Ember Days by Nick Ripatrazone Alleyway Books, 2015 $16.00 COME BACK HERE. KNOW A GUY WHO CAN HELP YOU FIND THE BOMB. Ember Days opens almost immediately with this all-caps note—a message from a brother to a brother, a last-ditch effort to reunite, to collect a debt, and to repent for a wrongdoing. This is …
Turning Japanese Graphic Memoir by MariNaomi 2D Cloud, 2016 $24.95 “The year was 1995 and I was twenty-two years old.” MariNaomi’s Turning Japanese begins with a breakup and ends with a homecoming. It’s a memoir that chronicles the protagonist’s personal evolution from job to job, from hemisphere to hemisphere. It’s a story that details MariNaomi’s …
Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Two Dollar Radio, 2014 $12.00 I’ve been told time and time again not to judge a book by its cover. And I’ll come clean—I always do. I’m a sucker for beautiful cover art. It will force me to pick a book off the shelf every time. I grew up with …
Easiest If I Had A Gun by Michael Gerhard Martin Alleyway Books, 2014 $16.00 If I’ve ever encountered a title that instantly sets the tone for a story collection, it’s “Shit Weasel is Late for Class.” The first tale in Easiest If I Had a Gun is an angry, bitter story of self-loathing from the mouth of a bullied …
Shape of the Sky by Shelagh Connor Shapiro Wind Ridge Books, 2014 $15.95 There’s music in the air in Shape of the Sky, the novel by Shelagh Connor Shapiro, out now from Wind Ridge Books. Music is central to this story of Resolute, Vermont—a tiny town, population 613. It’s one of those towns where everybody knows everybody, …
Fog Island Mountains by Michelle Bailat-Jones Tantor Media, 2014 $17.95 It’s a hushed, delicate world explored in Michelle Bailat-Jones’ Fog Island Mountains, out now from Tantor Media, Inc. A world that I got to know quite well over the course of the novel, and am truly having a hard time leaving. Or perhaps it’s better …
Late Lights by Kara Weiss Colony Collapse Press $14.00 It’s Monty’s fourth stint in juvenile detention, and in three weeks he’ll be free. He’s almost sixteen. And he’s decided: this time is the last. He watches the shadows shake and bend. He imagines the sweet smell of autumn. Other nights these shadows would be a …
How Blasphemy Sounds to God by Gary Fincke Braddock Avenue Books, 2014 $16.95 “Shaken, I stared at myself in the mirror above the dresser. At twenty-three, I looked old enough to appear ordinary in a coffin.” Striking sentences like these remained with me long after finishing Gary Fincke’s How Blasphemy Sounds to God. The book’s …