A young woman lies at the heart of this tangled mess of a story, as one so often does, but Toni is far from a plot device. She’s a hard-drinking badass with a psychopathic soft spot for violence and a dangerous temper. Protecting this gangster’s lover in the seedy streets of South London leads Eyrie Brown into a weekend of gunfights and bloodshed that he’ll never forget […]
Penned from the whimsical perspective of a child, My Mommy Does Weird Things by Amelie Julien is a fun and heartfelt read for both children and parents. Focusing on some of the strange responsibilities of mothers, and how funny some of them must look to children, the book inspires empathy as well as laughs. The full-page illustrations are vibrant and engaging, and the translated text is well done – though “bizarre” may have been a better choice for the title. Most of all, the subject matter is universally relatable, with each page offering amusing insights about parenthood.[…]
Thomas Trimble spins a tall and entertaining tale with Mystery in the Mine, a quick and spooky read with a keen sense of history. When Michael Bishop inherits an old mine, he doesn’t expect the supernatural assistance that seems to be leading him to untold riches. Though the narrative relies a bit too much on exposition, rather than action and dialogue, this charming ghost story focuses on the value of hard work, hope, and a bit of luck to uncover your own personal riches.
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The line between dreams and reality is shattered in Nightmare City by author P.S. Newman, the first book in her new Nightmare City series.
Los Angeles has collapsed into a dystopian roller-coaster, one in which the stuff of nightmares crosses over into the real world. To prevent complete destruction, the world has changed, and hunters patrol this new landscape, eliminating the horrors from the depths of dreams. Eden Maybrey is one of these shade hunters, someone who walks the night with sword in hand, cleaving horrific visions from reality.
This is a world where every shade is tracked back to […]
Childhood innocence and grown-up cruelty clash in Cape of Storms by author Bianca Bowers, a gripping coming-of-age tale woven through one of the darkest periods in South African history. Rosalinde is the precocious and endearing protagonist, an 8-year-old whose life is shaken and eyes are opened over the course of two shocking decades. With the South African landscape as a beautiful but sinister setting, this novel is a gripping and unforgettable account of one of humanity’s great failures, told with sensitivity and eloquence from a uniquely powerful perspective.
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When the enigmatic Dave rolls back into town with a legendary stash for sale, Rhiannon Karlson has no idea that her life is about to change forever. Thrown thirty years back in time in the midst of a wild DMT trip, Rhiannon finds herself tuning in, turning on, and dropping out in San Francisco at the peak of the Love Revolution. From Grace Slick buying her a beer to an epic trip to Woodstock ’69, this book is […]
No matter how far you go, you can’t run from the past, a hard truth that Stuart James discovers in Did You Hear About Stuart’s Desert Burial?: A Dark Tragicomedy and Cautionary Tale by David Bath. Getting roped into a half-baked scheme to rob a Vegas club, Stuart has no idea the chaos that Jenna and Gabe are about to bring down on his head for a payday. With whip-smart dialogue and visceral narration that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud, this is a savage and unpredictable scramble through morality, love, and deeply desperate times.
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The age-old conflict between undirected randomness and intelligent design gets a new referee with the thought-provoking Purposeful Evolution by Ron Deming.
Deming argues that many examples of rapid, seemingly reactive adaptations in species must be the result of some interaction or assessment of the environment, rather than the gradualism of natural selection, which can often take thousands of generations and hundreds of thousands of years. This “purposeful evolution” theory attempts to break down the binary of Darwinian evolution vs. creationism, instead considering the relationship and reactivity of organism to environment over a much smaller time scale.
Backed up with dozens […]