Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty is a haunting, provocative debut that blends horror, satire, and social commentary into a dark reflection of our beauty-obsessed culture. With an atmosphere that is both luxurious and grotesque, this novel exposes the monstrous side of perfectionism […]
Book Review: Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki – A Luminous Blend of Music, Magic, and Humanity
Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars is a novel that defies categorization. It’s part science fiction, part fantasy, part contemporary drama and entirely original. It’s a story about a violin teacher who owes her soul to the devil, a runaway transgender prodigy […]
Ry Herman’s This Princess Kills Monsters is an absolute delight a sharp, funny, and gloriously queer reinvention of the Grimm Brothers’ The Twelve Huntsmen. It’s the kind of story that knows exactly how ridiculous fairy tales can be and loves them all […]
Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters is a big, generous novel that aims for the whole constellation of a life: family, diaspora, art, love, ambition, and the curse of loss that seems to hover over every generation. Told across three decades and structured […]
Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne is a triumph of imagination and emotional depth, the kind of epic fantasy that feels both ancient and urgently modern. Drawing inspiration from Indian history and mythology, Suri crafts a world of burning temples, forbidden magic, and […]
Rivers Solomon turns the haunted house inside out in Model Home, a literary horror novel that treats a gated Dallas McMansion like a fault line running through one Black family. It is eerie, emotionally brutal, and relentlessly thoughtful. Where many hauntings end […]
Andrea Bartz returns with a moody island thriller that trades neon cocktails for rip currents. The Last Ferry Out strands grief stricken Abby on Isla Colel, a once buzzy paradise hollowed out by a hurricane and a vanishing ferry schedule. She has […]
Elle Sprinkle skates into college romance with a confident slow burn in Like a Power Play, a sapphic hockey rom com that pairs a driven team captain with a reluctant student coach. The result is equal parts on ice grit, off ice […]
Alix E. Harrow’s brisk, glittering novella takes Sleeping Beauty off the pedestal and drops her into a multiverse of girls who refuse to lie still. A Spindle Splintered is part portal fantasy, part fairy-tale critique, and part love letter to best-friend devotion, […]
Isabelle Popp’s Let’s Give ’Em Pumpkin to Talk About is a spicy, small-town romance that blends humor, heart, and just the right amount of fall coziness. With its grumpy-meets-sunshine dynamic, an eccentric Midwestern setting, and a fair dose of pumpkin-scented chaos, this […]