Compiled as a mixed media scrapbook of journal entries, personal text messages, and life lessons, this inspirational memoir is the work of a father, Stewart, diagnosed with cancer leaving behind memories, life lessons, and personal thoughts for his children. Through candid journal entries, Stewart vulnerably shares his journey with cancer from diagnosis to what he calls "ringing the bell." The father of seven children, Stewart takes the opportunity of compiling this book to set down “the life lessons, adages, and reflections that helped me endure hard times and avoid harder ones.”

Warm and wise, Living is, above all else, a literal act of love. In notes from a recorded interview conducted by his daughter's husband, affectionately dubbed "bearded son-in-law," Stewart chronicles his life before his cancer diagnosis, from his childhood growing up in Oregon to the present. (“Yesterday, I tested positive for Covid. Exciting.”) Stewart provides advice on love, enjoying life, and handling the inevitable bad times, all while sharing fascinating anecdotes from his own life’s highs and lows, such as winning $25,000 and a car on the college edition of Jeopardy, meeting and marrying the love of his life in college, and getting “kicked out” of Princeton. Juxtaposing the clinical and bleak appointments and treatment with his cancer with his paternal 100 inspirational lessons such as "life is a long first draft" and "do it until you are it," Stewart blends in humor and loving insight that readers will take to heart.

Living is a work curated out of love and with intention to impart a life’s accumulated wisdom. This touching memoir will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one to cancer or experienced a cancer diagnosis. This remarkable memoir is the product of taking the time to say goodbye when given the opportunity and leaving behind a history and legacy for the loved ones left to grieve the loss—a final and powerful act of love.

Takeaway: A father's touching compendium of insights and final words.

Comparable Titles: Meghan O'Rourke's The Long Goodbye, Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Living: Inspiration from a Father with Cancer

Gilchrist's debut, the first book in her Primordial Engine series, kicks off with a mix of breathtaking action and terrifying scenes of horror, and it never lets up from there. In a post-apocalyptic world where a group of Technocrats rules the remaining cities with an iron fist, a scavenger named Mica is at the mercy of a fanatical blood cult who believe that her dreams hold the key to the resurrection of a godlike being named the After Lord. As Mica realizes that she has terrible psychic abilities, the Technocrat battle drone D-2301, a once-human automaton now “fully machine, lacking any individual intelligence,” is wounded in battle, and soon makes a shocking discovery: her injuries, while threatening her life, have also allowed her to reclaim her missing humanity, memories, and self. She is no longer D-2301 but Animkii.

These two become uneasy allies after both escape the city. The drone, or "mod" (modified human) Animkii, had been banished an indigenous tribe for breaking a taboo. Mica, meanwhile, survived a plague brought to her family by a different mod and hates and distrusts Animkii as a result. Gilchrist brings urgency and inventive power to the cast’s convictions and resentments, the worldbuilding driving character and offering opportunity for vivid, unsettling setpieces. Their partnership takes them to the bowels underneath the city and its dens of corruption, the sterile and dehumanizing halls of the Technocrats themselves, and finally to the bitter cold of the Witherlands, the home of Animkii's people.

Gilchrist builds to memorable twists before the climactic, world-shaking battle as they strive to prevent the ascent of the After Lord. The leads often face harrowing situations, but Gilchrist finds clever ways to extricate them. Her attention to detail makes each environment vividly spring to life, but never at the expense of narrative momentum or the protagonists' complex backstories. Reversals and betrayals shock but make sense given the clues the reader is provided. Despite the cliffhanger ending, GIlchrist still provides a thoroughly satisfying first entry.

Takeaway: Standout post-apocalyptic debut of modded humans and Technocrat overlords.

Comparable Titles: C. Robert Cargill’s Sea of Rust, Hailey Piper’s No Gods For Drowning.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about The End of the World

If Americans share a national fantasy, it could be that of winning the lottery and living like a king, no matter how long the odds, no matter how many stories we might hear of past winners for whom that good luck proved disastrous. In this insightful debut, Copetas examines those disasters and many other facets of the lottery industry, running the numbers on the odds, talking to lottery officials, lawyers, and lottery winners who have won millions and lost it all, and also to lottery winners who—in even greater demonstrations of luck or something as powerful—haven’t really changed in any substantive way. Copetas’s original interviews, mixed with his own research and analysis, make this an intriguing read in a relaxed, conversational style as he examines the reality of the long-shot dream: what actually happens when someone wins big.

Overall, this is an enjoyable book with surprises (“just under one-third of people who win or inherit money don’t just blow it all, they blow it all and then some”), though some of the analysis (of the odds of winning; of who actually plays) can be dry. Copetas is most engaging when interviewing, historicizing, and thinking through fascinating questions. He gives the subject enough space to tell their story and offers no judgment afterward. In a fascinating chapter, Copetas talks to Kurt Panouses, the “Powerball lawyer” who has handled over 30 lottery winners, including some billion dollar jackpots, talks about the difference in state-to-state taxes, foundations and above all, the need for anonymity.

Even knowing the odds, it’s still fascinating to think through the questions (addressed here) like whether to take winnings as a lump sum or an annual payout. Copetas looks America’s lottery obsession in the eye and asks the tough questions with sometimes surprising, always informative answers in a book that pulls the reader in by shining a light on their dreams of instant wealth.

Takeaway: Illuminating breakdown of lottery, the odds, and what happens to winners.

Comparable Titles: David G. Schwartz’s Roll the Bones, Jonathan D. Cohen’s For a Dollar and a Dream.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about Winning Numbers

This richly detailed bildungsroman, the follow up to Kiser’s story collection The Guitar Player and Other Songs of Exile, surveys a surprising life, answering over its length the question of how its narrator, Geneva Clay of Kentucky coal country, grew from front-porch nights listening to “tree frogs and the lonely palpitating whip-poor-will” to become the kind of book-minded, art-struck New York City dreamer who describes “a celebrated Goya Christ” as a “mass of dark but luminous energy.” The novel bustles with incident and vibrant, everyday life as it considers, year-by-year, Geneva’s youth, from the 1940s into the bumptious 1960s, capturing long-gone people and ways of being (making “lye soap with bacon grease, lye, and water”; paging through a “Monkey Ward wishbook” agape at the “strange contraptions” of the women’s underclothes).

A Young Woman From the Provinces touches on tragedies and occasional conflicts, like Geneva’s parents telling her in Ohio not to befriend a Black boy, or her being asked to take a year off from college to help the family face its debts. Clay’s interest is in the development of a mind, and a self, which means the plotting, over this long novel, mostly concerns the accumulation of experience, as Geneva grows from reading Little Women to Joyce and Dostoyevsky. She’s a fish-out-of-water, in the book’s second half, but she manages swimmingly, making diverse friends who expose her to the world, trying out journalism and work in the publishing industry, and eventually taking a lover, on her own terms.

The New York passages are as alive as those set in the hills, offering deft yet seemingly offhand character portraiture, though, fittingly, these scenes are charged with more energy than lyric detail. The novel’s back half, a gush of events and impressions, demonstrates how much Geneva’s life has changed in contrast to her earlier meditations on Dogwoods, crawdads, and sneakily borrowing father’s Zane Grey novel. Narrative momentum at times slows, as this reads like beautifully presented memories, but readers who appreciate mid-century coming-of-age tales will find much to appreciate.

Takeaway: Gorgeous coming-of-age story of coal-country hollows and 1960s New York.

Comparable Titles: Ann Pancake’s Strange as This Weather Has Been, Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about A Young Woman from the Provinces

In this illuminating historical novel, Rodrigues imagines two illustrious, surprising, and nation-shaping 18th century lives, separated by years despite an intimate initial connection: that of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, an Italian poet and revolutionary of the short-lived Neapolitan Republic born into a Portuguese family, and Portuguese naturalist Joseph Correia da Serra, here Pimentel’s erstwhile lover, who kindled a passion with her in their youth in Naples. At the novel’s arresting start, after the fall of the Neapolitan Republic, Pimentel stands accused of high treason against the crown—“she believed the poor deserved to be educated in order to have a better future," Rodrigues notes. She is sent to prison for her revolutionary role, where she writes the memoir that narrates her half of Eleonora and Joseph. Facing death later, she pleads for a dignified beheading, which is denied.

Pimentel's pages eventually reach Correia da Serra, years later, in the most surprising of places: Monticello, the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, another thoughtful revolutionary, though one with blind spots. “It was perplexing,” Correia da Serra notes, observing Monticello’s slaves, “that a man like Jefferson didn’t see the contradictions of his own life.” Correia da Serra is thrown into a state of nostalgia and regret when Jefferson shares Pimentel’s memoir. As Correia da Serra reads her words, he and readers are transported through time as Eleonora recounts their love story and her impassioned revolutionary path, rooted in the principles of the French Revolution.

Rich in culture, history, and revolutionary fervor, this captivating read conjures the heart-pounding tale of one woman “born in one world and wanted to invent another” —and the men who wielded their power and status to silence her. Pimentel is a sharp-witted and impassioned protagonist willing to die for her beliefs, while Correia de Serra faces guilt over his younger self’s inaction. Written with lyrical prose and vivid detail, this sweeping novel of love, betrayal, and politics offers romance, redemption, and suspense. History buffs will relish the scrupulously described milieu.

Takeaway: Engrossing historical novel of love, betrayal, revolution.

Comparable Titles: Andrea Camilleri’s The Revolution of the Moon, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel’s From Arcadia to Revolution.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Eleonora and Joseph: Passion, Tragedy, and Revolution in the Age of Enlightenment. A Novel.

Clark’s haunting, genre-bending debut follows golden boy Brandon Blake on a journey of self-discovery as he seeks to understand his unique gift—he can envision past lives—and uncovers a mystery with urgent personal stakes: the truth behind his parents' disappearance in a plane crash when he was only 10 years old. With the help of his tarot-reading guardian, his Aunt Grace, and a mysterious hypnotherapist, Dr. Clara d'Uccelli, Brandon discovers buried treasure in the form of ancient scrolls, a discovery that puts his life in harm’s way and turns some of his closest allies to foes. The Alexandria Scrolls is a surprising, globe-trotting thriller with mystic revelations (“all those other souls are, in fact, me … all the other lives I ever have or ever will live”) plus riddles and artifacts, colorful characters and possible deviltry.

While material about the Oversoul and Balinese folklore can be heady, Clark writes in a clear, inviting manner that will pull in readers of speculative, spiritual thrillers. Intricately weaving in ideals about hypnosis, past life regression therapy, and tarot, all juxtaposed against historically rich themes such as archeological explorations and findings and ancient scroll translations, The Alexandria Scrolls is an immersive story full of twists and turns in a constantly moving plot with occasional bursts of action. The focus remains personal, though, no matter how wide the scope becomes. As Brandon learns more about his parents, their special skills, and the organization they belonged to, he continues to seek answers and begins to embrace his past, present, and future and what he is called to do with his life.

Following one complicated and at times floundering man's mission to understand himself and his family history—and his own histories—this suspenseful adventure will appeal to seekers who welcome unconventional thriller storytelling and books that explore the emotions and the challenges in trying to find a sense of self, family, and purpose.

Takeaway: Surprising thriller of reincarnation, ancient secrets, and finding one’s purpose.

Comparable Titles: Ann Brashares's My Name is Memory, H.R. Moore's Nation of the Sun.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Alexandria Scrolls

Jobless, desperate, and panicky, Hicks took up work as “Military Resilience Coach” or MRC, (pronounced merk) providing “no records kept” counseling, social work, and resiliency coaching to military personnel. In this frank memoir, Hicks’s debut, she’s open about the deep misgivings she felt about the job, as an anti-war liberal with a keen interest in Buddhist teachings. Still, The Gift Shop at the DMZ recounts how she accepted the position and traveled to US military bases across the world on short assignments as an MRC, trying her best to help soldiers “reach a state of greater emotional peace” but stuck trying to perform “walking social work”—which she describes as “random schmoozing with people.” Clients, though, prove few as there is a fear among personnel that news of their therapeutic encounters will travel up the chain of command and affect their careers.

Not being terribly busy, Hicks spends time sightseeing and exploring the local cultures. She also tries best to practice what she preaches when confronted with anxiety and depression at Camp Casey in South Korea. Her innate interest in Buddhism helps her connect with lamas and nuns as well as other Europeans and Americans interested in Buddhist practices. This brings her a measure of peace and acceptance of her singlehood and loneliness.

Sedate in pace and tone, the memoir explores not just the psychological challenges endured by soldiers and their families that result from multiple deployments, but also exposes the attitudes of military top brass when it comes to understanding mental illness and trauma among army personnel. With its patriarchal norms of masculinity and rampant homophobia, the military comes across as a lumbering behemoth with one leg enmeshed in the past. Hicks’s candid description of her own struggles with anxiety and depression and her exposing of attitudes within the military makes this memoir an illuminating read.

Takeaway: A serene memoir about counseling US military personnel and families.

Comparable Titles: Sally Wolf’s Life of a Military Psychologist, Marjorie Morrison’s The Inside Battle.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Gift Shop at the DMZ

The act of becoming, in Howse’s accomplished debut, is set against a vividly evoked collapse, as sisters Nadia and Nastya must discover their place as the world in which they were raised, the Soviet Union of the parents and grandparents, lurches toward its end. Howse brings urgent life to the 1980s era of Gorbachev, of a rumored disaster at what Russians then knew as the Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, and of Russian soldiers like the girls’ friend Johnny, who deserts the failed Afghanistan war, shoves a gun into his mouth and poses questions like “Do you feel, like in a nightmare, that all our suffering is a form of mockery?”

So it goes for this lost generation in Howse’s sweeping novel, an incisive slice of life whose slices are wide-ranging and generously proportioned—even if the lives itself, for those living them, too often feel fraught and small. As Nadia and co. face upheaval but still strive to “to patch a happy ending on a dubious beginning, to make a quilt from rags” and seize those moments when “the wager [of life] seemed a relatively cheerful proposition”—usually with family, friends, a cat named Cosmos, or for pregnant Nastya, the possibilities of a “home-in-the-making” with Girogi, a police detective who volunteers amid the horrors of the Chrernobyl evacuation zone.

Fascinating characters like that populate Howse’s story, though its heart is Nadia, yearning to go to Moscow and college, and enduring disasters, both incidental—a car accident, “blowup”s that occur “on a geographic scale”—and world-shaking. Howse’s novel is dense and detailed but alive with feeling, insight, and Nadia’s stirring, stinging, poetic thoughts. It juxtaposes in-depth, almost reportorial portraiture of a society’s decline with the fresh exuberance of youth, plus the terror and possibility of what might come next, when history itself—Nadia often notes the sites of massacres and tragedies—offers little reason for optimism. Still, Nadia offers reason for hope.

Takeaway: Intimate epic of coming of age as the Soviet Union collapses.

Comparable Titles: Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s The Orchard, Artem Mozgovoy’s Spring in Siberia.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Girl in the Water

Juliano offers the second installment in the Billy Winslow series (following 2022’s Kidnapping Steve), a contemporary magical-realist adventure with lighthearted appeal and, as the title suggests, much spirited basketball. Billy Winslow possesses spirit-hunting powers and visions of “gods and goddesses in the sky, angry, fighting over something.” Urged by a cryptic dream during a shamanistic ceremony “to save a son,” he follows clues from Mexico to the Tar Heels training basketball courts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Billy philosophizes about the uncertainty of existence as he approaches his ultimate calling: to rescue Andy Völler, a would-be star basketball player, from despair over the death of his family in a car-crash.

Billy is the classic flâneur who follows metaphorical breadcrumbs from the universe as he searches for answers: a flying car driven by a dead chauffeur, a frat party where he meets a beautiful superhero, and a friendly basketball that follows him, among many otherworldly incidents. This lends a mythological tone, akin to Perseus finding a goddess-given shield to help him win a battle. The whimsicality provides an atmosphere of both timelessness and humor. Meanwhile, Juliano is an expert at recounting basketball games, play-by-play, demonstrating with passion and precision the healing power of the sport.

The quirky Billy will again prove endearing to readers with his charisma and his casual willingness to follow abstract invitations toward adventure, always seizing upon the positive in the unpredictable. “Billy had to laugh. He was a leader with no followers, a shepherd with no sheep, a general with no army, but that was OK because he had what he needed: a pretty girl and a bar tab.” Such positivity helps him assemble and coach a heartwarming, underdog basketball team to take on the Tar Heels and showcase Andy’s skills. Readers of playful fabulism will eagerly follow the legendary Billy’s unexpected path towards bolstering a worthy athlete.

Takeaway: Wholly unique story of visions, college basketball, and a spirit quest.

Comparable Titles: Melissa Broder’s Death Valley, Charley Rosen’s No Blood, No Foul.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Triple Overtime

As its title promises, the stories in Turner’s intriguing debut are indeed playful. They are packed with playful language, occasionally address the reader directly, and offer an eclectic mix of protagonists (a spelling bee participant, a wolf, an S&M Dom, a Starbucks barista). But don’t mistake quirkiness for shallowness: Turner’s stories probe the peaks and valleys of the human experience, offering fascinating insights about love and life through the lens of psychology.

The collection delves into some dark themes, like abuse, suicidal ideation, and drug addiction. In “Aeternum,” an opiate-addicted narrator fresh off a bender lies on her girlfriend’s front stoop, covered in vomit, seeing herself through her girlfriend’s eyes, while “The Scissors” combines passages from academic research on teen addiction with the story of a teenage addict and the tragic consequences of his choices. Turner doesn’t shy away from gore, occasionally delivering shockingly violent conclusions. However, the collection achieves thematic balance through stories that effortlessly capture the giddy alchemy of romantic love and attraction, particularly in the “Dramatic Effect” series, which sweetly charts the development of a couple from a chance meeting to a committed, accepting—and quirky—partnership.

Regardless of their subject matter, Turner’s inventive use of language infuses all of her stories. Keeping up with her lively prose, packed with lengthy asides (brackets are often nested within parentheses) and refreshingly offbeat figures of speech, has rich rewards for readers on the wavelength of the “digretch”ions: Turner refers to coffee as “wonderbrew” and strings of Christmas lights as “Jolly Rancher luminescence.” But while Turner’s style is unconventional and occasionally dense, it reliably reveals her diverse characters’ inner worlds, whether they are a child at the beach or a lovestruck commuter. Some elements may be proudly eccentric, but readers will be surprised by how easy it is to connect with its characters as they attempt to know themselves and face their challenges.

Takeaway: Playful, sometimes jolting fictions of the highs and lows of the human mind.

Comparable Titles: Karen Russell, Carmen Maria Machado

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about But I Digretch

In McGurk’s second installment of the Norwood Nanny Chronicles, after The Agency, readers are plunged into a thrilling world of espionage, mystery, and personal redemption as Bree, a nanny/spy in training, comes to terms with the kidnapping of her first charges in Turkey—and the mysterious deaths of two fellow agents. Driven by a deep sense of responsibility for the kidnapped children, but also haunted by the unresolved deaths of her parents and half-sister, Bree sets out, with her fellow nanny spies, to solve the mystery of the missing children and uncover her family’s secrets.

McGurk crafts a tale that seamlessly weaves together the intricacies of spy craft, personal history, and the quest for truth, its elaborate plot unfolding across multiple time frames and locations. From the turbulent backdrop of Ireland during the Irish Republican Army and British Empire conflict to the orphanage in Alabama where Bree grew up, and finally to the Norwood Agency in Britain, the story navigates through these settings with skillful storytelling, though the timelines require close attention to fully appreciate the unraveling events.

Heredity, DNA tests, and undercover moles resonate, mirroring the spy game, as Bree explores her roots in her ancestral home with fellow spy Dash Heyward, aided by roommate and Head Girl, Ruby. The supporting characters, with their own motives and secrets, add complexity to the tale. As Bree grapples with the embedded tracking device in her neck and questions of trust, the tangled web of relationships, beliefs, and falsehoods keep readers guessing until the final pages, and how to discern intentions while surviving requires every inch of Bree’s focus. The payoff is a gripping tale of espionage, self-discovery, and survival, and McGurk masterfully blends the action, mystery, and character-driven moments together, delivering a worthy sequel that will leave readers anticipating the next installment.

Takeaway: A twisting spy game adventure of betrayal, self-discovery, and survival.

Comparable Titles: Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious, Marion Blackwood’s The Traitor Spy.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about The Handler

Bioku’s debut collection of affirmation poetry draws a dynamic blueprint of the unsettled mind that ultimately reveals itself as a declaration of self-acceptance. Divided into seven sections that each excavate different sources of emotional, physical, philosophical and spiritual discord, We Ponder takes readers on an odyssey through the speaker’s psyche that touches on disordered eating, OCD, depression, emotional abuse, feminism, racism, and more. “A work in progress, we were promised to be completed,” Bioku writes in “Becoming More Aware,” but that promise, it turns out, is never fulfilled; despair reigns for that poem’s speaker until their perspective shifts enough for them to abandon the idea of unachievable completion.

In “Insomnia,” from a section titled “Mental Collisions,” the speaker stays up until dawn and “watch[es] as the Earth tilt[s] on its axis to reveal the sun’s glory.” At this change in perspective, day is a result of the earth turning rather than the sun coming up. The speaker then asks, “does the sun ever rise?” which is a remark not just on the unsettled self but the unsettled collective—even though humanity has long understood that the sun itself does not ascend the sky, we cannot abandon the myth of sunrise. In Bioku’s hands, though, this inquiry and this turning of perspective on its axis results in a healing liberation.

Bioku spins an elaborate web of self-expression in We Ponder that, despite several one-dimensional poems, is accessible, relatable, and refreshingly bold, particularly for readers seeking poetry about mental illness. Bioku is at her best in this collection in the section titled “Spiritual Remedies,” which is a series of prayer-poems that are brief but often transcendent. As the speaker writes in “Magenta Cosmos,” in the path of God or Creator, the unsettled mind is not one meant to be solved or settled: “grand designs have no negative spaces.”

Takeaway: Dreamy, melancholy poems of spirituality, mental health, heartbreak, and love.

Comparable Titles: Nikita Gill’s “The Truth About Your Heart,” R. H. Sin.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B
Marketing copy: B

Click here for more about We Ponder: Unsettled Minds

This fiercely original SF headspinner, Coles’s assured novel debut, opens with fledgling humans Kanan and Tei, eager to be born again into their “Final” skins, making sense of a tiny universe whose edge Kanan could run to in “17 minutes.” Kanan and Tei have been together since birth, living under the eye of a mentor, yet on the day of their “Finalization” their futures—and friendship—change forever when Tei is chosen to be Finalized as an interpreter and Kanan is destined for the archives, once her "service to humanity was finished." Kanan, instead, does what she does best—she runs. (“She” is used as a matter of expediency in this review; the pronouns shift in clever ways in the novel.) Tei's new position sets him on a path of discovery and enlightenment, as does Kanan's, as they both learn more about the Natchers, an extinct alien race “plotting their return to the human universe.” The more these "agemates" discover, the more they begin to question.

WIth prose touched with poetry and charged with feeling, Coles explores the human condition in literal and philosophical senses as Kanan and Tei uncover secrets about their existence, their history, and the structure of a society whose particulars will keep even seasoned science-fiction readers guessing. As Kanan and Tei find and rely on their talents, they unearth strengths within themselves to determine their own destiny outside of the stations they have been told await them in the future.

A captivating story of truth, good and evil, and what constitutes being "human", The Limits of My World lives up to its title, revealing that what the protagonists perceive as the parameters of their existence—including creepy inventions like the “butchery curtains”—isn’t the limits of their world at all. For all the provocative ideas and revelations, Coles prioritizes character and adventure, pitting his protagonists against hard choices (“You live skinless or you do not live”) and the most urgent of questions.

Takeaway: Fresh SF page-turner of identity, dystopia, and fighting for one’s place.

Comparable Titles: Brian Everson’s The Warren; Lauren Beukes.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about The Limits of My World

Witham’s international thriller (after Gallery Pieces) pits Chinese and American teams against each other as they vie for dominance in the art world. When a piece from a missing American art collection is discovered en route to China, Washington assigns U.S. agents Grace Ho and Julian Peale the task of recovery. Meanwhile, in China, Quang Daiyu, an entrepreneur and niece of the general secretary, Ren Jinuah, schemes for power; she has her own art ambitions, alongside her deadly rival, Soong Wei, an equally politically connected adversary. The parties—and their high stakes missions—maneuver from Shanghai to sparsely populated regions near the old Silk Road in their efforts to secure valuable artifacts.

Witham does a masterful job covering the dirty dealing in artwork through the eyes of Quang and Soong, and even better is his deft portrayal of modern China. He navigates readers through a China still reflecting on its imperial era, even after communism and recent forays into capitalism, where soldiers can sing Bee Gees songs, but to Quang, the last imperial ruler, Empress Cixi, is "still present." Even the Cultural Revolution seemingly didn't erase all vestiges of the royal family, at least in spirit, and Witham’s lovingly penned descriptions of the country hold attention, even when the plot meanders.

Though the focus is mostly on China itself, Witham capably develops agents Ho and Peale as well; they’re an engaging pair, and their sleuthing in China is buoyed by their comfortable rapport. For action fans, there's plenty of martial arts fighting and a particularly well-staged army helicopter extraction scene, and Witham deserves full marks for the offbeat but exciting wind-up. The novel delves into the concept of cultural property, a background against which Witham weaves a plausible and gripping denouement centered on artwork, museum building contractors, and a mysterious drink called Gold Tea. This lands well for fans of impassioned political thrillers.

Takeaway: America and China engage in complex—and deadly—espionage over art.

Comparable Titles: Dan Brown, Sam Christer.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B
Marketing copy: A-

Click here for more about The Silk Road Affair: A Novel

Palmer’s debut, the first volume of his Tales from Taylor Street, centers on the capers of three friends, self-styled “‘honorable’ thieves,” in 1980s Chicago. Best pals Ralph “Beans” Trombino, Cosh Geraldi, and Richard “Izzy” Tonsi reside in Chicago’s Taylor Street neighborhood, running small-time robberies and holding court at their old Italian-restaurant-turned-club in between jobs. The trio, strict adherents to a code of honor that dictates they only engage in “victimless crimes, or at least [crimes where] the victim had it coming,” take teenager Jimmy Pope under their wing as they seek out new jobs, but when they agree to an epic score with the notorious “Step” Virrina, their lives are forever altered.

Taylor Street is a worthy setting, equal to the book’s thrilling plot line, where the gritty neighborhood comes alive with colorful characters, whether it’s Beans’s Uncle Skinny, neighborhood bookie Willy the Wiz (replete with black Stacy Adams wingtips), or Pete the Bum, a “bona fide hobo” with serious street cred. Palmer paints the labyrinthine ecosystem of cops, thieves, their all-too-human aspirations and dreams, and their collaborations—said and unsaid, overt and covert—in a realistic manner, and he smartly avoids styling the protagonists as idealistic heroes. Each is a thorough professional, as proud of their skills and exploits as any other on the “right” side of the law.

The brisk pace and mounting tension towards the end will keep readers on the edge of their seats, and once Step’s true intentions are exposed, the stakes grow exponentially higher—with actual lives hanging in the balance. The final resolution adds depth and nuance to the thriller, setting the stage for the next in the series, as Beans and his crew are tasked with avenging a childhood friend’s abuse at the hands of his physical therapist. This is a gripping read with unforgettable characters.

Takeaway: A gang of good-hearted thieves takes on 1980s Chicago.

Comparable Titles: S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland, Grace D. Li’s Portrait of a Thief.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Money for Nothing

Griffin’s dark romantic suspense story, the sequel to Stonebridge, melds love, trauma, and the supernatural as it follows pregnant widow Rynna Wyatt and her cousin, Ted Demeray, in late 1950’s Virginia. Rynna’s newly deceased husband, Jason, is the focus of an investigation following his suspicious death—a death that lands Rynna and Ted as primary suspects. The two want nothing more than to put that past behind them and start over together, but they’re keeping too many secrets—like their clandestine love affair and the ghostly appearance of Jason’s mother, Rosalind, who played a central role in his demise.

As Rynna and Ted escape the family manor together, they must navigate her pregnancy amid their blossoming relationship, but they soon find themselves plagued by the past: Jason’s ghost is obsessed with possessing his soon-to-be-born son, Robert (“I take what is mine” is his constant refrain), and Rynna can’t shake the nightmares of Jason terrorizing her—both in life and in death. Her relationship with Ted is destructive in its own right: Rynna’s deep insecurity pushes her to pursue marriage with him, and children of their own, despite his fears that their children will inherit his disabling arthritis, and Ted’s manipulative treatment of Rynna echoes her past marriage. Added to the mix is Jason’s ghost, repeatedly threatening to kill Rynna and Ted or steal Robert, and Ted’s memories of his failed relationship with prior girlfriend Sylvia, to whom he’d been “sort of engaged.”

The abusive dynamics between Rynna and Ted may be triggering for some readers, but Griffin takes time to explore the past trauma shaping their interactions. That theme of two wounded souls stays center stage throughout, although the character-driven moments are interlaced with chilling supernatural angst that gives the novel some edge. Rynna’s determination to protect her son adds much needed optimism, and, despite an abrupt ending, the epilogue is rewarding.

Takeaway: Love struggles to overcome trauma, past and present, in this dark romance.

Comparable Titles: Nancy Price’s Sleeping with the Enemy, John R. Holt’s When We Dead Awaken.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B
Marketing copy: A

Click here for more about Beyond Stonebridge