“My mother did not move from the bungalow’s doorway. Her apron, stained with baby burp and breakfast grease, seemed to pull down at her narrow shoulders. She brushed a dark sheaf of hair away from her face and boosted my…
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…
Several months ago, one of my mother’s childhood friends died. Margie was a librarian, teacher, writer, activist. Although we hadn’t connected in many years, she remained a vivid part of my memory of childhood, very much the color Red. At…
Jason June’s JAY’S GAY AGENDA is a new, delightfully queer YA about life after coming out. When teen Jay is officially known as the only gay student at his school, he’s overjoyed to find out he’s moving to super-queer Seattle….
“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…