Horn returns with the lively third installment in his Eudora Space Kid series, and this time the mischievous Eudora is battling more personal enemies, including her emotions and bad decisions. When her sister Molly wins the lead part in the school play, Eudora’s role as a background tree pales in comparison. To cope with her jealousy, she bypasses the controls for the ship’s resident robot officer Walter, piloting him into a scene-stealing moment with her sister that ends in disaster for Eudora—and a week in the ship’s brig as punishment. But Eudora’s shenanigans don’t end there, and soon she’s in more hot water than ever before.

Young readers will again be entertained with Eudora’s antics and Horn’s playful storytelling. Eudora unintentionally breaks Walter after he beats her at a board game, kickstarting a massive effort with her best friend, Arnold, to hide the accident—by using Eudora’s newest invention, a “remote-control-person device,” to take over Walter’s movements and voice. As always, her big ideas lead to chaos and a lesson, this time about owning up to your mistakes after Captain Jax needs Walter on the bridge to help stop yet another alien Qlaxon attack, and Eudora and Arnold’s plan backfires. All is not lost however: in typical Eudora fashion, she inadvertently staves off the attack by introducing the power-hungry aliens to competitive board-game play.

Horn’s creative details—Eudora and Molly were adopted by alien parents, and Arnold’s dad is actually a Qlaxon (and the ship’s chief of security)— give the story an exciting interstellar feel, while Tondora’s black-and-white illustrations bring the characters’ emotions front and center. And those emotions form the crux of Horn’s important message: that sharing your feelings and accepting help from others is the true secret to conquering the galaxy. The mock author interview at the end, spearheaded by Horn’s dog, Trixie, and a fun story-centered crossword add extra amusement.

Takeaway: An entertaining space tale with valuable lessons on handling your emotions.

Great for fans of: Lizzie Lipman’s Rocket Kids, Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot.

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

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Hyatt and Salzer’s first linked-verse collaboration together offers poetry of movement between the authors’ verses, choreographed by the Japanese forms of renga, rengay, and others. The collection achieves a “blissful silence of ecstatic dance” in poems that aren’t about merely friendship but are themselves friendship made poetic. In most of the pieces, apart from the solo linked-verse, the poets alternate stanzas, which creates the effect of “roots and shoots.../ push-pull energy/ in a garden/” to cultivate a natural tension but also a stirring awareness of the space between verses, friends, moments, and nature and art.

The subject matter reflects the collection’s poetic form, often juxtaposing, as is traditional in Japanese poetry, seemingly disparate images to illuminate stark truths that relate at times to the political, as in “The Machine” and “A Drop of Water,” the ancestral, as in “Inheritance” and “Grandma’s Stories,” and the natural, as in “Kaleidoscope” and “First Light,” where lines like “tired of the English language / I sit in the shade/ with a cranefly” explore the kind of paradoxes that aren’t housed in the sphere of chaos but rather the sphere of dream. The world is always turning, yet life remains still. Echoes shows readers contradictions of peace.

Yet while Hyatt and Salzer’s poems occupy this lulling, liminal space of blurred consciousness, they also harmonize into a soundtrack or sound-portrait of modern life, and the collection is abundant with lines like this one from “Black Ice”: “breaking news/ in the old t.v./ drifting clouds.” The way we live today is exposed in blends of dissimilar images that pair the mundane with the strange, but the authors throughout point towards how we can find serenity amid this chaos. An echo is a thing between sound and silence, and readers in this collection will find depth and meaning in their exposure to all three.

Takeaway: A linked-verse collaboration exploring nature, friendship, and the spaces between.

Great for fans of: Hiroaki Sato’s One Hundred Frogs, Matsuo Bashō.

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

Click here for more about Echoes: A Collection of Linked-Verse Poetry

The climactic fifth volume of Standal and artist Juan Romera’s Rebirth of the Gangster accomplished graphic novel series (collecting issues 19 through 24) offers more killer street-level crime storytelling, with sincere interest in the hard circumstances that lead to a criminal life and the complex and squalid mess that crime leads to, across generations. In Standal and Romera’s work, the bad choices someone makes right now—or that their parents made a generation ago—are likely to lead to worse ones tomorrow, spinning out into others’ lives. This edition opens with fallout from a death in the previous entry, with the criminal cohort of series protagonist Marcus, actually run by the unstable Hunter, now desperate for a fourth man to run a job targeting a bank … and Marcus’s own mother.

Complicating all this, of course, is the mess they’ve already made, as Lorena Sanchez, a long-ago friend of Hunter’s and a cop on her last case, closes in on the plan. (The heist is planned by men, but it’s the many compelling women who often have the upper hand.) The storytelling is tense, taut, and emotionally resonant, the silent panels of characters going about their days, weighed down by worries, every bit as suspenseful as the action. The creators excel at depicting hard lives, addiction and desperation, at the thrill of plotting a heist but also the compounding tragedies that lead to such a crime—and that will follow. Romera’s layouts are clear, sometimes stark, the emphasis always on the people and gripping flow of action and feeling across a page.

The dialogue is pared to the bone, never wasting a word. Like all the best crime stories, this volume stirs a sinking in the pit of the stomach as the heist approaches, and the violence, when it comes, is wrenching but humane. The conclusion proves satisfying, though new readers are advised to start with the first collection.

Takeaway: The knockout conclusion of a smart and humane graphic novel crime series.

Great for fans of: David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Criminal.

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

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Acharya’s debut surveys the experience of immigration to the U.S., from the perspective of a bright student (and teacher) of literature and journalism. On graduation day at Georgia University, as he waits for his girlfriend Melissa, Nepali native Deepak recalls the two years of struggle after immigrating to the US. He has found the going tough in his new nation, having to scrounge money not only to pay tuition and expenses but also to send home to meet the medical expenses of his ailing mother. Unable to find a job on campus, Deepak has to work outside illegally. His employers exploit him, paying him much less than the required minimum wage, but he is grateful. In class too, he faces ridicule for his Nepalese accent.

Deepak’s experiences are moving and ring true, echoing and enriching truths that have been explored in the body of South Asian immigrant writing. Acharya’s prose tends toward the blunt and declaratory, fitting the drudge work that Deepak, who lacks legal work documents, must take on to achieve his dreams. Deepak’s over-qualified, and often jolted by what he encounters in America, from his friend Ganesh’s refusal of his embrace (“Only gays do so”) to realizations about his own ingrained attitudes: “He claimed he did not believe in the caste system, but every time, when he reached the Dumpster, he felt humiliated.”

This narrative of soul-crushing work and cultural alienation in the interest of ambition is frank, revealing, and insightful. Occasional moments of connection lift the spirits of Deepak and readers alike, though key relationships—like that between Deepak and Melissa, who exchange poetry—are not explored in depth. Melissa’s issues with Deepak come up during the denouement but would have added welcome drama if dramatized earlier. That feeling of being cut off from others is powerful, but the novel comes to fullest life in moments of interaction.

Takeaway: An insightful novel about a Nepali immigrant's isolating experience in the U.S.

Great for fans of: Rajika Bhandari’s America Calling, Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans.

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

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“I see in the clouds a cast of characters speaking to me,” Harrell (The Hell’s Angels Letters) writes in this searching, soaring collection of cloud photography, an art she practices, contemplates, and celebrates while exploring its deep mysteries. “Whose are the images I see as if miraculously, in creating my own photography? How did they get into the sky? Is my mind—really capable of making up such elaborate images?” Harrell’s own images, striking and surprising, suggest multitudes, yielding rich new visions of figures and scenes the longer one gazes into their tufting splendor. An early photograph captioned “Angel Squadron,” for example, might offer a browser, at first glance, a suggestion of a solitary winged figure. Let your eyes linger, your imagination engage, though, and the seemingly abstract cloud gauze around that angel can bloom into a host, every billow and hump alive with sudden definition.

Harrell’s cloud photos are collaborative, between artist and nature, between beholder and photograph, between our at-a-glance perceptions and the deeper, expansive visions we tend to allow ourselves only in meditation or reverie. In inviting prefatory essays, Harrell persuasively links the art of cloud photography to “chance” images from the history of art, especially to da Vinci’s contention that “by indistinct things”—by this he means “the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places” “the mind is stimulated to new inventions.”

Harrell’s writing and photography here both combine the ecstatic with disciplined research and honed practices. The result is both inspired—the photographs reward patience with revelations—and inspiring: for readers, those revelations need not be the same ones that Harrell herself discerned. A chapter on clouds “as a meditative tool” explicitly encourages what the photos implicitly do, urging the discovery of “minute interconnections” in nature. Excerpts from others’ work on the history of chance images illuminate the material.

Takeaway: Seekers will relish this collection’s rich cloud photography and history of “chance images.”

Great for fans of: Robin Kelsey’s Photography and the Art of Chance, Rachel Eisendrath’s Gallery of Clouds.

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

Click here for more about Cloud Conversations & Image Stories--Leonardo's Theory

This powerful and touching memoir, Nixon’s debut, recounts a young man's journey with his mother and her struggle with mental illness—and the deeply troubled systems meant to offer support. With unflinching directness, Nixon pens the story of his family, with the strong support system of his paternal grandmother and his father, navigating the ups and downs of his mother’s illness and the impacts it has on those around them. In addition to sharing Nixon’s story, a heart-wrenching journey that touches on important moments of pain and connection that shaped his upbringing and the man he is today, Born into Crisis also stands as a call to action for change within the mental health community, urging greater compassion, a more personalized approach, and long-term therapy and observation among essential steps to fixing a broken system.

Nixon recounts the harrowing circumstances of his birth, digs into generational trauma, and testifies to the strength of familial bonds even in the face of uncertainty and chaos, all while painting a vivid, deeply personal picture of the ways many who experience mental illness are judged and viewed through a biased mindset rather than given the care and help they need. Nixon tells the story of his upbringing in emotionally charged prose that will resonate with readers of memoirs about trauma and mental issues; elsewhere, he offers a survivor’s clear-eyed assessment of the system itself, helpful breakdowns of new approaches like the Crisis Now model, and suggestions for how anyone can become an advocate for better treatment for a loved one, though at times the analysis of the potential systemic changes is generalized.

The book’s power comes from Nixon’s examination of the toll that living with untreated mental illness can wreak upon a family and the helpful, often inspiring advice and examples Nixon offers. A memoir showcasing familial bonds and rising above one's circumstances, Born into Crisis will resonate with readers facing the impact of mental illness in their lives.

Takeaway: A touching memoir on familial bonds, generational trauma, and mental health awareness.

Great for fans of: Bruce D. Perry’s What Happened to You, Jenifer Lewis’s The Mother of Black Hollywood.

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

Click here for more about Born Into Crisis

In Brown’s playful and inspiring picture book for children, three mechanics overcome doubt and uncertainty to fulfill their dream of writing and performing in a musical. Tony, Joey, and Louie work long days fixing cars and motorcycles in an old and dusty shop, but in their downtime their daydreams take them to the stage. One day Tony announces, “Wake up! The time is now you see! We’ll make this dream a reality!” As they go about their jobs, their tools are suddenly transformed—Tony dances with his broom, Joey builds set pieces, and Louie’s oil funnel becomes a trumpet. At night they stay up late to bring their Broadway visions to life.

Here, of course, is where skepticism sets in, both from themselves and those around them. The enterprising trio encounters various frustrations in their late-night practice sessions, and their concerns are echoed in the mutterings of passersby who “didn’t want the shop to change.” Still, the aspiring performers don’t give up. Tony learns to dance, Joey “glams up” the cluttered shop, and Louie turns pipes and brakes into instruments. The characters’ persistence—and their unfettered joy when they succeed—will show young people that their goals are worth fighting for, even if other people think they are odd. It will also show that self-doubt is a normal part of the creative process.

Eller’s colorful, collage-style illustrations suit this story well, showing the three friends busy at work repairing vehicles and planning and performing their musical amidst cut-and-paste backdrops of tires, tools, and old license plates. Some pictures incorporate many details and real-world images of cars and air compressors, while others are more minimal and allow kids to fill in details with their own imaginations. Ultimately, this story reminds young readers of the value of hard work and determination—and never giving up on one’s dreams.

Takeaway: In Brown’s playful and inspiring picture book,mechanics fulfill their dream of performing in a musical.

Great for fans of: R. J. Palacio’s We’re All Wonders, Matthew Forsythe’s Pokko and the Drum.

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

Click here for more about Mechanics! The Musical

Mindset, Aim, Gameplan, Immersion, and Consistency: that’s the M.A.G.I.C. formula Painter offers up in this inspiring debut aimed at readers who might feel they’re living on “autopilot,”not pursuing—or even articulating—their dreams out of fear of risk or disappointing others. Each step in the formula urges readers toward a new outlook or technique on the road to reaching goals and creating a fulfilled and happy life. "Every successful person has a turning point, the moment they decide they’re not going to live a mediocre life anymore,” Painter writes. Best Version Ever is a resource guide to help readers reach that turning point. He shares his own story with warmth and humor, demonstrating through the telling that it’s okay to face these feelings—and dig deep into what you really want, need, and are capable of achieving.

This brisk, concise motivational guide showcases the power of goal setting, manifesting, consistency and hard work, with Painter offering anecdotes of his business endeavors in real estate and instances where he implemented the M.A.G.I.C. formula in his own life. The emphasis is on the practical, as Painter provides worksheets and trackers to help readers stay on task; each chapter’s "TAKE ACTION" questions and prompts encourage action steps toward achieving change. Painter breaks down each step in his formula chapter by chapter in clear and concise detail. Readers will take away from this book a plan of action to start accomplishing their goals in an effective, organized manner.

The spirit throughout is positive, focused on mindfulness, gratitude, structured planning, and creating healthy habits that make an easier road to success. Painter avoids making grand promises, instead demonstrating how his audience—business owners, college students, or anyone on a self-development journey—can make themselves into their "Best Version Ever"s, one habit-forming step at a time. He reminds readers that this takes work, commitment, a plan, and positivity.

Takeaway: This motivational guide offers a realistic "magic" formula to success and happiness.

Great for fans of: Jen Sincero’s You Are a Badass, Catherine A. Sanderson’s The Positive Shift.

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

Click here for more about Best Version Ever

This impassioned guide to the reclamation of civilian power stands as a culmination of Cienfuegos’s four decades of activism and leadership. The founder of Community Rights US, which “works with communities to pass locally enforceable laws protecting people and nature from destructive corporate practices,” Cienfuegos has dedicated himself to fighting against corporate “personhood.” Currently, he believes we face “the largest social and economic and environmental emergency since the Civil War.” Crafted to help inspire “we the people” to realize the principles on which the nation was founded, How Dare We? compiles speeches, podcast scripts, articles, and essays Cienfuegos has written throughout his career, illuminating the political history of how we got here, and the perennial promise of America itself.

Cienfuegos’s passion is to drive social change by encouraging citizens to stand up corporate governance—“to make this democratic republic live up to the ideals that we were taught about in school.” Chapters examine how to campaign for change, a multifaceted and highly practical approach to how Democrats could handle the issue of logging, and a deep dive into the “two national constitutions” of the U.S., starting with the Articles of Confederation, a “profoundly more democratic document” in contrast to what was later ratified, “a constitution that is all about the rights of property and says almost nothing about the rights of people.” His prose is inviting, crafted to be persuasive to open-minded readers rather than just to rouse the spirits of longtime fellow travelers, and he’s deft at incorporating historical argument and precedent.

Cienfuegos writes with hope in the national spirit but also clear eyes: though he holds pride in America’s revolutionary history, he simultaneously also condemns the country’s “assaults on the world’s people and nature.” How Dare We also emphasizes the practical, especially “place-based and scale-sensitive” organization and activism. Cienfuegos offers concrete, achievable steps citizens can take to bring about change and hold elected leaders accountable.

Takeaway: Rousing, clear-eyed dispatches from the fight against corporate dominance of American government.

Great for fans of: Paul Starr’s Freedom’s Power, Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert’s The Art of Activism.

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

Click here for more about How Dare We?

In a remote town up in the Idaho Panhandle, a group of six women, who call themselves the Sandpoint Monday Writers, have created a community of “word workers” for whom writing “connects their inner and outer landscapes.” Sandpointed shares an inviting selection of this group’s collected works of poetry and prose. Because the authors work in tandem and share prompts, certain images recur from writer to writer throughout this collection; readers will encounter crows, cats, porcupines, and gardens throughout, but they will also be introduced to six different perspectives on women’s stories, the paradoxes of the dichotomy between humanity and nature, and the presence of the profound in the domestic and mundane.

While these poets share certain objects and subjects, their work varies significantly in form and style, with Jackie Henrion’s surrealist, Beat-inspired verses taking on a poetic splatter, and Robens Napolitan’s subtle, soft poems, featuring lines like “I still finger words, turn them over [...] // taste them with the tip of my tongue” use deft metaphors to draw a connection between self and language. Meanwhile, Rhoda Sanford’s contributions include mainly stories about pioneering women ancestors and other figures in her lineage. With this amalgam of Idahoan voices, the collection establishes a profound regional identity rooted in matriarchal power and nature’s capacity to inspire awe.

In Sandpoint, residents are at the mercy of the landscape, which offers chaos and serenity in the same breath, but also a wordless sustenance and nothingness which all the authors draw upon as a muse, each in their distinct writing style. “If I am to be a multitude,” Henrion writes, “a truce must be embraced,” and it is a truce between humanity and nature made with poetry. Residents and visitors of Sandpoint will appreciate the attention to landscape, milieu, and the drift of mind and heart of the region, and the stirring expressions of love of northern Idaho.

Takeaway: This poetry anthology from Sandpoint, Idaho, explores women’s stories on nature, grief, and community.

Great for fans of: Claudia Rankine and Juliana Spahr’s American Women Poets in the 21st Century, Robert Mezey’s Poems of the American West.

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

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The second entry in Braun’s Guest Book Trilogy again blends romance with elements of mystery, suspense, and literary women’s fiction, all in the restored 1920s cabins of Lake Arrowhead in California. Again, the plot revolves—at first—around Annie Park, a divorcee who now runs B&Bs and her own interior design studio. Annie falls for the affable Noah, but when she takes up an out-of-town design project for a rich client, things go astray, and Annie realizes she’s gotten herself into more than she bargained for. Meanwhile, Annie meets Carrie Davis and takes up the task of renovating her childhood home, a job and a relationship that will stir in her the spirit of the roaring twenties and reveal the secret history of Carrie’s family, replete with speakeasies and gangsters.

As in the first novel, Braun’s focus is dual, as The Girls In Cabin Number Three at first emphasizes Annie, in this case her budding relationship. Things take a turn with the arrival of Carrie, a guest whose “friend” Paul, the son of the late mobster Bugsy Siegel, recommended the cabin. From there, the novel splits perspectives, with Annie digging into the bootleggers-and-tommy-gun past and Carrie narrating chapters of her own. This device, twining two seemingly disparate stories, might jar readers new to the series, especially as Annie’s own story is engaging enough to stand alone. Braun’s trilogy centers such structural risks, asking readers to invest in the people Annie encounters—and to recognize the shared themes of renovation, rebuilding, and self-discovery.

Those themes shine through again, and the historical angle offers fascinating detail, eventually even taking over the narrative for a time. The bold choices continue with a late-in-the-game flashback from a new perspective. Lovers of romance and tales of women’s lives with quirky historical asides will enjoy this book, which rewards a willingness to shift one’s attention and seek out unexpected connections.

Takeaway: This ambitious, romance-tinged novel highlights unexpected connections in women’s lives.

Great for fans of: Julia Kelly’s The Light Over London, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.

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

Click here for more about The Girls in Cabin Number Three

The third in Lipinski’s Zane Clearwater Mystery series continues the story of Zane, his pregnant sister Lettie, and their loved ones as their mobile-home lives balance on a razor’s edge. After holding Lettie prisoner, Zane’s half brother Clyde was sent to prison, and the family thought they could move on. But ominous signs emerge, starting with Zane being suspended from his police training program on fabricated accusations, followed by Lettie receiving a baby rattle with sinister messages. These suspenseful portents precede an upcoming new trial for Clyde—after his previous one was overturned—leading Zane, Lettie (and her boyfriend Angel), and Zane and Lettie’s grandmother Verda to fear for their lives. When Clyde escapes after his bail hearing, others presume he’ll want to get as far away from Oklahoma as possible, but Zane and Lettie know that nothing less than a showdown is coming.

Readers accustomed to slick spy or law enforcement novels may be surprised to find themselves in the middle of an urgent blue-collar fight for survival. Both Zane and Lettie have been in trouble with the law in the past, Lettie is expecting a baby at sixteen, and they (and Angel) live with Verda in a mobile home park. But Lipinski shows that not having much doesn’t stop this family; they love each other deeply and will improvise from what they have to survive and stick together.

The story references events that occur in previous books, but Lipinski takes care to ensure everything that matters most is clear, so Stalked by Revenge can work for new readers. The compelling family dynamics at the heart of the story remain easy to relate to, despite all the thriller-novel tragedy this family has endured, and the thrills are enriched by Lipinski’s firm grounding in class, milieu, and life as it’s actually lived. Each character exhibits convincing strengths, weaknesses, and perspectives that make them vulnerable and resonant. The showdown’s gripping, but it’s the people that power this humane nailbiter.

Takeaway: This character-rich rural noir finds a family facing a revenge-minded half sibling’s jailbreak.

Great for fans of: Vicki Hendricks, Harry Crews.

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

Click here for more about Stalked By Revenge

Natural opposing entities are prominently featured in Pollock’s imaginative poetry collection. The title, “Exits,” points to the larger theme, and Pollock considers exits of all kinds, such as the process of toothpaste being “secreted” and the exit of a beloved Japanese woman from this earth. Pollock utilizes scenes and analysis of happenings from the natural world to expound upon the theme of exits, involving many forms of entry as well. This focus gives the work as a whole a worldview current to the nature—and sickness/death-focused—of contemporary life. Further, the poems travel the world, including one based on a Madagascar landscape scene, symbolic of the connectivity available in modern day.

There are darker and lighter poems, but Exits has a greater air of sadness; the creative structure and form of each poem serve to make the work a bit lighter. Pollock uses language steeped in Catholicism to discuss the moment where the author is told he has a nose tumor, and writes about lunar phases through the eyes of his daughter who thinks they’re “like her new glasses, focusing light / and sharpening the world.” Having essentially two focuses in each poem, one in the subject matter and one in the language and form, allows Pollock to more creatively examine concepts and requires the reader to think harder about each short work. It necessitates closer analysis of each line, but not so much analysis that readers will get buried in the weeds of words, as sometimes happens in poems.

What Pollock achieved here is a unique and diverse group of harmonious poems. It engages the creative while staying grounded in the natural and offers analysis of everyday-life scenes. It can be humorous, but it can also be macabre. These oppositions strengthen the actual writing, and aid Pollock in producing the multi-layered depth that distinguishes lasting poetry.

Takeaway: Lasting poems examining birth and death, light and dark, largely focused in the natural world.

Great for fans of: Ted Kooser, Bob Hicok.

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

Click here for more about Exits

Davidson’s debut offers a humane story of friendship, familial bonds, old vendettas, and mystery, all set against the flats of Southwest Texas, where dark clouds are “the only thing breaking what appeared to be a limitless horizon.” A storm certainly is gathering: former pro-baseball player Chris Hamilton travels to Laredo after receiving word that his mentor, Armando “Chico” Guerra, has suddenly died. The death has been ruled natural—Armando was found in the desert, miles out of town—but family employee Edurado suspects murder, and Armando’s sisters insist that Chris is welcomed into the Casa de la Guerra. Though Chris only intended to stay in town for a day to pay his respects, he is compelled to stay until the mystery is solved and his friend's killer is brought to justice.

Davidson does an exceptional job with character development throughout this story. Themes of romance, family, friendship, and community enrich a story rich in Hispanic tradition and culture, as Chris launches an amateur investigation. Chris must look up a "ghost" from his past, and soon discovers that uncovering more about his mentor's life also uncovers aspects of his own family– and a reminder that family is who you make it, and that it’s never too late to fix broken bonds.

Tree of Redemption is a slow burning thriller that will pique the interest of readers who favor character-driven drama with elements of empathetic literary fiction over plot-first thrillers. Davidson creates a protagonist that readers will find highly relatable and endearing, bringing his milieu and relationships to life with telling detail, engaging dialogue, and a welcome sense of life as it’s actually lived. Readers will find themselves just as invested in finding out whodunit as with how everything will work out for Chris and his newfound friendships in the end. This mystery thoughtfully crosses genres as well as cultures, and will hold attention until the satisfying conclusion.

Takeaway: A culture-crossing Texas mystery, rich in character, connection, revenge, and romance.

Great for fans of: Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone, Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes.

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

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Rush kicks off her Eternal Light series with a supernatural romance that blends the tropes of fated love and opposites attract. David Sadler, the world’s only half-demon, has been released from his centuries-long sensory deprivation punishment for failing to collect his last Mark for his infernal Master, and tossed into a contemporary nightclub to look for his new one, teenager Jessica Hanks. But two Guardians have also been sent to find Jessica, because of her unique importance as a conduit for good. David soon realizes that he could use Jessica to bargain for his own soul, but that if he can’t resist his attraction to his adversary Guardian Rebeka while capturing Jessica, he will transform, irreversibly, to full demon. (An additional novella, also supernatural but not in the same setting, is included in the volume.)

Rush’s grand depiction of the battle between good and evil and her relatable main characters will please supernatural fans with a mix of the familiar and unexpected. Rush establishes the basics of the conflict clearly in the initial chapters, but although the framing is clever, the focus on binary rules, regulations, and prophecy can feel rigid. There’s rich narrative possibilities in centuries-old supernatural beings navigating the modern world, and the social relationships between characters here suggest that history and complexity. Giant street battles offer hosts of angels and demons, inviting readers to revel in the epic, ancient scope, while Rush never loses sight of the urgently personal intrigue at the novel’s heart.

There’s real depth to the relationship between Rebeka and her protective “brother” Russell, which grounds the spy vs. spy aspect of the search for Jessica and serves as a secondary barrier to her budding relationship with David, possibly more so, at this point, than in the romance itself. Rush understands her genre, challenging and honoring its expectations, and offering delights for readers who find appeal in supernatural transformations, as both Rebeka and David gain their literal wings and come into their spiritual own at the story’s peak. The arc of the novel both completes cleanly and leads directly into the next entry.

Takeaway: Rush’s relatable leads and grand clash between good and evil will please supernatural fans.

Great for fans of: Ilona Andrews, D.G. Whiskey’s Fallen.

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

Click here for more about EXILED (Eternal Light Book 1)

Weinberg’s clever, surprising riff on and corrective to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol launches from a fruitful question: “How could God let Scrooge be redeemed, while Marley wandered forever, wrapped in chains?” The answer, when it eventually comes, involves love. Also: the transmutation of life into fiction and fiction back into life, achieved through magic, the theater, ghosts, the life of Charles Dickens, and God herself—who looks like a blonde Tina Fey. Also crucial are the machinations of witches of both the 19th and 21st centuries, one of whom treats her lover, an unknowing real-life Scrooge, to a sorcerous vasectomy. For all its wild inventions, at this novel’s heart is a portrait of a contemporary playwright, whose work brings her not just a Tony at age 25 but the attention of someone she never could have expected: the ghost of the actual Marley, the man whom Dickens—in, as Weinberg imagines it, a fit of pique and divine inspiration—immortalized as Scrooge’s partner in the Carol.

The book is wild, comic, sexually frank, restlessly inventive. The narrative vaults over centuries and lives, between mortal and ghostly realms, its best scenes established with quick telling details, about contemporary theater or the gentlemen’s clubs of Victorian London. Like Dickens’s classic, Scrooge’s Folly opens in the real world, introducing the fantastical to reveal human capacity for charity and redemption.

This is appealing material often undercut by inconsistent scenecraft. Early chapters centered on the development of playwright Andrea Smilow have the feeling of a script treatment rather than fully dramatized fiction, with crucial events passing in a blink, a tendency that continues throughout. Andrea’s compelling, as is her friend Beth, the strongest witch in contemporary North America, though what precisely such a distinction means Weinberg leaves to readers. Andrea’s present connects to the pasts of the (real-life!) Scrooge and Marley in gratifyingly surprising ways, and the project, in the second half, of finding redemption for Marley and romance for all is wholly original, building to a happy ending and bursts of comedy and insight.

Takeaway: A bold, playful riff on Dickens’s classic, bursting with ghosts and ideas.

Great for fans of: Jon Clinch’s Marley: A Novel, Samantha Silva’s Mr. Dickens and His Carol.

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

Click here for more about Scrooge's Folly - Saving Jacob Marley