by Rose Atkinson-Carter

Which LGBTQ publishers should you be reading?

Did you know that around 4 million books published in 2023?

Between self-publishing and traditional publishing, new books are filling our shelves every hour, every day. New niches are arriving; old ones are rising to the top. Diverse voices are being shared, and, thanks to some dedicated individuals and imprints, long-standing inequalities of representation in publishing are being challenged. In this article, I’ve listed 7 of my favorite publishers focusing on LGBTQ+ literature.

These publishers are helping authors tell their stories, no matter who they are, how they identify, or what story they wish to tell. From under-represented tales featuring queer heroes, nonbinary relationships, and struggles with sexual and gender identity, the publishers below all champion humanity in all its many shades and preferences.

From fiction to nonfiction, children’s books to poetry, here you’ll find publishing companies that not only challenge the mind, charm the heart, and expand your horizon but, most importantly, show you that fantastic stories come in various forms.

Listen up: These 7 LGBTQ+ publishers have something to say.

1. Arsenal Pulp Press

With over 400 titles in print, Arsenal Pulp Press is a Canadian based LGBTQ publisher that is no stranger to printing boundary-pushing reads. From tackling social issues to publishing eye-opening LGBTQ+ memoirs and BIPOC literature, to adult graphic novels, gender study essays, regional histories, and cookbooks, they’ve always published with a keen eye on the type of literature that engages readers, challenges norms, and asks questions about the world around us.

Some stellar titles from Arsenal Pulp Press include the much celebrated Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi and practical nonfiction like the forthcoming Special Topics in Being a Parent By S. Bear Bergman, which is an illustrated guide for parents trying to understand their child’s identity and queer experience.

2. Flashpoint Publications

Predating Y2K and the earliest days of digital publishing, Regal Crest Enterprises was originally a publisher of lesbian literature that grew to become much, much more. Now known as Flashpoint Publications, this US press champions sapphic romance and publishes books that defy stereotypes and expand binary worldviews. This LGBTQ publisher is a ray of sunshine in this vibrant corner of the publishing world. 

They have titles ranging all across genre spectrum, but the futuristic sci-fi romance, The Last Scion of Ra by K. Aten is an easy favorite! To couple that, Asher Faun’s collections of poems, Love, The Monster in the Closet, illustrates the kind of difference-making they’re capable of with their books.

3. Bold Strokes Books

Since 2004, Bold Strokes Books has been bringing quality queer fiction to the readers of the world. These books are memorable and deserve to be among the best of them.

With a dedicated and experienced team guiding each publication, they offer a diverse range of titles, such as Ride with Me by Jenna Jarvis, a stand-out journey of self-discovery, or the tongue-in-cheek mystery Bait and Witch by Clifford Mae Henderson. Bold Strokes Books captures diverse a myriad of queer experiences with their progressive and evocative titles.

Hey, readers! Don’t miss these recommended LGBTQ+ books from LGBTQ+ publishers.

4. Painted Hearts Publishing

Painted Hearts Publishing is an LGBTQ publisher publishing all subgenres of LGBTQ+ romance. Their catalog includes stories of paranormal lust, contemporary romances, sweet mysteries, historical romps, and urban fantasy adventures. The pages of a Painted Hearts novel are full of candid love, desire, and tenderness. Focused on expression, their titles are aimed toward readers who are looking for not just a great read, but a memorable one.

From Char DaFoe’s A Jade’s Diamond to The Panther and the Dove by Tiffany E. Taylor, Painted Hearts books feature deep characters and unflinching narratives. 

5. Cleis Press

As the largest independent publishing company in the United States focusing on LGBTQ+ themes, you’d think Cleis Press would know a thing or two about being an LGBTQ publisher. And you’d be right! 

With a firm eye on the horizon, Cleis Press has always aimed to serve books that change the way people think about romance, sexuality, and erotica; and not only that, to educate them too.

From fiction to nonfiction, their books cover much under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and the many avenues of pleasure and romance. Their books will broaden your horizon not just in how you view the world, but in how you view yourself.

Their powerhouse nonfiction book The Transgender Child by Stephanie A. Brill and Rachel Pepper is a highly-praised, award-winning book that has helped countless parents support their nonbinary and transgender children since 2008. Translated into multiple languages and sold world over, this book is not only important, but it is unapologetic about what it stands for: love and acceptance.

Hey, writers! Want to know what people would say about your book if it was published today? Try group beta reading!

6. Interlude Press

An award-winning publisher and home to over 90 titles, Interlude Press is an LGBTQ publisher specializing in books that promote understanding and the wide range of experiences of people who identify under the inclusive umbrella of LGBTQ+.

The press was formed in 2014 to publish novels, novellas, short form fiction, and more. With a YA imprint, Duet Books also under their wing, their novels have won many awards, been featured in numerous literary journals and book lists, and most importantly, won the hearts of many readers.

Notable books include Born Andromeda by K.M. Watts or Felix Silver, Teaspoons & Witches by Harry Cook, two YA classics-to-be of self-discovery, inner-truth, and that light which yearns to shine in all of us.

7. Sapphire Books Publishing

An absolute gem in the halls of indie publishing, Sapphire Books Publishing is an LGBTQ publisher specializing in lesbian fiction, nonfiction, and biographical memoirs. Founded by Christine Svendsen in 2010, they produce quality novels that reflect the lives of the lesbian community and their authors. Embracing their diverse and different experiences, this is the heart of their operation. 

The community of authors and readers for Sapphire Books is a strong and welcoming one. Stories such as Control by Kim Pritekel & Alex Ross or Prairie Fire by Kayt C. Peck go beyond romance and dig for a deep experience, personal for not only the characters but the readers too. With complex characters drawing you into their worlds, these books are exemplary of the kind of excellence Sapphire Books is achieving.

Rejoice! Here’s a bigger list of publishing companies!

About the Author

Rose Atkinson-Carter is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace and blog that helps connect authors with publishing professionals and provides free resources on topics ranging from hiring a ghostwriter to setting up book advertising campaigns and everything in between. She’s previously written for Horror Tree, Writing.ie, Nessgraphica, and a number of other writing and publishing blogs. She lives in London.

Thank you for reading “7 LGBTQ+ Publishers You Should Be Paying Attention To” by Rose Atkinson-Carter! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post 7 LGBTQ+ Publishers You Should Be Paying Attention To appeared first on Independent Book Review.

by Joe Walters

Get your pre-order finger ready. Summer 2023 is a season of great indie books.

Summer is a time for heat, for adventure, for vacation, for books. No matter if you’re in love with the season like me and Ray Bradbury or not, I still give you my full permission to dive into something brilliant this season.

Explosive. Groundbreaking. Essential. The indie books on this list are gearing up for big splashes, and I just want to make sure that you see them first. Literary fiction, mystery-thrillers, fantasy romance, climatology, and beyond–this list is anything but exhaustive of the great work indie presses & authors are doing.

So many books have crossed my desk over the last few months, boasting a summer release date. And while many more of them looked great, I can’t help but shout these 23 from the rooftop. Ready to read more? Start here.

Here are 23 indie books coming out in Summer 2023 that you’re going to want to see.

(Everything on Independent Book Review has been independently selected by a very picky group of people. We may earn a commission on items you purchase through our links.)

1. The Lost Journals of Sacajawea

Available May 2023

Author: Debra Magpie Earling

Genre: Historical Fiction

ISBN: 9781571311450

Print Length: 264 pages

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

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Sacajawea was the interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark. You’ve heard stories in schools and history books, but you’ve read nothing like Debra Magpie Earling’s The Lost Journals of Sacajawea. This lyrical novel challenges the historical narratives of this wildly impressive human.

2. The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos

Available July 2023

Author: Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya

Genre: Coming of Age

ISBN: 9781953387332

Print Length: 170 pages

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

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This Latinx American coming of age story has so much for so many, despite being so short. Identity, love, soccer, humor, the sweeping truths of American immigration–The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos will have you antsy to crack it open every chance you get.

Take it from Dantiel W. Moniz: “Restrepo Montoya’s prose illuminates truths so clearly you can see straight through them to the world around you, and even into yourself.”

3. About the Carleton Sisters

Available June 2023

Author: Dian Greenwood

Genre: Family / Sisters

ISBN: 9781647424404

Print Length: 312 pages

Publisher: She Writes Press

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I’m a sucker for a parallel storyline, especially when they converge. This literary novel from Dian Greenwood and She Writes Press is a story of the uniqueness of sisterhood and the uniqueness of sisters. Laura Stanfill, author of one of our impressive indies of 2022, called it, “Incisive, raw, and achingly beautiful.”

4. The Memory of Animals

Available June 2023

Author: Claire Fuller

Genre: Literary / Dystopian

ISBN: 9781953534873

Print Length: 288 pages

Publisher: Tin House Books

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Claire Fuller has been pumping out hits since 2015. From Our Endless Numbered Days to Bitter Orange and Unsettled Ground, when Fuller releases something, you should probably pay attention. This dystopia is giving off thriller vibes with its pandemic reality, the complications of squid, and survival.

5. Kill Your Darlings

Available May 2023

Author: L.E. Harper

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 9781792366628

Print Length: 322 pages

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How do you write a book about a writer? Tensions are high for authors, even when the room is quiet, when they are pounding away (or not) on their keyboard. You can do that, or you can throw them into the thick of their own novel.

Kill Your Darlings is a writer fantasy that’ll have you second-guessing whether or not that dangerous plot twist is worth including in your next story, and it tackles depression and the need to escape with fervor.

6. Weft

Available August 2023

Author: Kevin Allardice

Genre: Literary Fiction / Surreal

Print Length: NA

Publisher: Madrona Books

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IBR’s Nick Rees Gardner had this to say about Weft in a forthcoming review, “At the intersection of realist literary fiction, surrealism, horror, and crime, Kevin Allardice’s Weft is a powerful and unexpected novel about the ties that bind us to family and the lies we weave to make ourselves feel safe.”

And did I mention it’s about a mother-son con duo who find themselves in a haunted house? Keep an eye out for this one!

7. Dark Park

Available August 2023

Author: Kathe Koja

Genre: Science Fiction

Print Length: NA

Publisher: Meerkat Press

Info About the Book

Dark Factory landed a place on our 2022 Impressive Indies list, and with good reason. Bestselling sci-fi author Kathe Koja has gone above and beyond in building this reality-bending world, and Dark Park is coming in for an encore. If you like experimental sci-fi, this series is going to get you dancing.

8. Pure Cosmos Club

Available May 2023

Author: Matthew Binder

Genre: Literary Fiction / Humor

ISBN: 9781736912812

Print Length: 272 pages

Publisher: Stalking Horse Press

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Pure Cosmos Club is an absurd tragicomedy about a painter who falls under the influence of a New Age guru. With his life already slipping out of his grasp, he joins the guru’s cult in search of a solution beyond the daily humdrum materialism of life in today’s America. If you like Vonnegut and Murakami, choosing Binder is a no-brainer.

9. The Wind Began to Howl

Available May 2023

Author: Laird Barron

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Supernatural

ISBN: 9798988128601

Print Length: 192 pages

Publisher: Bad Hand Books

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This supernatural thriller follows private investigator Isaiah Coleridge into a chilling mix of music, movie magic, and madness. Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor, calls it “hardboiled and trippy at the same time,” while Clay McLeod Chapman calls it a “bareknuckle novella that’s equal parts Hollyweird fiction and conspiracy-laden Catskills noir.”

10. At the Edge of the Woods

Available June 2023

Author: Kathryn Bromwich

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Literary

ISBN: 9781953387318

Print Length: 220 pages

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

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This one might look familiar! At the Edge of the Woods received a starred review from Jaylynn Korrell back in February, and it was chosen as an Indie Book of the Month in April. It’s right up our alley with beautiful nature writing combined with real-life thrills and an excellent protagonist.

11. Launch Me to the Stars, I’m Finished Here

Available June 2023

Author: Nick Gregorio

Genre: Science Fiction

Print Length: NA

Publisher: Trident Press

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I loved Gregorio’s debut, Good Grief, back in 2018, and have been seeking out his books ever since. Why? He’s been pumping out uniqueness for years: from a mixed poetry and short story collaboration to his latest, Rare Encounters with Sea Beasts and Other Divine Phenomena, which gently covers childhood grief and friendship.

Launch Me to the Stars is about a depressed young woman aiming to build a spaceship so she can get to a lightyears-away world. I’m already a huge fan of Gregorio, but give me something about escapism, and I’ll get lost in it for days.

12. The Plotinus

Available July 2023

Author: Rikki Ducornet

Genre: Literary Fiction / Dystopian

ISBN: 9781566896818

Print Length: 88 pages

Publisher: Coffee House Press

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This inventive novella is about a young man who gets arrested and incarcerated by a robot called the Plotinus. With surprising optimism and vibrant hallucinations, this book celebrates the enduring power of imagination. And it’s from the brilliant Rikki Ducornet!

13. Girl Country

Available May 2023

Author: Jacqueline Vogtman

Genre: Short Story Collection

ISBN: 9781950539765

Publisher: Dzanc Books

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Did you hear that Dzanc Books just won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award? And with good reason! We’ve loved a number of Dzanc Books over the years, from The Conviction of Cora Burns to Dioramas by Blair Austin.

So when Girl Country hit my desk, I knew I couldn’t look away. It’s populated by mothers and monsters, mermaids and milkmaids, nuns and bus drivers—women navigating the intersection of the mundane and the magical. 

14. Small, Burning Things

Available July 2023

Author: Cathy Ulrich

Genre: Short Story Collection

Print Length: 180 pages

Publisher: Okay Donkey Press

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Cathy Ulrich’s debut, Ghosts of You, included some of the best flash fiction I’ve ever read. So you could imagine my excitement to see a second collection on its way to print.

Ulrich’s story starters are the best, you’ll see. Kim Magowan, author of How Far I’ve Come, even says, “Cathy Ulrich’s opening lines are magic wardrobes and trapdoors, plummeting readers into enticing, twisted story-worlds where girls disappear into thin air, fall from the sky, ignite in flames, crash through ice, and leave dirty, elusive footprints in their wake.” 

15. Prince Zadkiel (The Royal Matchmaking Competition)

Available June 2023

Author: Zoiy G. Galloay

Genre: YA / Fantasy / Romance

ISBN: 9781958996058

Print Length: 437 pages

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I couldn’t get you out of here without a romance! Zoiy G. Galloay, author of Princess Qloey, is back with another installment in her trope-filled Royal Matchmaking Competition series.

Find out why IBR’s senior reviewer Alexandria Ducksworth says, “Readers will love Galloay’s diverse fantasy world and its people…filled with elves, dwarves, nymphs, fairies, and more with their own unique cultures.”

16. Maybe There Are Witches

Available June 2023

Author: Jude Atwood

Genre: Middle Grade / Adventure

ISBN: 9781646033645

Print Length: 216 pages

Publisher: Fitzroy Books

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Give me any excuse to dive into witch activity, and I’m taking it. This one is about a middle schooler who, along with a couple weird boys from school, must get to the bottom of the witchy mystery surrounding her long-dead relative and determine if the villagers who killed her might have had a point.

Steven T. Seagle, creator of Ben 10 & Big Hero 6, says, “At a time where we all worry our kids might get lost in their phones, WITCHES poses that they might, instead, get lost in their tomes, and aside from the impending cataclysmic doom they might find within, I can’t think of a better fate for young readers like Clara, or yours.”

17. The Quickening

Available August 2023

Author: Elizabeth Rush

Genre: Science / Climate & Environment

ISBN: 9781571313966

Print Length: 424 pages

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

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Elizabeth Rush’s last book, Rising, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. This brilliant writer has a way of breaking down climate truths and remaining personal, human, and vulnerable in the face of the planet’s melting reality. It’s an expedition to Antartica, and somehow, it takes you even beyond that.

Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning, says, “The Quickening is the Antarctic book I’ve been waiting for—an immersive modern day expedition tale, a reflection on science and knowledge-making, a confrontation with gendered histories, and a brilliant writer’s spellbinding meditation on human mistakes, distant goals, and courage.”

18. Talking Back

Available May 2023

Author: Alejandra Dubcovsky

Genre: American History

ISBN: 9780300266122

Print Length: 280 pages

Publisher: Yale University Press

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If you’re an American history buff, you can’t miss this book. It tells stories of Native women breaking through in the colonial south, making big differences in big ways. With stories you likely won’t hear anywhere else, Talking Back is the epitome of essential historical nonfiction.

19. Is the Algorithm Plotting Against Us?

Available May 2023

Author: Kenneth Wenger

ISBN: 9781959632016

Print Length: 264 pages

Publisher: Working Fires Foundation

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Artificial intelligence is near impossible to avoid in 2023, and it will only improve and expand from here. In this first book from Working Fires Foundation, AI expert Kenneth Wenger breaks down the complexity and demonstrates its potential and pitfalls.

20. Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Available May 2023

Author: Jane Wong

Genre: Memoir / Asian American

ISBN: 9781953534675

Print Length: 288 pages

Publisher: Tin House Books

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Like so many of my northeast neighbors, I know my way around the Jersey Shore. I’ve got memories of its streets, its people, its beaches, its seagulls, its nonsense. Jane Wong’s memoir is humorous and honest and lyrical, “a love song of the Asian American working class.” This story of making a life with what you have is one that will stick with you.

21. Little Beast

Available May 2023

Author: Sara Quinn Rivara

ISBN: 9781736138670

Print Length: 76 pages

Publisher: Riot In Your Throat

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Riot In Your Throat has published some of the best books our team has read, like Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt, so we’re always keeping an eye on what they’re producing. Enter: Little Beast! This new collection by Sara Quinn Rivara is filled with wildlife, witchcraft, and wonder.

22. The Nameless

Available August 2023

Author: Brandi George

ISBN: 9798986523330

Print Length: 199 pages

Publisher: Kernpunkt Press

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The Nameless, an autobiographical poetry collection by the author of Gog, explores the speaker’s relationship with the figure of Death as a friend, a tormentor, a savior, and a capricious and mysterious force. 

David Kirby says, “It’s not possible for me to imagine a book more challenging or more pleasurable than this one.”

23. Judas & Suicide

Available May 2023

Author: Maya Williams

ISBN: NA

Publisher: Game Over Books

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This collection navigates religion and suicide by way of Black family and community. Author Allison Raskin says, “Rarely, if ever, have I read such an honest and artistic exploration of what it means to have to develop a will to live…. This book is one small, but crucial, step toward destigmatizing suicide in society and one large leap in helping those who have had their lives touched by it feel less alone.”

Which Summer 2023 books are you excited about?

About the Author

Joe Walters is the founder and editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel or trusting the process. Find him @joewalters13 on Twitter.

Thank you for reading Joe Walters’s Indie Books to Watch in Summer 2023! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Indie Books to Watch in Summer 2023 appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Curated by the IBR team

Let’s talk about the best books we read in 2022.

This doesn’t mean they were published in 2022.

Yes, some of them were published this year, because this was an impressive year for indie books, but some of these titles have been out for years and have been making a difference in people’s lives long before we got to them.

But they’re still here, they’re still awesome, and we can’t wait to share them with you.

If you don’t know, IBR is a team of book lovers dedicated to highlighting the best of indie presses and indie authors, so this list reflects that. You won’t find any books by big five publishers here.

This year, 15 of our 25 reviewers participated. Some of these books came from IBR assignments, and some came from their own leisure reading (because, plot twist, I think they like books). And while some reviewers chose five and an honorable mention list (whoops!), others only chose two or three that stood out the most. You will find the books, publication information about them, and a mini-review about why each book was chosen.

So if you’re in the mood to treat yourself to something indie and something awesome, consider yourself prepared.

Here are the best books we read in 2022!

#1. Braiding Sweetgrass

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Released: August 2015

Genre: Nonfiction / Nature & Ecology

Review by Joe Walters:

A thing about books is that they can change your life. I know this. I believe this. I just wish I could have known that this would be one of them so I could have read it sooner.

I learned so much about being alive on this planet thanks to Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author and narrator of this audiobook. Kimmerer told me stories and taught me the wisdom of the earth, most often while I was doing dishes. Not only did I enjoy it, I had a regular excuse to revisit a place of gratitude for the planet I’m living on.

Braiding Sweetgrass shares insights on nature with the knowledge of a botanist and the prose of a poet. If you’ve got some dishes to do, I’d recommend giving your ears to this book.

#2. My Volcano

by John Elizabeth Stintzi

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Released: March 2022

Genre: Literary / Disaster Fiction

Review by Joe Walters:

This novel sprouts a volcano from the reservoir in Central Park and continues to take big risks and land big punches. I was flabbergasted by where Stintzi took me. I read so many books that sometimes I think I get what you can do with them, then a book like this comes along.

It describes the various eruptions of our personal and collected lives with surprises and characters doing their best. I am so grateful to have found wonder in the pages of this groundbreaking book.

I read it on vacation, and strangers asked me about it (prob because of this badass cover), and I had so much trouble talking about it, despite doing it for a living. It might be hard to talk about, but it’s cool as hell to read it.

If you like experimental fiction and prose that’ll circle around you like a swarm of bees, you’ve got my wholehearted recommendation here.

#3. Jerks

by Sara Lippman

Publisher: Mason Jar Press

Released: March 2022

Genre: Literary Fiction / Short Story Collection

Review by Joe Walters:

I admit that I make a majority of my book purchases based on the cover. This is no different with Jerks. I mean, look at this thing.

It’s such an unbelievable experience for a book to be as good, if not better, than its great cover. A treat waiting to be peeled open.

The language is so bouncy in this collection. It features a cast of strong, weird, funny, sexual, and flawed characters, and each story fulfills or exceeds my expectations. Every. Single. One.

Short fiction fans: this is an easy recommendation.

#4. The Anthropocene Epoch

by Bruce Glass

Released: November 2021

Genre: Nonfiction / Climate & Environment / History

Review by Joe Walters:

Important. Impactful. Surprising.

The Anthropocene Epoch: When Humans Changed the World is about as good of a book on the climate crisis as I could have asked for. Supremely readable and undeniably informative, it has what it takes to transform everyday citizens from unknowing contributors in the end of the world to enthusiastic and active participants in its possible salvation.

If you don’t know much (or want to learn more) about the history of humans on this planet, I’m throwing a recommendation for this one your way.

#5. Negative Space

by Lilly Dancyger

Publisher: Santa Fe Writer’s Project

Released: May 2021

Genre: Nonfiction / Memoir / Family

Review by Joe Walters:

Another audiobook choice for me! Narrated by the author, Negative Space plants me in 80s/90s New York City with a group of artists and punks who have so much to show me about love and family.

I don’t read enough books about kids who love their parents despite their flaws, like drug addiction in this one, but I’m hoping this book changes that. It’s both a heartbreaker and a heartwarmer thanks to Dancyger’s deft hand.

Honorable Mentions:

• And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing edited by Hannah Grieco (Bookshop | Amazon)
• Not Your Job by Pierce Brantley (Bookshop | Amazon)
• The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney (Bookshop | Amazon)
• Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home by Shasta Grant (Bookshop | Amazon)
• Jewbilly by Rick Rosenberg (Bookshop | Amazon)

#1. First Born Sons

by Vincent Traughber Meis

Genre: Literary Fiction / LGBTQ+

Review by Jaylynn Korrell:

First Born Sons follows the lives of a handful of standout characters as they navigate their worlds, which are soon to be rocked by the year 2020. 

Touching on subjects such as race, being trans, politics, pandemics, adoption, and more, this story is jam-packed with contemporary issues. And yet it never feels like too much. Meis gracefully weaves in and out of the narratives, writing with sensitivity and honesty about each subject.

I can honestly say that I enjoyed every single chapter of this book—and each narrative within it. It is impressive to say the least for an author to tackle such difficult subjects in such a complete and compelling way. 

Meis brings humanity to the forefront of this book: characters who are uniquely flawed and deeply recognizable. 

#2. What Happens In…

by Steffanie Moyers

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Romance

Review by Jaylynn Korrell:

What Happens In… is a white-hot thriller set in the wonderful world of Las Vegas. With a steamy romance at the forefront and a dangerous killer lurking in the background, this novel absolutely mesmerized me.

I’d recommend What Happens In… to those readers who enjoy lustful and high-stakes stories. From the beginning, we know that Knox is engaging in activities that could put her away for life, and it makes the book even sexier. We never know what scene will be her last, if any. We never know who will catch on or when. And for a long time we have no clue just what it is her mysterious new boyfriend is up to while he is away. It creates a damn-near perfect hodgepodge of events that leaves readers guessing.

It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a while.

#3. The Linchpin Writer

by John Matthew Fox

Publisher: BOOKFOX

Genre: Nonfiction / Authorship

Review by Jaylynn Korrell:

A valuable guide to crafting a novel worth reading

In writing, the “linchpin moments” are the pivotal places that will either make or break your work. When done correctly, these moments hold your book together and make sure your readers are always engaged.

With specific examples from some of the greatest novels ever written (both classic and contemporary), his own personal experience, and lessons from writing professionals, Fox guides readers to better writing in regards to killing characters, ending chapters, creating gripping first dialogue, describing characters, evoking wonder, and much more. 

In addition to some really spot-on writing advice, Fox provides personal experience and inspiration to make this book something that writers can’t afford to miss.

#1. The Maenad’s God

by Karen Michalson

Publisher: Arula Books

Released: December 2022

Genre: Literary Fiction / Metafiction / LGBTQ+

Review by Tucker Lieberman:

An engaging metafictional romp through an improbable New England

What you’ll get out of this strange novel isn’t the blow-by-blow of how a drug ring is busted. It’s a character-driven story of interpersonal relationships and a general wonder at the explosive funniness of life. The dominant voice is irony and camp, even leaning into the 1970s-style bizarro that has been called “high weirdness,” but there are also glimpses of sincere existential questioning. 

The narrator is unique and memorable: a gay FBI agent who appreciates potpourri aromatherapy with his gun at the ready. Michalson also surprises readers with language that describes, for example, what it is to feel “like an old sea mollusk might feel dying on an Iowa plain.” 

#2. Man Made Monsters

by Andrea L. Rogers

Publisher: Levine Querido

Released: October 2022

Genre: Short Story Collection / Aboriginal & Indigenous Fiction

Review by Tucker Lieberman:

Monsters menace the border between realms. One kind of monster can wrap around a coyote, leaving “an empty skin and gaping eyes.” Core to this collection is Cherokee folklore; for example, if you see Uktena, a serpent with deer antlers, it means “the world is about to change.”

Every story is a different scenario and setting, but it all coheres into one world with energy and depth.

#3. When They Tell You to Be Good

by Prince Shakur

Publisher: Tin House Books

Released: October 2022

Genre: Nonfiction / Memoir / African & African American Literature

Review by Tucker Lieberman:

A memoir of coming into self-knowledge as a queer Black man and coming into activism as a young Jamaican-American. Shakur, who was an infant when his father was murdered, describes feeling “the importance of being incompatible with a world that aimed to destroy you.” The chronology circles like a ribbon, walking the labyrinth forward and backward.

#4. Cascade

by Rachel A. Rosen

Publisher: The BumblePuppy Press

Released: June 2022

Genre: Fantasy / Magical Realism

Review by Tucker Lieberman:

A novel of climate apocalypse and magic. This magic, a power that comes to some individuals, is a gut response to suffering or injustice or whatever they can’t accept. This story stars a new plant species called shriekgrass. Why does the grass shriek? Because it knows what’s happening to the world. Out of all the solutions we brainstorm to address the climate crisis, why don’t we hear more about magical ones?

#1. A Perfect Night

by Joseph Stone

Released: June 2022

Genre: Fantasy / Dark

Review by Alexandria Ducksworth:

I cannot get enough of Joseph Stone’s dark fiction.

A Perfect Night is Joseph Stone’s unforgettable story about a young girl and the terrible secrets tied to her gift of seeing spirits. You think your family has dark secrets. You’ll be glad you don’t have any like Fran. 

Stone weaves heavy scenarios you can’t stop thinking about in this story. It’s like not being able to fall asleep after watching a horror movie. Stone really knows how to give us the creeps. Scenes are disturbing yet strangely captivating. Readers may become addicted to the drama.

Everybody involved in this gripping story has something to reveal, and the results are often jaw-dropping and downright scary.

#2. Rogue

by Tam Derudder Jackson

Released: May 2022

Genre: Fantasy / Romance

Review by Alexandria Ducksworth:

Move over JR Ward and Gena Showalter.

Tam Derudder Jackson is coming for the paranormal romance pantheon. 

Rogue, her sizzling romantic adventure, is going to have readers missing its story and characters before they even reach the final page. This steamy story gives readers a little extra spice to their romance, and the tale includes characters as believable as you’re going to find with a splash of underrated Celtic mythos.

I highly recommend Rogue to longtime paranormal romance readers who can’t get enough of handsome, magical fighters with big swords. After reading this book, you’re are going to be starving for more of Jackson’s tales.

#3. Whole Body Prayer

by Yan Ming Li

Released: January 2022

Genre: Memoir / Spirituality / Asian & Asian American Literature

Review by Alexandria Ducksworth:

A tall glass of water for the parched soul

Yan Ming Li’s spiritual memoir Whole Body Prayer is an absolute treasure. Li is no stranger to hard times, yet his book is filled with encouraging moments for those who feel less than they should in this world.

We all have a gift of some sort. Some of us are born builders, writers, healers, and more. Whole Body Prayer is a wonderfully-written reminder of it. 

Although this is a short read, it’s uplifting and well worth the time spent. We all need a book like Whole Body Prayer during eventful times. It can give readers peace of mind and the power to keep moving no matter what happens out in the world.

#4. The Grand Game

by Tim Ahrens

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Fantasy / Dark

Review by Alexandria Ducksworth:

A Hunger Games meets Battle Royale fantasy delight

Do you control your fate, or is a higher power doing all the work? Is there some god out there who sets up where you live, work, date, and die?

Tim Ahrens takes this thought and throws it into a fun, fantasy adventure in The Grand Game. It’s a wonderful world filled with intriguing characters, unique lore, and memorable faraway lands. 

Ahrens knows how to scribe entertaining fantasy. Sure, there are tons of fantasies filled with kings, queens, dragons, and fairies, but what else can writers do with these age-old elements? Ahrens takes these tropes and twists them into an RPG “fight for your life” ordeal. Every page is filled with surprises, dangers, and secrets worth reading.

#5. Creole Conjure

by Christina Rosso

Publisher: Maudlin House

Released: October 2021

Genre: Short Story Collection / Fantasy

Review by Alexandria Ducksworth:

Alluring and mystical—Creole Conjure captures Louisiana in all of its mysterious glory.

This story collection comes with a pinch of magic. Author Christina Rosso thrives in her depiction of mystical New Orleans and makes you want to explore its singular charm.

This collection of intertwining stories is set both in New Orleans and the Honey Island Swamp, modeled after the real Manchac Swamp. The areas are well known for their magic, superstitions, and folklore. There are witches, werewolves, vampires, cursed dolls, and more than you can imagine in Creole Conjure. And the non-magical folks are just as peculiar.

Rosso has a way with mystical storytelling, taking you in like one of her witches and capturing you in her spell. 

#1. Stamp Mill Murder

by Sherilyn Decter

Released: January 2022

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Historical Mystery

Review by Joelene Pynnonen:

Despite being an escapist novel, this novel doesn’t sugarcoat the darker parts of the era.

The Moonshiner Mysteries series steps up its game with this second installment. The first book, Big Sky Murder, is a great set-up: it introduces the characters and shows readers around a fascinating historical small world.

This second book, Stamp Mill Murder, expands all the horizons: Characters who were already thoroughly enjoyable gain more nuance; we explore the town of Pony Gulch and its surrounding mines and forests deeper; and all the great historical aspects are developed even further too.

Light and fun with enough historical clout to hold its own, this series has been a fantastic escape from reality so far.

#2. Balsamic Moon

by Alan Gartenhaus

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: October 2022

Genre: Literary Fiction / Disaster Fiction

Review by Joelene Pynnonen:

Most disaster novels I’ve read follow similar conventions to disaster movies: more action than reality. Balsamic Moon breaks that mold. It’s a thoughtful, nuanced, and authentic exploration of the occurrence and direct aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. The long days of waiting, the stifling anxiety about whether they’ll be rescued, and the dwindling of already meager rations are all drawn with stark clarity.

Something about the way Balsamic Moon is written pulls readers so smoothly across its pages. It’s easy to empathize with the characters through the struggle for survival. The heat of the long days is palpable, the stench of the floodwater equally so.

While Balsamic Moon uses Hurricane Katrina as a vehicle for its story, the story isn’t really about the storm. There are so many different things that this novel explores, but, at its heart, I think it is about the people that society accepts and the people it rejects.

Reading Balsamic Moon is somehow both wonderful and heartrending. I could easily have spent more time with these characters. There seems to be so much of both of them left unexplored. It feels fitting, though, that in the wake of this disaster, things are left messy and incomplete. It leaves an air of disturbance around the novel. A feeling of disquiet that somehow mirrors the ultimate atmosphere of the book.

#3. Life, Travel, and the People In Between

by Mike Nixon

Publisher: Palmetto Publishing

Released: September 2022

Genre: Memoir / Travel

Review by Joelene Pynnonen:

An insightful, feel-good travel memoir that shows how following your passion can change your life

Life, Travel, and the People in Between is like an interesting discussion with someone talking about the life they love. It’s accessible, relatable, sometimes funny, and sometimes painful. It’s also one of those books that inspires you just by existing.

For someone without a lot of means, either social, professional, or economic, it’s amazing how Nixon manages to build such a fulfilling, enriching life while following his heart.

#4. So Far From Home

by Robert Wilhelm

Released: December 2021

Genre: Nonfiction / True Crime / Historical

Review by Joelene Pynnonen:

A vivid true crime story that dives into the social and political climate behind a gruesome murder

So Far From Home is a fascinating historical tale. While the crime is at the forefront, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. Wilhelm paints a full picture of the stakes that pertain to all parties through the trial. Pressure is on the prosecution to return a guilty vote. 

Author Robert Wilhelm maintains the perfect balance in giving all parties involved a voice, but also in making each of their perspectives persuasive. He takes the time to humanize the people involved in this story. For a book gleaned from old newspapers, it does so well in delving into personalities.

#5. Laugh Cry Rewind

by Judy Haveson

Released: July 2022

Genre: Memoir / Women

Review by Joelene Pynnonen:

A poignant memoir that shows how love perseveres beyond death

Laugh Cry Rewind could easily fall into pity memoir territory, but the often funny, irreverent tone puts it onto another level. While the central most devastating event in Judy’s life might have been losing her sister, Celia’s life dominates the page more than her death. This isn’t the story of a person fixed on one terrible moment, but of a person whose moments, both bad and good, all add up to an incredible life. 

Funny, awkward, and sad by turns, it explores the ins and outs of navigating all the complexities of the world from adolescence to relationships to careers.

#1. Don’t Ask the Blind Guy for Directions

by John Samuel

Released: November 2022

Genre: Nonfiction / Autobiography / Disability

Review by Andrea Marks-Joseph:

This is a tremendous book about the powerful impact of having a disability, denying that disability, and then finally using tools that make the world accessible for people with your specific disability. It’s a short, personal story that could be an afternoon read, but John Samuel’s words and life will stay with you long afterwards.

Though my disabilities are very different from Samuel’s, I could see so much of my own journey (the best parts: getting the accessibility tools I needed!) in there, but it’s filled with enlightening, practical lessons that would be beneficial and life-changing for everyone to read–especially if you’re running a company or involved in hiring processes. 

#2. The Sleepless

by Victor Manibo

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Released: August 2022

Genre: Science Fiction / Cyberpunk

Review by Andrea Marks-Joseph:

I think about this book every day, and I read it almost a year ago. This is a sci-fi novel about a world where “sleeplessness” (chronic, permanent insomnia) is the product of a global pandemic, but it is now something accessible on the black market.

What does capitalist society look like when the world is filled with people who never sleep? What does that mean for our office culture, our personal lives, our brain’s capacity to make and store memories, and for how our families see us? The worldbuilding is phenomenal, but this is also a murder mystery, a corporate conspiracy, and a highly motivated queer Filipino protagonist on his devastating journey through compounding grief. 

#3. Like & Subscribe for Murder

by Elle Kleos

Released: May 2022

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / LGBTQ+

Review by Andrea Marks-Joseph:

Like & Subscribe for Murder is a super fun, hilarious queer murder mystery complete with constant, affirming use of they/them pronouns (and gender neutral Spanish!) for its nonbinary protagonist, Detective Sam. Imagine HBO’s The White Lotus as more focused on the murder, just as horny but way more queer, heavier on the ‘eat the rich’ energy, and depicting actual solidarity with its local hotel staff. 

Elle Kleos nails the absurdity of wealth and the traditions of the rich, alongside the ridiculously serious business of an influencer’s lifestyle. I wish there were already ten books in this series because it’s truly unlike anything else I’ve read in the genre!

#4. Xenocultivars: Stories of Queer Growth

edited by Isabela Oliveira & Jed Sabin

Publisher: Speculatively Queer

Released: March 2022

Genre: Anthology / LGBTQ+ / Fantasy

Review by Andrea Marks-Joseph:

This short story anthology is the perfect gift for anyone interested in speculative fiction, and should be part of every inclusive library. All these stories—written by diverse marginalized authors from every corner of the globe—are magnificently queer and fantastically imaginative.

This vibrant collection blooms with ideas of what the world could look like and flourishes because it models what community should look like; it crosses genres from fairytales to horror to space adventure and back, radiating gender expansiveness and everyday queerness everywhere it takes us.

#5. Wicked Blood

by Margot de Klerk

Released: September 2022

Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Paranormal

Review by Andrea Marks-Joseph:

A wild and dreamy poetic journey through the wilderness in all of us.

De Klerk’s writing is effortlessly descriptive… The prose is never dense or overwhelming and really makes us feel as though we are wandering the streets of Berlin: riding its trains, noticing its architecture, appreciating its history, encountering its strange and mysterious people carrying worlds of secrets in their skin. 

I particularly enjoyed reading the shapeshifting experience as Cynthia transforms into whichever animal she chooses. De Klerk’s worldbuilding is rich with fresh takes on old magic. The fascinating mechanics of being a shapeshifter are by far my favorite. Shapeshifting is described clear as day, as if you’re watching on screen. The rules of Cynthia’s magic create challenges just as exciting as the opportunities they cause. The supernatural in Wicked Blood is wonderfully accessible and conversational, bringing you into the experience with ease. 

Wicked Blood is a book I’d read again with pleasure. Like any young adult’s time abroad, the true magic is in the surprises that each day brings and the people you meet along the way—prickly and powerful as they may be here.

Honorable Mentions:

• Bibi Blundermuss & the Tree Across the Cosmos by Andrew Durkin (Bookshop | Amazon)
• The Antidotes: Pollution Solution by Patty Mechael (Bookshop | Amazon)
• Alora Factor by D.L. Williams (Bookshop | Amazon)
• I Sang That by Sally Stevens (Bookshop | Amazon)
• The Way of the Cicadas by Audrey Henley (Bookshop | Amazon)

#1. Personal Demons (Hopeless, Maine)

by Nimue Brown and Tom Brown

Publisher: Outland Entertainment

Released: September 2021

Genre: Graphic Novel / Fantasy

Review by Kathy L. Brown:

This is a beautiful graphic novel with engaging characters and a really interesting story. I’m thrilled to see more magical orphanage adventures are available!

Fans of gorgeous art, subtle eldritch horror, and all around creepy good times will enjoy this hardback, full-color book.

#2. The Kraken Imaginary

by James M. Wright

Publisher: Montag Press

Genre: Fantasy / Historical

Review by Kathy L. Brown:

This secondary world has strong similarities to our own world’s ancient history and tells stories that interweave amongst each other.

Hilarious and entertaining while philosophically exploring the nature of, well, everything. Strong character development and well-crafted storytelling too! Great for fantasy fans, especially role-playing gamers and history buffs. (Disclosure: this reviewer also has a book out with the publisher, Montag Press.)

#3. 1836: Year of Escape

by Rose Osterman Kleidon

Released: August 2022

Genre: Historical Fiction / Adventure

Review by Kathy L. Brown:

A desperate and dangerous journey; an immersive historical fiction

Rose Osterman Kleidon crafts a compelling tale, seamlessly weaving family research, historical facts, imagination, and insight into human emotion and behavior into an exciting story. 

The first book in a series, it describes the Kästner family’s travels from Prussia to the Port of New Orleans. 1836: Year of Escape includes everything you could want in historical fiction—engaging characters, brisk action, compelling drama, and historical facts that are totally integrated into the narrative.

#4. Dilation: A 10,000 Year Sci-Fi Epic

by Travis Stecher

Released: January 2022

Genre: Science Fiction / Epic

Review by Kathy L. Brown:

The human drive to survive propels this skillful epic sci-fi, where humankind suffers from its own folly and an alien race plans for its annihilation

Author Travis Stecher takes on a vast subject in Dilation: A 10,000 Year Sci-Fi Epic—nothing short of the near-destruction of humanity. The story brings together people from across nations, planets, solar systems, and historical epochs to combat an extinction threat from light-years away.

Dilation’s prose is skillful and the voice confident. The author’s wry humor grounds the narrative, especially when things get dark and heavy. Readers who enjoyed The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey will appreciate Dilation’s grand scale, well-rendered characters, and ingenious melding of scientific possibilities with logical speculation about what lies ahead in humanity’s future. 

#5. Taming Infection

by Gregg Coodley & David Sarasohn

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: April 2022

Genre: Nonfiction / Health / History

Review by Kathy L. Brown:

An engrossing history of infectious diseases’ toll on humanity

Taming Infection is the story of the infectious diseases that have most tormented humanity as well as the impact of these illnesses on American history. In a clear conversational voice, the book explains fifteen major infectious diseases’ microbiology and clinical presentation as well as the measures developed to combat them. 

Readers interested in infectious diseases of the past and, unfortunately, the present will gain much from this book. History buffs will find new insights into the tremendous impact disease has had on events from war to colonization to legislation, as well as human behavior.

#1. The Seed Keeper

by Diane Wilson

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Released: March 2021

Genre: Literary Fiction / Native American Literature

Review by Genevieve Hartman:

This intergenerational narrative of one Dakota family’s struggles to maintain their homeland and their family legacy despite war, generational trauma, hostility from white neighbors, and environmental threat is one of the most achingly beautiful books I’ve ever read.

The characters are finely rendered with a deep devotion to each other, to their family history, to the land they call home, and to the seeds that represent both past and future hope.

#2. The Wet Hex

by Sun Yung Shin

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Released: June 2022

Genre: Poetry / Asian & Asian American Literature

Review by Genevieve Hartman:

The Wet Hex plays with form and expectations, using the symbols of shadows and light to create a gripping portrait of Korean folklore, motherhood, immigrant experience, and cataclysm. The poems are darkly resonant and honed to fine metal, piercing and leaving the reader paging through the depths of legend and our fading future.

#3. Born Into This

by Adam Thompson

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Released: July 2021

Genre: Short Story Collection / Indigenous & Aboriginal Fiction

Review by Genevieve Hartman:

A stark, moving window into Aboriginal life in Australia

Immersive, honest, and at times cutthroat, this short story collection peers into the lives of ordinary people across Tasmania—students, activists, desk workers, prisoners, and beyond—looking broadly into how people learn to survive in the circumstances they are born into.

Thompson leaves readers wondering what to say in the face of suffering and resilience, of fading ties to the land and the people who once lived there. Frank and darkly perceptive, yet somehow still tender, Born Into This is built out of short stories that strike, that spark, that ignite into flame.

#4. Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love

by Sherilyn Decter

Publisher: Red Hen Press

Released: June 2022

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / LGBTQ+

Review by Genevieve Hartman:

A chaotic, hilarious, and murder-filled journey through LA and Baja California

Readers will embark on a riotous, ribald, and somehow still laughter-inducing ride, from a terrible first date over coffee to a somewhat-accidental-but-also-on-purpose murder, with a few unintended deaths, a lot of misery, and of course, shopping and love to boot. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book as unabashedly fun as Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love, and I think it’ll be a while before I read another book that so deftly marries whimsy with wrongdoing, that makes me laugh out loud while cringing at the same time.

#1. A Lot of Questions (with no answers)?

by Jordan Neben

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: May 2022

Genre: Nonfiction / Philosophy / Essays

Review by Jadidsa Perez:

A Lot of Questions illuminates the darkest corners of humanity with humor and intelligence.

Neben has written one of the strongest debuts I’ve read in a while. A Lot of Questions does not simply look at the surface of ideas; it plunges deep into the waters of human behavior. The prose is clever, neat, and most importantly, accessible. Neben clearly explains any concept that is introduced and creates analogies that are easy to understand.

The book does not hone in on only one perspective. Instead, it looks at many different angles. As Neben himself admits, humans are extremely complex, thus history itself is almost a labyrinth. 

A Lot of Questions is an incredible read—emotionally intense but extremely important. 

#2. Lost Roots

by KArl von Loewe

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: September 2022

Genre: Memoir / Family History & Genealogy

Review by Jadidsa Perez:

A seed is planted in the reader’s mind that blossoms into a beautiful flower of prose, memories, and familial bonds.

Lost Roots: Family, Identity, and Abandoned Ancestry details the way oppressive structures have altered the identity of millions of families. For von Loewe, what began as a search for the significance of the compound name, “von Loewe Kiedrowski” resulted in a historical journey through wars, borders, and time. 

Lost Roots has equal parts nostalgic storytelling and detailed research, providing beguiling context for what’s happening in Poland, Germany, and America… My favorite aspect of this book is the juxtaposition between the family’s recollection and actual evidence of what occurred. Embellishment is a natural part of oral storytelling, and despite the documented evidence, it’s an important part of how people are remembered. 

#3. The Perfect Tulip

by Alexander Martinez

Released: December 2021

Genre: Nonfiction / Self-Help

Review by Jadidsa Perez:

Impulsivity and indecision can alter your life completely—let this book help you make the best decisions.

The goal of this book is not to make the “perfect” decision for someone, but to allow readers to critically engage with their choices and understand themselves, their environment, and how all of that will impact their future. 

What sets Perfect Tulip apart from other psychological self-help books, especially as personality tests have risen in popularity? Martinez’s honesty and focus on decision making carves out a niche within the self-help genre and makes Perfect Tulip not just enjoyable, but practical and informative. 

#1. What Have I Done?

by Carrie Close

Publisher: Unsolicited Press

Released: March 2022

Genre: Memoir / Poetry

Review by Anne Greenawalt:

I loved the hybrid/fragmented style of this book as well as the intimacy of the writing. I felt like I was getting a secret glimpse into the author’s private notebook. She writes unabashedly with the gritty and uncomfortable details of relationships and motherhood. This is one of the first hybrid books I’ve read, and I was drawn to the style because of the way the gaps leave room for the reader to make meaningful connections. 

#2. Beautiful, Violent Things

by Madeline Anthes

Publisher: Word West

Released: September 2021

Genre: Short Story Collection / Literary

Review by Anne Greenawalt:

The first time I read this book, I thought it was narrative prose poetry (even though it says “stories” on the cover) because the language is so beautiful and vivid. The strong narrative voices within each story drew me in, as did the themes of romantic (or not so romantic) relationships and motherhood. The intimacy Anthes creates, even in the micro stories, touched me viscerally. 

#3. Ceremonials

by Katharine Coldiron

Publisher: Kernpunkt Press

Released: February 2020

Genre: Literary Fiction / Women / LGBTQ+

Review by Anne Greenawalt:

Coldiron writes with gorgeous, lyrical prose about love, loss, and obsession that leaves me feeling haunted. This novella lives up to the jacket description of “a song etched in ink.” Now I want to listen to the album (Florence + the Machine’s 2011 album Ceremonials) that inspired it. 

#4. Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt

by Laurie Rachus Uttich

Publisher: Riot in Your Throat

Released: May 2022

Genre: Poetry

Review by Anne Greenawalt:

I love the fierce, feminist themes of all of Riot in Your Throat’s poetry collections, and Uttich’s collection is no exception. Each poem tells a story, often about de/constructing identity, motherhood, teaching, and fighting for equality in all of those realms. The narrative quality of each poem made them emotionally true and relatable. The line “I wonder if who I’ve become is who I am” still stays with me and helps me reflect on my own journey and identity as a woman.  

#1. My Volcano

by John Elizabeth Stintzi

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Released: March 2022

Genre: Literary / Disaster Fiction

Review by Nathaniel Drenner:

My Volcano explodes with a surreal, apocalyptic take on modern society. 

Stintzi’s novel reflects the surrealistic feeling of the early 21^st century—the feeling of life going on as normal when things are decidedly not normal. The threats rumbling under the surface are, we may feel, invisible even as they stare us in the face.

The novel gives us a funhouse mirror of ourselves and our society: entertaining, thought-provoking, and purposefully strange. The volcano—any of our volcanoes—always threatens to overwhelm, demanding our attention. The question remains what, if anything, we will do about it.

#2. The Happy Valley

by Benjamin Harnett

Released: October 2022

Genre: Literary Fiction / Dystopian

Review by Nathaniel Drenner:

A thought-provoking exploration of the past, the future, and the worlds we construct for ourselves

The story involves a secret society, a potential murder, and a law firm as old as the United States. The layers of plot, setting, and theme turn what could have been a simple young-adult adventure novel into a thought-provoking tale investigating how we construct our past, how societies function, and who gets to decide.

The Happy Valley offers fascinating insights about the relationship between the past and the future, anchoring its philosophical musings in a personal story of rediscovery. To blend the abstract with the concrete, to mash-up genres with intention—neither is any small feat, and this novel pulls off the sleight of hand necessary to bring its distinct vision to life.

#1. Dawn of Deoridium

by Jeff Ting

Released: February 2022

Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Asian & Asian American Literature

Review by Chika Anene:

A fantastic YA Fantasy that fans of The Poppy War by R.F Kuang will love

Trust me when I say: You’re going to fall in love with the world that Ting has created here.

16-year-old Kaili, who is next in line of the queens of the kingdom of Kalulishi, is no ordinary royal. She possesses electromagnetic power caused by The Shift—an upheaval of the earth’s magnetosphere more than three hundred years ago. 

From reading Dawn of Deoridium, one thing is clearest to me—Jeff Ting is one heck of a talented writer. The worldbuilding is unique, the descriptions are alive, and the characters all play integral roles in the development of the story. Brilliant.

#2. Welcome to the Free World

by Lloyd Raleigh

Released: November 2022

Genre: Science Fiction / Post-Apocalyptic

Review by Chika Anene:

Embark on a whirlwind of feverish exhilaration in this post-apocalyptic page-turner.

Will Robin is part of a group called “Scalpels,” and they are in opposition of the creators of the AI technology dominating the society he lives in. Scalpels work tirelessly to remove microchips embedded in the brains of individuals in society. 

As a part of Scalpels, Will’s job is to help individuals escape a totalitarian government that wishes to survey and control society through a metaverse where the “utopia” is in their heads. 

The world is so intricately woven together that readers are going to be sucked in from the moment they begin. Everything from the details of how the technology works to the state of the society has been so cleverly crafted that we always feel a part of the story and world.

Settle in to the comfort of your chairs for this story that grabs you by the throat.

#3. Wind Out of Time

by Rhema Sayers

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: January 2022

Genre: Science Fiction / Time Travel

Review by Chika Anene:

A funny, whimsical, and adventurous fantasy retelling of King Arthur of Camelot

While on a wild chase after a wanted terrorist, FBI agent Andrea Schilling unexpectedly finds herself tumbling through a portal leading to 5th century Britain where the ruler of the land is King Arthur. However, something’s not quite as it should be, as the kingdom Andrea finds herself in seems to be the exact opposite of what she remembers from the popular tales about King Arthur. 

What I enjoyed most about Wind Out of Time is the character development. As King Ardur gets to know Andrea, he becomes more willing to see the flaws within his kingdom and more willing to improve them.

The characters, scenes, and places are described with such vividness that I feel like the one who fell through a portal into a fairy tale.

#1. Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary

by Laura Stanfill

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Released: April 2022

Genre: Historical Fantasy / Magical Realism

Review by Erica Ball:

A playful and loving take on authenticity and pursuing your own path to happiness

From the first pages to the last period, the author’s spirited storytelling style lifts the prose above the actual action to a place where the reader can smile at the foibles of human life and behavior. This means that though unfortunate things happen to these likable characters, the reader can take the broader view of these circumstances.

Another strength is the originality of the writing. Simple scenes evoke strong emotions, such as a quiet moment between a mother and her colicky baby. There is a plethora of unexpected analogies that reframe ordinary experiences, often into the language of music.

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary is a place of music, birdsong, and beauty; a wonderful world in which to rest awhile. It is a look at how the destruction of certainty can make space for growth, and the peace that can be found in allowing ourselves to just be ourselves. 

#2. Wipe Out

by Teresa Godfrey

Publisher: Roswell Press

Released: January 2022

Genre: Science Fiction / Dystopian

Review by Erica Ball:

A hopeful look at what can happen, even in a dystopian future, when someone decides to do the right thing

Wipe Out by Teresa Godfrey is the story of a tough-as-nails military driver who accidentally finds herself leading a revolution. In this world, society is recovering from a deadly disease that has collapsed civilization.  

It is a story of one of those rare moments when many factors come together to trigger rapid change. A pivot point. A flashpoint occurs because the right people are in positions to make things happen, and—most importantly—choose to do so. 

#3. The True History of Jude

by Stuart Campbell

Released: July 2022

Genre: Science Fiction / Dystopia

Review by Erica Ball:

The story of a rebellious woman and the power of our stories, even in a world where truth is not welcome

The True History of Jude is an epistolary novel about a bleak dystopian future in which the geopolitical structure of the world has drastically changed. Due to massive environmental upheaval caused by climate change, many countries, including Australia, face grave uncertainty about the future of their cities and the people who live in them. 

When a pivotal moment strikes in the form of a tsunami, a complex political plan years in the making is triggered and the fates of millions are rewritten in an instant.

In many ways, it is a thought experiment with a terrifying premise: What would happen if the greatest powers in the world—those of government, military, and corporations were to join forces or be joined under a single will? As such, it is a look at how change can come gradually or in a single cataclysmic event. Of how freedoms can be slowly whittled away even if it’s obvious what is happening because no one has any idea what to do about it. Is there even anything to do about it, once such forces are at work?

#4. Brilliant White Peaks

by Teng Rong

Released: September 2021

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction / Animals

Review by Erica Ball:

An engrossing story capturing life through the experiences of a young wolf.

We follow him from birth, growing up in the warmth and comfort of his family, and exploring the slowly expanding world around their den. As he gets older he experiences all the ups and downs of living in the wild: hunting, accidents, fights, danger, love, and more.

In the wolf’s world, scent carries all important information, food is always the priority, and memories–good and bad–fade equally quickly. 

#1. Pearls on a String

by Jane Merling

Publisher: BayMar Publishing

Released: November 2022

Genre: Historical Fiction / Romance

Review by Tomi Alo:

A captivating historical fiction that uncovers family secrets and connects the past to the present

Author Jane Merling thrives in her depiction of tenacious and courageous people facing adversity.

Sarah Langner, a successful independent woman in the progressive 1980s, stumbles upon a mysterious box containing journals and letters belonging to her grandmother. As Sarah goes through the contents of the box, she uncovers many family secrets that will change what she thought she knew about her grandmother, father, and even herself. Though the book is from Sarah’s perspective, the story revolves mainly around the life of her grandmother, Augusta.

Merling writes Augusta’s life with such eloquence, capturing a true perseverance and resilience in her character. Even though Augusta isn’t alive to tell her story, we can see much of her kindness, generosity, and positive attitude toward life. 

It is a sweet and exciting historical fiction filled with love, strength, courage, tragedy, and humor.

#2. Gods of the Garden

by Robin Strong

Released: October 2022

Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Science Fiction

Review by Tomi Alo:

Robin Strong’s debut novel Gods of the Garden is an enlightening and engaging narrative that allows its reader to gain a fresh perspective on human existence.

With a focus on cultural anthropology, the book analyzes the foundation of life, offers a fresh perspective on how life changes when influenced, and poses the questions that have always seemed too ambiguous to have clear-cut answers—Why are we here? What’s our purpose in this world?

The author does an outstanding job of evoking varied emotions in her reader through the novel’s characters and description. She creates an atmosphere in which you can experience their losses and wins right alongside them.

#1. Icarus Never Flew ‘Round Here

by Matthew Edwards

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: August 2022

Genre: Literary Fiction / Coming of Age

Review by Madeline Barbush:

A curious portrait of a cattle rancher searching for meaning

Dale Samuel doesn’t know the meaning of life, if there is one, so he asks the sky. Blunt and raw in style, author Matt Edwards crafts this indelicate Frankensteinian tale of one man’s poorly cobbled-together idea of god and creation and the power that these entities hold. 

I highly recommend Icarus Never Flew ‘Round Here. It’s a novel that surprises you, makes you uneasy, and flies by in an instant. Matt Edwards creates a surreal world seen through the eyes of a cattle rancher who, once settled and serene, becomes hungry for meaning. It’s a quiet and slow sort of anxiety but one you can put back down, although in this case, I doubt you will want to. 

#2. By Fire

by Rhonda Harris Slota

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Released: December 2021

Genre: Poetry

Review by Madeline Barbush:

A hauntingly beautiful collection that explores the life of a daughter seeking love and reconciliation

By Fire is a fervid debut poetry collection, retracing the life of a youth growing up in southern Indiana with a father whose mental illness took the form of an overzealous belief that he was the prophet Elijah. 

Slota instills in each of her poems not only a palpable feeling of devastation, but also, eventually, renewal. She earnestly exposes and examines a family’s secrets and vulnerabilities; she need only describe the mother’s hands or the change in the father’s eyes and hair for us to feel the weight of all their suffering at once. 

There is both a silence and a bellowing call in each of these poems: the silence to quiet out the cries of pain, and the bellowing call for love. Slota paints a life with so many brilliant colors that all fade at once before brightening up again.

#1. Witch Window

by Phil Bayly

Released: October 2022

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Review by Lindsay Crandall:

A gripping mystery set in a stunning Vermont landscape

Witch Window starts in the summer heat with the discovery of a body. A body that just so happens to be dressed for skiing. 

Author Phil Bayly decorates this engrossing tale with rich descriptions of Vermont’s landscape and local flora—vivid enough that I started researching real estate prices in New England. 

As soon as I thought I had part of the mystery solved, Bayly slyly shifts focus to revisit a previously mentioned character or locale. He is clearly comfortable turning his mysteries around on their heads and enjoys leaving readers guessing to the final pages, to see how all of the dots of the story connect.

#2. The Source of Smoke

by V.L. Adams

Publisher: New Degree Press

Released: May 2022

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Small Town

Review by Lindsay Crandall:

V.L. Adams absolutely nails the combination of true crime and small town drama in The Source of Smoke.

Fans of the true crime genre are sure to love this novel. I think Adams really excels in pacing this story. Every new rumor or bit of gossip Charlie hears seems relevant to the situation, making it difficult to put the novel down. The story picks up most when the lies start to unravel, making the last quarter of the book easy to fly through. I genuinely enjoyed The Source of Smoke, and I think you would too.

#3. Reportedly Murdered

by Geoffrey Walters

Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers

Released: May 2022

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Detective

Review by Lindsay Crandall:

An unputdownable mystery about a reporter-turned-detective with a colorful cast of characters

Walters has a realistic reporter-turned-detective mystery. Each character, all unique and intriguing, is a viable suspect.

Set in New York City, it feels like a good old fashioned whodunnit detective mystery, even though Gregory isn’t really a detective. Fans of the mystery genre and detective fiction are going to enjoy this one. 

Happy reading! What were the best books you read in 2022?

About IBR

Founded in April 2018, Independent Book Review is dedicated to showing readers the best in small press and self-published books. IBR has over 25 reviewers on staff with an enthusiasm for genres all across the literary landscape. They are based out of Harrisburg, PA and are always considering new books for review.

Thank you for reading “The Best Books We Read This Year (2022)” curated by the Independent Book Review team! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post The Best Books We Read This Year (2022) appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Curated by Joe Walters & the IBR team

The results are in! Indie books were impressive in 2022.

Some of our all-time favorite books came out this year. They were daring, unique, funny, important. We’ve learned so much about the world over the past few years, and indie presses and indie authors have been adapting right along with it, investing in themselves and their stories. These books can alter world-views, deepen knowledge, and make minutes on this earth enjoyable.

This year’s impressive indie book list covers a wide range of genres and interests so that you can find whatever you need in your next reading experience: to learn, to elevate, to escape; it’s all here and all indie.

We’ve sifted through a lot of books this year: from the big indies to the small presses with the biggest hearts to the authors doing it all themselves. Some really excellent books have come to us this year, and somehow, we managed to get this list down to 30 indie books.

Here’s our list of impressive indie books of 2022.

#1. My Volcano

by John Elizabeth Stintzi

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: Literary / Disaster Fiction

About the Book:

My Volcano is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a menagerie of characters, as they each undergo personal eruptions, while the Earth itself is constantly shifting. Parable, myth, science-fiction, eco-horror, My Volcano is a radical work of literary art, emerging as a subversive, intoxicating artistic statement by John Elizabeth Stintzi.

On June 2, 2016, a protrusion of rock growing from the Central Park Reservoir is spotted by a jogger. Three weeks later, when it finally stops growing, it’s nearly two-and-a-half miles tall, and has been determined to be an active volcano.

As the volcano grows and then looms over New York, an eight-year-old boy in Mexico City finds himself transported 500 years into the past, where he witnesses the fall of the Aztec Empire; a Nigerian scholar in Tokyo studies a folktale about a woman of fire who descends a mountain and destroys an entire village; a white trans writer in Jersey City struggles to write a sci-fi novel about a thriving civilization on an impossible planet; a nurse tends to Syrian refugees in Greece while grappling with the trauma of living through the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan; a nomadic farmer in Mongolia is stung by a bee, magically transforming him into a green, thorned, flowering creature that aspires to connect every living thing into its consciousness.

With its riveting and audacious vision, My Volcano is a tapestry on fire, a distorted and cinematic new work from the fiercely talented John Elizabeth Stintzi.

#2. Light Skin Gone to Waste

by Toni Ann Johnson

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Genre: Short Story Collection / African & African American Literature

About the Book:

In 1962 Philip Arrington, a psychologist with a PhD from Yeshiva, arrives in the small, mostly blue-collar town of Monroe, New York, to rent a house for himself and his new wife. They’re Black, something the man about to show him the house doesn’t know. With that, we’re introduced to the Arringtons: Phil, Velma, his daughter Livia (from a previous marriage), and his youngest, Madeline, soon to be born. They’re cosmopolitan. Sophisticated. They’re also troubled, arrogant, and throughout the linked stories, falling apart.

We follow the family as Phil begins his private practice, as Velma opens her antiques shop, and as they buy new homes, collect art, go skiing, and have overseas adventures. It seems they’ve made it in the white world. However, young Maddie, one of the only Black children in town, bears the brunt of the racism and the invisible barriers her family’s money, education, and determination can’t free her from. As she grows up and realizes her father is sleeping with white women, her mother is violently mercurial, and her half-sister resents her, Maddie must decide who she is despite, or perhaps precisely because of, her family.

#3. Jerks

by Sara Lippman

Publisher: Mason Jar Press

Genre: Literary Fiction / Short Story Collection

About the Book:

With JERKS, Sara Lippmann rides the proverbial clutch between wanting and having. Ambivalent mothers, aging suburbanites, restless teens, survivalist parents, and disaffected wives—desire is a live wire, however frayed, a reminder that life, for all its sputtering stall outs, is still worth living. The messy characters in these eighteen stories may hack up their bed sheets with group sex, anonymous sex, sexual history, infidelity, and a literal handsaw, but there’s tenderness, too, among the lust and rage. Even when fantasy offers a shortcut to oneself, without connection, it’s a lonely escape. With crisp precision, ample honesty and desperate humor, Lippmann delivers an irresistibly fraught cast of characters at various stages of undress.

#4. How to Build a Home for the End of the World

by Kelly Shinners

Publisher: Perennial Press

Genre: Science Fiction / Post-Apocalyptic

About the Book:

In the midst of widespread drought, the Sorensens have been relatively sheltered in their hometown of Fox Lake, Illinois. But, when all the water in their lake disappears overnight, family bonds begin to unravel. Seventeen-year-old Mary-Beth, hell-bent on saving the girl she loves, convinces her father, Donny, to go on a road trip to California. Along the way, they meet inventors and academics, ancestors and desert healers, angels and ghosts, all while reckoning with the faultlines of their past to imagine a better future, a remade home in the world.

Framed as a case history of post-apocalyptic times, How To Build a Home for the End of the World considers how people negotiate care in the throes of ever-unfolding crisis.

5. Faith

by Itoro Bassey

Publisher: Malarkey Books

Genre: African & African American Fiction / Coming of Age

About the Book:

Faith is a coming-of-age tale about Arit Essien, a first-generation Nigerian-American woman born and raised in the U.S. who resettles in Nigeria. The novel is a meditation where several generations of women riff on ideas of faith, expectation, identity, and independence. It’s a poignant conversation between the dead and the living, the past and the present, and a young woman grappling to find her place in it all.

#6. How to Turn Into a Bird

by Maria Jose Ferrada

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Coming of Age / Hispanic & Latino Fiction

About the Book:

From the award-winning author of How to Order the Universe, María José Ferrada beautifully details the life and lessons of an unconventional man and the boy who loves him. 

After years of hard work in a factory outside of Santiago, Chile, Ramón accepts a peculiar job: to look after a Coca-Cola billboard located by the highway. And it doesn’t take long for Ramón to make an even more peculiar decision: to make the billboard his new home.

Twelve-year-old Miguel is enchanted by his uncle’s unusual living arrangement, but the neighborhood is buzzing with gossip, declaring Ramón a madman bringing shame to the community. As he visits his uncle in a perch above it all, Miguel comes to see a different perspective, and finds himself wondering what he believes―has his uncle lost his mind, as everyone says? Is madness―and the need for freedom―contagious? Or is Ramón the only one who can see things as they really are, finding a deeper meaning in a life they can’t understand from the ground?

When a local boy disappears, tensions erupt and forgotten memories come to the surface. And Miguel, no longer perched in the billboard with his uncle, witnesses the reality on the ground: a society that, in the name of peace, is not afraid to use violence.With sharp humor and a deep understanding of a child’s mind, How to Turn Into a Bird is a powerful tale of coming of age, loss of innocence, and shifting perspectives that asks us: how far outside of our lives must we go to really see things clearly?

#7. Throwing Shadows

by Jerry Roth

Publisher: Brigids Gate Press

Genre: Horror / Short Story Collection

About the Book:

A woman develops an unhealthy obsession with a scarecrow. A boy plays with a Ouija board and receives a terrifying warning of murder. A down-on-his-luck father learns what happens when you die in your sleep. These stories and six more frightening tales await the reader within the pages of Throwing Shadows: A Dark Collection.

Throwing Shadows will feed that hungry dark side that lives in your cellar.

#8. Cul-de-sac

by Nick Perilli

Publisher: Montag Press

Genre: Fantasy / Experimental

About the Book:

The Oughtside has slipped in through the cracks in the world and judgment has come for Habre Circle. Some boy rips himself out of sleep paralysis to find his dead-end street overtaken by the Oughtside, a limbo where the dead are remade as clay bones, shadow and porcelain. An opaque mass of a human figure meets the boy at his front door, offering him employment as judge and jury of his neighbors’ banal lives. He accepts this unpaid call to adventure seemingly plucked from the video games and narratives that consume him, descending into the homes and experiences of his childhood friend, a former babysitter who is now a skeleton, a bitter elder, and more through cracked storytelling mediums. The neighbors, in turn, see the boy’s true maladjusted self, interacting with him and each other in a strange limbo the way they never could in life, all of them hurtling towards salvation or damnation.

Cul-de-sac is an experimental fantasy that playfully explores the boundaries of genre and the power of a story’s medium. The book deftly weaves a narrative that guides you through the suspended places between life and death, the hunger and drive behind reconciliation, and the true cost of your past catching up with you.

#9. Unwieldy Creatures

by Addie Tsai

Publisher: Jaded Ibis Press

Genre: Asian & Asian American Fiction / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

Unwieldy Creatures, a biracial, queer, nonbinary retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, follows the story of three beings who all navigate life from the margins: Plum, a queer biracial Chinese intern at one of the world’s top embryology labs, who runs away from home to openly be with her girlfriend only to be left on her own; Dr. Frank, a queer biracial Indonesian scientist, who compromises everything she claims to love in the name of science and ambition when she sets out to procreate without sperm or egg; and Dr. Frank’s nonbinary creation who, painstakingly brought into the world, is abandoned due to complications at birth that result from a cruel twist of revenge. Plum struggles to determine the limits of her own ambition when Dr. Frank offers her a chance to assist with her next project. How far will Plum go in the name of scientific advancement and what is she willing to risk?

#10. Singing Lessons from the Stylish Canary

by Laura Stanfill

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Historical Fiction / Magical Realism

About the Book:

Georges Blanchard is revered in the small French town of Mireville both as a master serinette maker and for a miraculous incident in his childhood that earned him the title “The Sun-Bringer.” As his firstborn son, Henri Blanchard is expected to follow in his footsteps, but Henri would rather learn to make lace than music boxes. When Henri discovers a stash of American letters in his father’s drawer, he learns he’s not the firstborn son of Georges Blanchard at all: Henri has an older half-brother born to one of Georges’s American customers. When he crosses the ocean to encounter his half-brother at last, Henri discovers that there’s an entire world beyond Mirevilleace and there may be a perfect place for him yet.

#11. Dark Factory

by Kathe Koja

Publisher: Meerkat Press

Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy / Cyberpunk

About the Book:

Welcome to Dark Factory! You may experience strobe effects, Y reality, DJ beats, love, sex, betrayal, triple shot espresso, broken bones, broken dreams, ecstasy, self-knowledge, and the void. Dark Factory is a dance club: three floors of DJs, drinks, and customizable reality, everything you see and hear and feel. Ari Regon is the club’s wild card floor manager, Max Caspar is a stubborn DIY artist, both chasing a vision of true reality. And rogue journalist Marfa Carpenter is there to write it all down. Then a rooftop rave sets in motion a fathomless energy that may drive Ari and Max to the edge of the ultimate experience.

Dark Factory is Kathe Koja’s wholly original new novel from Meerkat Press, that combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing immersive events, to create a story that unfolds on the page, online, and in the reader’s creative mind.

#12. Rock Gods and Messy Monsters

by Diane Hatz

Genre: Magical Realism / Pop Culture

About the Book:

Aliens have hatched a rockstar. Brain extractions, falling body parts, and blood-vessel explosions have become the norm.

Alex’s dream job has turned into a nightmare. What should she do?

It’s the 1990s. Alex arrives to work at Acht Records, her improbable blonde hair streaked stress magenta and anger black. Her first duty is to wipe blood off her boss’s walls. It goes downhill from there.

Rock Gods & Messy Monsters is a humorous story about life inside a record company. Yet underneath and between the lines of satire and absurdism, the book is a cautionary tale.

It reminds us that dreams can be illusions.

Discovering who we really are takes courage and a commitment to self-love.

#13. A Three-Letter Name

by Annie Lisenby

Publisher: Parliament House

Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy

About the Book:

A touching YA fantasy for fans of A QUIET PLACE and PRINCESS MONONOKE.

Els never wanted to marry. Her calling was to protect her village from the feline beasts that prowl the forest at night, and love had no part in it. But after a fever steals much of her hearing, she is forced to decide between exile and marrying a stranger.

Samuel, Els’ new betrothed, is adjusting after an injury leaves him disabled. Never again will he be the great hunter and leader that his father expects, and after the girl he loves abandons him, he flees his village to escape scrutiny.

Before Els and Samuel can adapt to their life as a married couple, the very beasts that Els fended off spill more innocent blood, sending the village into a panic.

Now, there’s only one choice: hunt the beasts and kill every last one. And do it together.

Finding strength in their new disabilities, Els and Samuel must learn to listen with their hearts.

Their home and their lives depend on it.

#14. The Accidental Warriors

by Karl Fields

Genre: Middle Grade / Action & Adventure / Graphic Novel

About the Book:

Jalen Banneker has a confidence problem … as in, too much of it. But what his friends don’t know is that it’s all an act, hiding years of self-doubt.

But when an evil monster kidnaps his friend, Jalen must overcome his fears as he travels to a mystical world where he’ll have to defeat the monster, break an ancient curse, save his friend and find his way back home in time for dinner.

#15. Silver River Shadow

by Jane Thomas

Genre: Middle Grade / Action & Adventure Fiction

About the Book:

In 1946, Barney and Marion Lamm climbed into their two-seater plane and flew deep into the heart of the Canadian wilderness. Then one day the wonderful life they created was ripped apart.

Over seventy years later, their great-granddaughter Lizzie follows in their footsteps. Nobody ever tells Lizzie anything. Her mother’s dead and her father’s hiding in his work. Determined to know her family history, the truths she uncovers are laced with dangerous secrets.

Based on a true story and a real, raw quest for truth, Silver River Shadow shines a light on a country’s darkest secrets and unveils the mercury tragedy that still affects the Ojibway community in Canada’s northwestern Ontario today. With gorgeous illustrations, this beautifully written book is perfect for 8+ fans of Katherine Rundell, Tom Palmer and Onjali Rauf.

#16. Dream Pop Origami

by Jackson Bliss

Publisher: Unsolicited Press

Genre: Memoir / Asian & Asian American Literature

About the Book:

Dream Pop Origami is a beautiful, ambitious, interactive, and engrossing lyrical memoir about mixed-race identity, love, travel, AAPI masculinities, and personal metamorphosis. This experimental work of creative nonfiction examines, celebrates, and complicates what it means to be Asian & white, Nisei & hapa, Midwestern & Californian, Buddhist & American at the same time. In this stunning collection of choose-your-own-essays and autobiographical lists, multiracial identity is a counterpoint of memory, language, reflection, and imagination intersecting and interweaving into a coherent tapestry of text, emotion, and voice.

#17. Halfway from Home

by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

Publisher: Split/Lip Press

Genre: Creative Nonfiction / Essays

About the Book:

When she left a chaotic home at eighteen, Sarah Fawn Montgomery chased restlessness, claiming places on the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast, while determined never to settle. But it is difficult to move forward when she longs for the past. Now her family is ravaged by addiction, illness, and poverty; the country is increasingly divided; and the natural worlds in which she seeks solace are under siege by wildfire, tornados, and unrelenting storms. Turning to nostalgia as a way to grieve a rapidly-changing world, Montgomery excavates the stories and scars we bury, unearthing literal and metaphorical childhood time capsules and treasures.

Blending lyric memoir with lamenting cultural critique, Montgomery examines contemporary longing and desire, sorrow and ache, searching for how to build a home when human connection is disappearing, and how to live meaningfully when our sense of self is uncertain in a fractured world. Taking readers from the tide pools and monarch groves of California, to the fossil beds and grass prairies of Nebraska, to the scrimshaw shops and tangled forests of Massachusetts, Montgomery holds a mirror up to America and asks us to reflect on our past before we run out of time to save our future. Halfway from Home grieves a vanishing world while offering—amidst emotional and environmental collapse—ways to discover hope, healing, and home.

#18. The Autobiography of a Language

by Mirene Arsanios

Publisher: FuturePoem

Genre: Essays / Prose Poetry / Middle Eastern

About the Book:

“Here the mirror image of the almost hallucinatory, heart-rending loss of the familiar is literary defamiliarization. Arsanios both mourns and blasts apart the notion of the mother tongue, reminding us that for each “mother tongue” at least another tongue is silenced. Desire propels her genre-defying writing, which grief notwithstanding still manages to tongue languages, and that is her genius. –Mónica de la Torre

#19. Who Should We Let Die?

by Koye Oyerinde

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Health / Policy

About the Book:

Embedded in the “Health for All by the Year 2000” slogan was the notion of health as a human right. Yet, when we don’t guarantee health services to all, we are unwittingly answering the question, Who Should We Let Die?

America doesn’t provide healthcare services as a right of citizenship. Instead, it has a treatment system dominated by profit-orientated healthcare insurers, hospital corporations, medical device companies, and pharmaceutical corporations. In Who Should We Let Die? Dr. oyerinde describes it as a GoFundMe health system because almost half of the supplicants on the eponymous website are there to raise funds to pay for hospital bills.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that poorly handled local epidemics become pandemics. As enunciated in the Alma Ata Declaration, we need quality primary healthcare-based systems to detect diseases early and promptly alert health authorities to outbreaks. Such a system will not depend on GoFundMe campaigns or out-of-pocket payments for health services. Only a groundswell of demand by the public for good governance will get us to universal health coverage by 2030. Dr. Oyerinde presents illustrative anecdotes provoking conversations that could lead America and developing countries on their path to universal health coverage.

#20. Little Astronaut

by Maryann Aita

Publisher: ELJ Editions

Genre: Personal Memoir / Essays

About the Book:

Maryann grows up alone within a family of six, shrouded by her sister’s anorexia, her brother’s cancer, and her mother’s affair with alcohol. With her childhood consumed by her sister’s eating disorder, she braces for a future fraught with loss. Sinking deep into depression as a teenager, she struggles to understand what it means to love those around her, and questions whether being loved is worth the cost. After her sister’s recovery and her brother’s remission, she’s left to comb the depths of her loneliness and confront the darkest pall of her adolescence: her mother’s drinking. In moving from her hometown in Montana to New York City, she finds a place where those who are alone are not always lonely, and begins to define love, loneliness, and intimacy for herself.

Through experimentation with form, the book captures the perspectives of Maryann’s adult and childhood selves, as well as her experience of mental illness. Flipping through its pages, readers will discover a tapestry of image and white space, scenes written in screenplay, faux news articles, a one-woman show, a Punnett square, a poetry-prose hybrid, a report card, sketches, and math problems. LITTLE ASTRONAUT is a literary kaleidoscope blending the cerebral and emotional, and humor with darkness. The book explores anxiety and depression next to the intricacies of Barbie sex and a failed driving test. These essays dig into the tiny, intimate moments that stitch us together: awaiting sunrise on Christmas mornings with a brother, the unexpected grief of finding a wounded bird, and the meaning of objects passed between sisters. LITTLE ASTRONAUT is, at its heart, the story of a woman redefining intimacy after a lifetime of self-imposed detachment.

#21. Whole Body Prayer

by Yan Ming Li

Genre: Memoir / Spirituality / Asian & Asian American Literature

About the Book:

“The same energy that created stars and galaxies lies dormant within your belly.”

So begins Master Yan Ming Li’s spellbinding memoir recounting the challenges of growing up as a spiritually-gifted child in a land where exploration of the unseen realms was forbidden. Like a Chinese Harry Potter, Li found solace in a mysterious and powerful force he called the Light.

But this is not a work of fiction. It’s a true story. In the pages of this book, we learn how all of us can gain access to this benevolent, healing, and boundless Light.

It is, in fact, our birthright.

Raised under harsh conditions during the Cultural Revolution in Maoist, China, Li learned early on that he was born with a spiritual gift which he needed to keep secret. Li used the gift many times, nonetheless, to heal others, including members of his own family.

Since emigrating from China to the West in 1994, Li has shared his gift with people of every major religion. Now, he feels compelled to share his inspiring story and teaching with the world.

Whole Body Prayer is a meditation and healing technique developed by Li that returns us “original spirituality” by combining ancient practices from the world’s major religions.

#22. Fledgling

by Hannah-Bourne Taylor

Publisher: Aurum (The Quarto Group)

Genre: Memoir / Nature

About the Book:

Read the powerful account of one woman’s fight to reshape her identity through connection with nature when all normality has fallen away.

When lifelong bird-lover Hannah Bourne-Taylor moved with her husband to Ghana seven years ago she couldn’t have anticipated how her life would be forever changed by her unexpected encounters with nature and the subsequent bonds she formed.

Plucked from the comfort and predictability of her life before, Hannah struggled to establish herself in her new environment, striving to belong in the rural grasslands far away from home.

In this challenging situation, she was forced to turn inwards and interrogate her own sense of identity, however in the animal life around her, and in two wild birds in particular, Hannah found a source of solace and a way to reconnect with the world in which she was living.

Fledgling is a portrayal of adaptability, resilience and self-discovery in the face of isolation and change, fuelled by the quiet power of nature and the unexpected bonds with animals she encounters.

Hannah encourages us to reconsider the conventional boundaries of the relationships people have with animals through her inspiring and very beautiful glimpse of what is possible when we allow ourselves to connect to the natural world. 

Full of determination and compassion, Fledgling is a powerful meditation on our instinctive connection to nature. It shows that even the tiniest of birds can teach us what is important in life and how to embrace every day.

#23. Duplex

by Mike Nagel

Publisher: Autofocus

Genre: Memoir / Humor

About the Book:

Mike Nagel is spending too much time in his duplex. Mostly he’s hungover. There’s a squirrel in the attic, the ceiling’s caving in, and he’s not sure who to call about it. Not much else seems to happen in Mike Nagel’s Duplex, except of course everything happens there: a distinct mind is constantly working over the absurdity, meaninglessness, and mundanity of contemporary life in ways both laugh-out-loud funny and thoughtfully compelling.

#24. My Life of Crime

by Tyler C. Gore

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press

Genre: Essays / Humor

About the Book:

An awkward visit to a nude beach. A bike-pedaling angel careening through rush-hour traffic. The mystery of a sandwich found in a bathroom stall. A lyric, rainy-day ramble through the East Village. With the personal essays (and three other entertainments) in this debut collection, Tyler C. Gore reveals the artistic secrets of his life of crime: a charming wit, compassionate observation, perfection of style, and, over all, a winsomely colorful light tinged with just enough despair. Whether stewing over a subway encounter with a deranged businessman, confessing his sordid past as a prankster, or recounting his family’s history of hoarding, Gore is by turns melancholy, profound and hilarious. The collection culminates with the novella-length essay “Appendix,” a twisted, sprawling account of routine surgery that grapples with evolution, mortality, strangely attractive doctors, simulated universes, and an anorexic cat. My Life of Crime conjures up from the flotsam of an individual life something uncannily majestic: an insomniac contemplation of life in our eternal, twenty-four-hour New York City, infused throughout with its grit, humanity, unexpected romance, and the poignant intimacy of all the lives joined together within it.

#25. The World As We Knew It

edited by Amy Brady and Tajja Isen

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Anthology / Climate & Environment

About the Book:

Nineteen leading literary writers from around the globe offer timely, haunting first-person reflections on how climate change has altered their lives—including essays by Lydia Millet, Alexandra Kleeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Omar El Akkad, Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, and more

In this riveting anthology, leading literary writers reflect on how climate change has altered their lives, revealing the personal and haunting consequences of this global threat. 
 
In the opening essay, National Book Award finalist Lydia Millet mourns the end of the Saguaro cacti in her Arizona backyard due to drought. Later, Omar El Akkad contemplates how the rise of temperatures in the Middle East is destroying his home and the wellspring of his art. Gabrielle Bellot reflects on how a bizarre lionfish invasion devastated the coral reef near her home in the Caribbean—a precursor to even stranger events to come. Traveling through Nebraska, Terese Svoboda witnesses cougars running across highways and showing up in kindergartens. 
 
As the stories unfold—from Antarctica to Australia, New Hampshire to New York—an intimate portrait of a climate-changed world emerges, captured by writers whose lives jostle against incongruous memories of familiar places that have been transformed in startling ways.

#26. Meat Lovers

by Rebecca Hawkes

Publisher: Auckland University Press

Genre: Poetry

About the Book:

“Rebecca Hawkes has established herself as a provocative and vital new voice: rustic and risqué, candid and lyrical. Hawkes looks at the awkwardness of the strange era in which we find ourselves with a keen eye, where synthetic meat is grown in test tubes and love is procured through mercury screens.” – Leila Lois, Independent Book Review

A tenderly devastating look at our cows and ourselves by a remarkable new poet.

#27. When I Was the Wind

by Hannah Lee Jones

Publisher: June Road Press

Genre: Poetry / Asian & Asian American Literature

About the Book:

A wild and dreamy poetic journey through the wilderness in all of us.

In her debut poetry collection, Hannah Lee Jones brings readers on a mythic journey across a vast physical and metaphysical landscape. Four cardinal directions point the way through this inner wilderness, through trials and initiations, suffering and discovery, on a restless quest for deeper connection and wholeness. What emerges is a richly textured map of love and loss, a tapestry of hard-won truths both personal and universal. At turns mysterious, dreamlike, intimate, and illuminating, these poems explore what is wild and timeless in the human soul.

“Like stepping into a beautiful dream where women fly over orchards and we encompass the landscape. There are few collections of poems so meditative that I lose myself so deeply . . . WHEN I WAS THE WIND is a remarkable and gorgeous debut collection–you will be better having read these poems.”–Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides

#28. Taste

by Jehane Dubrow

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Genre: Poetry / Physical Anthropology

About the Book:

Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses, which we often take for granted. Structured as a series of “small bites,” the book considers the ways that we ingest the world, how we come to know ourselves and others through the daily act of tasting.

Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste. In a series of short, interdisciplinary essays, she blends personal experience with analysis of poetry, fiction, music, and the visual arts, as well as religious and philosophical texts. Dubrow considers the science of taste and how taste transforms from a physical sensation into a metaphor for discernment.

Taste is organized not so much as a linear dinner served in courses but as a meal consisting of meze, small plates of intensely flavored discourse.

#29. Z is for Zapatazo

by Ruben Rivera

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Poetry / Hispanic & Latino Poetry

About the Book:

Ruben Rivera, Ph.D., was born in New York City to a mixed-race Puerto Rican family and raised in southern California in that time “when children should be seen and not heard.” As a working-class brown Latino boy, Ruben was invisible in the public school curriculum, on TV and media – except for anomalies like Tonto whose name in Spanish meant Dummy – and America as a whole, even as the long-ignored were struggling to be seen and heard in the era of Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the Chicano movement, anti-war marches, and the threat of cold war doom.

In Z is for Zapatazo, Ruben’s poetry depicts family upheaval, social injustice, and suffering summarized by the Spanish word Zapatazo. But his writing also elaborates on the joys of love, family, faith, and hope for a better world. Experiences in the spaces between freedom and favoritism, ideals and reality, suffering and hope are rendered in a range of poetical forms with vivid imagery, deadly seriousness, and humor. Although his poetry has won awards in various contests, Z is for Zapatazo is Ruben’s first published collection.

#30. Between Every Bird, Our Bones

by emet ezell

Publisher: Newfound

Genre: Poetry

About the Book:

between every bird, our bones is reverence amidst ruin. emet responds to the violence of military occupation with domestic intimacy, trailed by medical debt and grackles. these poems inhabit the body on edge, cancerous and queer, migrating between texas and palestine. they ask: how to care for a place when you’re not allowed back?

Happy reading! Which indie books from 2022 did we leave off the list?

About the Curator

Joe Walters is the founder and editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and a book marketing specialist at Sunbury Press. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel and trusting the process. Find him @joewalters13 on Twitter.

Thank you for reading “30 Impressive Indie Books of 2022” curated by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post 30 Impressive Indie Books of 2022 appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Curated by Joe Walters

Which great books from indie presses and indie authors are coming out in early 2023?

2023 sounds like a year from the future. (It is, I guess, but different). Like a far-off time, an impossible arrival date. But here you are, alive and reading.

The indie publishing landscape looks a bit different than what you see out of the Big Five (or Four/Three/Two/One), especially when it comes to books for pre-order. You don’t see a lot of anticipated indie lists because not all indies make their books available early.

But hey, some do. And for the beginning of next year, they look incredible.

These presses care a ton about their authors and their books. It’s one of the main things you’ll find in common with so many of them: a love of books and a desire for them to be read widely. When I saw what kind of wonder was expected out of these smaller to mid-sized publishers in early 2023, I knew I had to share them with you.

No matter if you’re in the mood for poetic prose, informative nonfiction, or a deeper entrenchment into the earth for every second we’re still alive here, this list has something for you.

Here’s my list of indie books to look out for in early 2023.

#1. The Dream Builders

by Oindrila Mukherjee

Releases in January 2023

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Literary Fiction / World Literature – India

About the Book:

After living in the US for years, Maneka Roy returns home to India to mourn the loss of her mother and finds herself in a new world. The booming city of Hrishipur where her father now lives is nothing like the part of the country where she grew up, and the more she sees of this new, sparkling city, the more she learns that nothing―and no one―here is as it appears. Ultimately, it will take an unexpected tragic event for Maneka and those around her to finally understand just how fragile life is in this city built on aspirations.

Written from the perspectives of ten different characters, Oindrila Mukherjee’s incisive debut novel explores class divisions, gender roles, and stories of survival within a society that is constantly changing and becoming increasingly Americanized. It’s a story about India today, and people impacted by globalization everywhere: a tale of ambition, longing, and bitter loss that asks what it really costs to try and build a dream.

#2. Funeral

by Daisuke Shen & Vi Ki Nao

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Kernpunkt Press

Genre: Literary Fiction / Myth / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

Written using prose, images, lists, diagrams, songs, and plays, the novella Funeral follows Eddie from the 1969 film Funeral Parade of Roses in her descent to Hell.  In Hell, Eddie meets and falls in love with Madame Rose during lunch. They spend their days creating Hell’s first boba shop and cheering on Hell in the final pingpong match against Heaven, but  their relationship soon falls apart. When Xing returns home to  Shanghai via Hell’s bullet train, Eddie sets out on a journey to win  her back, accompanied by her friends Tony Leung, the god Tu’Er  Shen, the moon, Mary Poppins, and her over-talkative Uber  driver, Jimin Park. In this co-authored novella, DAISUKE SHEN & VI KHI NAO explore the depths of morality, pain, and queerness  with irreverent humor and unflinching honesty.

#3. After the Rapture

by Nancy Stohlman

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Mason Jar Press

Genre: Literary Fiction / Dystopian

About the Book:

“In this world of Walmarts, Barbies, Kens, orgies/time-shares, 7-11s, clones, a red Lake Michigan, and dreams, Nancy Stohlman’s humor and talent shines. The rapture becomes more than just a rapture: it’s a world turning on its head, acceptance, and then finding a new normal. Redeeming and heart-felt, this dystopian novel-in-flashes is one not to forget. After the Rapture is a rapture!” – Kim Chinquee, three-time Pushcart Prize winner, author of seven collections and the novel, PIPETTE

“After The Rapture is a startling, rhapsodic, brilliant tome. Stohlman dares to venture into an intricate mosaic of layered, futuristic identities, individualities, and lives both wasted and yet fully explored. A dazzling oscillation of scintillating prose, on the threshold between the ephemeral and the eternal. After the Rapture is a book full of surprise and wonder, a compelling and majestic book.” – Robert Vaughan, author of Askew, Funhouse and Addicts & Basements

#4. Sweetlust

by Asja Bakic

Releases February 2023

Publisher: The Feminist Press

Genre: Short Story Collection / Science Fiction

About the Book:

The eleven stories in Sweetlust interweave feminist critique, intertextuality, and science fiction tropes in an irreverent portrait of our past, present, and future.

In a dystopian world with no men, women are “rehabilitated” at an erotic amusement park. Climate change has caused massive flooding and warming in the Balkans, where one programmer builds a time machine. And a devious reimagining of The Sorrows of Young Werther refocuses to center a sexually adventurous Charlotte.

Asja Bakić deploys the speculative and weird to playfully interrogate conversations around artificial intelligence, gender fluidity, and environmental degradation. As she did in her acclaimed debut Mars, Bakić once again upends her characters’ convictions and identities—and infuses each disorienting universe with sly humor and off-kilter eroticism. Visceral and otherworldly, Sweetlust takes apart human desire and fragility, repeatedly framing pleasure as both inviting and perilous.

#5. The Merry Dredgers

by Jeremy C. Shipp

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Meerkat Press

Genre: Dark Fantasy / Occult

About the Book:

Seraphina must infiltrate a bizarre and dangerous cult to determine why her sister is in a coma after a mysterious accident at the hands of the cult members. 

Seraphina Ramon will stop at nothing to find out the truth about why her sister Eff is in a coma after a very suspicious “accident.” Even it means infiltrating the last place Seraphina knows Eff was alive: a once-abandoned amusement park now populated by a community of cultists.

 Follow Seraphina through the mouth of the Goblin: To the left, a wolf-themed roller coaster rests on the blackened earth, curled up like a dead snake. To the right, an animatronic Humpty Dumpy falls off a concrete castle and shatters on the ground, only to reform itself moments later. Up ahead, cultists giggle as they meditate in a hall of mirrors. This is the last place in the world Seraphina wants to be, but the best way to investigate this bizarre cult is to join them.

#6. Promised Shadows

by M.K. Ahearn

Releases January 2023

Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy

About the Book:

Rae is a skilled thief, willing to complete any job for the right price, that is until one job does not go according to plan. After coming face to face with a deadly and powerful prince, Rae has made a bargain that thrusts her into the center of palace life and fighting to save a kingdom she is not even sure she has much faith in. 

Gavriel is the Royal Prince of Apricus, set to rule the kingdom one day, that is if the shadows do not rise again and tear it apart, driving them into a never-ending darkness. Alongside his twin sister, Rory, and loyal friend, River, the three work tirelessly to find a solution that will end the shadows for good. Their prayers seem to be answered when they are forced into a bargain with a criminal: Rae.

Together the group races against time to locate a long lost ancient artifact that just might be the key to saving their kingdom. The only problem is after 17 years of hiding and building their forces, the shadows are also on the hunt and they are seeking revenge. Will the group be able to beat the odds and find a crown that may only exist in legends before it is too late?

#7. The Kudzu Queen

by Mimi Herman

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Genre: Historical Fiction / Coming of Age

About the Book:

“Funny, sad, and tender… Mimi Herman has written a novel that possesses a true and hard won understanding of the South.” —David Sedaris, author of Happy-Go-Lucky

Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu—claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches—Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King.

As she learns more about Cullowee, however, she discovers that he, like the kudzu he promotes, has a dark and predatory side. When she finds she is not the only one threatened, she devises a plan to bring him down. Based on historical facts, The Kudzu Queen unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu through the voice of an irresistibly delightful (and mostly honest) narrator.

#8. Zephyr

by Evan Chronis

Releases January 2023

Genre: Science Fiction / Dystopia

About the Book:

1990: Bill Milo leaves home to see the world. He crosses desert and ocean, searching for purpose but never quite finding it. One day, Bill meets an old man taking his daily walk. He warns Bill that God will soon test mankind with a great flood, and that man will respond with fear and division. His words haunt him for years to come.

2015: August Milo spends her time caring for her grandparents and running her bakery. On a cold winter day, a customer named George orders a cake for his grandmother’s hundredth birthday. They find warmth in each other.

2025: Tyler Haji plots to avenge his brother’s death. Before he can realize his duty, a once-in-a-millennium flood ravages the East Coast. Many of the survivors flee west to join Bill Edenson, an alleged modern-day prophet; others stay and adhere to a resurgent Eastern regime. Tyler wallows in his past among the Eastern ranks until a greater calling beckons him west.

0017 Post-Flood: Succession is the natural order of things. Adam memorized his father’s words at a young age. Sooner than later, Adam would take on his father’s mantle, just as generations of Crombies before him had. Adam woefully accepts his fate until a mysterious herald names him heir to a greater prize: the West.

Spanning time, genre, and place, Zephyr traces the impacts of trauma, hope, and pride on ourselves and on those we hold dearest.

#9. Dioramas

by Blair Austin

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Dzanc Books

Genre: Literary Fiction / Dystopian

About the Book:

In this hybrid novel—part essay, part prose poem, part travel narrative—Blair Austin brings us nose to the glass with our own vanishing world, what we preserve and at what cost.

In a city far in the future, in a society that has come through a great upheaval, retired lecturer Wiggins moves from window to window in a museum, intricately describing each scene. Whales gliding above a shipwreck and a lost cup and saucer. An animatronic forest twenty stories tall. urban wolves in the light of an apartment building. A line of mosquitoes in uniforms and regalia, honored as heroes of the last great war.
 
Bit by bit, Wiggins unspools the secrets of his world—the conflict that brought it to the brink, and the great thinker, Michaux, who led the diorama revolution, himself now preserved under glass.
 
After a phone call in the middle of the night, Wiggins sets out to visit the Diorama of the Town: an entire, dioramic world, hundreds of miles across, where people are objects of curiosity, taxidermied and posed. All his life, Wiggins has longed to see it. But in the Town, he comes face to face with the diorama’s contradictions. Its legacy of political violence. Its manipulation by those with power and money. And its paper-thin promise of immortality.

#10. Owl in the Oak Tree

by Penny Walker Veraar

Releases February 2023

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Family Life

About the Book:

She’s the key witness to a drive-by shooting. But what happens when her duty to justice threatens the most important thing in her world—her family?

Reagan Ramsey—mother and middle school teacher extraordinaire—knows how to hold it together in the face of adversity. In the aftermath of her husband’s death from cancer, Reagan is doing everything she can to help her two children process their father’s passing while trying to sort out what a new normal looks like for their family. The loss proves especially difficult for her seven-year-old daughter, Lizzie, who has a dual diagnosis of Down syndrome and autism and is nonverbal. Lizzie’s father had been her protector, a hands-on parent since the day she was born, and in his absence, her behavior becomes increasingly challenging as she struggles to express her feelings of loss and confusion.

But when a random encounter puts Reagan in the cross fire of a drive-by shooting—an event that shakes the foundation of her community—she suddenly becomes an involuntary key witness to a murder that turns her world, and her sense of safety, upside down. Trapped between protecting her family and helping to bring the killer to justice, Reagan’s sense of right and wrong is tested like never before.

As fear and shame threaten to break Reagan, she must learn to rely on her own conscience and her community for the strength to put her life on the line for those she loves. A piercing examination of how grief and gun violence reshape families and communities, Owl in the Oak Tree is at once a taut thriller and a story of love and redemption.

#11. The Red-Headed Pilgrim

by Kevin Maloney

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: Contemporary Fiction / Humor

About the Book:

Provocative, poignant, and resoundingly hilarious, The Red-Headed Pilgrim is the tragicomic tale of an anxious red-head and his sordid pursuit of enlightenment and pleasure (not necessarily in that order).

On a sunny day in a business park near Portland, Oregon, 42-year-old web developer Kevin Maloney is in the throes of an existential crisis that finds him shoeless in a field of Queen Anne’s lace, reflecting on the tumultuous events that brought him to this moment. Growing up in the suburbs, young Kevin suffered “a psychological break that ripped me from my humdrum existence” mainlining high fructose corn syrup and episodes of The Golden Girls. Thus begins a journey of hard-earned insights and sexual awakening that takes Kevin from angst-ridden Beaverton to the beaches of San Diego, a frontier-themed roadside attraction in Helena, Montana, and a hermetic shack on an organic lettuce farm.

Everything changes when Kevin falls in love with Wendy. After a chance tarot reading lands them on the frigid coast of Maine, their lives are unsettled by the birth of their daughter, Zoë, whose sudden presence is oftentimes terrifying, frequently disturbing, and yet—miraculously—always wondrous.

The Red-Headed Pilgrim is an irresistible novel of misadventure and new beginnings, of wanderlust and bad decisions, of parenthood and divorce, and of the heartfelt truths we unearth when we least expect it.

#12. Shoot the Horses First

by Leah Angstman

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Kernpunkt Press

Genre: Short Story Collection / Historical Fiction

About the Book:

A debut collection of genre-bending short histories and novellas spanning 16th- through early 20th-century.

Through a historian’s lens and folkloric storytelling, the pieces in SHOOT THE HORSES FIRST revel in the nuances, brutality, mythology, and tiny victories of our historical past. A launderer takes us inside the linens of the richest families in early Baltimore. A child on the Orphan Train has his teeth inspected like a horse. Civil War soldiers experience PTSD. While one woman lands on an island of the Wampanoag tribe, a woman 200 years later finds Apache in a harsh frontier. Children survive yellow fever, the desert heat, and mistaken identities; men survive severed fingers, untested medicines, and wives with obsessive compulsive disorders. Frederick Douglass’ grandson plays violin at the World’s Fair on Colored American Day, a woman with disabilities is kept hidden away like she doesn’t exist, and a botanist is denied her place in a science journal because she is female. Themes of place, war, mental illness, identity, disability, feminism, and unyielding optimism throughout harrowing desperation resurface in this collection of stories that takes us back to time immemorial, yet feels so close, and all too familiar.

#13. The Raven

by Dani Lamia

Releases February 2023

Publisher: Level 4 Press

Genre: Dark Fantasy / Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

About the Book:

She saw The Raven in her dreams. Now her life’s a nightmare.

No matter how hard she tries, Rebekah just doesn’t fit in at her prestigious Ivy League prep school. The cruel, privileged students ridicule and bully her on a daily basis. And instead of standing up for herself, Rebekah retreats into a dark, unsettling world of nightmarish visions . . .

In her dreams, a cloaked figure named The Raven gives her a chance to turn the tables on her tormentors, and exact bloody revenge. At first, she secretly relishes the power, but then Rebekah discovers her dreams have terrifying consequences: The Raven’s brutal revenge is real.

Ripped straight from the pages of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven unlocks deep truths about humanity and tackles self-worth, morality, and the pain of doing what’s right at all costs.

#14. I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

by Marisa Crane

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Science Fiction / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror in this lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state

In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crime—and a warning to those they encounter. Within the Department, corruption and prejudice run rampant, giving rise to an underclass of so-called Shadesters who are disenfranchised, publicly shamed, and deprived of civil rights protections.

Kris is a Shadester and a new mother to a baby born with a second shadow of her own. Grieving the loss of her wife and thoroughly unprepared for the reality of raising a child alone, Kris teeters on the edge of collapse, fumbling in a daze of alcohol, shame, and self-loathing. Yet as the kid grows, Kris finds her footing, raising a child whose irrepressible spark cannot be dampened by the harsh realities of the world. She can’t forget her wife, but with time, she can make a new life for herself and the kid, supported by a community of fellow misfits who defy the Department to lift one another up in solidarity and hope.

With a first-person register reminiscent of the fierce self-disclosure of Sheila Heti and the poetic precision of Ocean Vuong, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a bold debut novel that examines the long shadow of grief, the hard work of parenting, and the power of queer resistance.

#15. Origami Dogs

by Noley Reid

Releases April 2023

Publisher: Autumn House Press

Genre: Short Story Collection

About the Book:

Stories of characters who face tragedies alongside their canine companions.
 
Noley Reid’s fourth book, Origami Dogs, is a testament to her mastery of the form. Here, dogs rove the grounds of their companions’ emotions. The creatures in this short story collection often act subtly, serving as witnesses without language, exacerbating tension and providing relief to the human characters. Sometimes they are central to the stories’ plots, such as in the lead story, “Origami Dogs,” which focuses on Iris Garr, a dog breeder’s teenage daughter, as she begins noticing odd birth defects in new litters and realizes she must confront her mother, whom she loves yet cannot help but resent. In some stories, teens struggle toward womanhood or wrestle with sexuality and queerness, confronting parents who are unable to provide the care or support they need. In other stories, Reid’s characters are adults striving to be better spouses, parents, or both, and are often grappling with life-changing events—like a new disability or the loss of a child. Despite the gravitas of these tragedies, with Reid’s touch, they feel alive, present, and painfully close. Reid brings us to her characters in the fierce damp aftermath of calamity and asks us to dwell with them until new possibilities arrive.

At these tipping points, the characters of Origami Dogs stand ready with their dogs (or memories of them), to take the next step. By turns tender, moving, and devastating, this story collection is a celebration of the bond of devotion possible between humans and dogs, and it presents an intimate rendering of the lives we share.

#16. The Company of Strangers

by Jennifer Michalski

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Braddock Avenue Books

Genre: Short Story Collection / LGBTQ+ / Contemporary Fiction

About the Book:

The stories in Jen Michalski’s new collection reveal an America in which ideas of genuine community ring false and the spiritual backbone of family life is damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Characters, many of them queer Gen-Xers of a certain age, find themselves looking―often desperately―for a way to understand the lives they’ve lived and a way to move forward with at least the possibility of future happiness.

In “Long Haul,” a gay man visits his estranged uncle to lay to rest the unresolved guilt they both feel over the childhood disappearance of his sister. In “Great White” a gay man who was the sperm donor to a lesbian friend’s pregnancy, is confronted with the possibility of genuine parenthood when the friend’s partner dies and she is laid-low by grief. And in the title story, a young woman affirms her sexuality by having an affair with her brother’s wife; the fallout leading her to regain her footing only when she befriends an elderly gay couple vacationing in the area.

In stories that relentlessly demonstrate the tensions of the 21st century, Michalski’s The Company of Strangers provides a sometimes comical, sometimes touching portrait of what is perhaps our most pressing question: How do we make a life?

#17. Boundless as the Sky

by Dawn Raffel

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press

Genre: Historical Fiction

About the Book:

Dawn Raffel’s Boundless as the Sky is a book of the invisible histories that repose beneath the cities we inhabit, and the worlds we try to build out of words. The first of its two parts, stories of real and invented cities, some ancient, some dystopian, is a feminist response to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

The second part comes together into one narrative, taking place in a single city—Chicago—on a single day in 1933. It is based closely on a true event, the arrival of a “roaring armada of goodwill” in the form of twenty-four seaplanes flown in a display of fascist power by Mussolini’s wingman Italo Balbo to Chicago’s “Century of Progress” World’s Fair. The 7000-mile flight from Rome to Chicago was lauded by both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Hitler, at a time when aviation made banner headlines across the US, and news of the Nazis was often in a side column.

The novella follows a few of the many thousands of Chicagoans there to witness the planes’ arrival. These two panels of Raffel’s poetic diptych call out to each other with a mysterious and disquieting harmony, and from history and fantasy to the dangers and dark realities of the current moment with startling insight and urgency.

#18. Who Gets Believed?

by Dina Nayeri

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Immigration / Sociology

About the Book:

From the author of The Ungrateful Refugee—finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Kirkus Prize—Who Gets Believed? is a groundbreaking book about persuasion and performance that asks unsettling questions about lies, truths, and the difference between being believed and being dismissed in situations spanning asylum interviews, emergency rooms, consulting jobs, and family life

Why are honest asylum seekers dismissed as liars?

Former refugee and award-winning author Dina Nayeri begins with this question, turning to shocking and illuminating case studies in this book, which grows into a reckoning with our culture’s views on believability. From persuading a doctor that she’d prefer a C-section to learning to “bullshit gracefully” at McKinsey to struggling, in her personal life, to believe her troubled brother-in-law, Nayeri explores an aspect of our society that is rarely held up to the light.

For readers of David Grann, Malcolm Gladwell, and Atul Gawande, Who Gets Believed? is a book as deeply personal as it is profound in its reflections on morals, language, human psychology, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another.

#19. The Wise Hours

by Miriam Darlington

Releases February 2023

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Science & Nature / Animals

About the Book:

One minute I was sipping my tea by the window. There was nothing but the palest edge of grey light and a wisp of steam from my cup―and then a shadow swooped out of the air. With the lightest of scratches, as if the dawn light was solidifying into life, there it was, perched like an exclamation mark on the balcony: an owl, come to my home.

Owls have existed for over sixty million years, and in the relatively short time we have shared the planet with these majestic birds they have ignited the human imagination. But even as owls continue to captivate our collective consciousness, celebrated British nature writer Miriam Darlington finds herself struck by all she doesn’t know about the true nature of these enigmatic creatures.

Darlington begins her fieldwork in the British Isles with her teenage son, Benji. As her avian fascination grows, she travels to France, Serbia, Spain, Finland, and the frosted Lapland borders of the Arctic for rare encounters with the Barn Owl, Tawny Owl, Long-eared Owl, Pygmy Owl, Snowy Owl, and more. But when her son develops a mysterious illness, her quest to understand the elusive nature of owls becomes entangled with her search for finding a cure.

In The Wise Hours, Darlington watches and listens to the natural world and to the rhythms of her home and family, inviting readers to discover the wonders of owls alongside her while rewilding our imagination with the mystery, fragility, and magnificence of all creatures.

#20. A Darker Wilderness

Edited by Erin Sharkey

Releases February 2023

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Genre: Science & Nature / African & African American Studies

About the Book:

A vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory.

What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.

Erin Sharkey considers Benjamin Banneker’s 1795 almanac, as she follows the passing of seasons in an urban garden in Buffalo. Naima Penniman reflects on a statue of Haitian revolutionary François Makandal, within her own pursuit of environmental justice. Ama Codjoe meditates on rain, hair, protest, and freedom via a photo of a young woman during a civil rights demonstration in Alabama. And so on—with wide-ranging contributions from Carolyn Finney, Ronald Greer II, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Sean Hill, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Glynn Pogue, Katie Robinson, and Lauret Savoy—unearthing evidence of the ways Black people’s relationship to the natural world has persevered through colonialism, slavery, state-sponsored violence, and structurally racist policies like Jim Crow and redlining.

A scrapbook, a family chest, a quilt—and an astounding work of historical engagement and literary accomplishment—A Darker Wilderness is a collection brimming with abundance and insight.

#21. Not Too Late

by Rebecca Solnit

Releases April 2023

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Genre: Climate & Ecology

About the Book:

An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit (“the voice of the resistance”—New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment.

Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, anxious, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy.

These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz and Emergent Strategy author adrienne maree brown. Guided by Rebecca Solnit’s typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by illustrations, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.

Contributors include Julian Aguon, Jade Begay, adrienne maree brown, Edward Carr, Renato Redantor Constantino, Joelle Gergis, Jacquelyn Gill, Mary Annaise Heglar, Mary Ann Hitt, Roshi Joan Halifax, Nikayla Jefferson, Antonia Juhasz, Kathy Jetnil Kijiner, Fenton Lutunatabua & Joseph `Sikulu, Yotam Marom, Denali Nalamalapu, Leah Stokes, Farhana Sultana, and Gloria Walton.

#22. Mixed Signals

by Uri Gneezy

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Yale University Press

Genre: Decision-Making & Problem Solving / Business & Marketing

About the Book:

An informative and entertaining account of how actions send signals that shape behaviors and how to design better incentives for better results in our life, our work, and our world
 
Incentives send powerful signals that aim to influence behavior. But often there is a conflict between what we say and what we do in response to these incentives. The result: mixed signals.
 
Consider the CEO who urges teamwork but designs incentives for individual success, who invites innovation but punishes failure, who emphasizes quality but pays for quantity. Employing real-world scenarios just like this to illustrate this everyday phenomenon, behavioral economist Uri Gneezy explains why incentives often fail and demonstrates how the right incentives can change behavior by aligning with signals for better results.
 
Drawing on behavioral economics, game theory, psychology, and fieldwork, Gneezy outlines how to be incentive smart, designing rewards that are simple and effective. He highlights how the right combination of economic and psychological incentives can encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars, be more innovative at work, and even get to the gym. “Incentives send a signal,” Gneezy writes, “and your objective is to make sure this signal is aligned with your goals.”

#23. Fieldwork

by Iliana Regan

Releases January 2023

Publisher: Agate Publishing

Genre: Culinary Biography & Memoir / Nature & Ecology

About the Book:

From National Book Award–nominee Iliana Regan, a new memoir of her life and heritage as a forager, spanning her ancestry in Eastern Europe, her childhood in rural Indiana, and her new life set in the remote forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Fieldwork explores how Regan’s complex gender identity informs her acclaimed work as a chef and her profound experience of the natural world.

Included in our list of Must-Read Mushroom Books!

#24. The Language of Trees

by Katie Holten

Releases April 2023

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Nature & Ecology / Trees / Literature

About the Book:

“A masterpiece. Katie Holten’s tree alphabet is a gift to the printed world.”―Max Porter, author of Grief is a Thing with Feathers

Inspired by forests, trees, leaves, roots, and seeds, The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. In this gorgeously illustrated and deeply thoughtful collection, Katie Holten gifts readers her tree alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate beloved writing in praise of the natural world. With an introduction from Ross Gay, and featuring writings from over fifty contributors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, James Gleick, Elizabeth Kolbert, Plato, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Holten illustrates each selection with an abiding love and reverence for the magic of trees. She guides readers on a journey from “primeval atoms” and cave paintings to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry, unearthing a new way to see the natural beauty all around us and an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.

The Language of Trees considers our relationship with literature and landscape, resulting in an astonishing fusion of storytelling and art and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages.

#25. This Wide Terraqueous World

by Laird Hunt

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Genre: Writing & Publishing / Memoir

About the Book:

Haunting essays from acclaimed author Laird Hunt balance intimate remembrance with an examination of the writing life.

In this new collection of nonfiction from the celebrated author of Zorrie, Laird Hunt uses fiction as an inspiration, a tool, even an obsession, employing its methods to get to the heart of experience. The “sizzling” work of Jane Bowles colors his wanderings through Palermo, while a London museum trip provokes a consideration of taxidermy’s storytelling potential, and fairytales blend with echoes of W. G. Sebald, Willa Cather, and László Krasznahorkai. From intrigue at the United Nations to a broken-down car in Nebraska, from the history of denim to the dangerous games of childhood, This Wide Terraqueous World leads readers down the winding paths of memory as Hunt examines his subjects in razor-sharp prose both eerily spare and richly evocative.

#26. My Dear Comrades

by Sunu P. Chandy

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Genre: Poetry / Family /Women

About the Book:

In this poetry collection, Sunu P. Chandy includes stories about her experiences as a woman, civil rights attorney, parent, partner, daughter of South Asian immigrants, and member of the LGBTQ community. These poems cover themes ranging from immigration, social justice activism, friendship loss, fertility challenges, adoption, caregiving, and life during a pandemic. Sunu’s poems provide some resolve, some peace, some community, amidst the competing notions of how we are expected to be in the world, especially when facing a range of barriers.

Sunu’s poems provide company for many who may be experiencing isolation through any one of these experiences and remind us that we are not, in fact, going it alone. Whether the experience is being disregarded as a woman of color attorney, being rejected for being queer, losing a most treasured friendship, doubting one’s romantic partner or any other form of heartbreak, Sunu’s poems highlight the human requirement of continually starting anew. These poems remind us that we can, and we will, rebuild. They remind us that whether or not we know it, there are comrades who are on parallel roads too, and that as a collective, we are, undoubtedly, cheering each other on.

#27. Lupine

by Jenny Irish

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Black Lawrence Press

Genre: Poetry / Women

About the Book:

At the heart of all violence is fear: Lupine is a gathering of feminist prose poetry engaging themes of ecology, animality, and the human unknown. A series of interconnected dramatic monologues, the poems inhabit the personae of figures traditionally deemed Monstrous, giving them voice to confront and reclaim the violent mythologies that have so often been imposed upon them. As these unmuzzled monsters speak, the collection collapses the boundaries between the self and the subjugated other, ultimately upending the discourse of monstrosity itself. By exposing how women are villainized and sacrificed in response to cultural fear, Lupine offers a corrective to social narratives in which notions of the bestial and notions of the feminine are intimately entwined.

#28. Soft Apocalypse

by Leah Nieboer

Releases March 2023

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Genre: Poetry / Apocalypse

About the Book:

Soft Apocalypse pirouettes in the “anemic glow” of late capitalism, its lyrics performing in the civic pocket, in the offbeat, and by arrhythmias that offer improvisational measures for going and going on. Chrome angels, strange beloveds, and cool-eyed speakers cut speculative lines through precarious spaces of the present—deserts and nightscapes, neon-lit strips, corner stores, foreclosures, pharmacy queues, and “crumpled back alleys”—making imaginative economies, queer kinships, and alternative ways of being in the world. Nothing here is done with ease, but irreducible gifts do slip surreptitiously from palm to palm: after all, “we all need a little help sometimes / baby.” Anybody in these poems may use ordinary, embodied matters—“raw materials” and “dream residuals”—to shimmy out of dire, official measures and into “an unmarked rest,” an excess, or any “o vacancy!” where unofficial exchanges may be made.

Soft Apocalypse insistently edges these minor events and intimate apprehensions against the official orders, projections, violations, and isolations of our time. Instead of calculating toward a dystopic ending, this book bets on its softer wrecks, a futurity in an intimately rewired collective.

#29. Buffalo Girl

by Jessica Q. Stark

Releases April 2023

Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.

Genre: Poetry / Women

About the Book:

In these hybrid poems, Jessica Q. Stark explores her mother’s fraught immigration to the United States from Vietnam at the end of war through the lens of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale.

Told through personal, national, and cultural histories, Buffalo Girl is a feminist indictment of the violence used to define and control women’s bodies. Interspersed throughout this hybrid work are a series of collaged photographs, featuring Stark’s mother’s black-and-white photography from Vietnam beautifully and hauntingly layered over various natural landscapes — lush tropical plants, dense forests, pockets of wildflowers. Several illustrations from old Red Riding Hood children’s books can also be found embedded into these pieces. Juxtaposing the moral implications of Little Red Riding Hood with her mother’s photography, Stark creates an image-text conversation that attends to the wolves lurking in the forests of our everyday lives. 

Opening the whispered frames around sexuality and sex work, immersed in the unflattering symptoms of survival, Buffalo Girl burgeons with matrilineal love and corporeal rage while censuring the white gaze and the violence enacted through the English language. Here is an inversion of diasporic victimhood. Here is an unwavering attention to the burdens suffered by the women of this world. Here is a reimagination, a reclamation, a way out of the woods.

#30. Into the Good World Again

by Max Garland

Releases March 2023

Publisher: Holy Cow! Press

Genre: Poetry / Pandemic

About the Book:

In these unsettling pandemic times, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland offers poems of grace, resilience, and healing remembrance.

These are poems of remembering, not only the anguish and isolation of the global pandemic, during which most were written, but also remembering as a creative or restorative force. Max Garland’s poems walk on a wire of remnant faith that even in the news-glutted age of social media, there’s a role for poetry, “…news that Stays news,” as one poet put it nearly a century ago. There’s an evocative range: from the surrealistic conjurings of a child’s mind at bedtime, to the fragmented memory of an aging widow, struggling to recall the details of her life, or if not the details, at least the emotional truth of that life, realizing that for her, “Memory is more like poetry than poetry.”

Which books from indie presses and indie authors are you most excited about in 2023? Let us know in the comments!

About the Curator

Joe Walters is the founder and editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and a book marketing specialist at Sunbury Press. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel and trusting the process. Follow him @joewalters13 on Twitter.

Thank you for reading “30 Indie Books to Look for in Early 2023” curated by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post 30 Indie Books to Look Out for in Early 2023 appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Curated by Joe Walters

Too many good books are coming out in 2022

I don’t have enough room for them all.

Okay maybe I do.

Maybe I can just move some over. Put some on the ground, stack ’em like a used bookstore. Put ’em on my nightstand, on top of the other ones?

Okay, okay, Kindle. Yes. I’ll read this one before this one. This one too.

It’s April 21st, and I just hit my 30th book of the year. eBooks & audiobooks have changed my world in both dramatic and realistic ways. I’m doing more dishes than ever before, and I’ve been devouring nonfiction that way. In my tiny gaps of freedom with my best little baby friend, I’m sneaking in poems and flash fiction.

So my list of exciting 2022 books from indie presses and indie authors is comprised of…a whole bunch of stuff! And I’m excited about all of it.

And honestly, you should be too.

Authors & presses are doing incredible things right now. Wanna see?

Here’s my list of books to get excited about in 2022.

#1. Jerks

by Sara Lippman

Released in March 2020

Publisher: Mason Jar Press

Genre: Short Fiction / Literary

About the Book:

With JERKS, Sara Lippmann rides the proverbial clutch between wanting and having. Ambivalent mothers, aging suburbanites, restless teens, survivalist parents, and disaffected wives—desire is a live wire, however frayed, a reminder that life, for all its sputtering stall outs, is still worth living. The messy characters in these eighteen stories may hack up their bed sheets with group sex, anonymous sex, sexual history, infidelity, and a literal handsaw, but there’s tenderness, too, among the lust and rage. Even when fantasy offers a shortcut to oneself, without connection, it’s a lonely escape. With crisp precision, ample honesty and desperate humor, Lippmann delivers an irresistibly fraught cast of characters at various stages of undress.

#2. Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love

by Carlos Allende

Releases June 2022

Publisher: Red Hen Press

Genre: Thriller / Humor / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

A campy dark comedy for the angry and the disenchanted.

Last November, I found a dead body inside the freezer that my roommate keeps inside the garage. My first thought was to call the police, but Jignesh hadn’t paid his share of the rent just yet. It wasn’t due until the thirtieth, and you know how difficult it is to find people who pay on time. Jignesh always does. Also, he had season tickets for the LA Opera, and well . . . Madame Butterfly. Tosca. The Flying Dutchman . . . at the Dorothy Chandler . . . you cannot say no to that, can you? Well, it’s been a few good months now—Madame Butterfly was just superb, thank you. However, last Friday, I found a second body inside that stupid freezer in the garage. This time I’m evicting Jignesh. My house isn’t a mortuary . . . alas, I need to come up with some money first. You’ll understand, therefore, that I desperately need to sell this novel. Just enough copies to help me survive until I find a job . . . what could I do that doesn’t demand too much effort? We have a real treasure here, anyhow. Some chapters are almost but not quite pornographic. You could safely lend this to nana afterward!

#3. My Volcano

by John Elizabeth Stintzi

Releases March 2022

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: Literary / Disaster Fiction

About the Book:

My Volcano is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a menagerie of characters, as they each undergo personal eruptions, while the Earth itself is constantly shifting. Parable, myth, science-fiction, eco-horror, My Volcano is a radical work of literary art, emerging as a subversive, intoxicating artistic statement by John Elizabeth Stintzi.

On June 2, 2016, a protrusion of rock growing from the Central Park Reservoir is spotted by a jogger. Three weeks later, when it finally stops growing, it’s nearly two-and-a-half miles tall, and has been determined to be an active volcano.

As the volcano grows and then looms over New York, an eight-year-old boy in Mexico City finds himself transported 500 years into the past, where he witnesses the fall of the Aztec Empire; a Nigerian scholar in Tokyo studies a folktale about a woman of fire who descends a mountain and destroys an entire village; a white trans writer in Jersey City struggles to write a sci-fi novel about a thriving civilization on an impossible planet; a nurse tends to Syrian refugees in Greece while grappling with the trauma of living through the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan; a nomadic farmer in Mongolia is stung by a bee, magically transforming him into a green, thorned, flowering creature that aspires to connect every living thing into its consciousness.

With its riveting and audacious vision, My Volcano is a tapestry on fire, a distorted and cinematic new work from the fiercely talented John Elizabeth Stintzi.

#4. Faith

by Itoro Bassey

Released January 2022

Publisher: Malarkey Books

Genre: African & African American Fiction / Coming of Age

About the Book:

Faith is a coming-of-age tale about Arit Essien, a first-generation Nigerian-American woman born and raised in the U.S. who resettles in Nigeria. The novel is a meditation where several generations of women riff on ideas of faith, expectation, identity, and independence. It’s a poignant conversation between the dead and the living, the past and the present, and a young woman grappling to find her place in it all.

#5. And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing

Edited by Hannah Grieco

Released January 2022

Publisher: Alternating Current Press

Genre: Short Fiction / Speculative / Anthology

About the Book:

An evil teddy bear, a mermaid, a robot daughter, a ghost child. A mother surrendering her baby to the crows. A child consumed by lice from the inside out. A father sending his selkie daughter back to the sea. These flash stories and essays explore the whispered side of parenting—the loss, fear, vulnerability, and deep, deep love that lurks underneath our day-to-day lives as mothers and fathers. One glimpse into And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing, and you’ll never look at parenting in quite the same way again.

#6. Death Warrant

by Bryan Johnston

Releases June 2022

Publisher: CamCat Books

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Action-Adventure

About the Book:

Death Makes Great TV.

Frankie Percival is cashing in her chips. To save her brother from financial ruin, Frankie―a single stage performer and mentalist who never made it big―agrees to be assassinated on the most popular television show on the planet: Death Warrant. Once she signs her life away, her memory is wiped clean of the agreement, leaving her with no idea she will soon be killed spectacularly for global entertainment.

After years of working in low-rent theaters, Frankie prepares for the biggest performance of her life as her Death Warrant assassin closes in on her. Every person she encounters could be her killer. Every day could be her last.

She could be a star, if only she lives that long.

#7. Jawbone

by Mónica Ojeda

Released February 2022

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Genre: Women’s Fiction / Psychological / Horror

About the Book:

“Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?”

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?

When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.

#8. Sinkhole

by Davida Breier

Releases May 2022

Publisher: University of New Orleans Press

Genre: Psychological Thriller / Coming of Age

About the Book:

Humidity, lovebugs, and murder.

Lies from the past and a dangerous present collide when, after fifteen years in exile, Michelle Miller returns to her tiny hometown of Lorida, Florida. With her mother in the hospital, she’s forced to reckon with the broken relationships she left behind: with her family, with friends, and with herself.

As a teenager, Michelle felt isolated and invisible until she met Sissy, a dynamic and wealthy classmate. Their sudden, intense friendship was all-consuming. Punk rocker Morrison later joins their clique, and they become an inseparable trio. They were the perfect high school friends, bound by dysfunction, bad TV, and boredom―until one of them ends up dead.

Forced to confront the life she turned her back on fifteen years ago, she begins questioning what was truth and what were lies. Now at a distance, Michelle begins to see how dangerous Sissy truly was.

An ingenious debut from editor and publisher Davida Breier, Sinkhole is a mesmerizing, darkly comic coming-of-age novel immersed in 1980s central Florida. A disturbing and skillful exploration of home, friendship, selfhood, and grief set amidst golf courses, mobile homes, and alligators.

#9. Singing Lessons from the Stylish Canary

by Laura Stanfill

Released April 2022

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Historical Fiction / Magical Realism

About the Book:

Georges Blanchard is revered in the small French town of Mireville both as a master serinette maker and for a miraculous incident in his childhood that earned him the title “The Sun-Bringer.” As his firstborn son, Henri Blanchard is expected to follow in his footsteps, but Henri would rather learn to make lace than music boxes. When Henri discovers a stash of American letters in his father’s drawer, he learns he’s not the firstborn son of Georges Blanchard at all: Henri has an older half-brother born to one of Georges’s American customers. When he crosses the ocean to encounter his half-brother at last, Henri discovers that there’s an entire world beyond Mirevilleace and there may be a perfect place for him yet.

#10. Little Foxes Took Up Matches

by Katya Kazbek

Releases April 2022

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Coming of Age / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

An arresting coming of age, an exploration of gender, a modern folktale, a powerful portrait of a family―Katya Kazbek breaks out as a new voice to watch.

When Mitya was two years old, he swallowed his grandmother’s sewing needle. For his family, it marks the beginning of the end, the promise of certain death. For Mitya, it is a small, metal treasure that guides him from within. As he grows, his life mirrors the uncertain future of his country, which is attempting to rebuild itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union, torn between its past and the promise of modern freedom. Mitya finds himself facing a different sort of ambiguity: is he a boy, as everyone keeps telling him, or is he not quite a boy, as he often feels?

After suffering horrific abuse from his cousin Vovka who has returned broken from war, Mitya embarks on a journey across underground Moscow to find something better, a place to belong. His experiences are interlaced with a retelling of a foundational Russian fairytale, Koschei the Deathless, offering an element of fantasy to the brutal realities of Mitya’s everyday life.

Told with deep empathy, humor, and a bit of surreality, Little Foxes Took Up Matches is a revelation about the life of one community in a country of turmoil and upheaval, glimpsed through the eyes of a precocious and empathetic child, whose heart and mind understand that there are often more than two choices. An arresting coming of age, an exploration of gender, a modern folktale, a comedy about family, Katya Kazbek breaks out as a new voice to watch.

#11. Are We Ever Our Own

by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

Releases May 2022

Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.

Genre: Short Fiction / Hispanic & Latino Fiction

About the Book:

Moving between Cuba and the U.S., the stories in Are We Ever Our Own trace the paths of the women of the far-flung Armando Castell family.

Related but unknown to each other, these women are exiles, immigrants, artists, outsiders, all in search of a sense of self and belonging. The owner of a professional mourning service investigates the disappearance of her employees. On the eve of the Cuban revolution, a young woman breaks into the mansion where she was once a servant to help the rebels and free herself. A musician in a traveling troupe recounts the last day she saw her father.

Linked by theme and complex familial bonds, these stories shift across genres and forms to excavate the violence wreaked on women’s bodies and document the attempt to create something meaningful in the face of loss. They ask: who do we belong to? What, if anything, belongs to us?

#12. Unlawful DISorder

by David Jackson Ambrose

Releases June 2022

Publisher: Jaded Ibis Press

Genre: African & African American Fiction / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

Bowie doesn’t intend to hurt his mother-he just wants to collect his social security check from her. But when she throws around words like hallucinating and tells him he’s “hearing things,” his fear is triggered, and he takes action. This event, coupled with a history of reported psychotic episodes, a gambling addiction, and his sexual preference for other men, sets him on a collision course with mental health professionals, the police, and the prison system.

#13. Mage of Fools

by Eugen Bacon

Releases March 2022

Publisher: Meerkat Press

Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy / Dystopia

About the Book:

In the dystopian world of Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator’s sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution. Mafinga’s malevolent king dislikes books and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin’s husband Godi. But Jasmin has Godi’s secret story machine that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin’s crime for possessing the machine and its forbidden literature filled with subversive text is punishable by death. Fate grants a cruel reprieve in the service of a childless queen who claims Jasmin’s children as her own. Jasmin is powerless—until she discovers secrets behind the king and his sorcerer.

#14. The Covenant of Shihala

by Laya V Smith and Kyro Dean

Released March 2022

Genre: Fantasy / Romance / Middle Eastern

About the Book:

Lying is easy. You simply must either care far too much or far too little. But even human eyes will give away true intentions soon enough.

For ten years, street musician Ayelet has been on the run from the faceless slave master who tormented her childhood. Traipsing across the Middle East, the Ottoman empire, and Eastern Europe, she only stays ahead of the faceless man because the sight of a wisp or the jewel-toned eyes of a djinn warn her when evil draws near. Far from the ghosts of mythology and fairytales, she knows djinn for the demons they are. So she keeps moving and forsakes love for anyone or any place.

But lost souls long for homes, and when she returns to her country of medieval Turkey and meets up with an old friend, she finds herself lingering. One last performance, one last song. Then she will leave. But evil rarely waits, and when Ayelet sees a djinn watching her from the back of an eager crowd, she knows she stayed far too long.

Jahmil Amir, the displaced heir to the throne of the magical land of Shihala, has his own problems. Betrothed to a wretched djinn queen and in search of his mysteriously vanished army of darkontes, he has no time for music or love. Instead, his heart is consumed with revenge and the desire to obliterate the bloodthirsty hoards that destroyed his home.

When lava giants and bone-crunching ghouls from an ancient world force them together, the magic fire of djinn and Shihala have different plans for the fated lovers. But while love tempts them both with a promise as beautiful as it is forbidden, evil continues to stir.

#15. Dark Factory

by Kathe Koja

Releases May 2022

Publisher: Meerkat Press

Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy / Cyberpunk

About the Book:

Welcome to Dark Factory! You may experience strobe effects, Y reality, DJ beats, love, sex, betrayal, triple shot espresso, broken bones, broken dreams, ecstasy, self-knowledge, and the void. Dark Factory is a dance club: three floors of DJs, drinks, and customizable reality, everything you see and hear and feel. Ari Regon is the club’s wild card floor manager, Max Caspar is a stubborn DIY artist, both chasing a vision of true reality. And rogue journalist Marfa Carpenter is there to write it all down. Then a rooftop rave sets in motion a fathomless energy that may drive Ari and Max to the edge of the ultimate experience. Dark Factory is Kathe Koja’s wholly original new novel from Meerkat Press, that combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing immersive events, to create a story that unfolds on the page, online, and in the reader’s creative mind.

#16. Dear Inmate

by Lisa Boyle

Released March 2022

Genre: Historical Fiction / Irish & Irish American

Print Length: 410 pages

About the Book:

Their silent disgust failed to affect me anymore. But this was not silent. This was loud and forceful and violent. I could not ignore it.

Massachusetts, 1854. The anti-foreigner American Party, better known as the “Know-Nothings,” take power throughout the state. The city of Lowell elects Leonard Ward, a member of the party, as its mayor. Suddenly the “Know-Nothings” are everywhere. And they’re going after the Irish.

Rosaleen is ready to fight back. Emboldened by strange conspiracies about the Catholic Church, violent mobs and corrupt government officials are making life nearly unbearable for her people. Lowell’s newly formed police department is committed to ridding the streets of “Irish filth,” beating and arresting anyone who crosses them. When Rosaleen uncovers a horrific truth, it will test her in ways she could never have imagined.

Targeted by dangerous opposition, she needs help. But are her friends as loyal as she believes?

#17. What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me

by Donna Gordon

Releases June 2022

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Genre: Literary / Historical Fiction

About the Book:

WHAT BEN FRANKLIN WOULD HAVE TOLD ME explores the story of Lee, a vibrant thirteen-year-old boy who is facing premature death from Progeria (a premature aging disease); his caretaker Tomás, a survivor of Argentina’s Dirty War, who is searching for his missing wife, who was pregnant when they were both “disappeared;” and Lee’s single mother, Cass, overwhelmed by love for her son and the demands of her work as a Broadway makeup artist. When a mix-up prevents Cass from taking Lee on his “final wish” trip to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia to pursue his interest in the life of Ben Franklin, Tomás–who has discovered potential leads to his family in both cities–offers to accompany Lee on the trip. As one flees memories of death and the other hurtles inevitably toward it, they each share unsettling truths and find themselves transformed in the process. Set during the Ronald Reagan presidency, this lyrical novel transcends an adventure story to take the reader on an unforgettable journey which explores love, family and the inevitability of change.

#18. Out Front the Following Sea

by Leah Angstman

Released January 2022

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Genre: Historical Fiction / Women

About the Book:

Out Front the Following Sea is a historical epic of one woman’s survival in a time when the wilderness is still wild, heresy is publicly punishable, and being independent is worse than scorned—it is a death sentence. At the onset of King William’s War between French and English settlers in 1689 New England, Ruth Miner is accused of witchcraft for the murder of her parents and must flee the brutality of her town. She stows away on the ship of the only other person who knows her innocence: an audacious sailor—Owen—bound to her by years of attraction, friendship, and shared secrets. But when Owen’s French ancestry finds him at odds with a violent English commander, the turmoil becomes life-or-death for the sailor, the headstrong Ruth, and the cast of Quakers, Pequot Indians, soldiers, highwaymen, and townsfolk dragged into the fray. Now Ruth must choose between sending Owen to the gallows or keeping her own neck from the noose.

#19. Small Moods

by Shane Kowalski

Released February 2022

Publisher: Future Tense Books

Genre: Short Fiction / Literary

About the Book:

Like a cracked crystal ball tagged with black spray paint, these discomforting and darkly hilarious stories unveil a past, present, and future of unexplainable yet bizarrely poetic prophesies and moods. In ninety-five flash fictions, Shane Kowalski’s SMALL MOODS presents lovers, dogs, bathtubs, hands, jewels, bananas, peasant boys, cuckolds, Jesus, dildoes, shoes, nudes, cults, sadness, the movie Carrie, and much much more. Can you imagine a love child of Lydia Davis and Richard Brautigan? How about Russell Edson’s ghost having tea with Diane Williams? Reading SMALL MOODS is like entering a weird and private room of reject fairy tales and goofball fables. It’s a room that belongs to Shane Kowalski, and he is welcoming you with strong, open, sweat-drenched arms. Don’t be afraid. He made you something.

#20. Asylum

by Nina Shope

Releases May 2022

Publisher: Dzanc Books

Genre: Historical Fiction / Psychological

About the Book:

A work of brilliant and innovative historical fiction, Asylum delves into the disturbing and seductive relationship between a young hysteric named Augustine and renowned nineteenth-century French neurologist J.M. Charcot. As Charcot risks his career to investigate the controversial disease of hysteria, Augustine struggles to make him acknowledge their interdependence and shared desires—until a new lover, M., drives them all to the brink of fracture.

Drawing upon the medical photography, hypnotic states, and “grand demonstrations” that accompanied Charcot’s research, Asylum traces the deterioration of the dynamic between doctor and patient as they transform from mutually entranced creators to jealous and spurned paramours, to fierce rivals, and finally to bitter enemies. Told in lyrical, feverish, and sometimes delirious prose, Nina Shope delivers a captivating narrative at the crossroads of Mary Shelley and Donna Tartt.

#21. Circus of Shadows

by Kimberlee Turley

Releases May 2022

Genre: Young Adult / Gaslamp Fantasy

About the Book:

When seventeen-year-old Gracie Hart gets caught stealing a ride on a circus train, she expects to be arrested. Instead, she is offered a job as the new assistant to the circus magician and knife-thrower, Jack. He’s charismatic and genteel, but his aim isn’t perfect-hence the position opening.

The work is better than jail, but once Gracie starts performing with Jack, she begins finding threatening notes hidden in her costume.

At first, she thinks she’s being haunted by the ghost of the last assistant, but she can’t shake the feeling that things are even stranger than they appear. Plagued by reoccurring déjà vu, cryptic notes, and suspicions that Jack may not be who he seems to be, Gracie is swept into supernatural secrets surrounding Vincenzio’s Circus Troupe and Menagerie.

And when a second death is discovered in the circus, one thing becomes threateningly clear: if Gracie can’t figure out the mysteries under the big top, her next venue might be the afterlife.

#22. Grape, Again

by Gabriel Arquilevich

Releases July 2022

Publisher: Fitzroy Books

Genre: Middle Grade / Contemporary

About the Book:

Good news! Principal Clarkson says Grape is ready for junior high. He doesn’t have to go to Riverwash, the school for troubled kids! But there’s also bad news. Grape’s best friend, Lou, has moved to New York, leaving Grape alone to ride his Evel Knievel bike, sail with his family, and start his bar mitzvah training—all this while navigating a new school with new teachers, and, of course, the “spiders” in his brain. To make matters worse, Clair, Grape’s crush, has eyes on Maxwell, the new kid with feathered hair. Sherman and Bully Jim provide some company, but it’s his bond with Heidi—a wheelie-popping, cigarette-smoking foster kid—that teaches him what matters most in life. Full of hilarity and sadness, confusion and love, Grape, Again! is an unforgettable coming-of-age story.

#23. Bibi Blundermuss and the Tree Across the Cosmos

by Andrew Durkin

Releases March 2022

Publisher: Yellow Bike Press

Genre: Middle Grade / Fantasy

About the Book:

Twelve-year-old Bibi Blundermuss is terrified of trees. Being around them makes her dizzy and sick to her stomach—even comatose. So, when her only to chance to find her missing parents means climbing a magic tree in the forest near her home, she almost doesn’t take it.

When Bibi grits her teeth and scales the trunk, the tree grows—so violently that she and her cat Eek are catapulted into another world. Here, she befriends a herd of elk, on the run from a pack of vicious white lions. And she discovers, to her amazement, that her mother is a witch who has been protecting the elk with a poison flower spell, which keeps the lions away.

Yet the longer Bibi stays in the world of the elk and lions, the less sure she is that her mother is truly on the elks’ side—or even on Bibi’s side. In the end, a dangerous journey into the lions’ lair and a reunion with both parents uncovers a secret that changes Bibi’s life forever. Drawn into an epic snowbound battle against an army of zombie trees, she must face her greatest fear to discover her greatest power.

#24. The Believer

by Sarah Krasnostein

Released March 2022

Publisher: Tin House

Genre: Anthropology / Essays

About the Book:

An unforgettable tour of the human condition that explores our universal need for belief to help us make sense of life, death, and everything in between.

For Sarah Krasnostein it begins with a Mennonite choir performing on a subway platform, a fleeting moment of witness that sets her on a fascinating journey to discover why people need to believe in absolute truths and what happens when their beliefs crash into her own. Some of the people Krasnostein interviews believe in things many people do not: ghosts, UFOs, the literal creation of the universe in six days. Some believe in things most people would like to: dying with dignity and autonomy; facing up to our transgressions with truthfulness; living with integrity and compassion. 

By turns devastating and uplifting, and captured in snapshot-vivid detail, these six profiles of a death doula, a geologist who believes the world is six thousand years old, a lecturer in neurobiology who spends his weekends ghost hunting, the fiancée of a disappeared pilot and UFO enthusiasts, a woman incarcerated for killing her husband after suffering years of domestic violence, and Mennonite families in New York will leave you convinced that the most ordinary-seeming people are often the most remarkable and that deep and abiding commonalities can be found within the greatest differences. 

Vivid, unconventional, entertaining, and full of wonder, The Believer interweaves these stories with compassion and empathy, culminating in an unforgettable tour of the human condition that cuts to the core of who we are as people, and what we’re doing on this earth.

#25. Enjoy Me Among My Ruins

by Juniper Fitzgerald

Releases August 2022

Publisher: The Feminist Press

Genre: Memoir / Feminist

About the Book:

Combining feminist theories, X-Files fandom, and memoir, Enjoy Me among My Ruins draws together a kaleidoscopic archive of Juniper Fitzgerald’s experiences as a queer sex-working mother. Plumbing the major events that shaped her life, and interspersing her childhood letters written to cult icon Gillian Anderson, this experimental manifesto contends with dominant narratives placed upon marginalized people, ultimately rejecting a capitalist system that demands our purity and submission over our survival.

#26. Possums Run Amok

by Lora Lafayette

Releases May 2022

Publisher: Mercuria Press

Genre: Memoir / Women

About the Book:

Possums Run Amok is a rollicking, slyly hilarious, at times uncomfortable and dark memoir wherein the author and two friends are nicknamed The Possumettes. With fearless candor, Lora Lafayette recounts her life from a delinquent, late 1970s punk rock adolescence through a crooked, manic, transatlantic path to adulthood and her eventual terrifying descent into schizophrenia. Whip smart, daring, and inventive, Lafayette navigates the harsh realities of being a risk-taking adventurous young woman while seeking to wrest all the wild joy she can out of life. Her story reveals how blurry the line can be between real and unreal, choice and force. It lays bare the startling lack of empathy and services in society for those in crisis. Her voice is singular, her language full of shining unconventional metaphor. Deeply uncomfortable, laugh-out-loud funny, and devastatingly moving, Possums Run Amok is equal parts challenging and entertaining.

#27. Whole Body Prayer

by Yan Ming Li

Releases April 2022

Genre: Spirituality / Asian & Asian American Literature

About the Book:

“The same energy that created stars and galaxies lies dormant within your belly.”

So begins Master Yan Ming Li’s spellbinding memoir recounting the challenges of growing up as a spiritually-gifted child in a land where exploration of the unseen realms was forbidden. Like a Chinese Harry Potter, Li found solace in a mysterious and powerful force he called the Light.

But this is not a work of fiction. It’s a true story. In the pages of this book, we learn how all of us can gain access to this benevolent, healing, and boundless Light.

It is, in fact, our birthright.

Raised under harsh conditions during the Cultural Revolution in Maoist, China, Li learned early on that he was born with a spiritual gift which he needed to keep secret. Li used the gift many times, nonetheless, to heal others, including members of his own family.

Since emigrating from China to the West in 1994, Li has shared his gift with people of every major religion. Now, he feels compelled to share his inspiring story and teaching with the world.

Whole Body Prayer is a meditation and healing technique developed by Li that returns us “original spirituality” by combining ancient practices from the world’s major religions.

#28. Dream Pop Origami

by Jackson Bliss

Releases July 2022

Publisher: Unsolicited Press

Genre: Memoir / Asian & Asian American Literature

About the Book:

Dream Pop Origami is a beautiful, ambitious, interactive, and engrossing lyrical memoir about mixed-race identity, love, travel, AAPI masculinities, and personal metamorphosis. This experimental work of creative nonfiction examines, celebrates, and complicates what it means to be Asian & white, Nisei & hapa, Midwestern & Californian, Buddhist & American at the same time. In this stunning collection of choose-your-own-essays and autobiographical lists, multiracial identity is a counterpoint of memory, language, reflection, and imagination intersecting and interweaving into a coherent tapestry of text, emotion, and voice.

#29. The Understory

by M. E. Schuman

Releases January 2022

Genre: Nature & Ecology

About the Book:

Tragedy haunted her. Her instinct to survive drove her. On the savanna of Zimbabwe, Michelle Schuman watched the tears fall from the eyes of a baby elephant as it mourned its mother, a bloody emptiness where her trunk and face were missing because of ignorance and self-indulgence. Deep in the bamboo forest of the Virunga Mountains, she was touched by a Mountain Gorilla. On the once-pristine shores of Prince William Sound, she bore witness to the sobering spectacle of hundreds of seals ready to give birth, dragging their blackened, distended bellies through the oozing black death of greed spilling from the guts of the Exxon Valdez.

Although she also suffered an unbearable loss, and the dangers of working in remote areas of Alaska were real and tangible, the true threat to her survival was not from the natural world, but from the world of men who sought to tame her. Passion and peril are intertwined in this true tale of Michelle’s drive to make the natural world a better place; she found her greatest hindrance not in physical challenges but in human adversaries. In the understory, largely concealed from view, are saplings and shrubs, herbs and grasses, rooted in a carpet of moss, beneath the canopy of trees. They provide the sustenance for the magnificent forest, and this is the inspiring story of one woman’s battle from beneath the forest canopy to the beyond—in a scramble to undo what has been done.

#30. Refuse to Be Done

by Matt Bell

Released March 2022

Publisher: Soho Press

Genre: Writing & Publishing

About the Book:

They say writing is rewriting. So why does the second part get such short shrift? Refuse To Be Done will guide you through every step of the novel writing process, from getting started on those first pages to the last tips for making your final draft even tighter and stronger.

From lauded writer and teacher Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done is encouraging and intensely practical, focusing always on specific rewriting tasks, techniques, and activities for every stage of the process. You won’t find bromides here about the “the writing Muse.” Instead, Bell breaks down the writing process in three sections. In the first, Bell shares a bounty of tactics, all meant to push you through the initial conception and get words on the page. The second focuses on reworking the narrative through outlining, modeling, and rewriting. The third and final section offers a layered approach to polishing through a checklist of operations, breaking the daunting project of final revisions into many small, achievable tasks.

Whether you are a first time novelist or a veteran writer, you will find an abundance of strategies here to help motivate you and shake up your revision process, allowing you to approach your work, day after day and month after month, with fresh eyes and sharp new tools.

#31. Pauli Murray’s Revolutionary Life

by Simki Kuznick

Releases March 2022

Publisher: Rootstock Publishing

Genre: Biography / Social Activists

About the Book:

Inspiring and timely, Pauli Murray’s Revolutionary Life is the riveting story of an African American woman, born in 1910, who blazed through the barriers of race and gender decades before the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements. Pauli Murray fearlessly rode freight trains dressed as a boy during the Great Depression and befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt before embarking on a pioneering life of social activism, legal scholarship, and many firsts. In 1944, Pauli graduated first in her class at Howard University; in 1965, she was the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in law from Yale University; in 1966, she was a founder of NOW, the first National Organization for Women; and in 1977, Pauli was the first Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Pauli never faced a barrier she couldn’t smash through, and her life as a feminist, civil rights lawyer, poet, author, activist, and priest paved the way for all to live a life of equality and purpose.

#32. Water Under the Bridge

by Jennifer A. Payne

Released February 2022

Publisher: Three Chairs Publishing

Genre: Memoir / Creative Nonfiction

About the Book:

“She thought about him often over the years. Looked him up online occasionally to see where he was and if he was all right. It wasn’t until last fall that she found his email address, and several months more before she got up the courage to write.”

So begins the epistolary novel WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE by Connecticut writer Jen Payne, a sort-of love story told through a series of emails, about two people who reconnect after 15 years apart and work to reconcile their pasts…and futures. Influenced by the work of Brené Brown and a proponent of the bravery of storytelling, Payne says “WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE is about having the courage to speak our truths; it’s about trust and vulnerability, and about the true blessings found when we open our hearts – come what may.” 

#33. Who Should We Let Die?

by Koye Oyerinde

Releases April 2022

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Health / Policy

About the Book:

Embedded in the “Health for All by the Year 2000” slogan was the notion of health as a human right. Yet, when we don’t guarantee health services to all, we are unwittingly answering the question, Who Should We Let Die?

America doesn’t provide healthcare services as a right of citizenship. Instead, it has a treatment system dominated by profit-orientated healthcare insurers, hospital corporations, medical device companies, and pharmaceutical corporations. In Who Should We Let Die? Dr. oyerinde describes it as a GoFundMe health system because almost half of the supplicants on the eponymous website are there to raise funds to pay for hospital bills.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that poorly handled local epidemics become pandemics. As enunciated in the Alma Ata Declaration, we need quality primary healthcare-based systems to detect diseases early and promptly alert health authorities to outbreaks. Such a system will not depend on GoFundMe campaigns or out-of-pocket payments for health services. Only a groundswell of demand by the public for good governance will get us to universal health coverage by 2030. Dr. Oyerinde presents illustrative anecdotes provoking conversations that could lead America and developing countries on their path to universal health coverage.

#34. Multiple Joyce

by David Collard

Releases June 2022

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press

Genre: Literary Interest / History

About the Book:

In one hundred short essays David Collard navigates James Joyce’s astonishing cultural legacy in the century since the publication of Ulysses in 1922.Holding up a funhouse mirror to our times, Collard finds a multitude of Joyces, in often ludicrous disguises, wherever he looks-whether at Ally Sloper, Borsalino hats, Anthony Burgess, Cher, first editions, Flann O’Brien, Guinness, Hattie Jacques, John Cage, Kim Kardashian, Lego, Moby-Dick, numismatics, perfume, pianos, Princess Grace, puns, The Ramones, Sally Rooney, Stanley Unwin, Star Wars, waxworks or Zylo spectacles. Endlessly reinvented and exploited, Joyce emerges as a ubiquitous, indispensable and ruthlessly commodified Everyman.As Rónán Hession puts it in his foreword, Collard is above all “good company”. Whether you’re a devout admirer or wary newcomer, this surprising, unconventional handbook offers an entertaining prompt to dive into the depths of Joyce’s ever-expanding universe with a new awareness that it is very much our own.

#35. Another Appalachia

by Neema Avashia

Released March 2022

Publisher: West Virginia University Press

Genre: Biographies & Memoirs / Southern US / Indigenous & Aboriginal

About the Book:

“Commands your attention from the first page to the last word.” —Morgan Jerkins

When Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles.

Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia’s identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, gun culture, and more, Another Appalachia mixes nostalgia and humor, sadness and sweetness, personal reflection and universal questions.

#36. Ways of Walking

Edited by Ann de Forest

Releases May 2022

Publisher: New Door Books

Genre: Essay Anthology / Nature / Walking

About the Book:

Is walking a subversive act? For the authors of this book, it can be.

Ways of Walking brings together 26 writers who reflect on walks they have taken and what they have discovered along the way. Some walk across forbidden lines, violating laws to seek freedom. Some walk to bear witness to social injustice. Still others engage in a subtler subversion—violating the social norm of rapid, powered transportation to notice what fast travelers miss.

Through walking, these authors become more attuned to the places they move across, more attentive to intricate ecologies and layered histories—and more connected to themselves as well. Their small steps of rebellion lead to unexpected discoveries.

#37. The Backpack Years

by Stefanie Wilson and James Wilson

Releases June 2022

Genre: Memoir / Travel / Romance

About the Book:

Part travel story, part romance, part tale of sucking at life, The Backpack Years intertwines two memoirs, charting Stef and James’s turbulent six-year journey from wandering freely to reluctantly settled—and back again.

Straight-laced Stef left America to study abroad in Spain, letting loose and falling head over heels for two things: a handsome local and travel. Travel won out.

James had a ‘slowly-lose-the-will-to-live’ job in England and a future he felt he’d already destroyed. Fueled by crippling debt and a deteriorating relationship with his father, James fled to Australia in search of a better life.

Though their lives are heading in different directions, Stef and James fall in love in Sydney and ditch the carefree single life to forge a path together.

Can the two navigate their way through red-tape, relocation, miscommunication, and a last ditch, make-or-break trip to try to save their relationship, or will this be their last adventure as a couple?

Spanning thirteen countries and four continents, The Backpack Years is a story about how far we’re willing to go to be with the one we love.

#38. Dreaming the Present

by Irvin J. Hunt

Releases April 2022

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press

Genre: History / African American Literature

About the Book:

This is a story of art and movement building at the limits of imagination. In their darkest hours, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ella Baker, George Schuyler, and Fannie Lou Hamer gathered hundreds across the United States and beyond to build vast, but forgotten, networks of mutual aid: farms, shops, schools, banks, daycares, homes, health clinics, and burial grounds. They called these spaces “cooperatives,” local challenges to global capital, where people pooled all they had to meet their needs. By reading their activism as an artistic practice, Irvin Hunt argues that their primary need was to free their movement from the logic of progress. From a remarkably diverse archive, Hunt extrapolates three new ways to describe the time of a movement: a continual beginning, a deliberate falling apart, and a simultaneity, a kind of all-at-once-ness. These temporalities reflect how a people maneuvered the law, reappropriated property, built autonomous communities, and fundamentally reimagined what a movement can be. Their movement was not the dream of a brighter day; it was the making of today out of the stuff of dreams. Hunt offers both an original account of Black mutual aid and, in a world of diminishing of futures, a moving meditation on the possibilities of the present.

#39. La Syrena

by Banah el Ghadbanah

Releases August 2022

Publisher: Dzanc Books

Genre: Middle Eastern Poetry / LGBTQ+

About the Book:

LA SYRENA. For me home is in the water. When I go to the sea I want to swim forever and never look back. But I know I would die and the earth needs me on shore. My home is Syria and Syria for me is like the sea. I want nothing more than to jump in and swim around forever. In Syria I am declared wanted, like so many of us displaced lunar divas. The longing I feel is the deepest kind. It could crack the whole earth open. I am a Lumerian from Ancient Sumeria, a southern space creature in a northern world, LA SYRENA, zhe is my destiny.

To be queer and syrienne and femme is like being a mermaid in space. You are doubly displaced—both from the water and from the land. You come from the ancient waters of another planet, and you float among the stars, searching for a place to call home. On your journey you meet other displaced lunar beings and they remind you of your ancestors. Together you form satellite cartographies, you become a dance of ancestral water and the lush starry landscape where possibility lives.

In this collection, each poem flows like water on the page. The author weaves in stories و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of arabic letters و the memory of Sumerian cuneiform. This book is a hybrid creature between poem-story-form that crosses genres like it crosses dimensions. In this work, you are the mermaid. You are the forever migrant, a traveler between the oceanic and the extraterrestrial, across continents and planets. You are a time traveler, and you speak many languages. You are LA SYRENA, conjuring your own space to feel free.

#40. Spirit Matters

by Gordon Henry

Releases June 2022

Publisher: Holy Cow Press

Genre: Indigenous & Aboriginal Poetry

About the Book:

A major new collection of dazzling, surrealistic, entirely original poems by an American Book Award-winning Ojibwe author, whose work appears in two new Joy Harjo-edited anthologies.

In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, “Spirit Matters” invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.

#41. From Your Hostess at the T & A Museum

by Kathleen Balma

Releases August 2022

Publisher: Eyewear Publishing

Genre: American Poetry

About the Book:

FROM YOUR HOSTESS AT THE T&A MUSEUM is a stunning series of imaginative leaps and encounters, as playful as it is momentous. Not only poetry lovers, but enthusiasts of art history, fantasy fiction, sci-fi, westerns, travel narratives, nature documentaries, and historical fiction will delight in its genre-bending adventures and inventions. How did Abraham Lincoln build the log cabin he was born in? What happens at an invisible gun show? Are aliens really controlling a Chicago musician’s ears? Kathleen Balma crafts answers to these and other metaphysical questions with a language all her own. Known for her deadpan humor and lack of pretense, Balma has given us a first book that is both light to carry and hard to put down.

#42. Field Notes from the Flood Zone

by Heather Sellers

Releases April 2022

Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.

Genre: Nature & Climate

About the Book:

From the frontlines of climate catastrophe, a poet watches the sea approach her doorstep.

Born and raised in Florida, Heather Sellers grew up in an extraordinarily difficult home. The natural world provided a life-giving respite from domestic violence. She found, in the tropical flora and fauna, great beauty and meaningful connection. She made her way by trying to learn the name of every flower, every insect, every fish and shell and tree she encountered.

That world no longer exists.

In this collection of poems, Sellers laments its loss, while observing, over the course of a year, daily life of the people and other animals around her, on her street, and in her low-lying coastal town, where new high rises soar into the sky as the storm clouds gather with increasing intensity and the future of the community―and seemingly life as we know it―becomes more and more uncertain.

Sprung from her daily observation journals, haunted by ghosts from the past, Field Notes from the Flood Zone is a double love letter: to a beautiful and fragile landscape, and to the vulnerable young girl who grew up in that world. It is an elegy for the two great shaping forces in a life, heartbreaking family struggle and a collective lost treasure, our stunning, singular, desecrated Florida, and all its remnant beauty.

#43. Still Life

by Jay Hopler

Releases June 2022

Publisher: McSweeney’s Publishing

Genre: American Poetry

About the Book:

Confronted with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Jay Hopler―author of the National Book Award-finalist The Abridged History of Rainfall―got to work. The result of that labor is Still Life, a collection of poems that are heartbreaking, terrifying, and deeply, darkly hilarious. In an attempt to find meaning in a life ending right before his eyes, Hopler squares off against monsters real and imagined, personal and historical, and tries not to flinch. This work is no elegy; it’s a testament to courage, love, compassion, and the fierceness of the human heart. It’s a violently funny but playfully serious fulfillment of what Arseny Tarkovsky called the fundamental purpose of art: a way to prepare for death, be it far in the future or very near at hand.

#44. Z Is for Zapatazo

by Ruben Rivera

Released March 2022

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Hispanic American Poetry

About the Book:

Ruben Rivera, Ph.D., was born in New York City to a mixed-race Puerto Rican family and raised in southern California in that time “when children should be seen and not heard.” As a working-class brown Latino boy, Ruben was invisible in the public school curriculum, on TV and media – except for anomalies like Tonto whose name in Spanish meant Dummy – and America as a whole, even as the long-ignored were struggling to be seen and heard in the era of Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the Chicano movement, anti-war marches, and the threat of cold war doom.

In Z is for Zapatazo, Ruben’s poetry depicts family upheaval, social injustice, and suffering summarized by the Spanish word Zapatazo. But his writing also elaborates on the joys of love, family, faith, and hope for a better world. Experiences in the spaces between freedom and favoritism, ideals and reality, suffering and hope are rendered in a range of poetical forms with vivid imagery, deadly seriousness, and humor. Although his poetry has won awards in various contests, Z is for Zapatazo is Ruben’s first published collection.

#45. Muscle Memory

by Jenny Liou

Releases September 2022

Publisher: Kaya Press

Genre: Asian & Asian American Poetry

About the Book:

Jenny Liou’s debut poetry collection conjoins the world of cage fighting and the traumas of immigration

In Muscle Memory, Washington-based poet Jenny Liou grapples with violence and identity, beginning with the chain-link enclosure of the prizefighter’s cage and radiating outward into the diasporic sweep of Chinese American history. Liou writes with spare, stunning lyricism about how cage fighting offered relief from the trauma inflicted by diaspora’s vanishing ghosts; how, in the cage, an elbow splits an eyebrow, or an armbar snaps a limb, and, even when you lose a fight, you’ve won something: pain. Liou places the physical manifestation of violence in her sport alongside the deeper traumas of immigration and her own complicated search for identity, exploring what she inherited from her Chinese immigrant father―who was also obsessed with poetry and martial arts. When she finally steps away from the cage to raise children of her own, Liou begins to question how violence and history pass from one generation to the next, and whether healing is possible without forgetting.

There are more! There are more! These are some of the books from indie presses and indie authors that we’re excited about. Which 2022 books did we leave off the list?

About the Curator

Joe Walters is the founder and editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and a book marketing specialist at Sunbury Press. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel and trusting the process. Follow him @joewalters13 on Twitter.

Thank you for reading “45 Books We’re Excited About – 2022 Releases” curated by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post 45 Books We’re Excited About from Indie Presses & Indie Authors (2022 Releases) appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Curated by Joe Walters

2021 was a badass year for indie press books.

This isn’t anything new.

Indie presses are always pushing boundaries, bending genres, breaking new ground, and changing the scope of the literary landscape.

This year, some of the finest books came from indie presses. They made impressive strides alongside the big-budget publishers with novels, nonfiction, and poetry that grabbed readerly attention not because of their prominent space at your local Barnes & Noble, but because those who read them grabbed the shirts of those who were nearest to them, thrust a paperback into their chests, and said, “This. You’ve got to read this.”

Here at IBR, we’re reminded every year why our focus on indie press books is just about the best decision we ever could have made.

We’ve sifted through a lot of books this year–from the big indies, the mid-level indies, the small presses with the biggest hearts–and some really amazing ones have come through our gates. This list could have been much longer, trust me, but we managed to dwindle it down to an impressive thirty-five.

These are the books we’re thrusting into your chests. These are the ones we believe that you’ve just got to see.

Without further ado, in no particular order, here is this year’s roundup of Impressive Indie Press Books of 2021.

#1. What Storm, What Thunder

by Myriam J.A. Chancy

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Literary / Disaster Fiction

About the Book:

At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince.

Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster—Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all. Artfully weaving together these lives, witness is given to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man.

Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.

#2. I Will Die in a Foreign Land

by Kalani Pickhart

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: Literary / Historical

About the Book:

In 1913, a Russian ballet incited a riot in Paris at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. “Only a Russian could do that,” says Aleksandr Ivanovich. “Only a Russian could make the whole world go mad.”

A century later, in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to protest then-President Yanukovych’s failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President Vladimir Putin and Russia. The peaceful protests turned violent when military police shot live ammunition into the crowd, killing over a hundred civilians.

I Will Die in a Foreign Land follows four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are forever changed by the Euromaidan protests. Katya is an Ukrainian-American doctor stationed at a makeshift medical clinic in St. Michael’s Monastery; Misha is an engineer originally from Pripyat, who has lived in Kyiv since his wife’s death; Slava is a fiery young activist whose past hardships steel her determination in the face of persecution; and Aleksandr Ivanovich, a former KGB agent, who climbs atop a burned-out police bus at Independence Square and plays the piano.

As Katya, Misha, Slava, and Aleksandr’s lives become intertwined, they each seek their own solace during an especially tumultuous and violent period. The story is also told by a chorus of voices that incorporates folklore and narrates a turbulent Slavic history.

While unfolding an especially moving story of quiet beauty and love in a time of terror, I Will Die in a Foreign Land is an ambitious, intimate, and haunting portrait of human perseverance and empathy.

#3. These Bones

by Kayla Chenault

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Horror / Black & African American

About the Book:

In a neighborhood known as the Bramble Patch, the Lyons family endures despite poverty, racism, and the ghoulish appetites of an underworld kingpin called the Barghest.

As the years pass and the neighborhood falls into decay, along with the town that surrounds it, what’s left of the Bramble Patch will learn the saying is true: These bones are gonna rise again.

#4. Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body

by Megan Milks

Publisher: Feminist Press

Genre: LGBTQ+ / Coming of Age

About the Book:

Meet Margaret. At age twelve, she was head detective of the mystery club Girls Can Solve Anything. Margaret and her three best friends led exciting lives solving crimes, having adventures, and laughing a lot. But now that she’s entered high school, the club has disbanded, and Margaret is unmoored—she doesn’t want to grow up, and she wishes her friends wouldn’t either. Instead, she opts out, developing an eating disorder that quickly takes over her life. When she lands in a treatment center, Margaret finds her path to recovery twisting sideways as she pursues a string of new mysteries involving a ghost, a hidden passage, disturbing desires, and her own vexed relationship with herself.

Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body reimagines nineties adolescence—mashing up girl group series, choose-your-own-adventures, and chronicles of anorexia—in a queer and trans coming-of-age tale like no other. An interrogation of girlhood and nostalgia, dysmorphia and dysphoria, this debut novel puzzles through the weird, ever-evasive questions of growing up.

#5. Fire & Water

Edited by Mary Fifield and Kristin Thiel

Publisher: Black Lawrence Press

Genre: Short Story Anthology / Climate & Environment

About the Book:

Fiction. A Sàmi woman studying Alaska fish populations sees our past and future through their present signs of stress and her ancestral knowledge. A teenager faces a permanent drought in Australia and her own sexual desire. An unemployed man in Wisconsin marvels as a motley parade of animals makes his trailer their portal to a world untrammeled by humans. Featuring short fiction from authors around the globe; FIRE & WATER: STORIES FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE takes readers on a rare journey through the physical and emotional landscape of the climate crisis–not in the future; but today. By turns frightening; confusing; and even amusing; these stories remind us how complex; and beautiful; it is to be human in these unprecedented times.

#6. Ariadne, I Love You

by J. Ashley-Smith

Publisher: Meerkat Press

Genre: Dark Fantasy / Paranormal

About the Book:

Jude is dragged out of Alt-Country obscurity, out of the dismal loop of booze and sadness baths and the boundless, insatiable loneliness, to scrub up and fly to Australia for a last, desperate comeback tour. Hardly worth getting out of bed for-and he wouldn’t, if it weren’t for Coreen.

But Coreen is dead. And, worse than that, she’s married. Jude’s swan-song tour becomes instead a terminal descent, into the sordid past, into the meaning hidden in forgotten songs, into Coreen’s madness diary, there to waken something far worse than her ghost.

#7. Waiting Impatiently

By Andrew H. Housley

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Spiritual Fiction

About the Book:

Here’s a gritty story of a man’s spiritual metamorphosis.

As the world begins to shut down in the face of a pandemic, Ian — a well-worn yoga teacher and Zen student — wavers as he stands at the precipice of his life, attempting to accept the gift of self-examination while burying the pieces of his painful past.

In Waiting Impatiently by Andrew H. Housley, we experience the birth and process of self-transformation found through the catalyst of sorrow and lost love. Through Ian’s journey, we are offered the uniquely poignant perspective of a man’s internal struggle with Self. In a desperate moment, he arrives at the Monastery, a place where time stands still. Here, he finds solace to soothe his soul and to meditate on the Zen riddle, “can you manifest your true nature while staring at the pieces of your broken heart?”

#8. Lean Fall Stand

by Jon McGregor

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Psychological / Suspense

About the Book:

Remember the training: find shelter or make shelter, remain in place,establish contact with other members of the party, keep moving, keep calm.

Robert ‘Doc’ Wright, a veteran of Antarctic surveying, was there on the ice when the worst happened. He holds within him the complete story of that night—but depleted by the disaster, Wright is no longer able to communicate the truth. Instead, in the wake of the catastrophic expedition, he faces the most daunting adventure of his life: learning a whole new way to be in the world. Meanwhile Anna, his wife, must suddenly scramble to navigate the sharp and unexpected contours of life as a caregiver.

From the Booker Prize-longlisted, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning author of Reservoir 13, this is a novel every bit as mesmerizing as its setting. Tenderly unraveling different notions of heroism through the rippling effects of one extraordinary expedition on an ordinary family, Lean Fall Stand explores the indomitable human impulse to turn our experiences into stories—even when the words may fail us.

#9. I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat

by Christopher Gonzalez

Publisher: SFWP

Genre: Short Fiction / Hispanic American

About the Book:

Long nights, empty stomachs, and impulsive cravings haunt these stories. A college grad reunites with a high school crush when invited to his bachelor party, a lonely cat-sitter wreaks havoc on his friends’ apartment, happy hour french fries leave more than grease on lips and fingers, and, squeezed into a diner booth, one man eats past his limit for the sake of friendship. Exploring the lives of bisexual and gay Puerto Rican men, these fifteen stories show a vulnerable, intimate world of yearning and desire. The stars of these narratives linger between living their truest selves and remaining in the wings, embarking on a journey of self-discovery to satisfy their hunger for companionship and belonging.

#10. That Was

by Sarayu Srivatsa

Publisher: Platypus Press

Genre: Literary / Coming of Age

About the Book:

Orphaned at six with no memory of what happened to her family, Kavya was raised in the bustling city of Bombay by her uncle and aunt. In fleeting moments, like her time in Bangalore with spirited teenager Malli or her summers in Kyoto with budding architect Yasunari and his ageing grandparents, the truth of her traumatic past is revealed.

With an eclectic cast of characters—including timid photographer Ryu, rebellious artist Akiko, and the mysterious S-san—she searches for clarity on the streets of Tokyo and truth in the mountain villages of the Himalayas. In this poignant coming-of-age story, what Kavya discovers within turbulent dreams and vibrant memories will shape and nurture the woman she will become.

#11. Winterset Hollow

by Jonathan Edward Durham

Publisher: Credo House Publishers

Genre: Fantasy / Suspense

About the Book:

Everyone has wanted their favorite book to be real, if only for a moment. Everyone has wished to meet their favorite characters, if only for a day. But be careful in that wish, for even a history laid in ink can be repaid in flesh and blood, and reality is far deadlier than fiction . . . especially on Addington Isle.

Winterset Hollow follows a group of friends to the place that inspired their favorite book—a timeless tale about a tribe of animals preparing for their yearly end-of-summer festival. But after a series of shocking discoveries, they find that much of what the world believes to be fiction is actually fact, and that the truth behind their beloved story is darker and more dangerous than they ever imagined. It’s Barley Day . . . and you’re invited to the hunt.

Winterset Hollow is as thrilling as it is terrifying and as smart as it is surprising. A uniquely original story filled with properly unexpected twists and turns, Winterset Hollow delivers complex, indelible characters and pulse- pounding action as it storms toward an unforgettable climax that will leave you reeling. How do you celebrate Barley Day? You run, friend. You run.

#12. Born Into This

by Adam Thompson

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: Short Fiction / Australian / Indigenous

About the Book:

The remarkable stories in Born Into This are eye-opening, razor-sharp, and entertaining, often all at once.

From an Aboriginal ranger trying to instill some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania, to those scraping by on the margins of white society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions, Adam Thompson presents a powerful indictment of colonialism and racism.

With humor, pathos, and the occasional sly twist, Thompson’s characters confront discrimination, untimely funerals, classroom politics, the ongoing legacy of cultural destruction, and — overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both black and white Australia — the inexorable disappearance of the remnant natural world.

#13. Reset

by Paolo Pergola

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press

Genre: Literary / Existential

About the Book:

Lapo is a marine biologist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed after an accident that caused him amnesia. When distant memories slowly resurface and the weight of modern life becomes apparent, he realizes that having an empty head was not so bad. Like a present-day Oblomov, Lapo clings to his hospital routine to avoid the outside world, fending off the attacks of family and friends who continuously pester him. As the days go by, the pressure for Lapo to go back to his normal life keeps mounting. Will he ever leave the hospital or will he settle there for good?

Lost pieces of his history may provide the answer. Interspersed with intimate thoughts and daydreams about the lives of the fish he used to study, Lapo’s epic struggle is filled with irony and depth in equal measure. Nostalgic and provocative, Reset is an existentialist journey through the inner world of a man who has lost the thread of life and finds it again in nature and his past.

#14. Swan Song

by Elizabeth B. Splaine

Publisher: Woodhall Press

Genre: Historical Fiction

About the Book:

Ursula Becker’s operatic star is on the rise in Nazi Berlin…until she discovers that she is one-quarter Jewish. Although Hitler is aware of her lineage, her popularity and exquisite voice protect her and her family from persecution. When William Patrick Hitler arrives in Germany and is offered employment by his Uncle Adolf, a chance encounter with Ursula leads to a romantic relationship that further shields the young diva from mistreatment. But for how long?

Ursula is ordered to sing at Hitler’s Berghof estate where she throws down a gauntlet that unleashes the wrath of the megalomaniacal leader. Fearing for her life, Ursula and Willy decide to emigrate to England. But as the ship is about to sail, Ursula disappears. Willy crosses the globe in an effort to find her, even as his uncle taunts him, relishing in the horror of the murderous cat-and-mouse game.

#15. Alien Stories

by E.C. Osondu

Publisher: BOA Editions

Genre: Short Fiction / Science Fiction

About the Book:

Celebrated Nigerian-born writer E.C. Osondu delivers a short-story collection of nimble dexterity and startling originality in his BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning Alien Stories.

These eighteen startling stories, each centered around an encounter with the unexpected, explore what it means to be an alien. With a nod to the dual meaning of alien as both foreigner and extraterrestrial, Osondu turns familiar science-fiction tropes and immigration narratives on their heads, blending one with the other to call forth a whirlwind of otherness. With wry observations about society and human nature, in shifting landscapes from Africa to America to outer space and back again, Alien Stories breaks down the concept of foreignness to reveal what unites us all as ‘aliens’ within a complex and interconnected universe.

#16. Moon and the Mars

by Kia Corthron

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Genre: Historical Fiction / African American

About the Book:

An exploration of NYC and America in the burgeoning moments before the start of the Civil War through the eyes of a young, biracial girl—the highly anticipated new novel from the winner of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.

“Corthron, a true heir to James Baldwin, presents a startlingly original exposure of the complex roots of American racism.” —Naomi Wallace, MacArthur “Genius” Playwriting Fellow and author of One Flea Spare

In Moon and the Mars, set in the impoverished Five Points district of New York City in the years 1857-1863, we experience neighborhood life through the eyes of Theo from childhood to adolescence, an orphan living between the homes of her Black and Irish grandmothers. Throughout her formative years, Theo witnesses everything from the creation of tap dance to P.T. Barnum’s sensationalist museum to the draft riots that tear NYC asunder, amidst the daily maelstrom of Five Points work, hardship, and camaraderie. Meanwhile, white America’s attitudes towards people of color and slavery are shifting—painfully, transformationally—as the nation divides and marches to war.

As with her first novel, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, which was praised by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Angela Y. Davis, among many others, Corthron’s use of dialogue brings her characters to life in a way that only an award-winning playwright and scriptwriter can do. As Theo grows and attends school, her language and grammar change, as does her own vocabulary when she’s with her Black or Irish families. It’s an extraordinary feat and a revelation for the reader.

#17. The Gold Persimmon

by Lindsay Merbaum

Publisher: Creature Publishing

Genre: Horror / Thriller

About the Book:

Clytemnestra is a check-in girl at The Gold Persimmon, a temple-like New York City hotel with gilded furnishings and carefully guarded secrets. Cloistered in her own reality, Cly lives by a strict set of rules until a connection with a troubled hotel guest threatens the world she’s so carefully constructed.

In a parallel reality, an inexplicable fog envelops the city, trapping a young, nonbinary writer named Jaime in a sex hotel with six other people. As the survivors begin to turn on one another, Jaime must navigate a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Haunted by specters of grief and familial shame, Jaime and Cly find themselves trapped in dual narratives in this gripping experimental novel that explores sexuality, surveillance, and the very nature of storytelling.

#18. Beautiful, Violent Things

by Madeline Anthes

Publisher: Word West

Genre: Short Fiction / Literary

About the Book:

“Drunk ghosts, feral mothers…riveting obsessions and unbelongings and captivities-the fragmented texts in Beautiful, Violent Things seethe and grip and fluoresce without apology. In these eleven dispatches, Madeline Anthes carefully weaves desire and estrangement, reimagines power as a woman’s capacity for hollowing a man, the ability to deliver impossibilities from her misappropriated body. The speakers in this collection compose a primal song, reprise-with blood and feathers and new ferocity-the iconoclastic feminisms of Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Anthes is alive on the page, a writer to watch.”

– Tara Stillions Whitehead, author of Blood Histories

#19. Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult

by Kyle McCord

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Thriller / Psychological

About the Book:

This gripping drama follows Tom Duncan, the sole survivor of the largest cult mass suicide in U.S. history, as he works to rebuild his shattered life. After a Netflix documentary accuses Tom of masterminding the plot that led to the deaths of one hundred thirty-seven people, including his wife, he finds himself exiled from his home and family. Tom seeks redemption through a weekend memorial with other cult members who escaped before the grisly end.

In Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult by Kyle McCord, we see how well-meaning people seeking spiritual community can become ensnared in webs of intrigue and deadly manipulation. Through the lens of a Netflix documentary as well as Tom’s personal struggle, this book takes readers on a journey through the dark heart of a simple Iowa commune gone horribly wrong.

#20. Tastes Like War

by Grace M. Cho

Publisher: Feminist Press

Genre: Memoir / Asian American

About the Book:

This evocative memoir of food and family history is “somehow both mouthwatering and heartbreaking… [and] a potent personal history” (Shelf Awareness).

Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life.

Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive.

#21. Now Beacon, Now Sea

by Christopher Sorrentino

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Memoir / Family / Grief

About the Book:

A wrenching debut memoir of familial grief by a National Book Award finalist—and a defining account of what it means to love and lose a difficult parent, for readers of Joan Didion and Dani Shapiro.

When Christopher Sorrentino’s mother died in 2017, it marked the end of a journey that had begun eighty years earlier in the South Bronx. Victoria’s life took her to the heart of New York’s vibrant mid-century downtown artistic scene, to the sedate campus of Stanford, and finally back to Brooklyn—a journey witnessed by a son who watched, helpless, as she grew more and more isolated, distancing herself from everyone and everything she’d ever loved.

In examining the mystery of his mother’s life, from her dysfunctional marriage to his heedless father, the writer Gilbert Sorrentino, to her ultimate withdrawal from the world, Christopher excavates his own memories and family folklore in an effort to discover her dreams, understand her disappointments, and peel back the ways in which she seemed forever trapped between two identities: the Puerto Rican girl identified on her birth certificate as Black, and the white woman she had seemingly decided to become. Meanwhile Christopher experiences his own transformation, emerging from under his father’s shadow and his mother’s thumb to establish his identity as a writer and individual—one who would soon make his own missteps and mistakes.

Unfolding against the captivating backdrop of a vanished New York, a city of cheap bohemian enclaves and a thriving avant-garde—a dangerous, decaying, but liberated and potentially liberating place—Now Beacon, Now Sea is a matchless portrait of the beautiful, painful messiness of life, and the transformative power of even conflicted grief.

#22. A Constellation of Ghosts

by Laraine Herring

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Genre: Memoir / Speculative

About the Book:

A ghost is not what you think it is, says Raven. A ghost is a commitment. When Laraine Herring receives an unexpected colon cancer diagnosis, her father, thirty years dead, returns to her as a raven, setting off a magical journey into complicated grief, inherited trauma, and ancestral healing. As she struggles with redefining her expectations for her life, she slips further and further underground into the ancestral realm, where she finds herself writing a play directed by her father-as-raven. Raven says, It will be a cast of only four: you and me and my mother and my father, and we will speak until there are no more words between us. And then you can decide the ending. Tick, tock, write. A Constellation of Ghosts takes the reader into the liminal spaces between one world and another, where choices unspool into lives, and the stories we’ve told ourselves fall apart under the scrutiny of multiple perspectives like flesh from bone, reminding us that grief is the unexpected ferryman who can usher all of us back together again.

#23. Madder: A Memoir in Weeds

by Marco Wilkinson

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Genre: Memoir / LGBTQ

About the Book:

Madder, matter, mater—a weed, a state of mind, a material, a meaning, a mother. Essayist and horticulturist Marco Wilkinson searches for the roots of his own selfhood among family myths and memories.

“My life, these weeds.” Marco Wilkinson uses his deep knowledge of undervalued plants, mainly weeds—invisible yet ubiquitous, unwanted yet abundant, out-of-place yet flourishing—as both structure and metaphor in these intimate vignettes. Madder combines poetic meditations on nature, immigration, queer sensuality, and willful forgetting with recollections of Wilkinson’s Rhode Island childhood and glimpses of his maternal family’s life in Uruguay. The son of a fierce, hard-working mother who tried to erase even the memory of his absent father from their lives, Wilkinson investigates his heritage with a mixture of anger and empathy as he wrestles with the ambiguity of his own history. Using a verdant iconography rich with wordplay and symbolism, Wilkinson offers a mesmerizing portrait of cultivating belonging in an uprooted world.

#24. To Those Bounded

by Donald Edem Quist

Publisher: AWST Press

Genre: Black & African American Studies

About the Book:

An examination of Black exceptionalism and the mythos of criminality among African American men.

Edited by Tatiana Ryckman. Is it possible to be free while bound by an American myth? TO THOSE BOUNDED explores the effects of living in the far-reaching shadow of stereotypes, and the pressures one feels when their actions are always framed as reinforcing or rejecting an ethnic caricature. In this collection the author reflects on how popular media have shaped his identity, and how he’s learned to navigate the expectations it creates. Drawing inspiration from MAUD MARTHA by Gwendolyn Brooks and PENS…ES by Blaise Pascal, the personal vignettes that compose TO THOSE BOUNDED examine Black exceptionalism and the mythos of criminality among African American men.

#25. Craft in the Real World

by Matthew Salesses

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Publishing & Writing

About the Book:

The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?

Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, “When we write fiction, we write the world.”

#26. Wife | Daughter | Self

by Beth Kephart

Publisher: Forest Avenue Press

Genre: Memoir / Essays / Identity

About the Book:

Wife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics.

How are we shaped by the people we love? Who are we when we think no one else is watching? How do we trust the choices we make? The answers shift as the years go by. The stories remake themselves as we remember. Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her new memoir—traveling to lakes and rivers, New Mexico and Mexico, the icy waters of Alaska and a hot-air balloon launch in search of understanding. She is accompanied, often, by her Salvadoran-artist husband. She spends time, a lot of time, with her widowed father. As she looks at them she ponders herself and comes to terms with the person she is still becoming. At once sweeping and intimate, Wife | Daughter | Self is a memoir built of interlocking essays by an acclaimed author, teacher, and critic.

#27. Before the Earth Devours Us

by Esteban Rodriguez

Publisher: Split/Lip Press

Genre: Essays / Personal Memoir

About the Book:

In Esteban Rodríguez’s debut essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us, a young boy emerges from the valley of childhood memories, curious and seeking to understand a world that is violent, uncertain, and as full of loss as it is of life from the people who inhabit it. Here, the pages unfurl with uncles engaged in physical conflict; dogs roam neighborhoods and alleyways; a dead bird is used as a play object; and our protagonist, through observation and conflict of his own, begins to make sense of the impact he and his body have on others. Lyrical, engaging, and always honest, Rodríguez’s memorable collection reminds us that the past is never beyond language’s redemption.

#28. White Magic

by Elissa Washuta

Publisher: Tin House Books

Genre: Essays / Native & Indigenous

About the Book:

Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists.

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life―Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham―to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.

#29. Things That Crash, Things That Fly

by Scott Gould

Publisher: Vine Leaves Press

Genre: Memoir / Travel / Fatherhood

About the Book:

As a husband and wife make plans for an Italian vacation with friends-to visit her family’s Tuscan village-she makes an unexpected, last-minute addition to the itinerary: she plans to leave him upon their return to the States. And her bombshell includes a strange caveat. He isn’t allowed to breathe a word of it to their traveling companions. So begins Things That Crash, Things That Fly, the groundbreaking new memoir from award-winning writer Scott Gould.

Gould navigates that awkward vacation with his soon-to-be estranged wife in Serra, Italy, then sets out on another, longer journey-a winding route through heartbreak and anger, confusion and futility, despair and discovery. When Gould wangles (under dubious circumstances) a fellowship to research the death of William Guilfoil, a young WWII fighter pilot who crashed and died in the hills near Serra, he instead sets his sights on clarity and closure in his ex-wife’s ancestral home. As he grinds through an uncharted future, his story and Guilfoil’s become intertwined, and Gould gathers the fragments of a fractured heart. With a brutal honesty tempered with surprising humor, he tells us how he begins to stitch them back together.

Things That Crash, Things That Fly is about many things: lost love, daughters and fathers, evaporating marriage, Italian sandals, friendship, bad knees, acrobatic birds, secrecy, oddly placed piercings…but most of all, Gould’s inventive memoir is about how it’s truly possible to rise and soar, even after you’ve struck the ground.

#30. Funeral for Flaca

by Emilly Prado

Publisher: Future Tense Books

Genre: Memoir / Hispanic & Latino

About the Book:

Funeral for Flaca is an exploration of things lost and found-love, identity, family-and the traumas that transcend bodies, borders, cultures, and generations.

Emilly Prado retraces her experience coming of age as a prep-turned-chola-turned-punk in this collection that is one-part memoir-in-essays, and one-part playlist, zigzagging across genres and decades, much like the rapidly changing and varied tastes of her youth. Emilly spends the late 90’s and early aughts looking for acceptance as a young Chicana growing up in the mostly-white suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Portland, Oregon in 2008. Ni de aquí, ni de allá, she tries to find her place in the in between.

Growing up, the boys reject her, her father cheats on her mother, then the boys cheat on her and she cheats on them. At 21-years-old, Emilly checks herself into a psychiatric ward after a mental breakdown. One year later, she becomes a survivor of sexual assault. A few years after that, she survives another attempted assault. She searches for the antidote that will cure her, cycling through love, heartbreak, sex, an eating disorder, alcohol, an ever-evolving style, and, of course, music.

She captures the painful reality of what it means to lose and find your identity, many times over again. For anyone who has ever lost their way as a child or as an adult, Funeral for Flaca unravels the complex layers of an unpredictable life, inviting us into an intimate and honest journey profoundly told with humor and heart by Emilly Prado.

#31. Ceive

by B.K. Fischer

Publisher: BOA Editions

Genre: Narrative Poem / Nature

About the Book:

A poetic retelling of Noah’s Ark set in the near future, Ceive is a novella in verse that recounts a post-apocalyptic journey aboard a container ship.

This contemporary flood narrative unfolds through poems following the perspective of a woman named Val, who is found in the wreckage of her flooding home by a former UPS delivery man. As environmental and political catastrophes force them to flee the Eastern Seaboard, Val and her rescuer take refuge alongside a group of pilgrims seeking refuge from the catastrophic collapse of a civilization destroyed by gun violence, climate crisis, and social unrest.

The ship of cargo and refugees is run by the captain Nolan and his wife Nadia, who set sail for Greenland, now warmed to a temperate climate. The couple place Val in charge of caring for a neurodivergent young boy who holds knowledge of analog navigation. Mourning her missing daughter, Val experiences both isolation and a wellspring of compassion in survival, an indefatigable need to connect. She and the other pilgrims weather illness and peril, boredom and conflict, deprivation and despair as they set sail across stormy, unfamiliar waters.

Drawing from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, the Bible, and the Latin root word in receive, Ceive is a vision of eco-cataclysm and survival―inviting meditations on biodiversity, illness, social law, sustenance, scripture, menopause, sensory perception, human bonds, caregiving, and loss, all the while extending a call for renewal and hope.

#32. The Animal Indoors

by Carly Inghram

Publisher: Autumn House Press

Genre: Black & African American / LGBTQ

About the Book:

Poems following a Black queer woman as she seeks refuge from an unsafe world.
 
Carly Inghram’s poems explore the day-to-day experiences of a Black queer woman who is ceaselessly bombarded with images of mass-consumerism, white supremacy, and sexism, and who is forced, often reluctantly, back indoors and away from this outside chaos. The poems in The Animal Indoors seek to understand and define the boundaries between our inside and outside lives, critiquing the homogenization and increasing insincerity of American culture and considering what safe spaces exist for Black women. The speaker in these poems seeks refuge, working to keep the interior safe until we can reckon with the world outside, until the speaker is able to “unleash the indoor news onto the unclean water elsewhere.”

#33. Leap Thirty

by Diane Lowell Wilder

Publisher: June Road Press

About the Book:

This visceral debut collection is a dance across the decades. In thirty spare and gripping poems, Diane Lowell Wilder recasts midlife as a second coming of age: a time of new vulnerabilities and strengths, breakdown and renewal, constraint and release. In the process, she lands on vital sources of affirmation and resilience—in being a parent, in embracing change, in letting go, in reclaiming agency. Here is the aftermath of divorce and the landscape of later romance, the strain of watching parents age, the anxieties of motherhood, an aching hip, bold moves, fresh starts. Ever aware that the past and future are always bound up in the present, Wilder shows us how a poetic exploration of personal history, even when it means wrestling with loss, can help us gain perspective and maybe even a new sense of freedom and direction.

#34. Peculiar Heritage