The post What Should I Read Next? Indie Book Recommendations Based on Your Mood appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Nick Gardner
Answering the inevitable question.
I used to have a stack of about twenty books beside my reading chair, but last year I graduated to an entire to-be-read bookshelf. Now that shelf is two titles deep and I still find myself wondering, what should I read next?
The problem isn’t so much that I don’t have time to read all of the books I’ve collected—I’m not overwhelmed—but rather that sometimes I visit a new bookstore and a fresh plot catches my eye. Or I read a blurb or review and think, “This is the book that fits my mood!”
Even though I have a backlog of what I’m sure are perfectly wonderful titles, oftentimes it’s not the quality of the book as much as my mood that decides which author’s world I will lose myself to in that moment.
When a book fits my mood, it takes me where I want to go. My wanderlust overpowers me, so I read a travelogue or adventure story or my disgust with a certain contemporary event drives me to horror. Maybe I just want to see words used in sentences that are beautiful concoctions of sound and motion, so I read something lyrical, musical.
Though there are many reasons to read any book, if an author can drop me smack-dab into the middle of a place I’ve been yearning for, then their book rises to the top of my stack.
Below, I’ve arranged several books I’ve come to love based on moods, or, more specifically, where my mood drives me to get lost. Because if you’re going to lose yourself, you may as well know what you’re losing yourself to. And bonus points
—they’re all indie books!
Here are some book recommendations to answer the inevitable question, “What should I read next?”
(Book lists on Independent Book Review are chosen by very picky people. As affiliates, we earn a commission on books you purchase through our links.)
What should I read next if I want to get lost On a journey?
Oregon, Montana, Vermont, Kevin Maloney’s protagonist finds himself slumming it in some of my favorite cities and wild lands.
Joe Walters, in his review at Independent Book Review, calls The Red-Headed Pilgrim “escapist fiction. You can’t convince me otherwise. It’s not a fantasy, a sci-fi, any other mystical land to travel to (unless you count Portland). It’s just a break from this wild real life, a visit to a funny world, an entrance into someone else’s reality.”
And it’s weird, even though that “someone else’s reality” is not necessarily the “lap of luxury,” it is meaningful enough to wander the streets of Burlington, broke, with a cowboy hat and a corncob pipe, pretending to be some preposterous other. It’s somehow enough to know that you’re somewhere else.
Amaranthine Chevrolet
Another book filled with similar wanderlust, Amaranthine Chevrolet by Dennis E. Bolen, follows fifteen-year-old Robin, who takes off in his boss’s field truck on a thousand-mile trek across Western Canada. The book is based in 1967, so it plays doubly on my transportation in both space and time. Sometimes it’s enough to just mentally trek across North America and meet the strangers who live there in order to get you lost.
What should I read next if I want to get lost In nostalgia?
It’s nice to think back on the past—a car ride through the country with a long-lost lover, the joy of a high school soccer game. Nostalgia is everything you’ve physically lost but still carry with you.
Issa Quincy’s Absence is the story of a poem that follows the narrator from his childhood bedroom where his mother first read it to him. Over the years, the poem pops up time and again to remind him of his past, of his mother, a memory he will carry with him forever.
Amy Brozio-Andrews calls Issa Quincy’s Absence, “A tender and thoughtful novel that illuminates the power of memory and how it shapes us.”
Bonus nostalgia recommendation: Andrew Bertaina’s long essay, Ethan Hawke & Me: The Before Trilogy, tracks how the Ethan Hawke films shaped him as a man, a thinker, and a writer.
What should I read next if I want to get lost In language?
There are plenty of wonderful books out there written in simple language. A perfect plot or intriguing character is often enough to make a book worth reading. But then there are those writers who really lean into the rhythms of speech, the flow of their language. They may use beautiful imagery, some rhyme, some esoteric words, but the words themselves have the tendency to sweep you up and take you away.
Whitney Collins’ prose has wowed me since I read Ricky and Other Love Stories earlier this year. A collection of love stories that aren’t always only love stories, Collins is a smooth talker, throwing humor and wit into her prose. Shark attacks, sperm banks, a Ham Depot, Collins’ stories are always a heartfelt, if sometimes weird, wild ride.
Bonus recommendation in this mood: Claire Hopple’s Echo Chamber is bizarre and beautiful, sure to take you to unexpected places.
What should I read next if I want to get lost In the grotesque?
I’m late to the indie horror game, but thanks to David Simmons, I’ve found myself enjoying the description of a Dobson Fly eating its way through Jada’s insides. Simmons’ latest novel, The Eradicator features a twenty-four-year-old NICU nurse who likes parties, drugs, sex, and sometimes murder. As her own body deteriorates and lashes back at her, she takes her discomfort and her hatred of the world out on strangers around her in vicious ways.
Simmons describes the most disgusting parts of bodies in a manner that makes me cringe but also want to read on. It’s a mystery, in a way. It makes you wonder what is actually wrong with this person, with people.
Bonus recommendation in this mood: While David Ohle’s The Death of a Character is a vastly different story, the obsession with breaking-down bodies, with the strangeness of bodies is also there and also incredibly fascinating to read.
What should I read next if I want to get lost In the West?
I love a good Western. Boundless land to ride through, heroic escapes, a clear sense of good and evil, white hats versus black hats. The Western is, in many ways, a simplified world with clear laws about humanity.
Kendall Roberts’ Gunslingers is a story about cowboys in the wild plains of the West defining their own personal brand of justice in a dangerous world. Of course Gunslingers features shoot-outs and bar brawls, posses, and long rides through the desert, but Roberts’ take on the Western goes beyond the thrill of dead-eye gunmen and near escapes.
With deft prose, Roberts paints a fictional landscape spotted with fictional towns that comment on traditional views of the American Frontier while also showing its natural beauty. It’s wonderful to get lost in the plains.
What should I read next if I want to get lost In the mind?
Sometimes a mental landscape can be just as interesting as a physical landscape, even if the mind you’re reading is filled with small anxieties and paranoia. As an anxious person myself, it actually feels nice to lose myself to someone else’s paranoia. Or, rather, to see the anxieties of another character and laugh at how similar they are to my own. It’s healthy to laugh at yourself, and easy to do when you see your same follies in others.
Bennett Sims Other Minds and Other Stories is a collection of quiet, intellectual stories, often taking place over no more than a couple hours of the character’s life in which very little action actually occurs. However, as the characters spiral, the tension grips tighter. As suspicions snowball into certainties and questions mushroom into conspiracies, the simple process of writing an essay or reading a book turns into a question of life and death.
What should I read next if I want to get lost For a short amount of time?
I read on the metro sometimes, or in stolen moments before and after work. Maybe on an airplane, which is where I powered through Michael Bible’s powerful, moving, heartbreaking book about a tortoise, Little Lazarus (Clash Books). The book shows the world through the eyes of a turtle who cares very deeply for everyone around him. It’s a quiet book, but a short read, taking up not much more than an afternoon.
I’ve talked with several readers of Bible’s novella who have cried at the end. I also teared up. The prose is fantastic, but the heart is what drives this hundred-or-so-page novella.
Bonus recommendation in this mood: Ryan Rivas’ Lizard People is another short book with a lot of heart that’s definitely worth sitting with for a couple hours some afternoon.
No matter what your mood, there’s a book to match it because writers, like readers, often change. Whether you want to transport yourself to outer space or into the subconscious depths of your mind, there’s a book made for you.
About the Author
Nick Gardner is a writer, teacher, and critic who has worked as a winemaker, chef, painter, shoe salesman, and addiction counselor. His latest collection of stories from the Rust Belt, Delinquents And Other Escape Attempts, is out now from Madrona Books. He lives in Ohio and Washington, DC and works as a beer and wine monger in Maryland.
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The post What Should I Read Next? Indie Book Recommendations Based on Your Mood appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>The post 15 of the Best Mystery Thriller Books to Satisfy Your Inner Detective appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>Chosen by the IBR Staff
These mystery thrillers are to die for.
What is it with us and our interest in murder?
It’s in us to gaze through the fog, to look over our shoulder, to piece together the unknown. You’re telling me I can’t find out the truth? Challenge accepted.
Mystery thrillers are among our most popular reviews at IBR. We review tons of them. Why? Because the people who like them…they really, really like them. It’s one of those genres that can keep a reader for their entire life. Sure they might dabble in other spaces sometimes, but they always make their way back home…to murder.
Compiled by our mystery thriller team, this list includes murder mysteries, detective stories, psychological thrillers, paranormal mysteries, and beyond. And they’re all indie books!
Here are 15 mystery thrillers that’ll satisfy your inner crime solver.
1. Blood and Mascara
Infidelity, corruption, and murder on the mean streets of Washington, DC.
Author: Colin Krainin
Subgenre: Detective Fiction
Print Length: 292 pages
ISBN: 9798989986804
Recommended by: Erin Britton
What it’s about:
Former investigative journalist Bronze Goldberg is now a private eye who makes his living from seedy cases…Sufficiently shaken to take a modicum of action, Bronze reluctantly hits the streets to find out more about what happened to Billy Kopes, the “congressman who washed up on the banks of the Potomac.”
Given that Roger Haake, a political consultant, is “one of the most powerful unelected men in DC,” only someone incredibly brave or exceptionally foolish would consider having an affair with his wife. So which one was Kopes? And how much did Haake really know before he hired Bronze to tail Carolyn and find proof of her infidelity?
Unfortunately, in addition to being downright despicable, Haake is murdered before Bronze can find out more from him, which makes for two bodies dropping in less than 24 hours. Clearly, something is seriously amiss.
Why you should read it:
A hard-boiled detective story set in the late 1990s but with more than a hint of classic noir like The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, Colin Krainin’s Blood and Mascara traverses the seamier side of Washington, DC and exposes all the blood, gore, and corruption to be found there.
Through pitch-perfect PI dialogue and a plot packed with political duplicity, sleaze, and casual violence, Krainin presents a fiendish murder mystery that shines a light on both the best and worst of humanity.
Luckily, despite being such a deeply flawed human being, Bronze is actually a top-notch private investigator, likely due to a combination of his journalistic training and his plain orneriness. And given the twisted, complicated murder mystery that Krainin has crafted for him to solve, he’s going to need all his skill and experience to stay alive long enough to discover who is trying to kill him. The answer to the puzzle is wrapped up in layers of sleaze, scandal, and corruption, and Bronze has to survive through a fair bit of bloody violence as he attempts to unravel the Kopes/Haake conundrum.
–Erin Britton
2. An Unclean Place
Real people, a compelling mystery, and damn good writing
Author: Barbara Barrow
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Print Length: 308 pages
ISBN: 9781941360736
Publisher: Lanternfish Press
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
What it’s about:
Ms. Ella is a renegade teacher at Stillwater School, an experimental academy in Atlanta. Some students, like best friends Amber and Dawn, flock to her, and others are hurt by her. After she’s arrested and the school is closed due to scandal, Dawn stays on Ms. Ella’s trail.
But Dawn dies mysteriously years later. So Amber is the one who has to pursue the missing Ms. Ella, only to find more than she’s bargained for.
Why you should read it:
The writing is what pulled me in first. The third-person plural is a tough perspective to pull off, but Barrow does it with a flourish in the first section of this book, leaving an intriguing mythical feel to Ms. Ella’s impact on the students at the school.
The novel’s mysteries float through decades, and like the best of the psychological thriller genre, characters are complex and have agency. We find out who they really are only through sharp, subtle prose, and the mystery is well worth the wait.
–Toni Woodruff
3. Shitamachi Scam
Detective Hiroshi has to unmask scammers before the elderly in the city lose everything…including their lives.
Author: Michael Pronko
Subgenre: Detective Fiction
Print Length: 348 pages
ISBN: 9781942410317
Recommended by: Peggy Kurkowski
What it’s about:
Detective Hiroshi and his eclectic team of investigators are in the narrow lanes of shitamachi (“lower town”) Tokyo to unravel a devilishly complex scam scheme, where real estate has become the richest commodity and tradition just a stumbling block to “beautification” and progress. This is where thieving rings zero in on the most vulnerable—elderly women who are often widowed or retired.
When a scooter zooms through the street and kills their informant, whilst her scammer barely flees the scene, police officers are left with a bag full of blank paper, wondering what went wrong and why.
The next day, a young, reclusive tenant is found dead in his room. Are the two deaths connected? Hiroshi and his crack colleagues begin to peel back the layers of this mystery as break-ins and violence increase.Pronko aces the granular gumshoe work necessary as the scam becomes the lesser of two evils—ruthless land developers may have a larger scam of their own, one that isn’t afraid of murder to achieve its aims.
Why you should read it:
Shitamachi Scam is first-rate detective fiction that delivers a superb and timely plot with old school sleuthing and witty, compelling characters. Readers will want to see more of Hiroshi after this one.
The plot is intelligent and well-researched, reflecting as it does a current crime plague upon the elderly. For a crime disguising itself in white-collar clothing, Pronko dutifully approaches the narrative in a more cerebral manner, which makes the action sequences even more propulsive.
As Hiroshi and his colleagues—and Takuya and his—converge on the primary scammer(s) behind the deaths and mayhem, the climax is a cinematic set piece that rewards the readers’ patience in spades.
–Peggy Kurkowski
4. From Sweetgrass Bridge
An enthralling prairie mystery with humor, heart, and an ingenious plot
Author: Anthony Bidulka
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / LGBTQ
Print Length: 280 pages
ISBN: 9781988754543
Publisher: Stonehouse Publishing
Recommended by: Melissa Suggitt
What it’s about:
Set in the small town of Livingsky, Saskatchewan, the novel captures the essence of prairie life while unraveling the mysterious disappearance of a local hero, Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Dustin Thomson. The disappearance of Dustin, a beloved figure and role model for Indigenous youth, is a devastating reality for their community.
At the heart of the story is Merry Bell, a private investigator who has been back in her hometown for six months with little to show for it. Her business is floundering, her finances are strained, and she’s grappling with a sense of isolation. Just when Merry’s hope is nearly extinguished, Dustin’s cousin walks into her office, seeking her help to find the missing quarterback. If something bad happened to him out at the secluded Sweetgrass Bridge, she knows he didn’t do it to himself.
Merry’s investigation is anything but straightforward. As she delves deeper, she uncovers startling truths that add layers of complexity to the case.
Why you should read it:
From Sweetgrass Bridge proves to be a multifaceted mystery that adeptly balances its tension, humor, and emotionally charged moments.
Merry’s experience as a trans woman is depicted with care, insight, and understanding—an enrichment to the mystery… The setting of Livingsky, with its close-knit community and prairie backdrop, adds a nostalgic charm to the story. As a prairie girl myself, I found the depiction of the landscape and community life to be authentic and heartwarming. Bidulka’s pacing is impeccable, keeping readers on the edge of their seats while allowing the characters’ emotional journeys to unfold naturally.
–Melissa Suggitt
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5. The Apologist
A taut non-linear thriller with satisfying twists and an array of complex characters
Author: A.A. Weiss
Genre: Spy Thriller
Print Length: 193 pages
Publisher: The Agency Books (Sunbury Press)
Recommended by: Joseph Haeger
What it’s about:
Patrick Allred has the best of intentions. He wants to use his English education for good, helping people who need it most. After graduation, he walks into the Peace Corps recruiting office before learning he doesn’t actually have any applicable skills. He pivots to teaching English abroad and is soon Beijing bound. Little does he know he’s actively getting pulled into a twisted web of espionage and Chinese politics.
Then, he suddenly drops off the map.
His disappearance prompts freshman congressmember King to put together an under-the-radar mission led by assassins who don’t want to kill anymore. Two disillusioned hit men team up to locate and retrieve the missing American, ideally without any bloodshed, and this makes us wonder: do these killers have what it takes, or will they revert to their old ways to complete the mission?
Why you should read it:
The structure of The Apologist is reminiscent of a Christopher Nolan film. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of sorts, where different moments in time are running concurrently and it’s up to us to pull hints from the chapters to build a larger linear timeline in our heads. I love this tactic because it further engages the reader with the mystery of the story, expecting us to participate in a small way.
But even then, you don’t have to piece the timeline together to have a great time. All the characters are written effortlessly as their own individuals. Their dialogue wouldn’t even need to be attributed because through the cadence and language we already know whose voice is speaking.
Throughout the book, we don’t know who to root for. At any moment, any one of the characters could be the bad guy and any could be the good guy. The effect this creates is that we’re kind of rooting for every single one of them at all times. This means regardless of the thread we’re following, we have an emotional investment in that specific part of the story.
This is a rare novel that balances both plot and characters with equal fervor. Had the characters been lesser, the plot would have made up for it; and conversely, if the plot would have been weakened, the characters could have carried me through. In the end, it’s a one-two punch that makes me giddy even thinking about.
–Joseph Haeger
6. You’ve Been Summoned
An immersive, interactive mystery that keeps you on your toes
Author: Lindsey Lamar
Genre: Murder Mystery / Interactive
Print Length: 378 pages
Recommended by: Kristine Eckart
What it’s about:
Combining a modern-day mystery with an unsolved case from the 1940s, this book establishes a glamorous but secretive atmosphere and storyline to delight the likes of a millennial Agatha Christie.
You’ve Been Summoned revolves around two sets of sisters. Jane and Sillian Parks, the present-day set of twins, are at the center of an eerie visit to Sophomore Manor with their circle of friends. However, as arguments arise between the visitors and a man with an axe makes a startling appearance, the event turns from a costume party to an unsettling stay at a mansion with a past.
To make matters worse, Sillian goes missing and Jane’s twin senses are telling her that her sister is in danger. Will Jane be able to save Sillian from a terrible fate? And why did Sillian insist on having her party at Sophomore Manor?
Mary and Macie Sophomore, Hollywood’s darling twins from the 1940s, are focused on their careers. When teaming up with jazz icons Josh and James to gain publicity brings attention to the rising stars, the couples decide to get married and make this business arrangement permanent. But when their honeymoon period turns into a horror story, will Mary and Macie be able to escape?
Why you should read it:
Using diary entries from Mary Sophomore and a verbal account from Jane Parks, the novel transitions back and forth between the present day and the 1940s…. It brings a sense of old Hollywood glamor to the present-day action in a wonderful nod to the iconic Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
The creative details are what truly shine. Everything from the list of liars and the list of case files that replace a traditional table of contents to the newspaper clippings to the character drawings, letters, and diagrams all serve as evidence to create an immersive and interactive experience for the reader. Complete with ink splotches, different handwriting, and torn pages, the reader is offered a variety of puzzle pieces to put together to solve the intriguing mystery. It will make you feel like you’re at a murder mystery party.
–Kristine Eckart
7. The Mill House Murders
A chilling locked-room mystery that unfolds within the ominous walls of a setting shrouded in secrecy and tragedy
Author: Yukito Ayatsuji
Genre: Locked-Room Mystery / Japanese
Print Length: 288 pages
ISBN: 9781782278337
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Recommended by: Erin Britton
What it’s about:
When a killer strikes, brilliant amateur sleuth Kiyoshi Shimada sets about unravelling the complex web of secrets and lies that led to the perplexing crime.
Why you should read it:
Ayatsuji builds a compelling tale of intrigue around the eccentric Fujinuma Kiichi, the consequences of his accidental disfigurement, and his annual house party for a very select group of guests….Ayatsuji is a master at combining the macabre with the mysterious, creating a tense work of crime fiction that is packed with alarming events, red herrings, and psychological insights.
–Erin Britton
8. Midsummer Mysteries
An eclectic story anthology with some of the best mystery writers you’ll find
Edited: Martin Edwards
Genre: Short Story Anthology
Print Length: 416 pages
ISBN: 9781804177266
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
19 compelling thrillers all wrapped up in one beautiful hardcover book. SJ Butler, William Burton McCormick, SJ Bennett, Judith Cutler–this anthology is chock-full of some of the best mystery writers I’ve ever read, fiction or nonfiction. A perfect gift for mystery-thriller & crime fiction lovers with names they know and stories they’ll die for.
–Toni Woodruff
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9. Lying in Judgment
A propulsive, easy, entertaining audio journey with an unforgettable premise
Author: Gary Corbin
Genre: Audiobook / Crime / Legal
Listening Length: 9 hrs 25 mins
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
What it’s about:
In a jealous fit of rage, Peter Robinson tracks down his wife’s lover and beats him to death. Only problem is: he’s killed the wrong man.
And now, he’s being summoned to be on the jury of the case where he is the killer. Because he knows who really did it, he wants to get the accused off, but he’s got a tough motive to beat. We worry that Peter might be too close to the situation to let the wrong man go.
Why you should read it:
I listened to this audiobook years ago and haven’t forgotten a twist in it. The narration by the author is smooth and compelling, but it’s the premise that makes it so propulsive. A sure-fire “What would you do if this happened to you?” thriller with never-ending curiosity to find out what will come of the flawed protagonist.
–Toni Woodruff
10. Murder Under Redwood Moon
An energetic and suspenseful witchcraft-filled murder mystery
Author: Sherri L. Dodd
Genre: Supernatural Mystery
Print Length: 290 pages
ISBN: 9781685133887
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Recommended by: Chelsey Tucker
What it’s about:
In the small mountain town of Boulder Creek, beautiful young girls begin to go missing. Even worse: they show up in the river.
The entire town is on edge, but for Arista and her friends, it hits closer to home; they knew some of the victims. As a serial killer lurks in the shadows, danger continues to ramp up with snakes and upside down pentagrams signaling dark times.
A family relic that her Great-Aunt Bethie shows her may be the key they need to help solve these murders. “Our Ouija is rich with a past of providing details about serial killers—which is coming, my dear, you watch!” It soon comes to light that she may be in more danger than most, and her great-aunt knows why. Family is supposed to protect and care for one another, so how could they hurt you instead?
Why you should read it:
Murder Under Redwood Moon’s story structure provides the perfect pacing to nail the suspense factor. The author handles multiple viewpoints well and provides a macro-picture with micro-details—an essential piece to telling a captivating murder mystery. The reader is led to believe that they know more than they do, and just when they start piecing some things together, the point of view switches and we venture off in a new, enticing direction.
Murder Under Redwood Moon is going to be a fun read for mystery junkies as much as for fans of modern fantasy fiction and witchcraft. Dodd provides a refreshing tale while still including some staple lore conventions like the witch’s cat and broomsticks. The pages really fly by.
–Chelsey Tucker
13. Lost Grove (Part 1)
Strong paranormal elements really make this mystery pop.
Author: Charlotte Zang & Alex Knudsen
Genre: Paranormal / Mystery
Print Length: 357 pages
ISBN: 9798989796212
Recommended by: Alexandria Ducksworth
What it’s about:
When the corpse of Sarah Elizabeth Grahams winds up on shore, it throws the entire town of Lost Grove into a frenzy. Secrets long kept under wraps are slowly reaching their tipping point.
As they attempt to solve the mystery of Sarah’s death, sergeants Seth Wolfe and Bill Richards fall deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole that gets more shocking with each step they take.
Meanwhile in town, two psychic siblings attempt to start anew in a new high school to escape their past. A group of teenagers attempt to figure out if changelings truly exist. This mix of the paranormal into our recognized reality fits so well in this creepy atmosphere. There’s a whole world to uncover in this first book of the Lost Grove series.
Why you should read it:
Readers start Lost Grove by discovering Sarah Elizabeth Grahams washed up on the beach. It’s a common opener for an mystery until readers soon discover this is set in a place with witches and strange, bloodthirsty creatures. Lost Grove is what would have happened if the TV show Twin Peaks (1990) had taken a more supernatural path.
What makes Lost Grove such a compelling read is the town’s secrets. Many events are happening in Lost Grove besides the Grahams’ case. For instance, one of the townspeople, Mary Germaine, becomes obsessed with eating raw meat and drinking blood after a strange creature bites her. One coffee shop owner believes a ghost haunts her business. And even more.
Because of the unraveling threads, this book can get addictive quickly. The city’s lore will grip any reader’s attention, and there is so much alluring strangeness going on.
–Alexandria Ducksworth
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11. Blame It on the Moon
A mysterious haunted house story with plenty of heart
Author: Lou Pugliese
Genre: Haunted House
Print Length: 278 pages
ISBN: 9798990072602
Recommended by: Kristine Eckart
What it’s about:
Richard Craft, a widower in North Arlington, Virginia, moves into a spacious home passed down from generation to generation in his family. Still, his family is present in more ways than one. Mysterious sounds, appearances, and occurrences soon reveal the house is haunted—and Richard is determined to find out why.
As Richard digs into the lives of the house’s previous residents, including his deceased wife and child, his brother Bob, and more dating back to the Civil War era, Richard starts to discover secrets that have remained hidden for years. With each new discovery, Richard is one step closer to putting all the puzzle pieces together, but he also may be in more danger. Will he be able to help the spirits of the house find peace before it’s too late?
Why you should read it:
This is not your typical haunted house story. Blame It On The Moon by Lou Pugliese is a ghost story, murder mystery, steamy romance, and Indiana Jones archeology mission all rolled into one. These little twists are pleasant surprises that add a lot of nuance (& fun!) to the reading experience.
There’s a believable world in this novel with real-feeling characters who, like many readers, have reservations about believing in ghost stories, even if they enjoy them. From scientific equipment and experienced academic teams to Ouija boards and opal amulets, there’s a little something for every reader in this book.
–Kristine Eckart
12. Simon’s Dream
An inspiringly fresh take on the traditional crime thriller with coming of age romance and supernatural twists
Author: Jeremy Howe
Genre: Supernatural / Noir
Print Length: 256 pages
ISBN: 9798218222574
Recommended by: Warren Maxwell
What it’s about:
Ever since his step-father, former police chief Doug Lewis, threw him out of the house, Simon Verner has been forced to fend for himself, working his way into a tiny apartment through a strict routine and a job collecting golf balls at the local golf course. Regular therapy, a goldfish named Hank (rhymes with tank), and two loyal friends keep Simon content as he slowly discovers himself inside the parameters of his newly stable existence.
However, everything is turned upside down when uncanny dreams of a cop’s decade old murder begin visiting Simon. Thrust by these visions into Chicago’s corrupt underworld, Simon finds himself compelled to investigate a cold case that no one wants reopened.
Why you should read it:
The novel pushes boundaries with its exploration of the supernatural, but remains settled in the distinct realm of crime fiction. Simon’s quest to understand himself and the meaning behind his dreams is aided by Loretta, a fortune teller. Indeed, the dreams are windows into the past, giving Simon access to memories of his previous lives. From an African tribesman to an English queen, his life is indelibly linked to lives already lived, all of which are tainted by a millennium’s old curse. This heady theory of the soul deepens as the central mystery unfolds, adding exciting new dimensions to the straight-forward pleasures of mystery fiction. The writing is workman-like and entertaining, with sweeping descriptions and blow-by-blow action sequences frequently tipping into the cinematic. Shifts between dreams, reality, and the distant past are united by a tactile specificity that readers will be eager to visualize.
The thrilling story of a golf-ball fetcher who reinvents himself as a dogged agent of justice, Simon’s Dream abandons worn-out tropes in order to create a fresh new take on noir fiction.
–Warren Maxwell
14. The Mystery Next Door
Whatever kind of literary magic Michael Rodney Moore has conjured up, it’s working.
Author: Michael Rodney Moore
Genre: Middle Grade / Historical
Print Length: 259 pages
ISBN: 9798393679699
Recommended by: Alexandria Ducksworth
What it’s about:
Moore’s book begins with young Zoey Morganton as she moves into a small town with her mother in North Carolina. It isn’t long until she learns about the mysterious plantation not too far from her home: Oak Harbor. The house is covered with many secrets, ranging from a crazed slaveowner to a secret pirate treasure. Zoey can’t help her growing curiosity as she finds herself exploring Oak Harbor. There’s more to the plantation and the original owner’s history than she realizes.
Why you should read it:
The Mystery Next Door becomes addictive when Moore brings out old tales of piracy and long-lost treasure. It’s the type of adventure one would recognize from movies such as The Goonies (1985) and Tom & Huck (1995). Whose inner child didn’t wish they could find secret treasure in their own backyard?
One of the most captivating aspects of The Mystery Next Door is its exploration of Oak Harbor’s history. Moore delves into the complex dynamics of the 19th-century South, addressing topics such as slavery and the Civil War without it being too much for younger readers.
As Zoey Morganton delves deeper into the history of Oak Harbor, readers are treated to an alluring journey through time. Readers become engaged with the golden age of piracy and life in the South (before and after the Civil War).
The Mystery Next Door is a fun & delightful read. Middle school readers who are exploring the American South in other classes and those who relish in satisfying mysteries and adventure are going to love this story.
–Alexandria Ducksworth
15. Assassins Are Us
Action, heart, and laughs in equal measure.
Author: Kimberly van Sickle
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Humor
Print Length: 164 pages
ISBN: 9781639889433
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Recommended by: Melissa Suggitt
What it’s about:
Hedy isn’t your average teenager. She’s next in line to inherit her family’s centuries-old legacy as secret assassins. Picture this: deadly skills, killer charm, and a hint of rom-com magic. With Hedy and her family at the helm, you’ll want to prepare yourself for this unique combination of snort-inducing laughter and heart-pounding action.
Balancing a budding romance with Dave, a student in her class and the weight of her family’s destiny, Hedy’s journey is quite the complicated one. Is she meant to carry on her family legacy? Will pursuing Dave affect her focus and put herself, her family, and Dave in danger, potentially exposing their family’s sordid past? Assassins Are Us is a seamless blend of high school drama and covert ops, served with a side of chaotic family dinners that’ll make you grateful for every mundane gathering.
Why you should read it:
Buckle up for a wildly entertaining ride through family secrets, flirtatious encounters, and dangerous missions in uproariously captivating ways. Hedy Hinterschott is a protagonist you’ll wish was your best friend.
Don’t be fooled by the laughs; author Kimberly Van Sickle has a knack for tugging at heartstrings too. The bonds formed among Hedy and her quirky crew ooze authenticity, adding warmth to the story’s action-packed and slightly outlandish core. This book doesn’t just capture the essence of being a teenager; it catapults you into a world where family, romance, and thrilling twists intertwine constantly.
Hedy’s quick thinking, intelligence, and sassiness will win you over faster than you can say “undercover operation.” Just when you think you’ve cracked the code, Van Sickle throws curveballs that leave you gasping and grinning simultaneously.
–Melissa Suggitt
What are the best mystery thrillers you’ve read? Let us know in the comments!
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Nobody reads like fantasy readers read.
Send me to new worlds. Mystify my current one. Short novellas or door-stopping tomes—doesn’t matter. If it’s not this world I’m living in, I’d gladly spend time in it.
The fantasy reader stereotype has changed a little bit, hasn’t it? We’re not carrying around those fat serial paperbacks with dragons in our back pockets anymore. Now we’ve got the dragon books in our Kindles.
If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you have a library in your pocket, filled with thousands of fantasy novels. Ready to know which ones you should read? (Bonus points: they’re all indie!)
Have you used your KU free trial yet?
Here are 17 Kindle Unlimited fantasy books you’re going to love.
1. Winterset Hollow
Welcome to Barley Day. Eat, drink, and be merry—for tomorrow you will die.
Author: Jonathan Edward Durham
Subgenre: Dark Fantasy
Print Length: 326 pages
Recommended by: Joelene Pynnonen
What it’s about:
When the chance comes up to visit the former home of the late legendary (fictional) writer Edward Addington, Eamon Buckley jumps at it. Passing up the possibility of seeing the island that inspired Addington’s novel Winterset Hollow is impossible. And what better day to go than Barley Day? The one day in the year that all the characters in the book celebrate with their loved ones?
Once Eamon and his closest friends, Caroline and Mark, arrive on Addington Isle they realize that the truth of Edward Addington’s life might be stranger than his fiction. And, too late, they find that coming to the island might have been a mistake—and it might just cost them their lives.
Why you should read it:
Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham is the kind of whirlwind story that spirits you off in one direction and, just as you’re comfortably settling in for the ride, buffets you wildly into a different tale. A mix of quirky, wholesome, and horrific. This novel crosses genres in a way I’ve seldom seen before. And each of the genres is handled superbly.
The horror aspects of the novel are fantastic. The fact that the relationships are built on such solid foundations cements the horror in place. All of the characters are stuck in their trauma: working through it, giving in to it, or just going with the path of least resistance in the hopes of avoiding any more pain. It’s awful and confronting and terrifying because it uses fiction as a mirror of reality.
–Joelene Pynnonen
2. Dio in the Dark
A cinematic Toronto adventure depicting the ancient Greek gods as flawed eternal beings living in a modern world
Author: Rizwan Asad
Subgenre: Mythology
Print Length: 170 pages
Recommended by: Andrea Marks-Joseph
What it’s about:
This is the story of a father—Zeus, king of the gods—and the complicated relationship he has with his two sons Dionysus and Apollo. While they’re languishing in the pleasures of contemporary life, mistrust and betrayal burns bright between them. When impending doom hangs over them, the gods are left feeling as though they’re grasping at straws to stop it. They’ve navigated the modern world with mortals for so long that their powers are not as strong.
When Zeus suddenly goes missing, Dio discovers that his father is being held hostage as part of an overwhelming darkness that’s festering because the mortals are forgetting about the gods. “Zeus was bound not by steel, enchanted or other wise, but by the dismissal of his legend, the failure of the modern scribes to engrave his deeds into the tablets of modern men.” The gods work to revive the mortals’ knowledge of the pantheon.
Dio encounters various primordial deities and mythological monsters as he embarks on the quest to find and rescue his father—and the entire mortal world. The author (Rizwan Asad) takes this story to The Underworld, secret underground parties, and to the powerful depths of Instagram.
Why you should read it:
Dio in the Dark is a delightful reimagined future for Olympian gods. An ode to Greek mythology, this adventure offers something fresh and unique to their stories, and it proves to be an excellent choice for fans of both legends and urban fantasy.
It’s a story as delicious and full-bodied as the ancient Greek wine Dio adores.
While set in modern Toronto, Dio in the Dark turns the city radiant with all the possibilities of ancient magic. The visuals are colorful and stylized, with gorgeous landscapes and stunning locations. Asad’s writing is vivid and descriptive—making it impossible not to feel as if you have climbed through a vibrantly drawn storybook, or crept right into the scene in the middle of a cinematic otherworldly battle.
–Andrea Marks-Joseph
3. Fated Sworn
A royal fantasy adventure with a universe-transcending fated love
Author: Kristin L. Hamblin
Subgenre: Romantasy
Print Length: 527 pages
Recommended by: Andrea Marks-Joseph
What it’s about:
Fated Sworn is a story of loyalty and leadership, strategy and sacrifice; of a generous queen and a warm-hearted thief who are fated to find each other and fall in love.
Queen Faelyn—“‘Fae,’ they called her, with pointed ears, limitless magic, and a kingdom regaining its power in the world”—is a badass leader and passionate custodian of her kingdom. Her personal life and her people have faced so much hardship in the past, but by the time we meet her in this book she has successfully built her kingdom into a place where people are genuinely taken care of.
While she’s making plans to marry a prince from a kingdom that will ensure this safety and abundance is secure for another generation, she begins to feel a mystical connection with a mysterious young man. “The echo of a familiar pain lanced through her, as if she’d been here before, losing him to an unknown future all over again. But none of that made any sense. She’d only just met him.”
Why you should read it:
Fated Sworn’s magic systems are fascinating and cinematic, simultaneously intimate and intense. Those with magic in this novel have the ability to sense proximity to each other, to feel the exact emotional state of others, and to manipulate natural elements with magnificent implications. For this reason, the action scenes are especially vivid.
If you’re in the mood for exhilarating combat scenes, entrancing magical training montages, high-powered elemental magic battles, desperate street crime and ruthless gang dynamics—with the shining thread of destined soulmates sparkling throughout—this is the book for you.
This would make an equally sensational, heart-wrenching, sexy TV or film adaptation as both Outlander and Beautiful Creatures series have had, especially with its visually enthralling magic systems.
-Andrea Marks-Joseph
It’s almost your birthday! What are you asking for? Tell your people to get you gifts for book lovers.
4. A Moonserpent Tale
Danger, adventure, magic, and romance: what else could you want?
Author: Rosemarie Montefusco
Subgenre: Fairy Tale / Romance
Print Length: 354 pages
Recommended by: Kathy L. Brown
What it’s about:
A Moonserpent Tale tracks a young witch, her guide, an elf, and a pigeon on a quest through a barren, peril-fraught land.
Each has their own reasons for heading out on the journey, from Sol’s duty as a soldier to Araina’s mixed bag of grief and low self-esteem.
While delivering some spell books and a magical artifact to a friend at a nearby witch community, Araina’s latent magical ability manifests. She is the best choice for an important mission the coven needs to staff. A militaristic force seeks seven magical artifacts, hidden throughout the land, to wield even greater power. And something is wrong with nature itself, the land and its plants blighted. Are these events connected in some way?
Why you should read it:
A Moonserpent Tale’s sweet, slow-burn romance is perfect for these characters in this situation.
The book’s worldbuilding is thorough and thoughtful, and the description is immersive. The voice of the story has a wonderful, folkloric tone perfect for the material.
Readers who enjoy character-driven fantasy fiction such as the fantasy novels of Lois McMaster Bujold will be impressed with A Moonserpent Tale. This is a tale both thoughtful and entertaining, a true pleasure to read.
-Kathy L. Brown
5. The Wolf Esprit
Captivating historical fantasy in a dark mood
Author: Joseph Stone
Subgenre: Dark Fantasy / Historical
Print Length: 538 pages
Recommended by: Alexandria Ducksworth
What it’s about:
Young Esprit Lenoir follows his traveling family of performers around the French countryside. Even though they’re not Romani, they are still frowned upon for their peculiar lifestyle. Esprit does his best as an actor, always seeking his father’s approval, but his sexual orientation marks him as a sinner. His father wants him to as a heterosexual man, while Esprit just wants to be himself, even if locals ridicule him for it.
One day, Esprit spots a handsome gentleman during one of his performances. This encounter leads him to a hidden world of powerful werewolf clans and centuries-old secrets. It will take him across countries, helping him understand the wolf inside him.
Why you should read it:
Reading Wolf Esprit is like reading Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire—but with werewolves. Any werewolf fans (or general paranormal fans) will savor anything in the Lykanos Chronicles (Criminal Beware, Wolf Omega), but this is a terrific standalone.
The werewolves in Stone’s book are not the typical ferocious hairy mongrels running the woods attacking innocents at random. Stone’s wolves are smart, sophisticated, and insanely powerful. Just another reason why the author’s world is so intriguing.
Stone has the magical touch with his worldbuilding. I loved traveling with Esprit through rural France and in the lavish masquerade parties in Italy. Stone’s historical knowledge brings the world to life, while the fantasy enthralls.
-Alexandria Ducksworth
6. Dagny
A whirlwind expedition of mystery and discovery
Author: Matt Luedke
Subgenre: Myth / Historical
Print Length: 58 pages
What it’s about:
Left behind to tend their family’s cabin and reindeer as her father and brother are summoned to war, Dagny awakens one morning to find the herd under attack. Using every tool she has available, including Elvish rune magic, she ventures into the dangerous forest to rescue the stolen deer—where she discovers she must confront more intense obstacles than just a monstrous thief.
Why you should read it:
This fantasy exposes Luedke’s clear ability for robust and creative storytelling in just a few pages. The author has created a new world, somewhere between ours and a fantasy realm, where a lot of our legends and fairy tales come true, like trolls, magic, ghosts, and more. The plot is fast-paced; the story itself isn’t very wordy, but it is immersive and engaging regardless.
–Audrey Davis
7. Veil ONLINE
A captivating, heartstring-pulling role-player fantasy
Author: John Elijah Cressman
Subgenre: LitRPG
Print Length: 467 pages
Recommended by: Alexandria Ducksworth
What it’s about:
The journey of VEIL Online begins in the real-life world with protagonist Jace Burton. Jace is a programmer for the behemoth gaming company WorldCog, the company behind VEIL. Players enter the game through their virtual reality gaming pods, but this is beyond your typical gaming console. When you play in VEIL, you’re literally in it—able to transfer both your money and consciousness into the game after you die.
When you’re alive, you can log off whenever you want to.
So when Jace gets off from work to find himself stuck in VEIL, he’s got some questions to ask. There’s only one conclusion: Jace is dead in real life. But how did he die? Did somebody kill him? Is WorldCog behind it? As Jace progresses through VEIL, readers will uncover the game’s secrets and meet helpful and entertaining characters along the way.
Why you should read it:
If you combined Ready Player One with Dungeons and Dragons, you might get pretty darn close to VEIL Online. This book is a must for adventurous readers who love journeys with dragons, mages, rogues, and trolls.
One thing is for sure: Cressman definitely knows how to write a page-turner. He guides readers through twists and turns, surprises, and constant danger. Like in every good fantasy RPG, there is never a dull moment. Every time Jace succeeds in a quest, a new problem arises. When Jace finally transfers his way to another human body, it’s a level one—no magic, no advanced skills. Jace has to start from scratch.
Gamers will be all over VEIL Online. The air of mystery surrounding Jace’s permanent place inside the game will really get readers flipping pages.
–Alexandria Ducksworth
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8. The Song of the Fae
A sizzling love story with a shocking secret
Author: E.H. Jahr
Subgenre: Romantasy
Print Length: 299 pages
Recommended by: Lisa Parker Hayreh, PhD
What it’s about:
Kiera is compelled to heal others with her magic despite the threat of punishment if she is discovered. Only the fae may safely possess magic in their lands. But as hard as she tries to escape detection, her magical gifts attract the attention of the young fae prince Dorian.
Instead of punishing Kiera for healing a farmer’s wife, he offers her the chance to hone her magic under his tutelage at his palace in the land of the fae. Kiera is instantly attracted to Dorian despite being suspicious of his motives. Kiera must decide whether or not she can trust Dorian as she embarks on a journey to discover the true potential of her own magic.
As Dorian and Kiera work to strengthen her magical capabilities, their attraction deepens and evolves. Kiera soon discovers that Dorian is harboring secrets that threaten to upend her world. She also discovers that some of her friends and foes are not necessarily who they seem, so she must determine the truth and choose her allegiances to claim the full force of her magic and save her world from the throes of dark magic.
Why you should read it:
With sizzling sex scenes, a compelling romance, and vivid fantasy elements, E. H. Jahr delivers a delightful debut novel. Strong, outspoken, and intelligent, Kiera is an engaging heroine with an irresistible passion to heal and protect others. In spite of her efforts to blend into everyday life in Cresea, Kiera is propelled into a suspenseful mystery as she encounters the young prince Dorian. His offer to train her in fae magic is alluring, as is the instant chemistry between them.
Vivid descriptions paint the fae world into brilliant detail. Fast-paced action propels us along the twists and turns of Kiera’s adventures in magical training and in romance. Kiera’s evolving passion for Dorian is masterfully spun too. Some scenes, however, do spend some time telling us information rather than offering its usually engaging dialogue and action.
–Lisa Parker Hayreh, PhD
9. The Scales of Balance (A Vengeful Realm)
A captivating fantasy with strong characters and even stronger combat scenes
Author: Tim Facciola
Subgenre: Action & Adventure
Print Length: 530 pages
Recommended by: Timothy Thomas
What it’s about:
A fantasy novel replete with spilled blood in the name of a peace that every faction defines differently. Gods, judges, kings, mages, gladiators, slaves, all vying for position in a life that demands the deaths of one’s enemies to be achieved.
New Rheynia is on the brink of another civil war. As King Varros stands before his kingdom, Queen Danella plots his assassination should he not heed her request. With the kingdom in the balance and the rebellious Revivalists’ in the shadows, Prince Laeden takes it upon himself to protect his father by bringing down the insurgents, unaware that the blood he seeks spilled is his stepmother’s.
And somehow, Zephyrus finds himself in the middle of all of this. Having awakened with no memories and the only indications of who he is foretelling opposing paths for him, he is made a pawn in the Prince’s game and enters gladiatorial slavery for his exceptional fighting abilities to be a spy on Laeden’s behalf. To establish his future, he must secure his past, for therein lies the key to his freedom from the arena, and toward his destiny.
Why you should read it:
It is difficult to overstate the storytelling prowess of author Tim Facciola. As if representative of the balance the title speaks of, his writing rarely finds a scene that is not appropriately captured in tone, pacing, and dialogue. The rich catalogue of characters all have a greater depth than what may initially be perceived, and all have their own mostly sympathetic motivations. Perhaps most noteworthy of all is the vividly illustrative way in which the combat scenes are written.
This book is impressive. Readers of fantasy with a penchant for middle-aged settings will applaud its intricate storytelling and thoughtful worldbuilding.
–Timothy Thomas
10. Wizard’s Masquerade
Dramatic, romantic, and an absolute pleasure to read.
Author: Jay Pellegrin
Subgenre: Sword & Sorcery / Romantasy
Print Length: 550 pages
Recommended by: Andrea Marks-Joseph
What it’s about:
When we meet Leyna, she’s in the middle of a magical battle that counts for her final exams to graduate school with a wizarding qualification. Working toward a life of stability and independence, Leyna is twenty-two years old, ambitious, hardworking, and aware of the privileges that allowed her to get has far as she has.
She has one major goal: “As far as she was concerned, so long as her dream of becoming a wizard of His Majesty’s Royal Guard came true, the rest of the world could simply fall away.”
Wizard’s Masquerade instead leads her to a palace that is plagued by regicide, a monumental conspiracy against the monarchy as well as secret societies who are willing to do anything to further their agendas.
When tragedy strikes the kingdom, Leyna is assigned to investigate the traitorous crimes. Leyna’s investigation takes her on emotional twists and turns relating to who she can and can’t trust and leads her to discover that she doesn’t really know the people she loves.
Why you should read it:
The magic system that author Jay Pellegrin has built in this novel is fascinating and unique in its approach—familiar enough to understand immediately, but different in a way that feels fresh and necessary. Wizard’s Masquerade’s fantasy world features shapeshifting creatures, demon summonings gone wrong, levitation and lifesaving spells, vicious demon attacks, and mysterious magical spies.
The novel has more mystery than romance, though the frequent appearance of suitors and intriguing potential love interests will definitely appeal to romance readers who prefer the pull of a potential fling to carry them through a story.
With thrilling reveals to each new question, even the most clever mystery readers will find themselves surprised and delighted by the plot twists.
Leyna finds love and reunites with family in a novel that creatively connects scenes filled with crushing grief, sheer terror, sexual tension, fierce loyalty and longing.
–Andrea Marks-Joseph
11. Soulstealer Origins
A bewitching tale weaving fact and fiction in spellbinding fashion to both horror and delight
Author: Reed Logan Westgate
Subgenre: Historical Fantasy
Print Length: 341 pages
Recommended by: Timothy Thomas
What it’s about:
It is the Lord’s year 1303, and the famed holy crusaders known as the Knight’s Templar have fallen from the height of their power. Two knights, Lucious de Montfort and Marcus, lead a company of men into the mountains of Matra, outside the town of Eger, in search of a fabled weapon powerful enough to turn the tide of the war that threatens to consume their holy order.
They find that the weapon they seek, imprisoned in the mountain for centuries, is not an item to be wielded by man, but an instrument of God who is a harbinger of the end of days: the horseman of death. The knights free him from his prison on condition that he aid them in their war.
As they settle into the town of Eger, intent on waiting out the rest of the winter, they quickly learn that the front lines have fallen, the Pope has been killed, and there is no one left they can trust.
Lucious, reportedly in possession of the weapon they found, leaves Eger for Paris to take focus off of Marcus and the horseman, whom they’ve named Oxivius, as they remain in town. With their relationship growing each passing month, and tensions rising in both Eger and Paris, Oxivius and Marcus find their friendship, faith, and destiny are tested as nothing is what it seems.
Why you should read it:
Soulstealer Origins is a well-executed blend of history, religious dogma, and fictional elements. It tells a heartfelt story that asserts the humanity of a monster while affirming the monstrousness of humanity.
This book is really well-balanced for all that it contains, and it maintains that balance by keeping its focus on Oxivius and Marcus. Oxivius is an integral part of the plot, but he is fascinating on his own. Having lived, and destined to live, far longer than any of his companions, he has a unique perspective on life and humankind.
Reed Logan Westgate has delivered something truly unique in this novel.
-Timothy Thomas
12. The Monsters In Our Shadows
A hair-raising story about the struggle to accept your monstrous side, lest it consume you
Author: Edward J. Cembal
Subgenre: Horror / Dark Fantasy
Print Length: 398 pages
Recommended by: Jadidsa Perez
What it’s about:
Edward J. Cembal’s debut novel, The Monsters in Our Shadows, details a dystopian world filled with the “afflicted:” humans who have parasitic, amorphous monsters tethered to them.
As time goes on, the monsters—called “Shivers”—become so malnourished that they devour their human host and anyone around. Humanity is nearly extinct, the last of them all living in the city of Atlas. It’s our protagonist’s job, Anthem, to ensure these Shivers are disposed of day in and day out.
But tensions begin to rise amongst the afflicted and non-afflicted, forcing Anthem to go out and look for a cure for the monsters that have plagued his life.
Why you should read it:
The Monsters in Our Shadows is one of the most riveting books I’ve ever read. The book begins in the best, most gut-wrenching way, and it only continues this high threshold. It’s always hard to predict what will happen next, as there is a constant air of mystery and bog.
The pacing moves along swiftly and naturally, and it’s easy to get acquainted with the world of the story. The characters’ ways of life are established well, and somehow, even the concept of Shivers does not feel outlandish. The Monsters in our Shadows is able to live up to its hot start because of how much care Cembal utilizes in cultivating this world.
–Jadidsa Perez
13. The Yawning Gap
For anybody who loves epic fantasy lore, Vobh serves the perfect dish.
Author: C.V. Vobh
Subgenre: Epic
Print Length: 508 pages
Recommended by: Alexandria Ducksworth
What it’s about:
The world outside of Cor Volucre’s homeland is falling apart. The divided lands, called Boundaries, have been using sacred energy as their own. It all stems from the dying Elementals. If they all perish, the world Cor knows, including his beloved home, will cease to exist. Cor gathers a special stone helping him step through Boundary lines, gathering new companions along the way, and coming closer to his goal of saving the world.
Why you should read it:
The Elementals in Cor’s world are deeply respected gods. The idea of these otherworldly beings dying would cause anyone great distress. The world wouldn’t be much without them. The deeper you dive into this novel, the more you get the chance to truly discover the Elementals, like the “Fossils” they leave behind. Vobh shares so many intricate details that you’ll forget they’re not real.
One of the best traits of The Yawning Gap is the developing friendships of Cor, farmer girl Brayleigh, royal orator Celeste, and the famed Knight-Lord Deliad. Each character comes from distinctly different backgrounds, and some even had conflicts with each other. But with the weight of a dying world on their shoulders, they know their friendship can make a greater difference. The companionship closely resembles the bond of the Fellowship from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Their bond grows the closer they get to Mt. Doom.
At last, one can’t read an epic fantasy without epic action scenes. Vobh has written so much action that it’ll keep readers flipping the pages like nobody’s business. There are some parts in The Yawning Gap where everything gets weighed down and a tad slow though, too. The prose can get repetitive in these moments. As soon as your eyes drift from the pages, Vobh has this magic of snapping your attention back to life with swords clashing and magic colliding.
The Yawning Gap is a fantasy deserving of much attention. Vobh’s world is inspiring and the characters more than memorable.
–Alexandria Ducksworth
Find more fantasy (& other) books in our hidden gem books on KU.
14. Children of the Night
A dreadfully delightful homage to Gothic classics that offers something entirely of its own
Author: Zan Safra
Subgenre: YA / Gothic / Vampires & Monsters
Print Length: 356 pages
Recommended by: Samantha Hui
What it’s about:
Ayanda Draculesti navigates a world of “Naturals” and “Unnaturals,” a world dividing humans from those who have been tested on, mutilated, and reconstructed by alchemists who prey upon helpless children. A common enemy for the Naturals and Unnaturals, however, are the Risen Dead: vampires.
After five centuries of inactivity from these Dead, the cool and calculating vampire Isadora comes to Venice to wreak havoc, feeding on the Naturals and turning the Unnaturals against them. Ayanda’s particular set of skills, similar to those of vampires, may make her the perfect hero to fight against these killing things.
Ayanda does not have to fight this evil herself. The resurfacing of a familiar evil will connect Ayanda with other Unnaturals such as Jette Jekyll, Belle Frankenstein, and Yurei. Each character comes with their own set of skills and abilities as well as their own set of demons they must reconcile with.
While Ayanda is determined to take down the evil that is Isadora and her lackies, the other Unnaturals are hesitant to fight against such a lethal creature. They must also wrangle with the understanding that in fighting against the human-eating vampire, they would also be fighting for these Naturals who have forced an unbearable existence upon the Unnaturals.
Why you should read it:
Combining science fiction technology with Gothic and grotesque fantasy, this novel feels timeless yet futuristic, an anachronism well-juxtaposed.
For centuries, monsters and Gothic fiction have been utilized as representations of the cultural anxieties that took hold of the populations during the corresponding time periods. Safra has done an excellent job of implementing this storytelling tradition. Times have become more complex and convoluted, requiring more characters to represent a wider array of anxieties and identities that exist in today’s society.
I would highly recommend this book to those with a penchant for steampunk fiction and Gothic tropes. Safra’s storytelling is grotesque and captivating, both repulsing and intriguing us to keep on listening.
–Samantha Hui
15. The Indigo
Reading The Indigo will make you question your beliefs on reality altogether.
Author: Heather Siegel
Subgenre: YA / Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Print Length: 284 pages
Recommended by: Alexandria Ducksworth
What it’s about:
In The Indigo, a teen travels through dimensions to retrieve the soul of her unconscious mother. Despite what her family has concluded, 16-year-old Jett doesn’t believe it is the end of her mother’s life. Jett’s mom has been in the hospital for a long time. The hospital bills have been piling up, and Jett’s aunt Margaret is thinking about pulling the plug.
One night, Jett catches a glimpse of her mother in an alternate dimension, realizing she’s still alive. But how can she bring her back to physical reality? Jett bands together with Quantum club member Farold and dives into the mystical world of the astral realm. Getting into this strange new world is one thing, but battling the dangers waiting for her is another.
Why you should read it:
The most captivating theme Siegel presents in this book is the idea of astral projection. Astral travelers can go anywhere and do anything they want during their out-of-body experiences until their spiritual cord takes them back to their physical bodies. I love this metaphysical subject since it’s not mentioned often in mainstream fiction.
Author Heather Siegel plays with the idea that there is more to our lives than our three-dimensional reality, something human civilization has pondered since the beginning of time…Highly recommended.
16. The Lord of Long Shadows
The perfect storm of Game of Thrones meets Alice in Wonderland.
Author: M. Anderson
Subgenre: YA / Action & Adventure
Print Length: 328 pages
Recommended by: Jaylynn Korrell
What it’s about:
20-year old Alex Winters is an orphan and a waitress. She lives in a trailer and does everything she can to live a quiet, reclusive life, but one night, she saves a man from being beaten up. And the next day? She is transported to the sea of a completely new world: Aquillon. There, she starts the first of many battles to survive; in this world, lowly humans are abused, thieved, and treated like pests. In order to free humanity (and herself), she must embark on a journey with a few friends and discover her true role in this life.
Why you should read it:
The Lord of Long Shadows is the Young Adult book you’ll wish you had as a kid—but the one you’re happy to return to at any age. With magic, loss, bravery, and epic battles, this first book in the Knights of the Fallen Realm series comes out swinging—and hits.
M. Anderson creates a vivid world in Aquillon, offering a swift reminder to readers of how fun it is to imagine. There are no slow chapters in this novel, and no chapters lacking in absorbing detail. Fascinating animals like upright lions, goat warriors, and imaginative hybrids stand in the way of our main character’s goal and keep the reader enthralled with each next step.
–Jaylynn Korrell
17. The Brothers Dragon
Two young brothers travel from World War 2 ravaged London to a dangerous world of dragons, pirates, and family secrets.
Author: J.F. Baker
Subgenre: Middle Grade / Dragons
Print Length: 231 pages
Recommended by: Warren Maxwell
What it’s about:
Hidden on an island in the Atlantic, dragons, mermen, gargoyles, and witches have maintained a peaceful existence for centuries. When a malevolent force begins threatening this bucolic existence, it falls on Luke and Nick—the youngest members of an ancient, dragon-blooded family—to protect the island.
With Germany’s bombardment of London picking up, and their father away at war, eleven-year-old Luke and seven-year-old Nick are sent west to stay with an uncle they’ve never met. But when they discover strange maps, references to a land called Draksmore, and a tree house built of stone in the forbidden forest they find that their Uncle Bilok’s home is not the haven they had expected. Together, they quickly break their Uncle Bilok’s rules and find themselves in a world where the fantasy’s from Nick’s favorite books are real.
Why you should read it:
From the very beginning, an electric pace and compassionate understanding of character makes this story utterly captivating. Baker expertly leads Luke and Nick through their journey, delicately matching their burgeoning inner growth with its outward narrative display.
Readers of all ages will be swept up in by the captivating prose, gripping plot, and the easy way that each of Baker’s character appears fully formed and relatable from the start. Each chapter smoothly shades into the next with an almost inexorable sense of fate leading the whole book forwards… Extraordinarily fun and readable.
-Warren Maxwell
What are the best Kindle Unlimited fantasy books you’ve read? Let us know in the comments!
About the IBR Staff
Independent Book Review is your source for the best in indie books. With 25 readers on staff, we aim to show the reading world why they can put their trust in independently published lit. Meet the team or follow on Instagram & Twitter.
Thank you for reading “17 Kindle Unlimited Fantasy Books You Should Read RIGHT NOW (2024)!” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
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]]>The post Upcoming Book Releases We’re Excited About | Fall 2023 appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Joe Walters & the IBR Staff
Put your trust in indie books in Fall 2023.
You won’t regret it.
We received pitches for thousands of indie books this year. Our inbox is overflowing with creativity and uniqueness and bold steps taken away from those by the big five publishers.
National Book Award finalists like Mónica Ojeda stride alongside debut indie authors in this list of exciting books coming out in Fall 2023. It’s not the name that matters to us, the publishing house, the publicity; it’s the book.
What genres are you looking for? We review them all. This list includes literary fiction, speculative fiction, thrillers, middle grade books, and beyond. So get that pre-order finger ready. I think this season looks awesome.
Here are 23 upcoming book releases that we’re excited about in Fall 2023.
1. Nefando
Available October 2023
Author: Mónica Ojeda
Genre: Thriller / Horror
ISBN: 9781566896894
Print Length: 184 pages
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Mónica Ojeda’s last book, Jawbone, was impressive. Good psychological thrillers can rile you up and make you think at the same time, and Ojeda is so damn good at both. This follow-up novel is a techno-horror story about artists and video games, and it might be just as explosive.
2. The Glassman
Available September 2023
Author: Multimind
Genre: Dark Fantasy
ISBN: 9781952860102
Print Length: 151 pages
A lead singer survives a devastating accident only to discover that he can now control and create glass. What would you even do with this power? How could it help? Or could it only hurt? The Glassman is a dark fantasy that sings.
3. The Liberators
Available November 2023
Author: E.J. Koh
Genre: Literary / Asian & Asian American
ISBN: 9781959030157
Print Length: 304 pages
Publisher: Tin House Books
Don’t even get me started on this cover. (Okay, do. It’s incredible.) But it’s the generational family story that pulls me deeper into this one. If you’re fascinated in the ways the past influences the present, check out this debut novel that Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), called, “Spare, beautiful and richly layered.”
4. Landscapes
Available September 2023
Author: Christine Lai
Genre: Literary / Dystopian
ISBN: 9781953387387
Print Length: 230 pages
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Lai captures the intersectionality of art, feminism, and environmentalism in this moving debut novel
A major focus of this novel is destruction and what it means to create anew; destruction often is not the end but a site for rebirth. Though Penelope has devoted so much of her life to the preservation of [an art archive], in its demolition, she is able to transition into a new future…Landscapes is beautiful, provocative, and accessible. It will remind you that destruction is rarely the end and that we all must continue forward.
– Samantha Hui, Independent Book Review
5. Peach Pit
Available September 2023
Editors: Molly Llewellyn & Kristel Buckley
Genre: Short Fiction / Women
ISBN: 9781950539871
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Deesha Philyaw. Lauren Groff. Sarah Rose Etter. Should I just keep listing the badass women authors in this book? This star-studded story anthology is filled with monstrous female characters who are tired of being told to play nice.
6. Somewhere in the Gray Area
Available October 2023
Author: Jeffrey K. Davenport
Genre: Thriller / LGBTQ
Print Length: 328 pages
ISBN: 9798218192211
An overconfident character in over their head? Sign me up. And make it dangerous while you’re at it. This thriller features a programming intern who gets caught up in a police coverup that takes the lives of his boss and the rest of the program’s interns. Naturally, he joins up with a team of operatives, led by a team leader with an eye only for his work. For now.
7. The River, The Town
Available June 2023
Author: Farah Ali
Genre: Literary / Family
ISBN: 9781950539888
Print Length: 216 pages
Publisher: Dzanc Books
A deep and powerful work of literary climate fiction
The River, The Town follows Baadal, his wife Meena, and his mother Raheela over a lifetime from their rural landscape to the faraway dream of the City, as they try and fail and try again to love each other. As the title suggests, the Town depends on the river, a relationship just as fraught as the relationships between the humans that the river feeds.
With straightforward prose and a roving point of view, Ali traces the echoes between water and thirst, person and place, in this meditation on regionalism, poverty, and family trauma.
– Nick Rees Gardner, Independent Book Review
8. Veil of Doubt
Available October 2023
Author: Sharon Virts
Genre: Historical Fiction / Thriller
ISBN: 9781959411253
Print Length: 362 pages
Publisher: Girl Friday Books
A scintillating retelling of a true crime story from Reconstruction-era Virginia! One mother is accused of killing her husband, children, and aunt. Obviously you’re wondering if she did it. Just wait until you see the ending.
9. Wild Geese
Available September 2023
Author: Soula Emmanuel
Genre: Literary / LGBTQ
ISBN: 9781558610132
Print Length: 240
Publisher: The Feminist Press
Three years into her transition, Phoebe is finally setted in her new life in Copenhagen. Then her ex-girlfriend comes back, bringing all of what Phoebe tried to leave behind with her. A tale of dislocations and relocations, of migrating like the majestic honking birds in the sky. Julián Delgado Lopera (Fiebre Tropical) calls it, “A terrific read that looks at a trans experience unflinchingly….Sassy, cataclysmic, and full of life.”
10. Soul Jar
Available October 2023
Editor: Annie Carl
Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy / Short Fiction
ISBN: 9781942436577
Print Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Forest Avenue Press
Where are all the people with disabilities in fantasy fiction? Shapeshifter, demons, Mars! This imaginative anthology is a vibrant one. It’s even edited by a bookseller, Annie Carl, owner of The Neverending Bookshop in Edmonds, WA. I love this whole project.
11. The Strange Beautiful
Available September 2023
Author: Carla Crujido
Genre: Short Stories / Historical
Print Length: 202 pages
ISBN: 9781634050531
Publisher: Chin Music Press
A glimpse into the lives of ten tenants in one apartment complex in Spokane, WA over a period of 100 years. This linked story collection offers so much, from the Spanish flu to a mannequin protagonist. Jane Wong (Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City) says: “Full of surreal wonder, each story moves us forward in time with visceral, inventive, and intimate language – replete with winged women and oceanic Fugu poison.”
12. Sea Glass Memories
Available October 2023
Author: Anne Marie Bennett
Genre: Women’s Fiction
ISBN: 9798986050348
Print Length: 205 pages
A cozy novel with the charm of small-town life and the reassurance that we are resilient and capable of love
Anne Marie Bennett’s Sea Glass Memories explores the strength it takes to move beyond grief. Readers will follow the emotional growth of the main character and become encouraged to take their lives back into their own hands. This novel reminds us that to grieve is to love and to love is to carry on.
– Samantha Hui, Independent Book Review (forthcoming)
13. Sister Golden Calf
Available September 2023
Author: Colleen Burner
Genre: Literary Fiction
ISBN: 9781952897313
Publisher: Split/Lip Press
Road trip fiction, but heavy on the weird? Yes please! A motorcycle gang, a taxidermied eight-legged calf, a ghost town. The characters are worth the price of admission alone in this novella.
14. Sanctuary Motel
Available October 2023
Author: Alan Orloff
Genre: Thriller
Print Length: 254 pages
ISBN: 9781685123970
Publisher: Level Best Books
You may have seen Orloff’s name before, like in The Best American Mystery Stories (2018) or one of his Agatha winning books. This time, he’s written about a proprietor who opens up his motel to the unfortunate, only to bring danger to his doors.
15. Weather and Beasts and Growing Things
Available September 2023
Author: Charlotte Suttee
Genre: Science Fiction / Dystopian
Print Length: 208 pages
Publisher: Lethe Press
Imagine cultivating a garden atop a condemned apartment building in the year 2079. The city doesn’t want Stevven or their sentient plant, so they have to find a new home. But how do you find or make a home in a cyberpunk future riddled with oil cults and cannibals?
Feel like you don’t have time to read? Peep our 10 easy ways to read more.
16. Cursebreakers
Available September 2023
Author: Madeleine Nakamura
Genre: YA / Fantasy
ISBN: 9781939096128
Print Length: 284 pages
Publisher: Canis Major Books
Cursebreakers is nonstop action, pierced with so much heart and heightened emotion on both ends of the scale. These characters come alive off the page in a way that is rare and precious, and will no doubt fuel the rise of a powerful fandom.
The book follows Professor Adrien Desfourneaux, who finds himself entangled in the life-threatening position of preventing a magical coup linked to a rapidly increasing number of comatose victims—while he is experiencing a significant flare-up of his bipolar disorder symptoms.
– Andrea Marks-Joseph, Independent Book Review (STARRED)
17. The Confession of Hemingway Jones
Available September 2023
Author: Kathleen Hannon
Genre: Young Adult / Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780744302592
Print Length: 480 pages
Publisher: Camcat Books
A car accident claims his father’s life. But maybe it’s not the end of it? Hemingway Jones hijacks the lab in which he interns, a cryogenic preservation research center, and brings his father back to life. But now his skin is grey and he can’t be in 56 degree weather. He eats weird food too. So should he really do it again?
18. Facing the Beast Within
Available September 2023
Author: Mark Cheverton
Genre: Middle Grade / Fantasy
ISBN: 9781735878164
Print Length: 208 pages
An earnest reminder to be courageous and honest
Cameron Poole is anxious and is mocked daily. To make matters worse, supernatural creatures from a parallel dimension start appearing, and Cameron must defeat them to save their summer camp from the clutches of evil.
In addition to a fast-paced plot, Cheverton uses Cameron’s anxiety to demonstrate some tried-and-true coping methods from psychologists. This includes breathing exercises and many different mental distraction activities. I was pleased that the presence of these methods did not detract from the overall story; rather, including these in the book not only provides them as tools for kids and pre-teens to use in daily life, but it also offers visibility, inclusion, and normalization of these issues and coping methods.
– Audrey Davis, Independent Book Review (Forthcoming)
Speaking of reading for kids… Have you seen our gifts for kids who love to read?
19. The Boy from Nowhere
Available September 2023
Author: Richard Robison Jr.
Genre: Memoir / Historical
ISBN: 9798987007525
Print Length: 259 pages
Publisher: Blackwater Press
Moving around during 1960s America, Richard Robison Jr. knows about disconnection and loss, of hope and change. This personal story will resonate with readers interested in a vivid snapshot of the time period and the desire to know oneself when you keep moving.
20. Move Like Water
Available September 2023
Author: Hannah Stowe
Genre: Memoir / Oceans & Seas
ISBN: 9781959030102
Print Length: 288 pages
Publisher: Tin House Books
Not only do readers get to spend time sailing the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean in this memoir, but they are led by the rhythmic prose of a deeply invested and poetic marine biologist. Great for people who love marine animals too!
21. Attic of Dreams
Available September 2023
Author: Marilyn Webb Neagley
Genre: Memoir
ISBN: 9781578691319
Print Length: 284 pages
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
This lyrical memoir is about protecting the outer world and the journey to wholeness. Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies, Afterlife) says, “Neagley’s memoir addresses issues so critical now: how to take care of our natural world, of each other, of ourselves—we need magic attics of imagination and stories that inspire our activism.”
22. Dark Beds
Available October 2023
Author: Diana Whitney
ISBN: 9781735678375
Print Length: 102 pages
Publisher: June Road Press
A sensual, earthly collection of poetry centered around motherhood, marriage, and desire
Diana Whitney’s second collection of poems explores the double entendre of “dark beds,” referring both to garden beds and to the bedroom. The lines are rich with images of the natural world and delve into experiences of motherhood, sexuality, and even infidelity.
Whitney’s poems contain a kind of breathless tension that draws in the reader and compels them through each page, caught up in possibilities and what ifs. This is poetry of confession, ripe and ready to envelop the senses with its passion
– Genevieve Hartman, Independent Book Review (STARRED)
23. No Spare People
Available October 2023
Author: Erin Hoover
Print Length: 85 pages
ISBN: 9781625570598
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
A sharp, decisive look at life on the margins. It rejects the “acceptable losses” stemming from inequalities of gender, race, and class. Whiting Award winner Cate Marvin (World’s Tallest Disaster), says, “NO SPARE PEOPLE recalls to me the sobering effect of encountering Adrienne Rich’s work in the late ’80s… This is a deeply intellectual and expertly wrought collection.”
Which upcoming book releases are you most excited about?
About the Curator
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 Upcoming Book Releases We’re Excited About | Fall 2023! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
The post Upcoming Book Releases We’re Excited About | Fall 2023 appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>The post Indie Books to Watch in Summer 2023 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
]]>The post 15 Must-Read Mushroom Books appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Jaylynn Korrell
Your next favorite mushroom book is on this list.
I’m sure we’re not the only ones who have been completely fascinated with mushrooms lately. Some say it’s a phase–that mushrooms are just having a moment.
So what if they are?
These things can change the world. They do change the world. With our embrace, maybe they can change more of it.
It doesn’t matter when you developed your interest in mushrooms and mycelium. Those t-shirts you’re wearing look great. These coffee alternatives are good. These documentaries like Fantastic Fungi are genuinely life-changing for some people.
But there is more learning to be done & more fun to be had. It only gets cooler from here.
So like the foragers we are, we gathered up some of the best mushroom books from indie presses (and a former indie press) that we think you should check out.
You’ll find all sorts of mushroom books in this list. There is a mushroom book about foraging and one about cooking with mushrooms. There are field guides here and books about how mushrooms can save the planet.
We hope that at least one inspires you.
Here are some must-read mushroom books to add to your collection.
(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. Mushrooming
An illustrated guide to exploring & identifying fungi
Illustrations can make all the difference in identifying mushrooms. It’s one thing to read about how cool mushrooms are, it’s another to be able to determine which ones they are on your walk.
In this book from The Experiment Publishing, you’ll learn a ton about mushroom identification and details about more than 120 common fungi species. Some can be found in the forest, your local market, or right in your backyard. This book will give you a better chance of knowing exactly what it is, how to use it, or if you should back away.
2. Fungipedia
An illustrated mini-encyclopedia of mushroom lore
Would you believe that mushrooms are more closely related to humans than to plants?
In Fungipedia (Princeton University Press, 2019), mycologist Lawrence Millman expands on this concept and delves into a wide variety of mushroom-related topics like Alice in Wonderland, poisonings, waxy caps, Santa Claus, and more. You’ll get a little taste of it all in the 180 entries that make up this collection.
3. Fieldwork
A forager’s memoir
Not every mushroom book is a how-to guide. This brand new memoir from Iliana Regan and Agate Midway documents her life and heritage as a forager. It’s a personal story about one woman’s life and the way that foraging has shaped it. Creative nonfiction readers are going to like this one. That’s why we included it in our Books to Look Out for in Early 2023!
4. The Mycocultural Revolution
An intro to mycology
Expert mycologist Peter McCoy shares essential mushroom knowledge with amateur and studied mycologists alike in this one. Develop your skills of cultivation and identification while celebrating the fungi kingdom in this book from Microcosm Publishing.
5. In Search of Mycotopia
About the mushroom movement & citizen scientists
People all around the world are taking on the task of furthering mycological research. This book from Chelsea Green Publishing introduces readers to the wonders of mushrooms through the eyes and works of everyday people.
From experts to citizen scientists, there is a strong community of mushroom-devotees out there with stories and information to share.
6. The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi
Fungi in forests, homes, and bodies
Mushrooms play a key role for the earth, but they can also have a significant effect on our health.
Whether it’s through medical breakthroughs, journeys of the mind, or untimely deaths, mushrooms and humans have a complicated and extraordinary relationship. Along with exploring the microscopic world in our forests and home, The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi (Greystone Books, 2022) takes an impressive look at the microscopic world’s relationship with our bodies.
7. The Magic of Mushrooms
Fungi in folklore, superstition, and traditional medicine
Mushrooms may be having a moment right now, but it is not their first moment. On the contrary, mushrooms have been at the center of magical tales, folklore beliefs, and many superstitions for centuries.
With over 100 striking images sourced from the archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, The Magic of Mushrooms (Wellbeck Publishing, 2022) is as stunning as it is informational.
8. The Lives of Fungi
History of fungi
If you want to stick to the historical facts of mushrooms, then you are best off with The Lives of Fungi from Princeton University Press. This book combines accessible text with gorgeous images of fungi to help narrate their history on earth and the impact its made.
9. The Secret Life of Fungi
All things mushroom & the lessons they teach us
This book has all the mushroom facts and fascinations you could ask for. Told through her conversational and personal voice, this book from Pegasus connects our shared life with fungi and has no shortage of trivia on different kinds of mushrooms.
10. Cooking With Mushrooms
Edible mushrooms
Want to cook more with mushrooms but don’t know where to start? Start here. Andrea Gentl’s Cooking with Mushrooms from Artisan Books is a mushroom book that shows you a wide variety of ways to use them.
You’ll find recipes that include mushrooms as a side, a seasoning, the star of the plate, and everything in between. You’ll not only learn how to cook with mushrooms, but you’ll also learn how to do so safely and effectively.
11. Fearless Foraging in the Rocky Mountains
A foraging how-to
Foraging mushrooms is an activity that many people can find pleasure in, but it isn’t always as easy as just taking a walk. There are skills you can learn that help you know how and where to look for mushrooms and what you should do after you find them. Mushroom books like this one can help you forage safely and successfully–a practical addition to your home library.
12. Fungi
Short fiction anthology
Fiction lovers rejoice! There’s a short story anthology from Innsmouth Free Press devoted just to fungi. This mushroom book explores the topic in new and imaginative ways, with each author taking unique approaches and genres from noir to dark fantasy. Jeff VanderMeer is just one of the star-studded authors in the book’s cast.
13. Mushroom
Edible mushroom history
Mushroom by Cynthia Bertelsen takes a look a the history of mushrooms and their edible nature. She goes back to the nineteenth century to begin her edible mushroom storytelling and how they were perceived in different ways by different people.
For some they were dangerous and deadly, associated with accidental death and sickness. For others they were a delight for cooking or a magical religious experience. Anyone interested in how and why people used to eat mushrooms would love this mushroom book from Reaktion Books.
14. Mycelium Running
Mushrooms for the environment
Paul Stamets is one of the leading names in mycology, and his popularity is only growing since the Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi came out. In Mycelium Running (from then-indie publisher Ten Speed Press), Stamets shares all the ways that mushrooms can help to save our environment. His “mycorestoration” efforts are definitely worth reading about if you’re intrigued by the many capabilities of fungi.
15. Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World
Psychedelic Mushrooms
Because we know some of you are here looking for mushroom books about magic mushrooms, we decided to end our book list with Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World (also from Ten Speed Press).
It is the only identification guide exclusively devoted to the world’s psilocybin-containing mushroom, and it’s also written by Paul Stamets.
Have you added a mushroom book to your library yet? Let’s chat fungi! If you enjoyed this list, check out some of our other book lists like 2022’s impressive indies.
About the Author
Jaylynn Korrell is a nomadic writer currently based out of Pennsylvania. In addition to her writing and reading for Independent Book Review, she curates lists at GoodGiftLists.com.
Thank you. for reading Jaylynn Korrell’s 15 Must-Read Mushroom Books! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
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]]>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 21st 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.
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]]>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.
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]]>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.
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]]>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.
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