Charns (How Women’s Hockey Saved the World) offers readers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the power and joy of hockey in this entertaining memoir. Drawing on his family’s love for the sport, he details his son Leo and daughter WJ’s time spent learning, practicing, and eventually playing league hockey, describing it as “a prayer and a blessing disguised as a fast, exciting, and hard-hitting sport.” Charns candidly shares his irritation with the prejudice women face as hockey players, focused specifically on his daughter’s experiences on the ice, and delivers a quiet call-to-action for social justice minded readers: “If hockey is for everyone, there is no place for misogynist slurs, racial comments or other forms of bullying and abuse.”

Despite hockey initially being an outlet mainly for his children, Charns recounts his wife's (he refers to her as Tucker throughout) compulsion to skate after watching their son brim with satisfaction from scoring a goal in a game. Tucker yearned for that same feeling, spurring her full-hearted commitment to the sport and kickstarting some healthy family competition. Charns, who started playing hockey in his 40s, comically shares his angst at losing to Tucker’s team alongside his respect for their shared family hobbies: “Play together, stay together” he writes. His love of the game is evident throughout, particularly when recounting his disappointment at the need to stop coaching his son’s team after a medical crisis.

Charns does more than sing hockey’s praises—he delves into the sometimes painful dynamics of his childhood (an alcoholic father and hypervigilant mother) and his own adult struggles with mental health, but touchingly circles back to how spirited competition on the ice has helped him find peace and healing. He sprinkles in welcome wit, including an aside on Mattel finally making a realistic hockey Barbie in 2020 and a pitch for women’s “constitutional right” to swear as much as men in the rink. Hockey fans will be delighted.

Takeaway: An entertaining tribute to the power of hockey as a path to peace and happiness.

Great for fans of: Jerry Hack’s Memoir of a Hockey Nobody, Angela Ruggiero’s Breaking the Ice.

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

Click here for more about How Hockey Saved My World. An off-beat family memoir.

“It was only a matter of time before a single girl, without military training, and alone in the jungle, would be caught,” a private-industry intelligence contractor muses early in Born’s hard-edged thriller. That woman, Sara West, has lost everything but still must make her way, streaked in blood, across the mountains border from Uganda to the Congo, as a host of professional killers—American mercs, Russia’s spetsnaz forces—hunt for her and the secrets she had the misfortune to discover. On a research trip with her father and her husband, both botanists, Sara and co. found in the deepest jungle a downed Nazi plane … and a tranche of documents outlining Hitler’s contingency plans.

Born establishes this conflict and its players with convincing detail, briskly running down backstories on an international cast, while priming readers’ anticipation of the revelation of the prize that these competing spies and soldiers are willing to kill for. That prize: documents about a fortune “hidden outside Germany behind a web of front companies, banks and trusts,” set aside to fund the rise of a fourth Reich, and a list of the Reich’s “Circle of Friends,” which could still, all these decades later, destroy reputations around the globe. The action is raw and wrenching, which makes the chase all the more frightening.

On the run, Sara finds herself surprised at her own capabilities. Born’s accounts of her stealth-kills and trap setting are persuasively detailed; at times, the action occurs from the perspective of the men chasing her, edging toward survival-horror, with the hero as monster. That level of detail is consistent throughout the novel, occasionally slowing the narrative momentum, especially in the opening chapters. Dialogue is crisp throughout, though, and the story picks up speed once a former CIA agent discovers Sara might not be the traitor he’s been told. The brutal jungle survival adventure is memorable, but it’s the uneasy alliances and Sara’s climactic plan back in civilization that are Born’s most suspenseful inventions.

Takeaway: This brutal jungle thriller pits a woman who’s discovered Nazi secrets against pro killers.

Great for fans of: Wilbur Smith, Frederick Forsyth.

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

Click here for more about The File

Gladden presents a thought-provoking memoir in this literary debut. At birth, the author was a Black male. But growing up, Gladden identified as a Black man with a white woman’s soul, which he describes as a transracial identity—blending transgender and transracial life elements. Written mostly in epistolary form, Gladden’s brutally honest musings first take the form of an inner white girl addressing the author, then the author addressing the intricacies of a shadow identity. Gladden and his inner white girl also take a figurative road trip, conversing and looking for answers in locations from Washington D.C. to Finland.

Gladden doesn’t sugarcoat the injustices perpetrated on Black Americans, especially Black men, (“The more melanin in the skin the more malaise and mayhem you can expect”), but believes that Eighties sitcoms such as Diff’rent Strokes heralded a new era of a world where Black and white kids could co-exist happily together. Gladden also invokes Rachel Dolezal and Dr. Jessica Krug as kindred spirits. Dolezal, the former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s Spokane, WA, chapter, identified as a Black woman, while her race at birth was white; Krug, a white former George Washington associate professor, admitted to faking being Black and Puerto Rican.

Gladden’s evocative prose has a lyrical quality (“and I am warning you directly, Ronnie. Our identity can only continue to grate, rumble, and slip against each other for so long”), which will easily draw readers into the narrative and carry them through to the final page. A helpful resources section will help readers to gain a greater understanding about complex intersectional identity. Minor grammar and editing errors distract but don’t diminish the importance or power of the story and storytelling. Anyone hoping to gain insight into the experiences of a person whose outside doesn’t correlate to their inner identification will learn empathy in the author’s wise pages.

Takeaway: A thought-provoking account of complex intersectional identity experience.

Great for fans of: Jo Ivester’s Never a Girl, Always a Boy, Jazz Jennings’s Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, Amy Ellis Nutt’s Becoming Nicole.

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

Click here for more about White Girl Within

Guitarist/author Sterling’s debut novel entices with unbridled suspense as a father seeks to find closure in the disappearance of his daughter. Though his daughter Megan disappeared almost two years before, Colorado resident and police officer Tom Floyd remains determined to find out what happened to her. Though he hopes she chose to abandon her small-town life and is alive elsewhere, the facts suggest otherwise. Tom hires a former cop-turned-private-investigator, whose findings suggest that Megan’s drug use may have played a key role in her disappearance. Complicating all this: the suspicion that the notorious “Rocky Mountain Killer” might be involved, and the fracturing of Tom’s marriage to Lisa as Tom gets closer to the truth—and the danger for everyone eager to expose it intensifies.

The Fear of Winter, the first in a series, leads readers down a twisted path of mystery and suspense. As Tom and the investigator’s team learn more about Megan’s drug use and the characters and encounters that go with it, Sterling’s richly detailed depictions of the underbelly of the illegal drug trade mesmerize with chilling authenticity—and with much welcome empathy, both for the daughter with shocking secrets and the father facing them at last. (Sterling’s memoir Teenage Degenerate offers an unflinching account of addiction.)

The darkness and cold of the Colorado winter is the perfect setting for the bleakness of the novel as Sterling examines what could make a young woman disappear and the unraveling of a marriage. Sterling hones in on Tom’s continued search for closure, hinting at the simmering undercurrent of hope which, along with his marriage, will likely be shattered if Tom learns that Megan is dead. Yet the aspect of the novel that will likely resonate most with readers is Tom’s consideration of all the things he wants to change about the past which would prevent the horrific events he now faces to learn what happened to his daughter.

Takeaway: A man desperate to find a missing daughter searches for hope in this tense novel.

Great for fans of: Jess Lourey’s The Quarry Girls, Thomas Fincham’s The Dead Daughter.

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

Click here for more about The Fear of Winter

Spanish poet and celebrated lyricist and musician Antonio Casares’ seventh poetry collection, published posthumously, is both a love letter to and a eulogy for Scotland, “a place north of dreams,” and all the literary masters who wrote their best work in the misty, gothic streets of its cities. On the surface, the collection reads like tourist poetry, complete with photos of the poet at Scottish landmarks, but Casares, a Cantabria native, is far more than a tourist in his travels there. In place of travel guides, he uses the works of Burns, Byron, and Walter Scott to steer him through “the country of poetry.”

To read Casares’s poems is to take a dreamlike tour through Scotland, where every cobblestone in the street is charged with some unspeakable, ancient force that has compelled artists to create for millennia. Readers experience Scotland in Casares’s poems like a Celtic Shangri-La, yet it is not some sorrowless fantasyland. The verses certainly radiate with a nearly obsessive admiration for Scotland and its poets, but the grief therein is just as powerful, almost to a mystical extent, for the death of his heroes, Scotland’s lack of independence, and the temporality of poetry and life itself. In his poetry, however, Casares makes the sadness radiant and romantic—just one of the many jewels that make up “the most melancholy country in the world.”

Lovers of Scottish literary history and poetry in general will appreciate the poems chronicling Casares’s insomniac walks through Aberdeen, hearing Byron’s “voice among the voices of the people who walk past me” and the search for his idol’s unmarked Edinburgh resting place in “Thomas de Quincey’s Grave.” Casares’s spellbinding poems evoke the magic aura in his forebears' work, and he reminds readers that a poet’s legacy isn’t maintained simply by their verse—it’s by the people who read it.

Takeaway: An endearing and haunting homage in English and Spanish verse to Scotland and its poets.

Great for fans of: Robert Burns, Luis Cernuda

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

Click here for more about El Unicornio Blanco (The White Unicorn)

Erickson (The Great Healing) tells the pressing story of regenerative agriculture, which is also, simply, the story of soil. Arguing that we need healthy soil not just to cultivate a healthy ecosystem, but also to grow nutritious food and quickly draw down carbon to avoid climate catastrophe, Erickson explores the benefits of this regenerative agriculture, defining it with care and precision, and identifies industrial agriculture as its opposite. Erickson lays bare the violence of industrial agriculture, from pesticides and herbicides to worker exploitation. As always, he’s clear-eyed—even alarming—about the dangers humanity has created for itself, but also never hopeless, instead showcasing how we can foster regenerative agriculture, from taking to the land ourselves to advocating for policy change.

Through gorgeous photos, illuminating research, lots of engaging individual stories, and even some cleverly anthropomorphized animals (including Lucinda the Monarch Butterfly and Pat the Pooper), Erickson illustrates how a healthy ecosystem works for nature and for humans. Erickson takes care to include stories of urban farms, such as Green Leaf Learning Farm in South Memphis, and to spell out how consumer choice can drive demand for regenerative agriculture, crucial steps in starting to bring change when “chemical fertilizer-intensive, input-intensive farming” takes up 99 percent of American cropland.

Although his urgency is clear, the primary note that Erickson strikes throughout the book is one of hope. The tools and techniques of regenerative agriculture may feel new (though they are deeply traditional) but they work, and work better than industrial agriculture. He makes a persuasive case that, in the long run, regenerative agriculture can even be more profitable than conventional agriculture. Erickson argues that what we need now is the courage and the hope to take bold steps for the health of humanity and the planet. Anyone interested in new directions for agriculture, as a consumer or farmer, will benefit from this well researched, carefully written and beautifully illustrated exploration.

Takeaway: This endorsement of regenerative agriculture will fascinate readers invested in the future of farming.

Great for fans of: John Kempf’s Quality Agriculture, Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil.

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

Click here for more about Regenerative Agriculture: The Climate Crisis Solution

Daily’s inspirational novel of loss, redemption, and Christian faith centers on a Boston man and the surprising connections he makes with unexpected souls—and, quite possibly, the divine. Marvin Johnson, 87, loses his wife and decides to end his own life, purchasing a gun from a pawn shop. While returning home, he finds a badly hurt child on the pavement and carries him home, collapsing due to the strain. Meanwhile, teenager Savannah/Samantha Wilkins, living out of her car and desperate for money, breaks into Marvin’s house. Unwilling to leave an unconscious Marvin in the bathroom, she calls emergency services before escaping with valuables. Unknown to her, a creepy cop, both abuser and abused, is stalking her. As these three lives unravel, the presence of the strange child in Marvin’s affects him in surprising ways.

Daily’s language is marvelously empathetic and draws the reader into the lives of the three major characters. The reader feels the helpless, debilitating misery—of the unhoused, of children of abusive fathers, of bereaved spouses and parents. The tension builds and the pacing stays taut up for much of the novel, up until the point where Marvin and the child, Michael, have a conversation in which the child quotes from scripture, thereby stepping out of a realist yet spiritual mode and into something more miraculous, as the “strange” child begins to feel very familiar (fast-healing wounds, frail body, luminous skin, fine, silky, golden hair).

Readers’ response to these developments, of course, might be a matter of faith. Daily’s portraiture of contemporary characters feeling for meaning in their lives is moving, and the possibility of Marvin healing, through the care and protection of a child, is so rich that readers invested in that story may resist the miracles and visions to come. Still, this empathetic and well-written novel about homelessness and coping with loss will strike a chord with believers.

Takeaway: This empathetic Christian novel centers on grief, the unhoused, and a miracle baby.

Great for fans of: Francine Rivers’s The Scarlet Thread, Karen Kingsbury’s Found.

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

Click here for more about Strange Child

Quintero kicks off the Unholy Slaying Agency with bullets, fangs, and wickedly fun horror. Despite its title, A Whisper in the Dark roars with full-throated paranormal military action horror, as the Ghost Team, fresh from lycanthrope-stomping, takes on a deadly new mission involving cult rituals, demonic possession, the possible enslavement of humanity, and possibly a plot to create human hybrids with animals and machines. Even worse, for some of the squad’s amusing cranks and loudmouths, who give the book its heart: saving the world means going to Los Angeles. Woven into this tale of supernatural combat is a broader conspiratorial bent, as members of the Unholy Slaying Agency—the U.S.A.—consider the possibility that the government has been compromised by the likes of the Brotherhood of Blood.

The action starts quickly, with a heavily armed U.S.A. squad raiding a squalid den of beasts. “A hunched mountain of hair and muscle rattled with a frenzied growl,” Quintero writes, as his soldiers fire off rounds and sharp bursts of dialogue, their chatter—all tactics, jargon, and inside-joke camaraderie—as exciting as the firefight. Quintero is adept at mixing humor, tension, character, and inventive action into vivid scenes. Readers who love clever scares, splatter, and squad dialogue like “Bravo section move with me” will relish the team’s descent into forgotten tunnels beneath L.A. or its shivery exploration of an asylum where “a mountain of shadows writhed in the background.”

Also strong: team briefings, the unsettling sense that Ghost Squad might be betrayed at any moment, and the suspense of a “Scryer” reaching out into a demon’s essence to communicate. Quintero’s full-length debut is fast-paced almost to a fault, as at times its revelations and world-building might benefit from more discussion or time for readers to process. But the world of the story is rich and surprising, and Quintero ties the villains’ evil to Biblical apocrypha and urgent real-world issues. Most importantly, the scenes are strong, hair-raising, and driven by engaging characters.

Takeaway: This blend of horror and military action is splattery fun, full of demons and character.

Great for fans of: Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series, Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International.

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

Click here for more about A Whisper In The Dark

This eye-opening survey from Baynes (author of the Manifest Destiny fantasy series) traces, with clear eyes and sharp outrage, the atrocities and exploitation that the mother continent has faced from the time of the transatlantic slave trade to present-day neocolonialist attitudes that shape international relations and trade. A short, satirical, and informative read, Enemies of Africa is a clap back against institutional and cultural racism and imperial policies. The author sheds light on various “enemies” who have worked against Africa over the centuries, their machinations severely hampering its growth. The perpetrators of the slave trade, the Ku Klux Klan, the colonial empires, racism rooted in cultural bias and pseudoscientific theories, and financial neocolonialism—these are all persuasively termed by the author as the continent’s enemies.

Throughout, Baynes attempts to start a much-needed conversation about Africa. He condemns the “paternalistic and condescending attitude” that has surrounded the discourse on the continent and criticizes global ignorance of Africa’s history. Enemies of Africa connects contemporary problems with root historical causes, as Baynes argues, “The worst of Colonialism that continues to have the greatest impact was the partitioning of Africa in the 1800s at the Berlin conference.” He musters ample evidence, making the case that the territorial conflicts that still embroil the continent rise from arbitrary borders drawn across by European powers, with no regard to the continent’s many cultural, ecological, and historical communities.

The heart and soul of this book is the inequities that Africa has endured: its people that have been oppressed, its rivers that have been polluted, its resources that have been exploited. Baynes warns that progress made around the world by members of the African diaspora also is at risk due to these enemies “‘lying in wait for the black people of the world,” a stark contention that would benefit from more development. Enemies of Africa stands as a powerful starting place to help readers understand and empathize with the living, breathing land that is Africa.

Takeaway: A searing, persuasive introduction to historical injustices endured by Africa.

Great for fans of: Obianuju Ekeocha’s Target Africa, Walter Rodney’s ​​How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

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

Click here for more about Enemies of Africa: Second Edition

Hawkins disturbs and terrifies with 13 tales of suburban horror in his chilling debut collection. Opening with an eerie narrative of a young girl and her sick mother who take a home remedy to the extreme and closing with an intense heart-wrenching lethal children’s birthday party, Hawkins’s bold premises and deft followthrough create gut-wrenching tension sure to thrill horror enthusiasts. A splatter of gore and heavy doses of suspense keep readers frightfully engaged while his array of memorable characters haunt the pages. Whether it’s the teenager obsessed with mannequins, an innocent boy with a suspicious rash, or a bullied kid whose shadow seems to have a mind of its own, this varied cast walks through darkness with only a sliver of hope that they’ll ever reach the light.

With crisp prose and brisk character work, Hawkins reminds readers that danger can lurk close to home by setting his stories in a variety of familiar suburban locations such as a comic book store, the local mall, an office building, and typical neighborhood homes with secrets lurking behind closed doors. Throughout, visceral imagery brings the terror to life: readers will hear the “wet gurgle” and see the “blossom of brownish red” liquid spreading out. Killer opening lines such as “It was the blood that changed everything” make the twisted and ominous worlds inviting.

A broad array of horror is presented within Suburban Monsters. “Storms of the Present” is an intense body horror piece featuring a woman desperate to be thin. “Green Eyes” and “Moonrise Over Water with Sargassum” toy with the elements of nature, and for those suffering from coulrophobia, beware the creepy clown. At times, Hawkins dares to go darker than readers might be eager to follow; “Candle for the Birthday Boy” is somewhat punishing in its depiction of an overweight kid. Whatever the subgenre preference, Hawkins delivers nightmare fuel to readers brave enough to dive into this hair-raising collection.

Takeaway: Spine-chilling horror stories set in familiar locations with relatable characters.

Great for fans of: Kealan Patrick Burke’s Secret Faces, Alan Baxter’s Served Cold.

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

Click here for more about Suburban Monsters

An amnesiac and an emotionally-troubled actor meet in the most violent of circumstances in Crocker’s thriller-romance debut. Former soldier and current actor Daizon is out fishing when he stumbles upon “a pale blue, fallen-angel type figure” on the brink of death whom he later discovers is named Amia. Amia wakes up in the hospital not remembering anything, including her name and who beat her so viciously that Daizon found her naked, bloody, and barely breathing. Daizon’s agent asks him to research a future role in the same two-month mental health rehabilitation program, Whole Me, as Amia’s doctors send her to to heal. When Amia meets the man who saved her life, she has the distinct feeling of “familiarity like the fog that she couldn’t quite grasp.” Either because of or despite those feelings, Amia finds herself falling for Daizon and Daizon falls right back.

The mystery behind Daizon and Amia’s meeting looms large within the context of their budding romance, and their story contains all the elements of a compelling thriller. Memories come back to Amia piece by piece with the help of Daizon, their fellow Whole Me program members, and clinical psychologist Dr. Wolf. As each tantalizing puzzle piece clicks back into place for Amia, readers will find it increasingly hard to put the story down. Characterization is strong, dialogue is engaging, the clues are surprising, and the pace is swift.

What Crocker provides to readers is a classic story of a guy and girl falling in love made a few layers deeper by a sensitively handled—and often suspenseful—throughline of trauma and healing. Crocker makes it a point to discuss the hard but realistic journey that sufferers of PTSD must take through Amia’s assault and Daizon’s past in the military and rough parts of childhood. Crocker’s refusal to shy away from the truth of facing trauma humanizes the thriller elements, resulting in a storyline that will keep readers guessing … but also feeling.

Takeaway: Crocker spices a classic thriller with romance and sensitive treatment of trauma.

Great for fans of: Pamela Q. Fernandes’s Find Me in the Snow, Anastasia Zadeik’s Blurred Fates.

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

Click here for more about Stars to Light the Sky

Riha (The Bounty Huntress) offers an exciting, high-stakes rescue thriller set in the forests of Oregon, alive with fascinating detail that fuels the suspense. The book’s heart is a daring, unconventional rescue of a father and his blind teenage daughter from a raging forest wildfire, though Riha is also interested in the logistics of how these fires are monitored and controlled, digging with a reporter’s eye into the command structure, practices, shoptalk, tech, and culture of the agencies and response teams—some staffed with prison inmates. The result is, in some ways, a tense wildfire procedural.

But it’s four characters who drive the story. Will and Kal Spencer, on a hike in the forest as a much-needed bonding activity, and firefighters Lucas Bowden and Corby Jones. Bowden is haunted by the death of a former crew member, while Jones is a go-getter who understands her status as a woman out in the field means she has to prove herself. When the hikers go missing, amid the “big timber and towering mountains” of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, the firefighters are mobilized to find the missing hikers, though Jones senses that a drug problem may compromise Bowden.

Riha ramps up the tension when Kal and Will are separated and discover that the dangers they face aren’t all in nature, especially when a prisoner-firefighter proves not to have the hikers’ best interests at heart. The firefighters’ efforts at a rescue offer explosive, adrenaline-fueled action. A ground and air evacuation impossible because of the fire, and Bowden cleverly suggests they go by river, which proves another source of elemental danger—and white-knuckle adventure. The twists and obstacles keep coming, though the attention to detail, such as background information on wildfires and firefighting plus the backstories of a host of characters, means the story takes some time to heat up, but once this slow-burning thriller ignites it fully rages, and readers who love outdoor adventure will be caught up.

Takeaway: This white-knuckle rescue thriller offers a terrifying wildfire and rich procedural detail.

Great for fans of: Kurt Kamm, Andrew Pyper’s The Wildfire Season.

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

Click here for more about Incident 395

The striking second installment in Atrium's Tribal Wars series tackles exploitation and culture clashes on a newly discovered planet, with the rich intelligence, invention, and characterization that are the hallmarks of Atrium’s work. More than a decade has passed since Brianna Miller left the savannah in Dolvia, and in that time she built herself a successful life as a business woman and an escort in Paris. But when her aunt protests against the oppression under the tribal leaders’ rule by immolating herself in the plaza in front of the governor’s mansion in Cylay, she is forced to return. Though she has to leave behind her carefully constructed life for a place she's uncertain how she feels about, Brianna is determined not to lose control—and to push her people forward, whether they want to or not.

But no Atrium story is simple. Dolvia is a broiling cauldron of conflicts and interests, and Brianna's plans and actions send shock waves throughout worlds and lives. Among those are Kelly Osborn, who is of mixed blood and from a disgraced family, and Hershel Henry, an Australian journalist who is new to Dolvia, and gets to see more of Dolvia than he could have imagined. The different perspectives of these individuals who hop between worlds and don't quite feel at home anywhere accumulates into a panoramic view of Dolvia's intricate aspects and contradictions— a place of great blessing and misfortune, of abundance and scarcity, where telepathic lizards thrive and locally born people are ostracized.

Despite the wormholes, space travels, telepathic lizards, and the rest of its fascinating speculative elements, at its core The Body Politic is an anthropological story, committed to the illumination of culture and character. As is her wont, Atrium pays close attention, too, to women's lives. And though the abundance in the narrative can at times be overwhelming, just like a visit to Dolvia, it's also riveting.

Takeaway: Lovers of rich, thoughtful, culture-exploring SF will relish Atrium’s series.

Great for fans of: Ursula K. Le Guin, Sofia Samatar.

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

Click here for more about The Body Politic (The Tribal Wars Book 2)

This bold psychological novel from Matluck (Notes for a Eulogy) gets under the skin of Mary Sorabi, a classical pianist and recent winner of the Graffman International Piano Competition. To all her friends, she seems like she’s about to be the next big thing in the music world. Instead of pondering her upcoming recital, though, Mary’s pondering the three faceless beings who appeared on her couch one evening. Calling themselves The Judges, they delve into Mary’s daily life decisions, big and small, weighing them out, complete with slide projector, all for some unknown grander purpose. Their faceless natures belie their thoughts on justice; “Justice shouldn’t be wearing a blindfold,” one intones, adding “ she should be wearing a mask, because justice is inscrutable.”

That’s the enticing setup of The Judges, a clever and incisive story that focuses heavily on Mary’s internal dialogue, inviting readers to come to know every little thought—and her own judgements on everything and everyone around her. From her deliberating the appropriate tip for a waiter who offers her free food to her considering how to handle her boundaries with a verbally abusive older brother, Matluck lays bare this engaging character’s complex everyday decision-making process, pointing the way for readers to ponder in their own lives.

Are the judges a manifestation of her inner doubts, some beyond-the-human tribunal, or something stranger still? Those questions fascinate, but Matluck’s interest is in Mary and her mind as she navigates the world. At times densely thoughtful, the novel probes why we make the decisions that we do, the storytelling laser-pointed focus on Mary’s inner turmoil, her rationalizations and running monologues when dealing with cashiers, family members, and even, to her astonishment, a young man who recognizes her for her artistry. Matluck explores rich questions but leaves many answers to readers to answer, guided by insights like “big decisions were nothing but a lot of small decisions piled on top of one another.”

Takeaway: A surprising novel of a pianist’s mind, a mysterious tribunal, and the ethics of everyday choices.

Great for fans of: Nicholson Baker, Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues.

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

Click here for more about The Judges

In this series-starter, down-on-his-luck PI Igg Downs, stuck in a grim section of Los Angeles, is trying to dig his way out of a pile of trouble: his landlady has died, leaving everything to her vicious dog, making Downs his caretaker. But the landlady's great-nephew is trying to evict him anyway, and he's up against brutal cop Jake, who has never forgiven Downs for sleeping with his wife. In the middle of all this, teenage Frankie, on parole from gang activities, tries to engage Downs to find her missing uncle. Her plight pierces his cynical attitude, and they form an uneasy partnership. Downs pulls himself together to help Frankie—and perhaps to achieve redemption.

Allen has a gift for characterizations, and best of all is Downs, who narrates the story in a sardonic first person, admits to clumsiness and knows when he’s outmatched. He's generally pessimistic, but he shows he's not as hard-bitten as he pretends: "People and their feelings were messy. That is why I avoided both religiously." Allen also does a wonderful job with the semi-adult Frankie. Downs sees this right away, and their relationship—prickly at first—comes across as warm and real. Even minor characters come to life in vibrant detail, such as Mamacita, for whom hot peppers solve all problems. The noirish, sometimes playful Raymond Chandler patter is often polished and memorable, though at times it comes on thick, and the plot gets convoluted, but the engaging cast and steady surprises nimbly carry the story.

Allen gets full marks for showing the part of Los Angeles that isn't Hollywood, where the gangs rule. We see Frankie's dilapidated neighborhood, whose downtrodden residents make attempts to beautify it: one owner was "either colorblind or spent way too much time and money at the local weed shop." In the end, Downs navigates through the neighborhood and its denizens to an ending that is both shocking and satisfying, leaving readers to hope for a sequel.

Takeaway: A down-on-his-luck PI finds that a scrappy teen may be his ticket to redemption.

Great for fans of: Robert B. Parker’s Night Passage, Benjamin Black’s The Silver Swan.

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

Click here for more about Murder Can Be Fatal

For most kids, bathroom-related accidents are too embarrassing to discuss, but that’s not the case for 10-year-old Emma Easly. In Schlosberg’s entertaining, conversational book for middle-grade readers, Emma openly discusses her struggles with enuresis, which she helpfully defines as “pee accidents,” and encopresis, or “poop accidents,” to help other kids feel less ashamed of what are actually common problems. Along with her friends from school, Emma has created the E Club, which gives other young people with the same issues a place to feel like they belong. She also collects words that start with E, which are highlighted throughout and listed at the end along with a series of word games.

The best part of this surprisingly lighthearted tale is Emma’s sparkling personality, which makes reading this book feel like talking to a close friend. Emma may be the CEO of the E Club, but her medical conditions don’t define her—she’s smart, funny, and ambitious, declaring that she aspires to be “employed as an essayist.” She’s also capable, independent, and the best goalie on the soccer team, and she knows an impressive number of euphemisms for pooping, many of which she hilariously shares with her new doctor. Seeing that Emma is just a normal kid will help children with similar concerns look more closely at their own positive qualities.

The story is accompanied by Beech’s black-and-white illustrations, which are meant to look as though Emma could have sketched them herself. The pictures primarily show people and places from Emma’s life and imagination, such as Emma being carried on a palanquin and coining herself “the exalted empress of the enema empire” after she masters a new type of treatment for her constipation. Ultimately this book serves as a reminder that accidents are never a kid’s fault and that solutions do exist—but in the meantime, friendship and humor can help, too.

Takeaway: This entertaining, conversational story shows kids with enuresis and encopresis they’re not alone.

Great for fans of: Tracey J. Vessillo’s I Can’t, I Won’t, No Way!, Howard J. Bennett’s It Hurts When I Poop!.

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

Click here for more about Emma and the E Club