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Scott Allen Benkie delivers a candid legal thriller in his novel The Lawyer’s Angel. Attorney James Crosson is at his wit’s end with heavy gambling debt and a failing practice, which leads him to take a case involving a CEO despot who is doing everything he can to maintain his throne. Benkie accurately depicts the toxicity of wealth and power through his plutocratic characters, giving the thriller a sense of acerbic social critique. Some dense legal diction slows the novel down at times, and there is an overuse of ethnic stereotypes, but the resolution where characters reimagine their lives […]

With a sublime balance of heartbreak and humor, Judy Haveson shares her life story in Laugh Cry Rewind. Growing up in a loving Jewish family could not protect Haveson’s childhood from unthinkable traumas, including a random act of violence and the death of her adored sister, Celia. Her sister’s calm and wisdom stayed alive in Haveson’s memory as she navigated college, careers, dating, marriage and miscarriages, the deaths of beloved family members, and celebrated the birth of her son. Reading more like an autobiography with its strict chronology, Laugh Cry Rewind is intimate and mesmerizing thanks to Haveson’s conversational […]

In this powerful memoir, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls, Mary Ellen Gambutti narrates the complicated journey to restoring her identity after adoption. Gambutti describes her upbringing, in turns idyllic and traumatic, through reconstructed memories, speculation, and vignettes, aided throughout by personal knowledge, letters, and other artifacts. While some generalizations dilute the memoir’s pointed focus on adoption, readers will be enlightened by Gambutti’s portrayal of an adoptee’s pervasive feelings of loss, impermanence, and abandonment. Gambutti explains how adoptees must stay hypervigilant, which takes center stage when she devotes herself to the search for her family of […]

In the emotive novel Karma, co-authors T. Kennington and C. Roth unravel an engrossing mystery of two women running from a traumatic past of violence and addiction. After narrowly escaping their own deaths, Micah and Rowan flee to L.A. where they run a nightclub and find solace in unexpected love. The third-person perspective successfully cultivates a cagey tone, drawing readers into this decidedly dark take on romance, which dives into a number of difficult subjects, such as physical and emotional abuse. When the pair meet their matches in Caden and Declan, the savior-complex is somewhat disappointing for such fiercely […]

A young adult sci-fi fantasy replete with superpowers and interdimensional aliens, Diana Williams’ Alora Factor: Invasion of the Realm Jumpers is also a surprisingly down-to-earth story, as teenagers and adults alike grapple with changes ranging from the personal and social to the global and metaphysical. In this sensitively crafted YA read, thirteen-year-old Alora must come to terms with her own frighteningly powerful new gift, while fighting a body-snatching alien invasion and looking out for her family and friends. Strong, diverse, relatable characters each bring something unique to this well-woven story, interspersed with world-saving action, which will leave readers eager for […]

Path of the Bearers and Other Stories by Nicholas Licalsi is a creative collection of seventeen science fiction tales that test the ingenuity and limitations of both man and machine – an orphan who grows to 1200 pounds eating pizzas in a spaceship, dangerous multi-limbed creatures, orbs that hold every child’s purpose, and humanized computers are among the original inventions that populate these stories. Thematically linking explorations into outer space and the examination of the interior space of human emotion and fallibility, Licalsi’s stories are uniquely varied and inventive. Several pieces would gain strength from more plot development and less […]