Uncovered by Leah Lax is her memoir of leaving her Hasidic Jewish community and becoming herself. It might be read in conjunction with Concealed by Esther Amini, also a memoir of leaving a fundamental Jewish family and becoming an integrated person. Lax, a Texan with...
A Matter Of Chance, a domestic thriller, is Julie Maloney’s debut novel. Maddy Stewart, a single mom is on vacation at the Jersey shore with her eight-year-old daughter, Vinni. While on the beach with her daughter, she sees her elderly neighbors, and the husband...
Friends & Other Liars is Kaela Coble’s debut novel, and it’s an ambitious one, told in multiple points of view and past/present timelines. In it, five friends (Ruby, Ally, Danny, Murphy and Emmett) have known each other since grade school in Chatwick, a small...
Love, Art, and Other Obstacles, released May 18, 2020 by Wild Rose Press, is the third in the Book Nirvana romance series. I have read the second, Runaway Love Story and enjoyed it as well, so I'll definitely have to backtrack and read the first. The series is...
Little Voices is Vanessa Lillie’s debut novel. It’s a murder mystery, political thriller, and psychological suspense wrapped into one. Then throw in a blazingly intense family drama of a new mother suffering from postpartum psychosis. Devon, the protagonist, is a...
You Beneath Your Skin is Damyanti Biswas’s debut novel, and it’s a prime example of a murder mystery with plenty of twists and turns in a complex plot. Set in a smoggy New Delhi winter, the book brought to mind my travels through that part of the world—cities teeming...
Were We Awake was released November 20, 2019 by Fomite Press. I'd enjoyed L. M. Brown's first collection of short stories (Treading the Uneven Ground) so much I was compelled to read her second collection of stories. The cover of Were We Awake brings to mind the...
How Fires End is Marco Rafalà’s debut novel, and a stunning one it is, all about families and secrets and trauma. Told in reverse chronological order, How Fires End begins with the story of David, the son of a Sicilian immigrant in Middletown, CT. David’s mother died...
Derailed is author Mary Keliikoa’s debut novel. Kelly Pruitt, a woman in her early thirties, has taken over her late father’s private detective agency. She's never lost the "baby fat" she gained when pregnant with her daughter eight years ago and is physically...
Written in 2015 and independently published in 2016, Don’t Speak (Jade Harrington series, book # 1) reflects the political scene in America at that time. This thriller has a female, Whitney Fairchild, running for president against a conservative male incumbent whose...
Pride of Eden, released March 17, 2020 by St. Martin's Press, is a gritty book inhabited by even-grittier characters. Author Taylor Brown pulls together a diverse cast of mostly-unlikable characters. Anse Caulfield is a Vietnam vet and retired racehorse jockey. He is...
Two girls with totally opposite personalities, Anna and Lia, find an unlikely friendship in high school, one that survives even their interest in the same boys. They have a falling out in college—and Lia walks out of Anna’s life without further word. That event...
Remaining Aileen is author Autumn Lindsey’s debut novel. Lindsey provides new nuances to vampire lore as she twists women’s fiction and vampire paranormal to produce a unique blend that is at times light-hearted and at others vampire-dark. It's a Twilight meets soccer...
Many Restless Concerns: The Victims of Countess Bathory Speak in Chorus is a dark yet beautiful, lyrical, and enchanting read. I read this prose/poetry novel in one sitting, then immediately flipped to the beginning. Though the horror was difficult to endure even the...
Barbara Linn Probst’s debut novel, Queen of the Owls, is stunning: gorgeous prose highlighting a book about creativity, seeing and being seen. As a former photographer and artist, this book has everything needed to intrigue me: Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Steiglitz,...
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