenue, it seems like the perfect escape from cramped barracks life. What follows is three weeks of […]
Some romances borrow a profession for atmosphere and never bother to learn how the job works. This one does the reading. Yes, Chef by Grace Reilly arrives with a comparison-title pitch (The Bear meets It Happened One Summer) that sets a high bar, and while the book does not clear that bar in every direction, […]
A bold, insightful unpacking of the software that runs our lives When investigating digital catastrophes, focusing on the immediate collision between automated logic and the chaotic nature of human implementation yields a distinct kind of analytical comfort. Modern technological systems frequently break down precisely where they connect with everyday human context, turning basic design gaps […]
A riveting paranormal adventure fit for a spooky campfire tale When Finn Garcia heads into the Twisted Pine Range to camp with his family and their friends, he doesn’t have high expectations. His parents, Dan and Maeve, have been fighting lately and his brother Matt has been getting increasingly meaner for the past few years. Being […]