A prologue opens the novel. It is some time during World War II and a woman, Alice, abandons her seven-year old son at a railway station. The story proper begins many years earlier in the town of Bautzen … where
READ MORE

Rolling Stone editor Julia Holmes's first novel, Meeks, owes a lot to Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," the classic 1948 short story which opens with a seemingly innocent town meeting in an unspecified time and place, and gradually increases the reader's sense of foreboding until the very end when somebody heaves a rock, "and then they were upon her." Shivers!
READ MORE

Imagine a bookstore that only sold good novels—not commercial drivel or fluffy installments of the latest teen series, but interesting fiction gathered together by book-loving people who refuse to pander to bestseller lists. Essentially, a reader's version of heaven.
READ MORE

This pleasantly engaging debut is about family, tradition, stories and following one's heart. Saira Qader has grown up in LA with her traditional Indo-Pak parents. Though her older sister, Ameena, has always been virtuous and obedient, Saira has a rebellious streak.
READ MORE

Kei Yanagimoto's husband walked out without explanation and without a breath of further contact with her or their three year old daughter, leaving her in a strange limbo for twelve years …
READ MORE