Book Reviews

PRETTY GIRLS GET AWAY WITH MURDER

Ethan Moll is the very definition of an eligible bachelor: He’s handsome and charming, hails from a wealthy family, and is a rising star as a digital-marketing recruiter at Integrated Business Solutions.When he’s found stabbed to death in the shower in his Kentucky home, some suspecthis ex-girlfriend, Gabbi Edwards, who was openly distraught when he …

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CHAOS

Caro Ogunyemi works as an engineer aboard the spaceship Calamity, and there isn’t a piece of tech she can’t operate, repair, or hack. While her crew is on leave, she accepts a job to infiltrate Shikigami, a luxury prison planet for wealthy criminals operated by the Pierce family. Her mission is to find evidence that …

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VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS

“The responsibility for the nation and people of Tibet was placed upon me the moment I was recognized as the Dalai Lama at the age of two.” When he became Tibet’s leader at 16, the year Chinese soldiers swarmed into the formerly independent nation, he entered into numerous discussions with Mao Zedong (“truly unlike anyone …

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MY BIG FAT FAKE MARRIAGE

Thirty-one-year-old Connie, an aspiring writer, has never trusted self-proclaimed “nice guys,” because her track record when it comes to dating them has been terrible. Either their niceness is a facade meant to cover up some big lie—like a wife at home—or they’re just pretending to be decent to get into her bed. That’s why she …

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THE WILD DARK

Evie Wilder and the criminal crew of the renowned La Fable Sombre, including core members Dev, Queenie, and Mad, navigate rainy streets, engage in rooftop conversations, and gather in a graffiti-covered castle, all in pursuit of the talismans that will bring the answers they seek. With Ciaran released from the Wild Dark’s icy-cold grip and …

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THE HUMAN SCALE

When FBI agent Tony Malik, whose father is Palestinian, travels to the historic city of Hebron to attend a cousin’s wedding, he’s still recovering from a bomb explosion that left him with erratic memory loss. His sense of disorientation deepens when, drawn into the investigation of the chief’s murder—after having been falsely named a suspect—he …

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FEAR STALKS THE VILLAGE

Ironically, the first recipient is Miss Decima Asprey, the queen of Spout Manor, whose reputation for kindness and civility is unimpeachable. Even so, the accusations, which she duly reports to the rector, Rev. Simon Blake, leave her neighbors uneasy when they learn about them, as they quickly do. The stakes rise when Julia Corner, a …

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FAN SERVICE

Devin Ashwood made a name for himself as the lead heartthrob on The Arcane Files, a long-running supernatural detective show, but since it ended, the now 42-year-old has struggled to find his next gig. When he wakes up outside one day, naked and with no memory of the night before, and then a video of …

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ON BREATHING

Presenting both insightful and challenging prose, Webster, a clinical psychoanalyst and an author (Disorganization & Sex), carefully examines breathing through multiple lenses, beginning with vivid detail of giving birth to her second child before weaving through her experiences as an asthmatic teenager, a deep-sea diver, and a Covid-era palliative care therapist. The book’s thematic sections …

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Leeta Simtar

Leeta Simtar, who’s well above 6 feet tall, is like many other teenage girls in that she yearns for greater freedom than her life on the planet Fure will allow—a feeling that’s only underscored by her status as a “Brid,” or interspecies hybrid. This is a world anchored by rote order, as its motto (“One …

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