Three children evacuate London for Sussex during WWII and make a surprising series of discoveries in this reflective novel from Mulhorn (The Release). Fourteen-year-old Katie and her younger brothers Angel, 10, and Tom, six, are on a farm belonging to their grandparents, whom they call Biddy and Codger. Their father, a soldier, is stationed in North Africa and their mother works for the Ministry of Information. In between farm chores and irregular schooling by their distractible grandmother, the children discover signs of someone bivouacking in a forested part of the property. They stake it out and meet Stanely Mobbs, a young draft dodger. Stanley becomes like an older brother, indulging the two boys’ games and winning over Angel, who initially wanted to report Stanley to Biddy and Codger. The siblings sneak him food and keep his presence a secret until Angel is attacked by knife-wielding bullies. When Stanley intervenes, he’s stabbed, prompting Angel to take him to Codger, who’s a doctor. Codger is sympathetic to Stanley’s predicament and tries to help him become a medic to avoid the front lines. Meanwhile, during a surprise visit from the children’s injured father, they learn a secret about their origins. Mulhorn effectively conveys the children’s sense of their lives being in suspension while they wait out the war. It’s an affecting family drama. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this affecting debut from Gongola, a preteen navigates family strife near the end of the Vietnam War, tries to be a hero, and discovers the truth is not always what it seems. Stevie Stepanek, 11, grows up in a New England mill town, raised by a father who lost both legs as an infantryman in WWII, and who frequently trades barbs with Stevie’s mother, a waitress and heavy smoker. Stevie absorbs his family’s pain even more intensely upon the return from Vietnam of his older brother, Paul, who’s suffering from PTSD and has gone mute. When the Barnes family, who is Black, moves in across the street in their predominantly white neighborhood, Stevie resists his parents’ racist admonishments to stay away from them. He befriends Ronnie, the family’s youngest, and the two become altar boys together. After Stevie begins to suspect their priest, Father Gabe, of molesting Ronnie, he sets out with Ronnie’s brother Marcus to investigate, setting the stage for an improbable plot twist. Much better are the nostalgic scenes of Stevie’s everyday challenges and triumphs, as when he convinces his parents to help him fix up his broken-down Schwinn Sting-Ray, or plays pick-up baseball with his friends. It’s an enjoyable if simplistic trip down memory lane. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Krenik’s promising debut nimbly melds fantasy and mystery for a satisfying whodunit set in 2226. Courtney Drake has spent two years distraught over the disappearance of her husband, Keith, who vanished while coordinating assistance to hurricane victims in the Tropics. She’s stunned when a letter arrives informing her that Keith was arrested for spreading lies about PAX, a group of anti-democratic elites who masked their desire for power as an earnest attempt to improve living conditions for working people worldwide. Strapped for money, Courtney agrees to tutor the five-year-old twins of Lord Robert Ranfurly, a widower who has been secretly working with anti-PAX group CAPE, to which Courtney’s son, Nick, also belongs. The job becomes more complicated when Lord Ranfurly’s gardener is killed, possibly by PAX members or sympathizers, and Courtney teams up with Lord Ranfurly to solve the murder, hoping the investigation might lead her to Keith. Krenik toggles between Courtney’s and Ranfurly’s perspectives, which helps flesh out a future filled with dragons and nefarious government conspiracies. With satisfying reveals and tantalizing sparks between the protagonists, this will leave readers eager for the sequel. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Wood’s simple and straightforward debut traces the friendship of three women from young adulthood into their late 70s. In 1946, recent high school grads BT, Joanie, and Edie view a summer waiting tables on Martha’s Vineyard as a chance for liberation from the “tightly bound cocoon” of Little Cliffs, R.I. Indeed, the girls do find freedom—especially BT, who embarks on a summer fling while her fiancé, Leo, is stationed overseas. Decades later, recently widowed Joanie struggles with whether to confess the role she and Edie played in BT and Leo’s eventual broken engagement. Toggling between the first-person perspectives of all three women, the novel shifts between the present day and that pivotal youthful summer and touches on each woman’s relationship and career trajectories during the intervening years. The emotional core is the steadiness of the women’s friendships over decades of disappointments by parents and spouses. Reuniting near the novel’s end, they reflect on the meaning of “coming of age,” with Joanie musing, “What age? Old age? Have we come into it yet? All I know is that life is getting shorter and friends could leave us.” Archival photos sprinkled throughout lend authenticity to the refreshingly unsentimental narrative. This satisfies. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/15/2025 | Details & Permalink

Stuart’s fifth Seattle-set whodunit featuring PI Cameron Chandler (after Moonlight Can Be Deadly) succeeds as both a mystery and a poignant exploration of homelessness. Cameron works for the scrappy, budget-conscious Penny-wise Investigations, whose office is in a shopping mall. While walking through the mall one afternoon, Cameron spots a young boy fleeing two violent men. She hides the child in her office, feeds him, and asks why he’s in trouble. He tells her his name is Cole White, and that he was being followed because he witnessed his pursuers kidnapping a woman named Bess who lived in the same homeless camp as him. Cameron decides to take Cole into her home and investigate the matter pro bono. As she digs, she learns that Bess is just the latest in a string of victims who have been snatched from homeless encampments across the city, and that most of the crimes haven’t been reported to the police. Stuart makes Cameron’s empathy and anger palpable as she tries to track the kidnappers down, offering a fresh and quietly hopeful spin on noir conventions along the way. This is a winner. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this melancholy fantasy, Huie (the Thedre trilogy) unspools a dragon’s centuries-long life story. Young warrior Sisal grew up hearing her grandparents’ tales of the monstrous red dragon that has been oppressing the town of Vakfored, hoarding precious materials and devouring any who disobey. Now Sisal is the chosen hero to slay the beast—but when she enters the dragon’s cave, he politely introduces himself as Vakandi Foreldri, once known as Life Giver by the people of Vakfored. He promises to “leave Vakfored alone if you listen to my story.” The dragon goes on to chronicle how, 800 years prior, he saved a group of humans, orcs, and dwarves from wolves and led them to a safe place to start a village. Over the centuries, he protected the townsfolk from monsters and foreign invaders. Vakfored came to excel in art, music, and magic, but always relied on Vakandi for protection, something the dragon realized too late could bring about the town’s downfall. He knew he had to teach the townsfolk to defend themselves, even if it meant they turned on him. It’s a promising premise, and though the prose is a bit clunky, Huie imbues Vakandi’s backstory with a good mix of sorrow and affection on the way to a heartfelt conclusion. This poignant tale is sure to please dragon lovers. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Sci-fi author Gerrib (One of Our Spaceships Is Missing) delivers a solid suspense debut. In 1986, high school senior Pat Kowalski is working on an oral history of Eastville, Ill., for his final project. He spends his birthday at his great-grandmother Barb’s nursing home in hopes that she might offer up useful stories, but he’s unsure how seriously to take her claims that, in 1896, a stranger with gold coins and a gun in his pockets dropped dead outside her Eastville home. Barb tells Pat she found the stranger’s bag nearby, which was overflowing with gold, and kept it for decades as a rainy day fund. She says $12,000 remains, but grows confused when Pat asks her where it is. With his father dying and his mother facing foreclosure on the family home, Pat sets aside his history project to track down the treasure with only Barb’s foggy testimony as his guide. His search catches the attention of his classmate, Vincent “Three Sticks” Bisceglie, who also needs cash, and who proves he’ll go to surprising lengths to get it. Gerrib wrings a lot of tense fun out of the treasure hunt, and Pat is an appealingly sensitive teenage lead. This grown-up Goonies riff is a treat. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

In Martynenka’s passionate if uneven debut, a young woman reflects on her infatuation with a rock star and his untimely death from a drug overdose. As a teen in 2008, Janina travels from Belarus with her rock journalist father to Ukraine, where he’s covering a music festival. After catching a set by Rockets, she falls for keyboardist Raman. They later connect over social media, and in 2015, he invites her backstage at concerts in Belarus with his new band. At one point, Raman even declares his love to her from the stage, but he also keeps her at a distance, typically abandoning her after a show to hook up with another woman or do drugs. Janina’s friends frequently warn her that Raman isn’t good for her, but she persists in obsessing over him and trying to get him help for his addiction to heroin, even as friends start leaving his side. After Raman dies, Janina is plagued by survivor’s guilt. The narrative contains some astute observations about the nature of addiction, though they’re often delivered in unpolished prose (“I needed the constant embrace of alcohol to shield me from the overwhelming emotions”). Still, it’s a convincing depiction of one person’s unhealthy pull on another. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 07/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Former actor Lenz (Hello, Rest of My Life) delves into Hollywood film lore with his immersive latest, about a personal assistant’s quixotic 1970s quest to complete an obscure unfinished film rumored to have costarred John Wayne and James Dean. Emily Bennett first hears about Showdown’s 1955 production from a fellow extra on a 1973 TV shoot. A few years later, while working for an actor on the set of The Shootist, Wayne’s final film, she works up the courage to ask the taciturn star about Showdown but fails to convince him to finish it (“I’m too old to play myself,” Wayne says). After Wayne dies in 1979, she recruits Wayne impersonator Tom Manfredo and Dean impersonator Jimmy Riley to act in the film, and a love triangle develops as she falls for Tom while Jimmy nurses his feelings for her. Things get a bit unwieldy in the melodramatic third act with a pair of shoehorned and occasionally confusing Oedipal motifs (one character has killed his father and another may have had sex with his mother), but for the most part Lenz, who also appeared in The Shootist, offers a fascinating perspective on Hollywood’s Golden Age and its pull on his cast. This is worth a look. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 07/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

Fogle (City of Liars) offers an enchanting narrative of the tumultuous friendship between composers Erik Satie and Claude Debussy. In 1890, 24-year-old music school dropout Erik meets the older and more successful Claude in a Paris music shop. Claude, recognizing the young man’s talent, invites him to become a Rosicrucian, and the order performs one of Erik’s pieces at a salon. Still, Erik struggles to make ends meet until he finds success incorporating American popular music into his compositions, while Claude takes a break from his own work to care for his wife after a miscarriage. Their relationship turns sour after Erik learns that Claude, who has grown resentful of Erik’s success, has used part of his work without permission in the 1908 piece “Children’s Corner.” Some of the prose is awkward (“I never wanted to perform dreary sauerkraut to their standards of mechanical perfection,” Erik narrates, describing his dismissal from a conservatory as a teen), but Fogle effectively captures the composers’ innovations and respect for each other’s work (“Somewhere between a chant and a recitative.... The music blurs the temporal boundaries, drawing me into another world,” Erik remarks on Claude’s 1902 opera, Pelléas et Mélisande). Those with an interest in classical music will find this hard to put down. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 06/27/2025 | Details & Permalink