BOOKLOVES

Nimbly traversing the realities of our world, these poems present a full artistic vision through precise, humorous, and deeply serious accounts of the sights, sounds, and stories that surround us. “The rain came first. Or was it soil? A seed. Then a bird that shat the seed.” Loosestrife for Porcupines is a collection that exudes […]

You duel or you die. That single line, drilled into Astrid Nachstern’s head from the time she was eight, is the heartbeat of Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter, the debut fantasy from the writing duo of Katie Ellis-Brown and Becky Hunter. Marketed for the Fourth Wing crowd and pitched as the opening salvo of the […]

There are end-of-the-world books that crackle with action. Cities burn, survivors clutch rifles, governments fall in chapter one. Klune does not write that book. We Burned So Bright by T.J. Klune is the smaller, sadder, stranger cousin of those novels. Don is seventy-two. Rodney is seventy-eight. They wake up one morning in Camden, Maine, knowing […]

A complex tale set on an imagined world, reflecting on our violently shared past and present Taking place on an alternate planet but one with problems all too familiar to our own, A Soldier In The Borderlands mixes low fantasy with science fiction to grapple with ecological and psychological issues. Arwen Spicer brings forth descriptions […]

A quiet novel on trauma, loss, and the way secrets both kept and shared have long-lasting ripple effects Three Days Grace is an intimate glimpse into the life of Nick, his mother Lynne, her wife Susan, and the tangentially connected Laslo and Marco.  When the story begins, Nick is summoning the courage to meet all […]

There’s something horribly wrong at Lost Lake… B.E. Smith’s Shallow Rock makes one thing immediately clear: it is neither a standard crime caper nor a simple ghost story. It is a novel about inheritance—of guilt, of violence, of myth—and about what happens when a community tells the same story for long enough that it becomes […]

A thoughtful musing on midlife self-isolation and corporate frustration set in the early days of COVID-19 Gregory Venters’ Destiny and Other Follies is a successful meditation on how a middle-aged man’s emotional withdrawal alters his career and marriage. Calder Brandt, an industry consultant for a company called Scientific Management, is perpetually undermined in his attempts […]