John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

Offering a compelling argument about the cons of parenthood, Why You Should Never EVER Have Children: The Easy Path to a Privileged Life by DJ Dean is an amusing and unapologetic rebuttal to the biological imperative. From the towering expenses of child-rearing and its relentless demands on your time to the negative impacts on one’s health, socialization, and career ambitions, this casual but serious manifesto is an off-the-cuff takedown of the pressure to procreate. For any prospective parents teetering on the edge of life’s biggest decision, Dean unleashes a methodical and persuasive argument that having a child could actually be […]

A captivating combination of art world intrigue, familial devotion, and the sinister price tag of fame, The Haunted Artist by Larry Witham is a gripping fourth installment of the Julian Peale Art-Crime Mystery series. When Colleen Mason’s brother dies under suspicious circumstances, mere months after his star rises as an enigmatic genius of the art world, she enlists the skills of Julian Peale to sniff out fake from fact. As the layers of deception and fraud are peeled away, Julian discovers the manipulative forces, alluring promises, and occult powers that led to the artist’s meteoric rise and tragic fall. A […]

A compelling collection of visionary short stories that flirt at the edge of the miraculous, The Palmse Music Box by Rae Richen is a transportive and insightful work that questions the line between fate and free will. Themes of time, luck, life, death, and their remarkable interplay are peppered across these stories, arising in tales about the redemptive nature of gardens, cruel imbalances of destiny, the double-sided blade of scientific discovery, and the innate human drive to explore beyond what we know. Diverse in style, subject matter, solemnity, and length, these time-spanning stories are a celebration of everyday mysteries and […]

The legacy of ancient alien castaways collides with a contemporary crisis on Earth in Ghost Flower by William F. Merck II, a genre-defying adventure of time travel, love, and destiny. More than 4,000 years after their intergalactic arrival, extraterrestrial descendants must help a team of researchers unravel a virological mystery and stop a devastating pandemic in its tracks, traveling back to the Rennaisance – including a dalliance with Shakespeare – to save the future. Despite some stilted elements in dialogue, the alternating narrative streams, imaginative technologies, and compelling cast of characters both human and alien make this creatively crafted novel […]

A thrilling tangle of ancient traditions, the advance of time, and a non-native lawman trying to keep the peace in rural Alaska, Raven’s Legacy by Charlotte Stuart crackles with originality and small-town tension. When the local arts center is robbed of its priceless artifacts, the divided Tlingit village turns to Jonah St. Clair to find the thieves and return their titular legacy. However, when potential witnesses start getting cleaned up like loose ends, the case takes a murderous turn that threatens to tear the entire community apart. A police procedural steeped in immersive detail and a magnetic cast of believable […]