A broken family of former slave owners. A pregnant woman awaiting her lover's arrival. A veteran that lost a hand in the civil war. A gathering with unexpected guests. In Sister Séance, a historical feminist horror novel by Aimee Parkison, a Halloween celebration brings together a range of characters in Concord, Massachusetts, and brings them face to face with their pasts.
Sister Séance is set shortly after the Civil War and centers around the history of two families: the Turners and the Haydens. A Dumb Supper, a meal where guests communicate without speaking, serves as the catalyst that gathers both families and most of the town along with two unplanned guests, the Usherwood Twins, a pair of mediums.
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Yuvi Zalkow’s second and newest novel, I Only Cry With Emoticons, is a hilarious ride through dealing with human connection in a modern age littered with smartphones, tablets, dating apps, and hashtags. At its core, it’s a story about responsibility. It begs the question, how do we take responsibility for our irresponsible reliance on technology? How do we take responsibility for allowing ourselves to become so disconnected not just with one another, but our own lives?
Coming of age stories are nothing new, and neither are stories about characters who are “on the run.” Yet when these types of stories are executed in an original fresh way, it’s impossible to not find yourself being invested in the characters and themes. That was my experience when reading Lori Ann Stephens’ upcoming novel, Blue Running. In this novel, Stephens manages to take the classic thriller style story of a young girl, or rather two young women, on the run, desperate to escape their past actions, and melds it with a heartfelt coming of age story. The end result of this can only be described as one of the most nail-biting depictions of adolescence I’ve ever read.
Against the backdrop of a slowly dying world, Helene Bukowski writes a beautiful and brutal story about living with trauma, the strain of motherhood, and the danger of fearing the unknown.
In the opening lines of Milk Teeth, Helene Bukowski sets the tone for the story to come: “The fog has swallowed up the sea. It stands like a wall, there, where the beach begins. I can’t get used to the sight of the water. I’m always looking for a bank on the opposite side that could reassure me, but there’s nothing but sea and sky. These days, even this line is blurred.” Beautiful, brutal, and eerily accessible, the story of Milk Teeth is one that peels back the layers we build around fear; it lays them bare along tainted waters and dares its readers to move through the fear and into the beyond.
“Failure to thrive” is the medical term used for the slow development of an infant due to a lack of nutrients. Babies who receive this diagnosis will often have developmental delays later in life. This condition can be the result of an internal, chromosomal issue or the environment around the child. In either case, death is imminent unless there is interference.
Meghan Lamb’s debut novel, Failure to Thrive captures that slow process and the inability to thrive in settings that produce nothing but death and decay. The story takes place in a Pennsylvania coal town poisoned by an underground fire. Divided into three sections, it centers around three families: a young couple struggling to raise a neurodivergent daughter, a woman caring for a dying parent and dealing with the after-effects of her past substance abuse, and a young man dealing with memory loss after a catastrophic accident. Lamb uses genre-bending prose, vivid imagery, and subtle characterization to highlight the major themes of her novel. |
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