John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

A layered and revelatory second installment of The Nabukko Trilogy, K.R. Gadeken’s Daedalus deepens this already standout science fiction series. After being falsely arrested for a murderous spree that shakes her newfound community, Effie wins back the trust of some, but not all, and must learn to navigate her divided desire for answers, stability, and companionship. Muddling through a murky web of secrets, lies, and half-recollected memories, she journeys to uncover the truth about their collective Obliviation, and risks everything to break the survivors free of a vicious cycle of forgetting. With compelling prose and dextrous world-building, Gadeken puts […]

A gut-wrenching story of chosen family and the heartbreaks that define our identity, A Thousand More by K.S. Lynn delicately captures the burden of loss and the redemptive power of love. Identical twins Shelby and Michelle are separated at birth, but fate brings their lives back into orbit, forcing both to reckon with their inexplicable connection and painful secrets of the past. As they both embark on unexpected paths to motherhood amid their individual griefs, they come to learn what sacrifice and unconditional devotion really mean. A striking example of parallel storytelling that highlights women’s unbreakable bonds and timeless struggles, […]

An edgy slice of sci-fi layered with philosophical subtlety, Hypocrisy by A.J. Thibault posits a near-future crisis when Earthlings learn that non-human intelligence has been living among them for millennia. Caught in a cosmos-spanning war over a buried storehouse of galactic history, Alen Innocent is a bad alien with good intentions, and some serious concerns about the fate of the universe. Returning to the pale blue dot to save his niece and the remaining inhabitants of our “library planet,” this shape-shifting protagonist is a fascinating lead character to explore myriad issues of the human experience, encouraging readers to step back […]

A rugged coming-of-age story set against the cultural battlefield of America’s pioneering past, Rivers of the North by Jeffrey W. Tenney offers an unfiltered glimpse at a hard-scrabble era of survival. After the shocking murder of his grandfather, sixteen-year-old Quincy Sutton leaves Illinois with a group of Mormons seeking a safe haven in Minnesota. Drawn in by youthful infatuation and the possibility of reuniting with his long-absent father, Quincy embarks on a harrowing journey of self-discovery on the expanding American frontier, but crooked lawyers, murderous schemes, religious divides, and the savagery of the “civilized” stand in his way. Mixing historical […]

A mind-opening guide for personal evolution through cognitive revolution, The Modern Know-it-All: A Handbook to Achieving an Infallible Worldview by Brandon Wolfe is an original and far-reaching work of self-help, pulling back the curtain on our artificial world, which keeps the average person pliable, apathetic, and consequently powerless. Encouraging readers to discard outmoded ideas about intelligence in exchange for an emotional, philosophical, and intellectual upgrade, the book acts as a manual to deconstruct inherent biases and subjective ideologies. Though the book has a distinct political bent by bluntly detailing how religion, nationalism, and traditionally conservative belief systems must be abandoned […]