Cheryl Bostrom’s SUGAR BIRDS is an immersive exploration of loss, redemption, and coming of age in the breathtaking Pacific Northwest wilderness. After accidentally setting a tragic fire, ten-year-old Aggie runs to the woods her father taught her to navigate, where…
Mona Mireles, the prematurely bitter and grumpy protagonist of Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ debut novel Mona at Sea, graduates from college with her dream job at an investment back all lined up. Her hard work has paid off. She’s crossed that…
In P. J. Vernon‘s Bath Haus, Oliver Park, a recovering addict from Indiana, has everything he ever wanted: sobriety and a loving, wealthy partner in Nathan, a prominent trauma surgeon. Despite their difference in age and disparate backgrounds, they’ve made…
The central mystery of Katheen Alcalá’s Spirits of the Ordinary is this: how can a book have everything –breathtaking, living landscapes, gender-bending, gold fever, Indigenous wisdom without cliché or fetishization, Crypto-Jews, empowered women, and profound character arcs – yet still…
“Society cannot exist,” the philosopher Edmund Burke cautioned, without “a controlling power upon will and appetite…men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” A similar warning may reside in The Rock Eaters, Brenda Peynado’s beautifully bizarre…
In 1993, Jeff Arch’s screenplay Sleepless in Seattle became a hit movie, won him an Academy Award nomination, and launched a thirty-year career writing for films. For most of those years, though, Jeff was haunted by a story that insisted…