Editorial Reviews

A boarding school cooking competition creates a matchless atmosphere for rivalry over family traditions in Mary Ramsey’s engaging and original young adult novel, Run It! Elena has big shoes to fill at the top-tier Toshaini-Kai Institute, including the fact that her mom and dad are both celebrated alumni. Elena faces her similarly well-known peers, while a secret about her father simmers in the background. Mary Ramsey’s novel deftly balances themes of personal loss and sorrow with the pressure of career success, making the book a positive, feel-good read overall, with a fascinating fly-on-the-wall perspective on both boarding school life and […]

A sprawling fantasy world of magic, mana, mystery, and mythology, Mirror of Reality by Alexander Schmid is a sword and sorcery adventure like few others. Pulling from myriad sources of legend and lore, along with original godheads, alternate universes, and super-powered technologies, this epic quest to save the Empire of Geb is a nonstop ride. The breakneck pace and action-packed sequences would be far more impactful after a heavy edit to the writing, as grammatical errors, run-on sentences, repetitive prose, cliche, and idiomatic language, inconsistent formatting, and lack of essential exposition all make the reading experience challenging, but the story […]

A comical spree of interstellar hijinks with genocidal stakes, Zeno’s Last Grain by Jay Gaskell is a wonderfully weird launchpad for the out-of-this-world Galaxy Marshals series. Spilling onto the page in a manic flood of sci-fi action, dumb luck, and unwarranted moxie, these are the misadventures of Jon Simmons, interstellar delivery man, as he rampages through space to clean up an epic mess of his own creation. The writing has as many plot holes as wormholes, the characters are goofy, and the prose would benefit from a merciless edit, but the endless stream of near-misses and sharply clever comebacks makes […]

A captivating time travel romance set in Brooklyn, Crossing the Dateline by Carrie Hannah offers readers a startling mystery surrounding an evocative painting. Justine finds a portal in her home which takes her back in time to 1905 where she sees an illustration that looks strikingly like her mother and begins to fall in love with the portrait’s dashing artist. With the help of Maggie, the housekeeper, Justine gathers clues to determine the origin of the likeness and solve her connection to the past. A clever mix of historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and fantasy, the short chapters of this […]

Tom B. Night’s Circadian Algorithms is a fast-paced sci-fi thriller with a conspiracy angle that prompts questions about the nature of experiential reality itself. Following point-of-view characters Madeline and Darwin in various states of wakefulness and sleep, the story unravels a plan to reorder the future of humanity, while the protagonists unravel somewhat as well, as they must fight to gain and maintain a grip on just what is real. A profound book for any enthusiast of biohacking and dreams, Circadian Algorithms is a profoundly inventive work of visionary sci-fi.[…]

A country lawyer begrudgingly takes on a complicated and notorious murder case in R.G. Ashcroft’s Fetch Me A Hangman, a page-turning legal thriller about crossing tangled ethical lines. Brandeis Fields does not want to defend Aaron Tait, a young man accused of killing the mayor’s daughter, but there’s no one else for the job. Not only will Fields have to contend with the wrath of locals, but he’ll have to cope with a cantankerous client, an incompetent co-lawyer, and the feelings of his own family. While Ashcroft’s writing is sometimes a bit stiff, the book’s gradual twists and turns are […]

A one-sided love story about obsessive fantasy gone wrong, C.O.B.’s The Beauty in Ms. White is a striking novel about the power of delusional assumptions. Carlos Castillo is an unsuccessful novelist living in Philadelphia, where he spends his days as a shoe store manager and his nights in a drunken stupor. After moving into a new apartment, Carlos becomes infatuated with a woman living next door and fabricates an intimate relationship with her. Readers should hold on tight for a wild, sharply plotted ride, as C.O.B.’s unreliable narrator sinks further and further into shocking madness, for an intriguing mixture of […]

In this exquisitely illustrated book written by Elissa Kerr, children will love to learn about beekeeping and making honey. The story, crafted in loose rhyme making it immediately memorable, is both educational and fascinating. The illustrations by Zoe Saunders are so charming and full of natural splendor that the story will give young children a real thrill, especially when we see the bees working in a fantastical hive, complete with goggles and honey jars. A wonderful journey into a fascinating and unusual hobby that will open avenues for exploration and imagination in any child who is lucky enough to discover […]