“The game is fixed and the cards are marked,” Blumenthal writes in the first story. It feels like a warning: we will never have all the information. We will not always know which version of a story is true, whether two stories are connected, or whether we have understood what we just read. But the cards are on the table, the stories are waiting, and the reader gets to decide what to do with them.

In Dani Cessna’s captivating debut novel, Ghost Orchid, readers are immediately drawn into the hidden world of the Everglades. Beyond the view of the stream of daily visitors to this National Park, lies another world unseen by many, a world where longtime residents live off the grid in desolate shacks, where the swamp’s beauty haunts more than scares, where fens, glades and bogs host egrets, alligators, water moccasins and other creatures., It’s a world with secrets that gradually unfold over the course of this gripping story.

Money is a knotty subject and it rules our lives in often painful, sometimes happy, and mostly constant ways. The cover of Ask Me About the Money: Stories by Keith Pilapil Lesmeister hints at the dimly lit journey we take when we live by dollars and cents, but Lesmeister’s stories go beyond the debits and credits; they pulse with family and relationships, identity, and Midwestern life. His is a voice to be reckoned with as he carefully paints lives often ignored.

Nobody’s Saffron, Yaryna Chornohuz, Amelia Glaser, Arrowsmith Press, Jenn Hollmeyer

Tabitha, Stay Up
Lee Upton
Sagging Meniscus Press, September 2026
224 pages

About, Above, Around: 50 Prepositions
Mark Mayer
Texas Review Press
212 pages

What, after all, is a preposition? Mark Mayer, author of About, Above, Around, would tell you they’re “half-invisible words” that, according to the Merriam Webster definition, “show direction, location, or time, or introduce an object.” Prepositions are a part of speech that specify and clarify, orient and portray. What then, do we do with prepositions and what do they do to us? Within that question lies the theme of Mayer’s thought-provoking series of loosely related vignettes, some long, some sort, all loaded with literary magic. Art features in the book, some drawings Gorey-like, while other paintings evoke chalky-like colorful modernism.

Falling, in Love with Teaching serves as a powerful reminder that real wisdom isn’t expressed through rote recitation of dates and facts. It’s expressed through the heart, from person to person, and from poet to reader, in lessons that will last a lifetime.

The Age of Migration by Kai Maristed

These stories are compassionate without sentimentality, ambitious without losing sight of individual lives, and beautifully attentive to the fragile moments when one life quietly becomes another.

Review of The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin

by Alexandra Lapierre - Translated from the French by Tina Kover

Europa Press, 2026

“Poetry Wants Us to Be Our Free and Best Selves”: A Reflection on Against Breaking

Apple & Palm by Patricia Henley

The town and its surrounding land form the connective tissue between stories, linking women across generations, families, friendships, and chance encounters. Certain landmarks reappear throughout stories, creating the sense that geography itself is responsible for bringing these lives together.

I Have One Student
by Mary Ellen Redmond.
Finishing Line Press (June 26, 2026)

But to grasp Shamlu’s preoccupation with freedom, you also have to sense the passionate love that drives his work, a passion above all else for humanity and humankind as fundamentally creative beings.

In NYC, Lucas soars academically while Lila has a contentious relationship with Professor Vrubel, her piano teacher, who throws shade on her practice after practice. Imperious, but truthful, he warns her: “…press coverage means little on its own if you can’t consistently deliver great performances…I have assumed you’re here because you want to develop yourself artistically. If it’s instant fame you’re after, I invite you to do everything your agent tells you to do.” Sage advice that Lila can’t quite accept until she hears him play Bach (Bach, again!) – and then, she feels the tsunami of what she thinks is Bach but does not know is Vrubel’s experience and wisdom. It’s also the watery echo of interpretable obstinacy, but to say more would give away the plot. It’s enough to know what Vrubel tells Lila. “Don’t hide in the music. Show your true self.”

Hutsulka Nicole Yurcaba

…we have How to Live with a Dog—a book about dogs, yes, and how to live with them, but, thanks to Saville’s deep clarity, compassion, and engaging storytelling—it’s also very much a book about how to human.

Surrender
Jennifer Acker
Delphinium Books (April 2026)
275 pages

Acker’s knowledge and understanding of farm life, so well-researched, and her gentle authority, vibrate throughout the novel as farm owner Lucy struggles to keep her father’s family farm running.

Relearning the Body
Carlene Gadapee
Finishing Line Press (May 2026)

The collection is a lyrical journey that moves between carefree humor and moments of survival, rediscovery, and small victories. What makes Gadapee's work so accessible is her ability to weave imagery, allusion, and a myriad of literary devices seamlessly into this journey, creating a mirror in which readers of any age can see their own stories reflected and rediscovered.

Murray’s fears: war, violence, dictatorship, loss; erasure by a military culture plumbed with a keen eye and occasional wry revulsion.

Murray’s loves: their daughter, their husband (most of the time); animals; the natural world.

the book of sentences
rob mclennan
University of Calgary Press, 2025
186 pages

“What I love about reviewing books is how much I learn—not simply from what the authors have written, but from researching the techniques, influences and ideas that inform their writing. All of this makes me a better writer.”