John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

Exploring trauma and resilience in gritty first-person detail, Sleeping Around by Morgan Vega is a powerful reflection on stability, the concept of home, and the heavy baggage we all must sometimes carry. As an intimate coming-of-age tale, this young adult novel highlights the impact the foster care system can have on the mindset and psychological wellbeing of children, and the adults they become. Driven by a complex narrator and woven together with unassuming, conversational prose, the target audience for this book may be older teens moving into a new chapter of life, but the intense themes will resonate with older […]

A painfully relatable story of family, loss, and perseverance in the face of Covid-19, Losing Your Mum in the Apocalypse by E. Mycroft is a confessional story for our times. Written with unflinching honesty about the author’s struggle, grieving process, and guilt surrounding mortality and survival, this is far from an easy book, but it does feel essential. The global pandemic has blanketed the world with grief in all different forms – for people, for the past, for stability and certainty – giving this story broad appeal. While the prose is deeply personal, the relevance is universal, boosted by splashes […]

On the hunt for a brutal highwayman and a local scourge, William is a classic anti-hero on horseback in The Western Bounty Hunter by Samuel Ludke, a hugely entertaining classic western. This novella traces an exhilarating chase for justice, but the protagonist’s strict code when it comes to killing makes the story more nuanced and original than you’d expect. With a small cast of supporting allies, including the fiery Mauer, and brief side plots that add emotional depth, this is a compelling tale of morality, self-control, and redemption. Some of the dialogue needs polishing, as the characters are occasionally too […]