November 14, 2023
In this tale, a traveler equivocates about whether to accept an all-expenses paid trip with his family, then must deal with the questions arising from his decision.
As the story opens, Darren Dallavalle is returning from Africa where he took a raft trip from Victoria Falls down the Zambezi River, then traveled to Mozambique and […]
May 9, 2023
The premise of Zeb Beck’s The Melancholy Strumpet Master is intriguing: By day, Gilmore Crowell works at a school for juvenile delinquents in California, but nights and weekends, he crosses the border to Tijuana where he’s trying to finish his doctoral thesis on street walkers.
After eight years of trying to finish his anthropology doctorate […]
March 14, 2023
Jeremy Haladyna’s novel Oxtail is a madcap romp involving inept law enforcement, nerdy storm chasers, outsized small-town characters, and space aliens.
Sign painter Harley Rennet is a dreamer in Sandusky, Kansas, in search of artistic bliss, a man who “might occasionally —every so often—be spotted lingering in a field, ogling a show of natural beauty.” […]
March 28, 2022
The novel How the Ə Got Producted is written in the salacious style of a political tell-all. It probes intersections of technology and intimacy, subtly interrogates contemporary sexual politics, and offers playful satire of government bureaucracy.
How the Ə Got Producted is an unconventional love story. Its narrator (and author) is N.K. von S., affectionately […]
January 31, 2022
Author Aaron Zevy is back with another boisterous collection of short stories guaranteed to delight and entertain.
Zevy and his zany collection of friends and relatives from previous books return to act as the author’s foils in his predicaments and self-deprecating stories. The author deftly conjures tall tales, perhaps based on reality — or not. […]
January 3, 2022
Nothing’s as it Seems, the second installment in Holly Brandon’s Chastity series, follows 31-year-old, structural engineer Dr. Chastity “Chase” Morgan’s journey to find a career and the man she’ll eventually marry.
Influenced by her grandmother’s prompting and her cousin, Roxie, who gives Chastity an emoji-guided worksheet to find the perfect guy, Chastity hunts for a […]
December 20, 2021
Andy Lazris’s The Great Stupidity is a satire set during the plague, lampooning present-day responses to COVID.
A village blacksmith referred to only as “Smith” has miraculously survived the plague, attributing his luck to religion and science—particularly the advice of The Great Frenchie, a supposedly infallible academic who advises everyone to protect themselves by waving […]
September 13, 2021
Edward Faith’s Tales of the Elder Statesman is a collection of 80 brief stories (averaging two to three pages each) set in fictional Rough Edge, Alabama. Most center on the eponymous “Elder Statesman,” a verbose, curmudgeonly, and inadvertently hilarious plant foreman with countless other side hustles.
The recounting of this character’s misadventures weaves a tapestry […]
July 20, 2021
Jean Marie Davis’ Espoused is a comedic yet tender fable about love and the nature of commitment.
In the novel’s world, the law requires those in a first marriage to uncouple after 15 years. Partners who wish to stay together must endure a lengthy legal process to espouse.
Tom and Sara Healy hire hard-working lawyer […]
June 14, 2021
Escape from Oblivia, by Brian Kindall, imagines one man’s journey from mundane midlife crisis to the magical reality of boyish fantasy.
Will Kirby— novelist, restless husband, and stay-at-home dad—haunts the library researching his hero (and the subject of his next book) Dick Zag, 20th century pulp writer and rugged adventurer. The voluptuous lead librarian, Roxanne, […]