John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

An original and identity-affirming tale of night-cursed vampires, complex love, and a bold fellowship of imperfect adventurers, Descent of Ravens by A.C. Andrews is a dark and masterful YA novel. Discovering and expanding their sword-and-sorcery powers to beat back the sinister forces of evil, many of the young kinji in this tale are also navigating their own blossoming sexual identities and gender perspectives. The combination of classic fantasy elements and contemporary cultural themes results in a thought-provoking and norm-challenging story that is both deeply intimate and broadly appealing.

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A philosophical, surreal, and irresistible dive into a Nameless City, The Silent Symphony by Marcel M du Plessis is a mind-expanding narrative too weird to be ignored and too wise to be untrue. A series of cryptic characters choose “fatal acts of desperation” and every shrugging misstep is shadowed by the pervading sense that no one and nothing is what it seems, unraveling itself with Kafkaesque levels of psychological symbolism. Cas, Warrick, and Kat form the novel’s magnetic core of artists, dreamers, writers, and wild ones, taking readers on a cerebral journey through a bizarre and eerily silent world, for […]

A transatlantic drama of mafia ties, Vegas dreams, Nazi gold, and one family’s struggle for legitimacy, The Picture Box by Carlo Armenise is a fast-paced thrill of a novel. Complex character revelations and a straightforward storytelling style make this a culturally immersive read that is easy to devour. The blending of long-buried secrets with new and visceral mysteries, jewelry thefts, and inexplicable tragedies keep the story spiraling in unexpected directions, often pushing forward at a manic pace. The prose is sometimes abrupt, and the dialogue can feel heavily explicit or unnatural, but the relentless pace of this shadowy tale is […]

An emotional tapestry of a novel, Under the Weeping Willow by Jenny Knipfer, Book Two in the Sheltering Trees series, is a tender exploration of loss and forgiveness, and how those powerful concepts evolve over the course of a life. Robin and Enid are a mother and daughter whose stories are separated by nearly seven decades, and divided by a deep wound that has never healed, but the discovery of her mother’s journals leads to secrets and revelations Enid never could have expected. A sensitive and well-crafted drama unpacking issues of mental health, layers of grief, societal expectations, and the […]

A stunning and tightly told work of historical fiction, The Coward of Grimsby by Eric Ryan is a swashbuckling, time-jumping story that you won’t want to put down til it’s over. From sunken Spanish warships and brutal mutinies to tragedies of the soul and the undeniable charm of a bygone era, this novelette twists readers’ expectations through a cleverly deconstructed plot that achieves a delightful level of suspense. Tied together with subtle themes and edited to near perfection, this satisfying read may require some suspension of disbelief, but it is a pleasure to get lost in Ryan’s original tale.[…]

Set in a horrific dystopia where mutant scum with telepathic weapons manipulate those few unlucky survivors of the Extinction, Seven Players by Adam Wodyk is a head-spinning dive into humanity’s dark future. Shifting traditional perspectives and twisting narrative rules, the book plunges readers into a wholly inventive, but daunting world – the “acting dreams” of the main character, Max, who is little more than a psychological puppet for the entertainment of the Emperial masses. While the exposition is occasionally clumsy, and some narration is overly explicit, this cerebral slice of dystopian fiction is boundlessly creative and entirely unique, which more […]