John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

Intriguingly wise and emotionally nuanced, Unbearable by Amy Winfield is the surreal story of a lost young camper befriending a curmudgeonly bear – one who can somehow talk, drive, cook, and even debate semantics. Whether the bear is educating Brandon about the danger of stereotypes, saving his life with plant medicine, or begrudgingly becoming his loyal companion, Smokey retains a clever sass that is both sarcastic and smart. Underlaid with lessons about personal responsibility, unfair prejudices, anger issues, self-reliance, bullying, and compassion, this witty and well-conceived short novel is heartfelt, original, and wholly entertaining.

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After a young woman’s brutal murder in the English countryside, the hunt for her killer quickly spirals out of control in The Pike, a gripping UK thriller by J.J. Richards, and the second in his DCI Walker Crime Thrillers series. As potential suspects begin desperately trying to skip town and jumping in front of trains, the heinous killings don’t stop, hinting at a far more sinister explanation than teenage hedonism gone horribly wrong. The repartee of the investigators, particularly between Briggs and DCI Walker, keep the procedural elements of the plot informative and well-paced, without giving away the whodunit, […]

Author Fred D. Hannah III delivers another installment of his Recreation series with The Dead Zone 4: Sleep Now, Forever Do Us Part, a breathless new adventure pitting cosmic Queens against Dark Lords in the DreamSpace outside reality. In a freshly forged universe packed with androids and magic, Aliana bides her time for revenge against the evil force who defeated her friends and eliminated all she ever knew. While things may look normal on the outside, the truth is that reality has become stranger than fiction, and Aliana must tap into all of her spectrum powers if she hopes […]

A spiraling and surreal set of stories from Mikhael Aroni, Your Lucky Day is an unassuming yet compelling work of short fiction. Tracing a mysterious force through the causes and effects it wreaks on average lives and the world at large, “The Noise” is a haunting tale of societal interconnectedness. Exploring identity, risk, and human exploration in modern relationships, “The Power” has a similar premise, but proceeds to deliver a vulnerable narrative around an enigmatic and imaginative protagonist. Layered with intentional meaning and subtle probing of social norms, Aroni offers up a brief but profound read.

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