Holly returns to small-town Alabama in the emotional companion piece to The Stories We Keep. Cat, 17, bonds with new student Glen Lewis in 1981 over the loss of their fathers—hers recently died in a work accident, while his abandoned the family. The pair start dating, but trouble brews during the summer months when their classmate Ally spreads rumors that Glen had sex with her. Glen then informs Cat that Ally is telling the truth, but that it happened before he started dating Cat. Later, Cat spies Glen talking with another girl at a Fourth of July party and then sees him hanging out with Ally outside of a bar. Cat chooses to ignore further rumors of Glen’s infidelity and marries him immediately after graduating from high school. She gives birth to a daughter, Jenna, a couple of years later, but Jenna is colicky, and Glen becomes distant and neglectful, often spending time at a bar after work, and Cat wonders if she should have heeded earlier warnings. The narrative can feel repetitive, especially as Cat and Glen constantly pick at each other, but it builds to a satisfying and hopeful conclusion. Readers will be stirred by this bittersweet bildungsroman. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Wilder’s lively fourth whodunit featuring PI Liz Adams (after A Christmas Conundrum) sees her tracking down her new husband’s missing friend. Liz has just married her former client Brad O’Connor. After she helped Brad identify who was hacking his identity-theft protection company, he and his business partner, Tim Knight, sold the business. Tim has moved to the island of Grand Cayman to try his hand at writing, planning to fold his research about the area’s history of money laundering into his first novel. Before he can complete his manuscript, however, he vanishes. When Liz and Brad, who are in Grand Cayman for their honeymoon, learn about Tim’s disappearance, they determine to find him. Their probe is made more complicated when it intersects with that of Liz’s old flame, JP, a French intelligence operative who’s been assigned to investigate money laundering in the Caymans. Wilder’s answer to the question of Tim’s whereabouts is both logical and surprising, and the tropical setting offers plenty of pleasures for armchair travelers. Fans of Carolyn Hart’s cozies will enjoy themselves. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

A ghostwriter uncovers her client’s secrets and finds love and danger in this enticing tale from Mekler (Sunrise Shows Late). In 1980 Paris, wealthy industrialist Luc Kasten hires 30-something American journalist Diane Jameson to ghostwrite a memoir to share with his family. Diane accepts, intrigued by the charming older man, and agrees to spend the weekend with him at his home in the south of France. Despite Luc’s claim that he wants to set the record straight (“My life has been half-truths for a very long time”), Diane has trouble getting him to disclose seemingly innocuous details, like the name of his childhood best friend. When she presses him, he redirects by flirting, and she begins to fall for him. She also starts digging into his past, casting doubt on his stated birth year of 1920 and discovering that Guy Thibault, an old enemy of Luc’s who was responsible for sending him to a concentration camp during WWII, is now blackmailing him, having recently figured out his long-ago misdeed, which Mekler doesn’t reveal until late in the novel. With Diane enmeshed in Luc’s life and Guy after him, the narrative blends an enriching morality tale with a suspenseful game of cat and mouse. WWII fiction fans won’t want to miss this. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

A Native American girl discovers her sexuality and reels from sexual abuse in this frank outing from Hart (Native Love Jams). Winnow Sticks is five when she and her friends mimic a sex scene from a movie they glimpsed their parents watching. At 10, Winnow is sent by her parents, who are getting divorced, from their Red Lake Nation home in Minnesota to live with her aunt Shelly in Arkansas. There, she befriends a girl named Sarrah, who kisses her. Shelly gives Winnow a pornographic magazine to explain sex, which she and Sarrah look at. Then Winnow moves with her aunt to Texas, where Shelly forces her to attend a weekly Bible study session at a local church, during which Winnow regularly locks herself in the bathroom to masturbate. The narrative blends Winnow’s coming of age with harrowing episodes of sexual assault, as when she’s abducted as a preteen by two boys who threaten to kill her if she doesn’t have sex with them. Here and elsewhere, Hart’s gritty and plainspoken chronicle glimmers with poetic insight—Winnow, humiliated by the attack, spends the night outside, “staring up at the stars, wondering how far my pain and fear stretched out beyond my body. It felt like it was traveling to at least the edge of the solar system.” This bracing tale is worth a look. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Deracine (Algorithms of Betrayal) offers a nuanced depiction of a friendship between two women that might become something more. The story takes place in Silicon Valley on the eve of the 2008 recession, when Laurie Lamont toils as an administrative assistant for a tech start-up. She runs into her colleague Mal Kumar on a double date, and the pair hit it off, agreeing to become roommates. Mal becomes a steady and comforting presence in Laurie’s life, helping her weather a series of breakups and health problems, as when she undergoes a hysterectomy after a blood clot is found in her uterus. The novel gets off to a slow start, but it offers a realistic view into the frustrations of dating in Silicon Valley—one boyfriend installs spyware on Laurie’s devices, while another merely avoids commitment. It gets better as the friendship deepens and Laurie develops feelings for Mal, causing readers to hope the women will eventually find their way to each other. This charms. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Laqueur (The Man I Love) unspools an evocative if meandering tale of a sex worker questioning his sexuality. As a teen growing up in 1970s Queens, N.Y., Javier “Jav” Gil deSoto is caught having sex with a male cousin by his father, who beats him and throws him out. Working as a waiter, Jav comes across a woman named Gloria who mentors him as a male escort. He then meets a young man named Alex Penda, who fled Chile as a young boy without his parents after Pinochet’s military coup. Alex introduces his foster sister, Valerie Lark, to Jav, and she hires him for sex multiple times. Jav is just as interested in Alex, and wonders whether he’s bisexual. In 2006, Jav learns that his estranged widowed sister has died from a fall, and that her will names him legal guardian of her 17-year-old son, Aaron. When Jav travels from New York City to meet Aaron in the Hudson Valley, he runs into Alex, who is now married to Val, and much drama ensues. Laqueur offers colorful insights into sex work (“Everyone has something fascinating about them, Jav,” Gloria tells him. “Your job is to find it. Then you can fuck it”), but the novel becomes overly sentimental as it barrels toward its climax. This sprawling tale is a mixed bag. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Zucker (The Eisenhower Chronicles) offers a comprehensive if occasionally stilted biographical novel of John Quincy Adams’s tenure as secretary of state. Spanning from 1817 through Adams’s inauguration as president in 1825, the story covers the consequential episodes he navigated, including the annexation of Florida, the Missouri Compromise, and the meddling of European empires in the Western Hemisphere that pushed him to create the Monroe Doctrine. Zucker conveys the competing demands of decision makers, including Andrew Jackson, James Monroe, Henry Clay, and various European diplomats, while providing context for the era’s political debates. Interspersed among the political machinations are more modestly revealing insights into Adams’s home life, including his tense relationship with his wife, who feels undervalued, and his sons, whose lack of ambition causes him to bristle. The long conversations between Adams and others lack flavor, but the first-person narration credibly evokes the pressures and strain he felt, especially given his disgust with slavery and the bargains he made that allowed it to expand. Readers interested in early American history will appreciate the depth of detail. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

A woman grapples with her husband’s infidelity in the delightful debut novel from Gallagher (The Divorce Party Handbook). Ruby Bixler is making spaghetti carbonara for her newscaster husband, Brad Diamond, when she answers his cellphone. It’s a receptionist at a hotel, announcing that Brad left his watch there earlier that day. At first, Ruby believes Brad’s lies, but when irrefutable proof emerges that he’s having an affair with his 25-year-old assistant, Natasha, Ruby transforms from people pleaser to diabolical enforcer of marital justice. After her husband forces her out of their home, Ruby goes ballistic, sneaking back into the house to hide shrimp in curtain rods and dump dirty cat litter on their bed. She also seduces Brad into sex, which she secretly films with a nanny cam, planning to share the footage with Natasha (“Ruby knew that she had in her possession a nuclear bomb, a powerful weapon which must not be squandered but must be implemented with great respect”). At times, Gallagher leans a bit heavy on exposition, but she keeps the reader on Ruby’s side with wicked humor and playful irony, as when Ruby sees a billboard advertising Brad as “the newsman you can trust.” Readers are in for a treat. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

At the start of this entertaining but uneven series-launching fantasy from Kenyon (Prince of Storms), 21-year-old Yevliesza is whisked from the mundane world to magical Numinasi, her ancestral homeland, by a dragon-like creature known as a dactyl. Once in this unfamiliar land, one of many alternate realities evolved from human myths, Yevliesza is taken under the wing of dashing ne’er-do-well Lord Valenty. While feeling like an outsider and struggling to adjust to matriarchal Numinasi’s political and magical workings (and lack of modern conveniences), Yevliesza discovers unexpected abilities and becomes infatuated with handsome elven prince Tirhan. Danger arises in the form of enemy forces known in this world as the Volkish, but which Yevliesza recognizes as Nazi troops from Earth. When the Volkish threaten to invade, Yevliesza must master her powers in time to stop them. Kenyon’s worldbuilding is vivid, ambitious, and expansive, but it often raises more questions than it answers. Frequent shifts in point of view, meanwhile, result in some characters being less developed than others and a slightly overcomplicated plot. Still, the romantic tension is well drawn, the heroine is easy to root for, and Kenyon lays solid groundwork for future installments. Readers will be excited for more. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 11/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

In the propulsive latest from Kemanis (Thursday’s List), a young woman tries to find out what happened to her long-lost mother. Feisty firefighter Delicate Soul “Caty” Robertson, 19, was raised by her Black father, Paul Leroy “Roy” Robertson, in early 1990s Berkeley, Calif., after her white mother, Leonore “Len” Witaker, took off when she was an infant. In search of clues, Caty visits her estranged maternal grandmother, who tells Caty a private investigator tracked Len to Los Angeles shortly after her disappearance, but the trail went cold. Caty travels to L.A., where she manages to track down a woman who might be Len. In a parallel narrative set in the 1970s, flower child Len falls in love with Vietnam War veteran Roy, who dreams of opening his own restaurant. Len’s well-off parents disapprove of the relationship and threaten to cut Len off from the trust fund established by her grandmother. Shortly before Caty is born, Len makes a startling choice that forever alters her and Roy’s lives. A further twist near the end of the novel strains credulity, but for the most part, Kemanis adroitly portrays the longing that drives Caty’s search. Readers who enjoy family dramas will find much to admire in this buoyant tale. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 11/28/2025 | Details & Permalink