The post Forthcoming & New Release Books You Won’t Want to Miss (2025) appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Eric Mayrhofer
The final quarter of 2025 is upon us.
Autumn—the season when we start pulling out cozy sweatshirts, putting pumpkin in everything, and getting started on our Christmas lists (if we’re ambitious). If you’d rather binge Gilmore Girls for the ninetieth time, you have my blessing, but I also highly recommend checking out this season’s new book releases instead.
The books coming out between October and December 2025 are gearing up to freak you out and give you hope. They’re getting ready to show you the magic in the world and remind you that it’s a wild place to live. In a season of so many extraordinary reads, these are some of the best indie books to add to your TBR.
Here are 12 new release books you won’t want to miss.
1. Magic at the Grand Dragonfly Theatre
Author: Brandie June
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: October 7
ISBN: 9780744311792
Publisher: CamCat Books
To me, autumn is the season of writing. From the motivation of the former beast known as NaNoWriMo to the coziness of drafting by hand while watching the leaves change beyond the window, nothing feels quite as right as writing. But when you add forbidden magic? Now that makes a story worth savoring.
Those elements are the starting point in Brandie June’s new release Magic at the Grand Dragonfly Theatre. Playwright Violet Ashmore lives in the shadow of her sister Iris, who has promised to protect Violet and her dangerous magic from from the Crown. But when bounty hunter Alec Morgan infiltrates the theater and begins falling for Iris, their life—and the theater—could all come undone.
With a literary protagonist longing for more, the danger of books like Caraval and the lyrical magic of The Night Circus, Magic at the Grand Dragonfly Theatre has the potential to be the most enchanting read of the end of 2025.
2. But the Wicked Shall Perish
Author: Catori Sarmiento
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Fantasy
Release Date: October 7
ISBN: 9781960018762
Publisher: Running Wild Press
More than a few years ago now, The Golem and the Jinni used Jewish folklore to incredible effect, creating a lush and heartwarming fantasy about the immigrant experience in America. This year, Catori Sarmiento incorporates the culture’s mythology to paint a blood-red portrait of a woman seeking her murderer—and revenge.
But the Wicked Shall Perish slips readers into Tziporah Curiel’s resurrected shoes. When she comes back to life in 1920s Venice, Italy, she begins a quest for justice that will leave a trail of souls in her wake and lead to a deal with a demon, forcing her to come to terms with what happened and what she has become. Supernatural, heart-wrenching, and pulse-pounding, this might be exactly the early Halloween treat you’ve been looking for.
3. The Scald Crow
Author: Grace Daly
Genre: Literary Fiction / Horror
Release Date: October 14
ISBN: 9781951971311
Publisher: Creature Horror
“This isn’t a dream… This is really happening!” Could that iconic quote from Rosemary’s Baby be the inspiration for a new spooky season favorite? It may seem like it when you read The Scald Crow by Grace Daly. Offering laughs and scares in equal measure, the novel asks, “Can a sick woman ever be trusted?”
The sick woman in question is Brigid, a self-doubting protagonist living with chronic pain so severe it cost her her job. To add misfortune to injury, her mother goes missing, a turn of events that forces her back into her childhood home. Soon, a crow starts following her, a painting returns no matter how often she rids herself of it, and nightmares of her mother keep startling her awake. Is it all in her head? After all, her pain has no identifiable cause, and that must be her own fault too…right?
A book that confronts readers with the one thing that is all too often our own worst enemies—the negative voices in our heads—The Scald Crow is a spine-tingling, ultimately empowering entry in the horror genre.
4. The Ten Thousand Things
Author: Debbi Flittner
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: October 7
ISBN: 9798992424218
2025 isn’t all about the scares though. Any time is a good time for beautifully written memoirs. This memoir on silence and belonging is the author’s lifelong attempt to understand her “elusive, unnerving” mother.
Lauren Hayataka of IBR says it’s the lyricism of the prose that elevates the memoir. She says, “Flittner writes with the precision of someone who has carried these memories for decades, shaping them into vivid, almost cinematic scenes: hiding beneath plastic during a sudden storm, watching rain blur the world into a secret cave; lying in the plastic-covered back seat of the family’s Buick as the desert slid past; screaming for help in a kitchen where no one came.”
For all those looking for moving true stories about complex family in lyrical prose, find out why Hayataka calls it “radiant” and “unforgettable.”
5. Bloodletting a Butterfly
Author: Alec B. Hood
Genre: Poetry / Dark
Release Date: Oct 14
ISBN: 9798891328266
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Okay, back to the dead. But with a twist.
Alec B. Hood’s poetry is “visceral, devastating, and brilliantly gory,” says Mandy Bach of IBR. The speaker of the collection is completely preoccupied with death and dying and discusses it with raw, physical imagery.
“Hood expertly uses surreal descriptions of the body to help readers understand the disturbing nature of this preoccupation with suffering and death. He writes, ‘there are insect eggs / embedded in my esophagus // parasites peering / through my pupils // my lungs / flooded with webs // my blood / blinking with lightning bugs.‘”
Feast your eyes on roadkill, ghosts, and more in this “beautifully ugly” collection.
6. The Mongoose
Author: Joana mosi
Genre: Graphic Novel
Release Date: October 14
ISBN: 9782925114475
Publisher: Pow Pow Press
Pow Pow Press is doing some amazing work! After the unique power of The Jellyfish and Botanica Drama, I couldn’t help but get excited about The Mongoose.
This black and white graphic novel about grief and ghosts and, oddly, a phantom mongoose combines what I’ve come to expect from Pow Pow Press: thoughtful and moving visual stories with a dash of strange.
7. A Blood Witch
Author: Joseph Stone
Genre: Fantasy / Dark
Release Date: November 5
Joseph Stone is no stranger to captivating dark fantasy. From the alluring darkness of The Lykanos Chronicles, which we included in our list of best book series of the past few years, to the first book in the Haunted Women series, which Alexandria Ducksworth raved about, Stone writes evocative fantasy with “jaw-dropping” and “downright scary” results.
And now, book two! Victoria Lilly of IBR called it “a chilling, layered, and intelligent gothic piece that tackles the genre from a distinctly feminist angle… Not a comforting read, but a valuable one.”
8. The Sofa
Author: Sam Munson
Genre: Horror / Literary
Release Date: November 11
ISBN: 9781953387974
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Mr. Montessori goes downstairs one morning to find his sofa is different. The doors are all locked. Windows too. Nobody’s broken in. So how did this get here, and where did their old, perfect couch go?
Suddenly, the image of a man in a bowler hat starts popping up all around him. His son’s drawing used to only have the new sofa in it. The mirror used to be only him staring back.
The Sofa by Sam Munson is a surreal piece of everyday horror that nails down obsession in an eerily painful way. Man, what if Montessori just stepped away from this fascination? What if he accepted this weirdly outdated sofa as his own and moved on with his perfectly fine life? It surely wouldn’t turn out like this.
9. A Gathering Place
Author: Vicki salloum
Genre: Literary Fiction
Release Date: November 18
ISBN: 9798999042286
Publisher: Silent Clamor Press
Sometimes faith is all but a voice.
81-year-old Blue Hamieh follows her faith to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, believing that the Virgin Mary wants her to open a gathering place, a cafe, for downtrodden people in the devastated city. Is this a true calling, or is her family right and she should return to Mississippi?
Vicki Salloum imbues this community-driven novel of faith and resilience with artful, meaningful prose and a big heart. I dare you not to fall for Blue by the novel’s end.
10. Hotel Melikov (Citizen Orlov Book 2)
Author: Jonathan Payne
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Crime
Release Date: November 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780744311808
Publisher: CamCat Books
What better way to prepare for the oncoming winter chill than to immerse yourself in the chilling espionage of a mountainous, central-European country?
In Hotel Melikov, the second book of Jonathan Payne’s Citizen Orlov series, readers find Orlov as the Minister for Security of a nation on the verge of collapsing. When tension between the government and revolutionaries erupt, all he wants is to return to his former life as a fishmonger. But when he discovers a sinister plot that threatens everyone, what will he choose?
Featuring tense thrills, political intrigue, nuns who are more than they seem, and a comedic twist, Jonathan Payne returns us to the world of Citizen Orlov in style.
11. Hope
Author: Sommer Schafer
Genre: Literary Fiction / Short Stories
Release Date: November 25
ISBN: 9781963115475
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Previously published in Best American Short Stories, Sommer Schafer returns with Hope, a story collection to keep you warm as winter approaches.
Set in the small island community of Hope, Alaska, Hope offers an experience that will delight fans of small-town, big-emotion collections like Olive Kitteridge. Linked stories show the hopes and dreams the townsfolk have for the future, all while questioning how well (or how much) they can bury the past.
With precise descriptions, sharp insights, and subtle humor, Schafer’s collection holds all the promise of an uplifting read on these lengthening nights.
12. Dark Matter
Author: Kaja Kothe
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: December 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781946154972
Publisher: Meerkat Press
Bunny Graves has to make this list. Kathe Koja’s Dark Factory series has already been praised for its wild and mind-bending prose, the esoteric experience it gives readers, and its thrilling combinations of art, technology, and a willingness to explore both reality and virtual reality.
Readers might just have their minds blown in Dark Matter. Here, Bunny and Koja’s array of characters wind through a cyberpunk-ish landscape to break the rules, chase ancient myths into virtual reality and back again, and make it through in a world where corporate wars can be life and death. It’s set up to be a rewarding finish for longtime fans of the acclaimed Koja and a bold new world for readers in search of a Snow Crash-meets-Cyberpunk 2077 fix.
What new release books are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments!
Author Bio
Eric Mayrhofer is a marketing creative living in Connecticut with his partner and their three cats, Frosty, Korra, and Zoe. A lifelong reader, Eric is working on his first novel in between illustrating, watching spooky movies, and pretending he knows how to bake after watching reruns of The Great British Baking Show.
Thank you for reading “Forthcoming & New Release Books You Won’t Want to Miss (2025)!” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
Book Reviews | IBR Blog | Resources for Writers
The post Forthcoming & New Release Books You Won’t Want to Miss (2025) appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>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.
Thank you for reading Nick Gardner’s “What Should I Read Next? Indie Book Recommendations Based on Mood.” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
The post What Should I Read Next? Indie Book Recommendations Based on Your Mood appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>The post Troubleshoot Your Reading: A Guide to Overcoming Reading Slumps appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Shelly Foreshaw
Some books meet you where you are. Others require a little strategy.
If your reading life has felt off lately—distracted, sluggish, or strangely joyless—you’re going to want to diagnose the problem. The right fix might be simpler than you think.
Here are some common causes for a reading slump and how to fix them.
#1. You’re having trouble concentrating.
Diagnosis: Narrative Attention Deficit
You sit down to read, but your mind flickers elsewhere. Paragraphs blur. Sentences slide past. Your attention span isn’t ready for long form content, the book isn’t holding you—and maybe nothing will. So you get up to eat. You do the dishes again. You pick up the book and put it down, then pick up the book and put it down, then pick up the book and put it down.
Prescription: Find the narrator who insists on taking you with them.
Some books are designed to grip you from the first line, with prose that’s urgent, lean, and emotionally direct. When my own concentration falters, I turn to Bret Easton Ellis—not for moral instruction, but for pace. His narrators don’t wait for you to catch up; they just go. A great indie author pick for fast-paced fiction is Sherri L. Dodd and her Murder, Tea, and Crystals trilogy.
Some books feel like films. Chuck Palahniuk once said he set out to write for people who loved video games—not traditional readers. The result was Fight Club. Books like this aren’t just fast; they’re immersive, built for people whose attention is pulled in all directions. (RPG fantasy fans: Check out Veil Online!)
And seriously—keep an eye on debuts! Something written before the author had the luxury (or burden) of refinement. In my reading life, their books always seem to move so fast—because they must!—and the energy is contagious. When in doubt, follow the momentum. Boxcutters by John Chrostek fits that mold!
#2. You just can’t seem to get started.
Diagnosis: Entry Resistance
You’ve picked out the book, maybe even opened it once or twice—but somehow, starting feels like such a task. The first page hasn’t drawn you in, and the thought of returning to it already feels like work.
Read past the resistance. Commit to a minimum page count on your first attempt—fifteen pages, twenty, maybe forty if you’ve got the time. Enough to cross the initial threshold and allow the narrative to begin unfolding. Often, the real problem isn’t the book itself but the inertia of beginning. The second time you pick it up, the world of the story will already be faintly familiar, and that makes returning easier.
Extra, Spicy Tip: Skip the prologue or introduction. Don’t waste your reading energy on the preamble—save it for the actual text. You can always return to it later, once the book has had a chance to speak for itself.
Need more convincing to get started? Here are some of the biggest benefits of reading.
#3. It feels like you don’t have enough time.
Diagnosis: Literary Delusion
We are made up of time. It never changes. 24 hours, every day. There are moments, there are small pockets; these are the little times.
Those books you’ve been wanting to read might feel too daunting. The chapters might be too long. You might feel like you can’t commit at the outset to finishing a full book in a specific amount of time.
Prescription: Reach for short stories. They offer the satisfaction of completion without the long-term commitment. They are so often spaces for authors to take creative risks—testing ideas, styles, or narrative experiments. The best of them come with sharpness: a sense that the story is being held taut by its brevity.
They also linger! Since the author doesn’t have space to expand on every detail, you end up doing some of the imaginative work yourself—filling in the emotional terrain, sketching out the lives that unfold just beyond the final line, while you’re doing your busy work around the house or in your life. It’s a kind of co-authorship. This not only activates your inner world, but it also leaves you with compact, vivid narratives that tend to resurface days later in conversation or thought.
Best of all, short stories can lead you back to longer reading. They awaken the part of you that craves story, and once the appetite returns, reaching for a novel feels less like a chore and more like a continuation. You have the time; you just have to make it. Smartly.
Plays can also offer something unique. Unlike short stories, which can be jagged or experimental, plays often dwell in deep emotional and psychological space. They are less concerned with the outer plot than with what the characters are wrestling with internally. There’s immediacy to them—dialogue, tension—that creates a vivid sense of life unfolding.
Anton Chekov and the American classics are especially good here. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller are often described as psychological writers—not in an academic sense, but in an intuitive, emotional one. Their work grips you not because of the plots, but because of the emotional clarity and quiet devastation they manage to evoke in just a few acts. You leave not just with a story, but with a mood that stays with you.
#4. You are bored by your current book.
Diagnosis: Narrative Drift
The prose stretches on without much movement—neither in plot nor in cadence. You find yourself drifting, rereading the same lines, or worse, skipping ahead without really absorbing anything.
Prescription: If you’re reading leisurely, don’t be afraid to move on. I don’t care if you’re 200 pages into your 400 page book. It’s still going to feel too long if you’re not enjoying yourself. Sure you can’t add it to your finished pile for the year, but sometimes reading slumps are specific to the book. Move on. There’s better books waiting for you, like these ones.
If you’re reading as an assignment or feel like you have to read the book, go for a walk. Pace up and down your room, your hallway, your garden—anywhere that allows for a bit of steady, uninterrupted movement. The physical rhythm can help impose structure where the writing offers none. It keeps you alert and engaged, and paradoxically, heightens your focus. With the mind slightly occupied by movement, your attention on the text sharpens. What seemed shapeless on the page starts to take on a rhythm of its own.
#5. You feel like you’re lacking momentum.
Diagnosis: Passive Absorption Mode
Some books don’t offer natural pauses—long chapters, no section breaks, no clear arc. You’re not reading to savor the prose; you’re reading to understand, to absorb, or simply to finish.
Prescription: Read in public. A subway ride introduces “organic” interruptions—someone getting on or off, a shift in the carriage, a dog barking in the distance. These interruptions, rather than breaking your focus, can create a strange, dreamlike absorption. The plot lodges itself more firmly in your mind, and you often retain more than you expect. Alternatively, the ambient distractions can produce a kind of tunnel-vision concentration—as if your mind is working harder to hold onto the thread of the story.
This approach works especially well for lighter or less stylistically rich books, the kind you don’t necessarily want to sit down and savor, but still want to read through with momentum.
If you’re prone to dizziness or public transit isn’t an option, replicate the effect in a café or bar—ideally in the evening, when the hum of conversation is steady and low. The surrounding life creates texture and contrast with the text.
#6. You’re feeling intimidated by the classics.
Diagnosis: Literary Stage Fright
You’ve been meaning to read them—Dostoevsky, Proust, & co—but something about their reputation, the page count, or the way people talk about them makes you hesitate. You want to admire but are afraid you won’t understand them—or worse, that you might not enjoy them.
Prescription: Begin with the author’s shorter work. Novellas, short stories, essays. Just get a sense of their voice, concerns, and style. A single story can introduce you to the atmosphere of their work without requiring a major commitment. It builds familiarity and, more importantly, appetite.
Once you’ve had a taste, you may find you want to read the longer works—not out of obligation, but curiosity. Most of these stories are available online or in collected editions. Think of them as literary aperitifs—sharp, suggestive, and much easier to approach.
If you want to read Robin Wall Kimmerer for example, author of the hefty but incredible Braiding Sweetgrass, start with The Serviceberry.
#7. The book you have to read is too difficult.
Diagnosis: The Comprehension Stall
You’re reading the same paragraph for the third time and still can’t quite tell what it’s trying to say. The prose is dense, the terminology unfamiliar, and the argument elusive.
Prescription: Begin with the conclusion of the chapter or section—this is where the author often distills their central claim. Once you know where they’re headed, you’ll be better prepared to trace the path they take to get there. Next, skim the chapter to identify key terms that you don’t yet know. Take the time to look these up before your proper read to not interrupt your flow later.
When you return to the full chapter, you’ll find the argument clearer, the reading smoother, and your focus far less fragmented.
#8. You’re reading the wrong format.
Diagnosis: Paperback Inaccessibility
I love physical books. New book smell, old book smell; I welcome it all. I love to listen to the gentle swishing of the page as I turn it to find out what happens next. I love placing it face-out on my bookshelf or nightstand and carrying it by my side as I venture to my comfy spot.
But you don’t always feel uncomfortable reading in public, or you need to turn the light off because your partner is asleep.
Prescription: Experiment with a new format.
E-readers can be great for public reading. Not only might some of them fit in your pocket, but if you whip out your Kindle at your kid’s sporting event, it might just look like you’re on your phone like so many others.
E-readers are excellent to fall asleep by too. If you read a paperback, you need the light on. With e-readers, you can lie in bed, read with only one hand, and fall asleep naturally without having to interrupt it by turning off the light. (Be warned though: you may drop it on your face.)
And audiobooks open up a whole new world of possibilities for readers! The time-sensitive reader can do the dishes, put the clothes away, even go to the gym while they’re reading. Nonfiction books make for great audiobooks because it doesn’t matter much if you tune out for a paragraph or two. Give it a shot!
What’s causing your reading slump? Let me know in the comments!
About the Author
Having worked as a playwright in Berlin, Shelly Foreshaw now splits her time between Germany and the UK while working as a freelance writer. She’s currently in the process of publishing her first novella.
Thank you for reading “Troubleshoot Your Reading: A Guide to Overcoming Reading Slumps” by Shelly Foreshaw! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
The post Troubleshoot Your Reading: A Guide to Overcoming Reading Slumps appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>The post 7 Contemporary Beach Reads to Pack This Summer appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Addison Ciuchta
A beach read lives outside genre.
With summer fully upon us, the annual discussion of what makes a beach read a beach read is back in full force. Some say beach reads are lighthearted romances to speed through by the surf. Others say a sucker punch of a thriller is the best for those sand-filled afternoons. I, however, think a beach read is any and all of the above. As long as it fits a few criteria.
A beach read must be absorbing. It must keep you hook you at the start and keep you engaged until the end. But should you get interrupted by a mid-afternoon ice cream break or a dip in the water, it should be easy to dive back into. It probably shouldn’t be too sad either, but that one’s up for debate.
This list is made up of dazzling romance, the spectacular adventure, and twisty-turny mysteries, all of which are easy to breeze through. And bonus points: they’re all indie books!
Here are 7 books perfect for your beach bag.
(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.)
1. Empire of Shadows
Author: Jacquelyn Benson
Genre: Fantasy / Romance
Print Length: 476 pages
ISBN: 9781958051337
After she is arrested at a women’s rights protest, Ellie Mallory is fired from her archivist job. Her archeological dreams crumbling before her, she finds a map that documents the route to an ancient, mythical city. She’s not the only one interested in what lay at the end of the x, a sleekly vicious villain named Jacobs hot on her heels as she spontaneously decides to sail to Honduras to investigate. There, she meets a local surveyor Adam Bates, a rough-around-the-edges rascal who agrees to help her navigate the dangerous route.
It’s a thrilling adventure full of dense brush, ancient history, and unexpected connection between Ellie and Adam who both, in their own way, fight against a society that tells them who they should be, lending a sincerity to the narrative even as gashes, gore, and gun fire erupt. Fair warning, it’s on the longer side, so don’t forget to reapply that sunscreen!
2. Make a Scene
Author: Mimi Grace
Genre: Romance
Print Length: 230 pages
ISBN: 9781999108236
Bakery-owner Retta Majors is thrown off kilter when, at a family gathering, her cousin announces she’s engaged to Retta’s ex-boyfriend. As her family congratulates the couple, Retta tries to keep her composure. Wanting to show everyone how fine she is with it all, Retta agrees to attend the wedding against her better judgement, making up a boyfriend who is supposed to come along with her.
After a few failed attempts, she finds her fake boyfriend in the boxing gym next to her bakery; one of the owners, Duncan Gilmore, is the perfect candidate. All she has to do is give up a coveted parking space and a recipe to get him to say yes.
As Retta and Duncan get to know each other so they can ace their act at the wedding, real chemistry blooms between them. Through descriptions of pastries you can practically taste, not-so-pretend dates, and background family drama, you’ll be smiling through it all.
Need gifts for your book-loving kid? Check out these gifts for kids who love to read.
3. Lucky Secrets
Author: B.T. Polcari
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Genre: Mystery / Cozy
Print Length: 414 pages
ISBN: 9781509261420
Amateur sleuth Sara Donovan is heading into finals before college graduation when two envelopes arrive, one with an invitation to take part in a mysterious competition and the other containing doctored blackmail photos that suggest Sara doesn’t have a choice in whether to agree.
With her best friend Zoe and her loyal sidekick sleuth dog Mauzzy, the trio report to a mansion where the competition will take place. Under strict non-disclosure agreements, vague threats from the unknown organizer, and the pressure of seven other contestants, Sara’s investigating skills are pushed to their limits as she tries not only to win but to unmask the person pulling the strings behind it all.
Sara’s sleuthing skills, her adorable sidekick Mauzzy, and riddles galore make this an excellent cozy mystery to read beach-side. But just because it’s lighthearted doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t high!
Blackmail, white collar crime, and violence raise the tension to keep you guessing.
4. Tap Dancing on Everest
Author: Mimi Zieman
Genre: Memoir / Climbing
Print Length: 244 pages
ISBN: 9781493078431
Tap Dancing on Everest is part adventure, part inspiration—perfect for a sunny break from your daily life.
Mimi is still in medical school when she accepts the invitation to be a doctor that accompanies a team of climbers striking out a new path on Mt. Everest. But they have limited resources and no possibility for rescue.
Fighting her own self-doubt, the rough conditions, and the biting cold, Mimi recounts her experience with the climbers, reflecting on her childhood, her education, and her heritage as she does.
What makes this unique is the perspective, Mimi approaching the narrative of her trek from more of a layperson’s point-of-view rather than a technical take on the climb. It’s also full of vulnerability as she reflects on her upbringing as the child of Jewish immigrants, her insecurities in studying medicine, and her true dedication to help others.
5. His Third Victim
Author: Helen H. Durrant
Publisher: Joffe Books
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Print Length: 235 pages
ISBN: 9781912106196
After the death of his partner in an ambush last year, Detective Inspector Matt Bridle is taking a break from investigative work, maybe forever, to heal his own injuries from the attack.
But after a young boy goes missing and five seemingly unconnected people turn up dead in Yorkshire with the same Chinese symbol on them, his boss needs him back. Now paired with a new sergeant, Lily, the pair must find out who the killer is before there are more bodies to be found.
With glimpses into the meticulous, chilling mind of the killer, you’ll be rooting for D.I. Brindle to put a stop to this before it’s too late. With leads that go nowhere, suspicious witnesses, and his own trauma, though, Brindle’s up against more than a simple open-and-shut case. A truly thrilling beach read!
6. Looks Good on Paper
Author: Kilby Blades
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Genre: Romance
Print Length: 310 pages
ISBN: 9798849930459
Zuri Robinson likes paper. Okay, maybe she loves paper. It’s kind of her thing. Pen pal letters written on that fancy paper? There’s nothing better. One of the only things that keeps her pushing through her customer service job, fielding calls from disgruntled users of a not-so-respectable dating app, is knowing a package of wonderful stationary or a letter from her Italian pen pal, Alessandro, is waiting for her.
What she doesn’t know is that the person writing the letters is actually Nico, Alessandro’s brother. When Zuri jets off for Italy for a much-needed vacation, the secret can’t stay secret for long.
With beautiful descriptions to Italy (and Italian men), this is an adorable romance between Zuri and Nico, framed by the touching letters they sent each other. What’s stunning about this one is the way love can bloom amongst every day, mundane topics, the small details of each other’s lives where they find a deep connection in each other before they ever meet.
7. Murder in First Position: An On Pointe Mystery
Author: Lori Robbins
Publisher: Level Best Books
Genre: Mystery
Print Length: 260 pages
ISBN: 9781947915749
Leah Siderova, a ballerina, is knocked from top billing and lead roles after a knee injury requires surgery. Her competitor, a younger ballerina named Arianna, is now in the spotlight, taking Leah’s place. Back in action, Leah’s determined to knock Arianna down a peg.
But when Leah finds Arianna stabbed to death, Leah’s shocked to find she’s prime suspect number one in the police’s eyes. Everyone knows ballet is cutthroat, and sure they may have had an altercation or two, but she’d never actually murder anyone. Now, as the company turns on her, Leah must solve the case and prove her innocence before bars keep her from dancing again.
With many a possible murderer, Leah has her work cut out for her. Juxtaposed between the seemingly soft and pretty world of ballet and the harsh light of a murder, Leah finds out quickly just how similar the two worlds are. Plus, author Lori Robbins’ knowledge of ballet shines through, showing a backstage look at what really goes on in a ballet company, flaws and all. This is a fun, cozy mystery, especially for those interested in dance.
And of course…those kids need books too!
About the Author
Addison Ciuchta is a reader first, a writer second, and an everything else third. She spends her days hiding from the Arizona heat, spending time with her fluffy cat, enjoying any sweet or sour candy she can get her hands on, and making plans to travel anywhere and everywhere.
Thank you for reading “7 Contemporary Beach Reads to Pack This Summer!” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
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]]>The post Literary Fiction Books That Are Punk AF appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Nick Gardner
Indie lit has always been counterculture.
It would honestly be nuts for a small press to open their door to submissions without the desire to fight the status quo. The very idea of indie lit is anticapitalist (small presses probably won’t get you rich), anti-establishment (the “Big Five” can eat it), and, for the most part, small presses like fiction that breaks the rules. But what makes a book punk-as-fuck goes beyond the author’s antiauthoritarian leanings. It must have some other pull. It needs music.
While this list is far from exhaustive, it focuses on books of literary fiction that don’t just have that punk fierceness, that blatant challenging of authority, but those that also have the music.
Think Bad Brains, Buzzcocks, Pere Ubu. You can get behind the lyrics, the message, the ethos, the power, but a punk group is nothing if the sound doesn’t make you want to mosh. That’s what makes these specific literary fiction authors stand out: not only the shared goal of challenging the way the reader sees the world, but also an understanding of the aesthetic necessary to keep a reader glued to the page.
Here are 7 literary fiction books that challenge the status quo.
(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.)
1. Someone Who Isn’t Me
Okay, some can argue that he’s more post-hardcore than punk, but Geoff Rickly’s debut novel, Someone Who Isn’t Me, hums with musical prose that rivals the best lyrical writers of literary fiction.
A heroin addict and lead singer, the protagonist, Geoff, seeks sobriety through the psychedelic drug Ibogaine. His trip sends him on a psychic spiral through his guilt-laden past, forcing him to contend with the person he has become. Rickly depicts Geoff’s wild tour across the United States, not holding back on the bickering or the drugs. It’s a dirty novel in the way that addiction can be dirty. But it also breaks the trend of stories about addiction. Refusing to pause on the fallout, Rickly writes beyond into recovery and hope.
2. No Names
Author: Greg Hewett
Publisher: Coffee House Press (April 2025)
Print Length: 352 pages
ISBN: 9781566897259
Greg Hewett’s No Names is by far the slowest moving of the works of literary fiction in this list. Think Sleep’s Dopesmoker. Okay, maybe it’s doom metal. Whatever the case, punk is the root.
As Hewett skips around from POV to POV, a large focus is a punk band called, of course, The No Names, and the sketchy European tour that ended the band. But there’s also quite a bit of classical music in the background, as well as a long exploration of friendships entangled with sexual experimentation. Maybe the end drags on a bit longer than expected, but the prose holds up, a song that slowly diminishes rather than ending with a crash.
Looking for more literary fiction recommendations? Check out our best books of 2024!
3. Earth Angel
Author: Madeline Cash
Publisher: CLASH Books (April 18, 2023)
Print Length: 152 pages
ISBN: 9781955904698
Easy to read cover-to-cover in a single sitting, Earth Angel is all power chords, heavy and fast. Cash’s sentences are short and piercing and her endings cut to nothing rather than attempting a summation or even a meaning. Because everything is meaningless, right?
Think Biblical plagues, Isis recruits, childless millennials and millennials with children that they’re not quite sure what to do with. Think designer drugs, broke city dwellers, homicidal fantasies, porn. Maybe Earth Angel is too modern to hold to the ‘80s DIY ethos, but it’s still counterculture AF. It still questions authority, culture, and god. It’s a witty collection for confused kids who definitely don’t want to grow up.
4. Scumbag Summer
Author: Jillian Luft
Publisher: House of Vlad Press (June 2024)
Print Length: 192 pages
ISBN: 9798320644059
More sex, more drugs, more blood and fallout, Scumbag Summer explores smoky bowling alleys and dive bars, the crass scenery of Orlando. Though she’s a college grad, the protagonist seems intent on continuing her nihilistic young-adulthood, refusing to settle into any kind of square, middle class grind.
Orlando for her is No Doz and 7 layer burritos, and as she lodges herself more deeply into the dumpster fire, she spots the pages with social commentary, a distrust of wealth and power and an understanding of “trash culture,” of those stuck in on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy who sometimes can’t even imagine the climb. Scumbag Summer also contains one of the most punk lines I’ve ever read: “Love is a friendly butcher.”
5. Ghosts of East Baltimore
Author: David Simmons
Publisher: Broken River Books (2022)
Print Length: 202 pages
ISBN: 9781940885544
A Baltimore native with a deep understanding of the underground, David Simmons shrugs off the rules in his debut literary crime thriller. As with the other books on this list, there’s a unique and manic music behind Simmons’ prose. It’s rough music, blasted loud. I mean what’s more punk than a protagonist named Worm who gets out of prison to find that he’s the only one who can take out a drug ring smuggling dangerous chemicals into his community?
Simmons raises the bar for punk AF literature with his cutting social commentary, including “crack epidemic” history lessons and a deep understanding of Baltimore’s crime and corruption-ridden past.
6. Hellions
Author: Julia Elliott
Publisher: Tin House Books (April 15, 2025)
Print Length: 272 pages
ISBN: 9781963108064
Witches, Cryptids, Ghosts, and other supernatural entities plague the pages of Julia Elliott’s strange collection of longer short fiction. No flash stories here. But just like when you enter a DIY venue and feel surrounded by like minds, the pages of Hellions is a comforting place for those who have normalized the weird.
In “The Maiden,” a community trampoline allows a witchy girl to show up the popular kids with her otherworldly acrobatics before disappearing to her woodland squat. And in “Hellion,” a tough twelve-year-old tames an alligator. Elliott’s stories are filled with loners and weirdos outperforming their normative peers and youngsters challenging their parents’ conservative ideals. What’s more punk than that?
7. Hey You Assholes
Author: Kyle Seibel
Publisher: CLASH Books (March 25, 2025)
Print Length: 272 pages
ISBN: 9781960988393
Seibel’s story of trying to publish this debut book of short literary fiction, Hey You Assholes is filled with almost as many bizarre twists as the book itself. It reminds me of a 21st century reenactment of ‘80s punk bands banging down doors to book a studio or distro a record. He couldn’t have found a better home for his book than Clash Books, a publisher of some of the strangest and most energetic fiction on the market. Energetic is the word, because even the longer stories don’t stop driving. ThinkLandowner Plays Dopesmoker 666% Faster and with No Distortion.
Hey You Assholes is a deep dive into the lives of unpopular people: soft-hearted alcoholics, wiley factory workers, and Navy veterans who feel forever lost at sea. None of Seibel’s characters have money or power and they definitely don’t have any respect for The Man.
Want some thrills in your bookshelf? Check out the best indie thrillers!
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.
Thank you for reading Nick Gardner’s “Literary Fiction Books That Are Punk AF!” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
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]]>The post 13+ Kids’ Books to Get Your Children Excited About Reading appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Toni Woodruff, Joe Walters, and Jaylynn Korrell
Kids’ books are like windows to a new world.
These little people are just trying to figure out this life on earth thing. They know only what they know, and we see why they know what they know, even how it differs or connects with our own understanding of the world.
That’s only one of the reasons why it’s so important to read kids’ books.
Sometimes it can be difficult to talk about certain subjects. Other times, they just never arise naturally enough for our little one to grow curious about it. Some books include topics we don’t even want to talk about to our kids yet, like death or brattiness, so which books are the ones you should get for your little one and the little ones around you?
This list includes picture books and board books, some suitable from ages 2-9. Some are nonfiction while others are about as fantastical as they come (I’m looking at you, Rainbow Goblins!).
If you’re looking to expand your little library or give an awesome kids’ book for your best friend’s baby shower, this list has you covered. And in true IBR fashion, they’re all indie books!
Here are 13 kids’ books that little ones love.
1. The Rainbow Goblins
Gorgeous paintings, creepy goblins, and a story of nature fighting back
Author: Ul de Rico
Subgenre: Fantasy & Magic
Print Length: 32 pages
ISBN: 9780500277591
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Recommended by: Joe Walters
Welcome to my absolute favorite purchase of 2024!
My daughter picked up The Rainbow Goblins in the Odyssey Bookstore in Ithaca, NY, and I was amazed with her quality control. And once you pick this thing up, you’ll see why.
The paintings are breathtaking, and it tells an oddly creepy (but not scary!) story about goblins who are trying to drink up all the colors of the rainbow until there’s nothing left. Everyone lives in fear of them, except for the Valley of the Rainbow. But when the goblins gather up their lassoes and set their sights on that, the roots of the trees and plants communicate to the nature around them that it’s time to fight back. And how!
Watch in absolutely gorgeous color as nature fights back against the rainbow goblins and ensures that rainbows are safe from their wrath once and for all.
It’s creative and long but not too long, and the pictures are a wonder to look at. A particularly good choice for book-loving, imaginative 3-year-olds all the way up to 9-year-olds.
–Joe Walters
2. My Father Once Told Me
Stellar! A Native Nations creation myth told with poetic language, magical illustrations, and love passed down
Author: Blas Telleria
Subgenre: Native American
Print Length: 54 pages
ISBN: 9798218417253
Recommended by: Joe Walters
Not often do I encounter kids’ books quite as beautiful as this one. I don’t want to exaggerate; don’t want to overdo it, make you think I’m being untrue for the sake of hyperbole. I just really want you and your kids to read this book.
It’s a creation story that’s passed down from father to son about how the Great Spirit reached into the nothing of the universe and turned it into a Something. A big blue ball that his children—the animals of the sky—are enamored of. Oh, please, please, can we go in?
Salmon and Whale are the first to dive into the unknown blue. They are followed by Eagle and Crow taking to the skies, Tortoise and Turtle carrying mud on their backs from the ocean to build land to stand on. Moose, Water Snake, Wolf, beyond—the animals play and form the land in ways that are natural to them. Who else but Water Snake would form the rivers; who else but Beaver would create lakes and waterfalls?
My Father Once Told Me is poetic but not in the sing-song way you’ve come to expect of children’s books. There are no rhymes here. But the story that the unnamed narrator father tells uses poetic techniques like repetition—“little” on the first page to contrast the one human against the big world—and personified language that floats through fire and air, up to sky, and moves stars around.
The illustrations are equally magical. The animals and the land are freely flowing, like fluid movements akin to moving water, and the trees rise high and tall. Imprints of the animals’ bodies are even long like the trees. The water and the land and the lifeforms all flow together in soft palettes and pleasing tones of blue and green. And on the off-chance it’s not blue or green, orange and reds pop in eye-catching, still-fluid contrasts.
ut this isn’t all. It’s also got a deep conversation going on about myth as history. This story is passed down like all important stories are. It’s a father talking to a son like his father talked to him. Kids can gain access—maybe with a little help from their mom or dad—to the understanding of how history works.
–Joe Walters
3. Fly High, Baby Dragon
A brave baby dragon and an encouraging yet patient mother star in Fly High, Baby Dragon—an easy choice for all-the-time reading.
Author: David Klochko
Subgenre: Dragons
Print Length: 26 pages
ISBN: 9798989991013
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
Fly High, Baby Dragon checks all the boxes. It has a good story, good kids, good parenting, a good moral, great eye-popping illustrations, and, most importantly, it has actually captivated my little one. She wants to read it, and I’ll gladly open it again, knowing she’ll be learning about something relevant and encouraging while getting pulled in by the story.
A baby dragon emerges from his shell excited to learn that he will soon be able to fly. But not before a little practice and a lot of patience after flying doesn’t come easily. Baby Dragon jumps off a cliff and falls and kerplunks and splats. He’s frustrated—he wants to give up—but he’s got one cool mom on his side, cheering him on when he gets back up again and taking him away to give him space and distract him from the problem at hand. She’s wonderfully patient, dances with him, feeds him delicious, big-bellied breakfasts, and allows him to make the decision to get back out there. To keep trying.
Riding a bike. Steering a scooter. Jumping at the trampoline park. Climbing the rock wall at the playground. My kid experiences failure at first attempt all the time. All I’ve ever wanted to communicate with her is in this book. Yes, you’re going to fall. Yes, it hurts to get hurt. But also yes, it can be worth it if you keep trying. And yet at the same time, it’s not worth panicking over. If you’re not ready to conquer it, try something else. Dance, eat. But don’t be afraid to try again when you feel ready.
–Toni Woodruff
Need more space for kids’ books? Here are our favorite kids’ bookshelf ideas!
4. Alphabreaths
A calming, fun tool to teach young’ins the power of breathwork
Author: Christopher Willard
Subgenre: Mindfulness / Alphabet
Print Length: 32 pages
ISBN: 9781683641971
Publisher: Sounds True
Recommended by: Joe Walters
It’s easy to take breathing for granted. It comes naturally and happens without us even thinking about it. But what about our little ones?
Breathing is one of my favorite parenting techniques: showing my babies that I’m focusing on breathing while they’re crying. This book brings the physical activity of breathing to the forefront and makes an alphabet game out of it.
Open your arms like an alligator on the in-breath, snap those jaws shut on the exhale. Flap your wings like a butterfly and breathe your way around the room. Envision you’re blowing out your birthday cake.
A great book to start your day with, one or two or three breathing and imagination activities to remind us that we are here on this earth and capable of conquering anything as long as we just keep breathing.
–Joe Walters
5. A Very Chilling Mystery
A creative and fun story that tests the limits of our imagination
Author: Steve A. Erickson
Subgenre: Cooking & Food
Print Length: 52 pages
ISBN: 9781639882519
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Recommended by: Jaylynn Korrell
There’s a party going on in the fridge, and Erickson lets you in on it. It starts with an illustration of a little girl eyeing up the fridge from afar as the narrator invites us on a journey of confirmation that those delectables aren’t just lying around waiting to be enjoyed in there.
Soon we’re taken through the shelves as foods and beverages go about their daily business, which includes things like playing baseball with a carrot bat, potatoes watching tv on a meatloaf couch, and beets rocking out on a drum set. In fact they’re doing everything but the nothing most people assume, and it’s awesome!
The illustrations are what truly bring the book to life. As it takes place predominantly in the fridge, readers can look forward to a colorful display of fruits, vegetables, leftover dinners, and mysterious forgotten foods on each page. The illustrations are so inviting and professional but also look as if they’ve been done with crayon or colored pencil, giving them a youthful touch that matches the reading level perfectly.
Children will enjoy Erickson’s rhythm and rhyme style of storytelling while adults will appreciate some of the more detailed aspects of the vegetable characters, like the half and half who can’t make up their mind or the beet who plays in a band called “The Beets,” written in the same font as “The Beatles.”
–Jaylynn Korrell
6. Over and Under the Pond
Take a dip beneath the boat in this calming and informative book on aquatic life.
Author: Kate Messner
Subgenre: Nature
Print Length: 48 pages
ISBN: 9781452145426
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
Part of a wonderful series, Over and Under the Pond follows a boy and his mother as they kayak over the water and talk about the life going on underneath them.
Talking about frogs, turtles, fish, beavers and even the animals who visit the water to get their meals and wash up (like moose!), this book is a trove of helpful information for kids who like to kayak and swim in natural waters.
While it can be enjoyed by younger audiences like 3 year olds, it can stay relevant in your bookshelves for years to come, maybe even as old as 12. Since it follows a mom and her son, it gives your story-loving little one something to cling to as they learn the nature lessons of the book.
–Toni Woodruff
7. The Boogie Barn Band
A fun, instructive tale about the impact that music has on people
Author: William Nephew and Natalie Neal
Subgenre: Music & Instruments
Print Length: 28 pages
ISBN: 9798989779727
Recommended by: Jaylynn Korrell
To me, the best kids’ books are the ones that entertain and teach. The Boogie Barn Band does both. On top of that, it gives kids the opportunity to be vocal and active. It’s a positive, upbeat story about musical barn animals and how they bring their community together.
In the beginning, music beckons animals from all around town to a local farm. Soon the Boogie Barn has quite an audience on their hands—all excited to jam out.
To get the concert underway, readers are introduced to each member of the band and the instruments they play. Each character has their own flare, and they do a great job explaining the role they play and the sounds each instrument makes.
The vibe is upbeat, exciting, and fun, and it’s reflected well in vivid illustrations and an array of your kids’ favorite animals. The happiness exudes off each character so the positive experience can be had by all. You won’t be able to resist smiling after witnessing how much fun they’re having and the audience is having. Backed by a beautiful barn on a bright sunny day, this book seems the epitome of positivity.
The authors of The Boogie Barn Band do an excellent job of adding in informative bits about the technical pieces of each instrument as well as its role in the music-making process. The drummer of the band, Reggie the dog, is described as the one in charge of keeping the beat with his instrument. From guitar to piano to bass, we learn about how the instruments are played and are given examples of the sounds they make. It inspires an activity too—I can just imagine how many kids will be laughing as they try to sound out how the instruments are supposed to sound.
–Jaylynn Korrell
Celebrate your kids’ love of reading with some of the best gifts for kids who love to read.
8. Blink and Glow
A shining & bright kids’ book about the natural magic of real-life glowing animals
Author: Raven Howell & Ann Pilicer
Subgenre: Nature
Print Length: 36 pages
ISBN: 9781738219377
Publisher: Tielmour Press
Recommended by: Joe Walters
Leo and Lilly have show-and-tell at school tomorrow, and they want to have the best things to show off. And what better items than living ones!
Leo bottles up a firefly. While Lilly can’t catch her own, she spots another glowing creature—a salamander—near the pond! If you didn’t know that salamanders can glow in the dark, you do now.
But their light starts to diffuse the longer they’re kept in the jar. With the help of their grandmother, they learn that these animals, including the lunar moth flapping nearby, need to be free in order to shine their brightest light.
So while it feels special to have their own little bottled-up magic, they discover how important it is to let them live their own lives out in nature. Grandma keeps the fun going by showing them how they can make art inspired by these amazing critters. The book even lets you in on the fun by walking your kids through the steps of making their very own firefly suncatcher with tissue paper and a picture frame.
The art is lovely, natural, and magical. Parents who like to pair their books with art activities will relish what Blink and Glow has to offer.
–Joe Walters
9. Purple Ina
Myth, magic, culture, and color, Purple Ina is a sparkling gem of a picture book.
Author: Rafael Arzuaga
Subgenre: Fantasy / Culture
Print Length: 30 pages
ISBN: 9780692270516
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
Ina lives on a beautiful purple island. It’s all she knows, until a fierce gust of wind sends her flying to new islands, all splashed in their own color. And along with the new colors, she meets new people, all appreciative of the way they do things on their island and sharing some of the magic with Ina before she takes off for the next.
Each page is clean with a minimal art, and yet there’s still so much beauty to look at. It entertains with just enough magic and fully-fleshed characters in a short amount of time. Experience a forever summer with Adonis on the pink island, shine bright at night with Light on the orange island, and play music with Esteban on a land draped in color.
It’s a subtle story of the lives of other people and other cultures, and it doesn’t state any morals overtly. Just shares the truth that there are other people and other places out there to love.
–Toni Woodruff
10. Ricky, the Rock That Couldn’t Roll
A caring, warmhearted book about supporting your friends no matter what obstacle stands in their way
Author: Mr. Jay
Subgenre: Rocks / Disabilities
Print Length: 28 pages
ISBN: 9780578198033
Recommended by: Joe Walters
I don’t know how you make being a rock look so fun, but this rhyming picture book does it in droves. Author Mr. Jay and illustrator Erin Wozniak team up to turn this group of rocks into personality-rich critical thinkers who see a friend being left out for the make-up of his body and do something about it.
While all his friends are rolling up and down a hill, Ricky can’t join in on the fun because one of his sides is flat. I absolutely love the parallels being discussed in this book of a rock and kids with disabilities of any kind.
This book is a stellar introduction to showing kids what they can do to help their friends, and it’s a warmhearted reminder to those with disabilities that people care about them and that they can achieve their goals.
–Joe Walters
Surprise your kids’ teachers with this handy list of great gifts for English teachers.
11. Immune Heroes
An entertaining, useful book to help kids learn about cuts, scrapes, and the healing process
Author: Namita Gandhi, PhD
Subgenre: Science
Print Length: 36 pages
ISBN: 9781917095211
Recommended by: Jaylynn Korrell
In Immune Heroes, siblings Mayu and Nimi are out riding bikes and enjoying the day when Mayu suddenly hits a rock and tumbles to the ground. His sister runs to comfort him while reminding him that the pain he’s currently feeling is a good thing, as it signifies the beginning of the healing process. And the beginning of the healing process couldn’t be cooler than the way that Gandhi tells it.
This book packs in a lot of action in its 30 or so pages, as the process of healing isn’t always completed on the first try. Bacteria find their way in despite the tacky platelets creating a protective seal. Macrophages are called in to devour said bacteria as new intruders find other ways to wreak havoc. Gandhi’s story transforms healing into an epic battle that is sure to entertain.
Parents who want to introduce big concepts like immunology to their kids in a way that they’ll understand will love this book. Gandhi writes about the experience in such a fun way that kids may not even realize they’re being taught a valuable, relatable science lesson. She explains things in an accessible way and pairs the prose with beautiful graphics that will keep little eyes glued to the page. I loved watching each new group of characters rush to the scene whether it be to attack or defend Mayu’s wound.
–Jaylynn Korrell
12. Baby Loves Science (The Five Senses)
5 brightly colored, easy to understand kids’ science books in one neat package
Author: Ruth Spiro
Genre: Board Books / Science
Print Length: 110 pages
ISBN: 9781632890580
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
Bombarding your kids with fun stories is a good thing. But no children’s library is complete without this resourceful & relevant 5-book series.
The five senses—hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste—are a wonderful kid-friendly science topic. Not only can they count the senses on one tiny hand, but they have experience with each of them, whether they’re equipped with it or not.
This series does an excellent job of including those kids without the ability to see or hear in addition to discussing the science of how each of them work. From tiny molecules to their big, developing brains, this series could stick with your little one for years. Even by the time they hit school-age, they’ll be able to return to these educational resources in their bookshelf.
–Toni Woodruff
13. Hummingbird
A touching little story of familial connection over the wonder of hummingbirds
Author: Nicola Davies
Genre: Picture Book / Birds
Print Length: 32 pages
ISBN: 9781536205381
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Recommended by: Toni Woodruff
Any parent in love with the beauty and magic of hummingbirds will adore this children’s book. The lush green, natural surroundings of each page make for an eye-popping viewing experience, but it’s the sheer number of unique hummingbirds flying around that make it stand out most.
It’s about a young girl who hand-feeds hummingbirds with her grandmother in Central America, but she soon departs for New York City. And while she believes she leaves the magnificent little creatures behind, Granny tells her to keep an eye out. That they travel north too. Maybe even to Central Park for the very first time.
Hummingbirds emit a special type of magic. Bring the wonderment to your bookshelf with this gorgeously illustrated, moving story of connecting through generations by way of these amazing migratory birds.
–Toni Woodruff
What are your favorite kids’ books of all time? Let us know in the comments!
About IBR
Independent Book Review is your source for the best in indie books. With 30 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.
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]]>The post The 17 Best Book Apps for Every Kind of Reader appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>by Jaylynn Korrell
Technology and books: Friends or enemies?
If there’s one thing that book lovers love, it’s books! More of them. No matter how they find them. Ebooks, audiobooks, paperbacks. The more chances to read the better. And with the right book apps, they can be totally free!
You don’t have to worry about feeling like you’re betraying your beloved paperbacks! Think of these apps as an extension of your love of literature or a portal into even more literary engagement!
But not all of these book apps are simply for reading books.
There are apps that allow you to browse & buy brand new titles, read reviews, log your reading, track your patterns, and even keep your kid reading. The options are all endless so long as you have the right digital resources.
So check out these awesome book apps!
(Everything on Independent Book Review has been selected by a very picky group of people. As affiliates we may earn a commission on items you purchase through our links.)
There’s no better place to start than my absolute favorite cheap & free eBook app! BookBub’s got unbeatable deals with author updates, handpicked recommendations, and truly some of the best indie & big-five books available. If you haven’t tried BookBub yet…you’re welcome.
The Kindle is definitely one of my favorite e-readers, but it’s also a great app to have on your phone or iPad. Not only can you find & download nearly every eBook on the internet, but it’s extremely readable as well. You’ll always have access to your favorite books with the Kindle app, and the app will keep track of where you left off on a different device and save it in the cloud so you’ll never lose your place.
Ummm…you’ve heard of Goodreads already? No surprise! This is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Readers can search their database of books to find people’s honest reviews before buying anything. Or, they can join the conversation and write their own reviews!
Classic books are classics for a reason. People have loved reading them forever. But a lot of people find them difficult to get through, even if they end up loving them. Serial Reader gives readers a more digestible way to read Classic books by dividing them up into 20 minute sessions. You can read an unabridged 20 minute portion of these books daily with this free book app, and slowly but continuously check some classics off of your “to be read” list.
Find yourself too busy (or homebound) to take a trip to the library? Check out this extensive digital document library! Book apps like Scribd provide readers with access to over 170 million documents, while also allowing people to upload their your own documents. It allows readers to keep a number of useful audiobooks and ebooks in one place: a truly great learning and sharing resource for readers and writers.
Finding this app was a game-changer for me. If you’ve got a library card, you’ve probably got access to Hoopla (or Libby). Hoopla allows you to access books found in your library’s database, as well as audiobooks, comic books, and even movies. So much free content!
Looking for somewhere to read original works of fiction? Wattpad has over 90 million subscribers who are reading and uploading fiction works and connecting with other readers and writers. This may just be the place to find your next favorite author before their writing career takes off. These are not always published books like you’d find on Kindle, so you’re finding some real hidden gems here.
Love poetry? Check out these gifts for poets & poetry lovers!
There are ways to read books without opening your eyelids or flipping a page. Audible the dominant force in audiobooks. This app offers monthly membership subscriptions or individual purchases so that you can listen to new, old, and bestselling audiobooks while doing household chores. Try a free trial!
How long does it take you to read? This book app is a valuable tool in helping you reach your reading goals by tracking your reading progress, maintaining an organized catalog of your completed books, and helping you set monthly or even yearly reading goals. It even provides you with personalized stats in real-time so you can track your progress. People who are trying to develop a good reading habit will like this!
Blinkist caters to those who don’t have the time or maybe even the interest to read an entire book. With this book app, you can get a summary of thousands popular nonfiction books in 15 minutes or less. So if reading isn’t your thing but you want the information from some of the best nonfiction books, Blinkist is the way to go.
Have you ever wished for a better way to pick the perfect next book? StoryGraph might be the way to do it. This app takes tracking to the next level by taking into account your mood and the mood of the books you’re usually reading (emotional, lighthearted, relaxing, etc). You can also view how your stats progress overtime to give you more insight on what books you should pick up next.
Unlike Blinkist, Summary Z provides a short summary of fiction books as well as nonfiction. So if you’ve got work to do for class and could use a refresher on a novel, check this one out! Summary Z is a great reference.
Poetry lovers, unite! Apps like Poetizer allow people to read, write, publish, and buy poetry. Poetry collections can be delivered to your doorstep and then promoted on your personal Poetizer platform. It’s an excellent app for writers & poets.
After you read a really great book, it’s hard to not want to talk about it with everyone you come in contact with. Having the community to do that with is rare. But it doesn’t have to be! Litsy is a place to share blurbs, reviews, your favorite quotes, and more. It’s my preferred social media account for book lovers!
Make your book club experience a lot easier by downloading this essential bookclub app. This app is excellent for those looking to simplify every aspect of being in a book club, from setting up meetings to picking your next book club book. Look up top book club books of the week or use their discover tool, and don’t forget to ask good book club questions!
Book apps aren’t just for adults. Kids book apps like Epic exist just to engage readers 12 and under. Epic is the largest digital library just for kids who love to read. It has over 40,000 kids titles to choose from, and they have audiobooks and learning videos available too. This app is free for educators and students to use during the school day.
A book subscription box is a great way to gain access to new releases easily. Aardvark Book Club’s app allows subscribers to choose three new released books from a curated list of 4-5 newly published books to have delivered to their doorstep each month. Then you can discuss your favorites on their app in their discussion community. It’s just like having a bookstore and a book club in your pocket!
So which of these book apps will you be downloading? Let us know in the comments, and tell us if there are any you think we missed!
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 “17 Best Book Apps for Avid Readers” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
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]]>The post 32 Impressive Indie Press Books from 2020 appeared first on Independent Book Review.
]]>Curated by Joe Walters
Make room on your bookshelves. It’s time for our list of impressive indie press books from 2020!
Every year, independent presses put out acclaimed and award-winning work. More often than not, they are doing this with a lower budget and fewer staff members than many of the big five publishers and their imprints.
So I think it’s about time we celebrate these awesome indies–with a big old end-of-the-year book list!
I’ve seen a whole lot of great books flash across my inbox and social-feeds this year, and I’ve flown through my fair share of pages, too, so I decided to stop being so stingy and curate this year’s list of impressive indie press books. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve chosen my list with care, almost like a book-nerd mixtape. There are stories in here that’ll send you somewhere new, that’ll amaze you, thrill you, make you sad and make you happy at the same time; by my including these books out of the thousands in indie press lit, I’m saying they’re worth a shot. If you think the cover and the description sound awesome, make sure to head on over to Bookshop and support your indie bookseller in the process.
In no particular order, here’s our list of 32 Impressive Indie Press Books from 2020!
Fiction
#1. Virtuoso
by Yelena Moskovich
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Genre: LGBTQ Literary
About the Book:
As Communism begins to crumble in Prague in the 1980s, Jana’s unremarkable life becomes all at once remarkable when a precocious young girl named Zorka moves into the apartment building with her mother and sick father. With Zorka’s signature two-finger salute and abrasive wit, she brings flair to the girls’ days despite her mother’s protestations to not “be weird.” But after scorching her mother’s prized fur coat and stealing from a nefarious teacher, Zorka suddenly disappears.
Meanwhile in Paris, Aimée de Saint-Pé married young to an older woman, Dominique, an actress whose star has crested and is in decline. A quixotic journey of self-discovery, Virtuoso follows Zorka as she comes of age in Prague, Wisconsin, and then Boston, amidst a backdrop of clothing logos, MTV, computer coders, and other outcast youth. But it isn’t till a Parisian conference hall brimming with orthopedic mattresses and therapeutic appendages when Jana first encounters Aimée, their fates steering them both to a cryptic bar on the Rue de Prague, and, perhaps, to Zorka.
With a distinctive prose flair and spellbinding vision, Virtuoso is a story of love, loss, and self-discovery that heralds Yelena Moskovich as a brilliant and one-of-a-kind visionary.
#2. A Girl Is a Body of Water
by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Publisher: Tin House
Genre: Coming of Age & Womanhood
About the Book:
In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta―her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts―but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Complicating these feelings of abandonment, as Kirabo comes of age she feels the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her at odds with her sweet and obedient nature.
Seeking answers, Kirabo begins spending afternoons with Nsuuta, the local witch, trading stories and learning not only about this force inside her, but about the woman who birthed her, who she learns is alive but not ready to meet. Nsuuta also explains that Kirabo has a streak of the “first woman”―an independent, original state that has been all but lost to women.
Kirabo’s journey to reconcile her rebellious origins, alongside her desire to reconnect with her mother and to honor her family’s expectations, is rich in the folklore of Uganda and an arresting exploration of what it means to be a modern girl in a world that seems determined to silence women. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s unforgettable novel is a sweeping testament to the true and lasting connections between history, tradition, family, friends, and the promise of a different future.
#3. Anthropica
by David Hollander
Publisher: Animal Riot Press
Genre: Literary Science Fiction
About the Book:
A Hungarian fatalist convinced that the human race is a blemish on God’s otherwise beautiful universe; a statistician who has determined that we completely exhaust the earth’s resources every 30 days; a failing novelist whose nihilistic fiction has doomed her halfhearted quest for tenure; an Ultimate Frisbee-playing man-child who has discovered a fractal pattern contained within all matter, but is nevertheless obsessed with the chase for a National Championship; a banished race of mole people preparing for a violent uprising; a factory filled with human heads being mined for information; a former philosophy professor with ALS who has discovered, as he becomes “locked in,” that he can make things happen simply by wanting them badly enough; and a trio of vengeful, superintelligent robots secretly imprisoned in an underground hangar in Iksan, South Korea, patiently waiting for some gullible human(s) to release them.
This is a partial cast of Anthropica, a novel that puts Laszlow Katasztrófa’s beautiful vision of a universe without us to the test. Because even if Laszlow believes that he is merely an agent of fate, a cog in God’s inscrutable machine, he’s nevertheless the one driving this crazy machine. And once he has his team assembled, it turns out that he might-against all odds and his own expectations-actually have the tools to see his apocalyptic plan to fruition.
#4. Fiebre Tropical
by Juliana Delgado Lopera
Publisher: Feminist Press
Genre: Hispanic American Literature & Fiction
About the Book:
Lit by the hormonal neon glow of Miami, this heady, multilingual debut novel follows a Colombian teenager’s coming-of-age and coming out as she plunges headfirst into lust and evangelism.
Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead.
But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor’s daughter. As her mother’s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls more and more intensely in love with Carmen. To get closer to her, Francisca turns to Jesus to be saved, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion.
#5. Temporary
by Hilary Leichter
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Genre: Magical realism
About the Book:
In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”
This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
#6. The Enlightenment of Greengage Tree
by Shokoofeh Azar
Publisher: Europa Editions
Genre: Family life
About the Book:
FINALIST for the 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
From the pen of one of Iran’s rising literary stars, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is a family story about the unbreakable connection between the living and the dead.
Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness.
Told from the wise yet innocent gaze of a young girl, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime.
#7. Little Feasts
by Jules Archer
Publisher: Thirty West Publishing
Genre: Feminist short fiction
About the Book:
Following her successes from All the Ghosts We’ve Always Had, critically-acclaimed flash fiction writer, Jules Archer, returns to the dinner table with Little Feasts, her debut short story collection. The stories are a table-long buffet of femininity, a lying tree, childhood innocence, toxic masculinity, and a 20-pound cast-iron skillet. Works within have been featured in Five:2: One, SmokeLong Quarterly, Maudlin House, PANK, and more.
#8. The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing
by Joseph Fasano
Publisher: Platypus Press
Genre: Literary
About the Book:
Deep in the mountains of British Columbia, across an unforgiving landscape, one man’s pursuit of a fabled mountain lion leads him into the furthest reaches of himself. As he struggles to confront the wilderness surrounding him–from the baying hounds to the relentless northern snows–he journeys into his own haunted memories: a life of wild horses and ballet, fishing skiffs and blizzards, tropical seas and dolphins. Through wind, snow, and the depths of grief, he asks what price he is willing to exact on a world that ravages what we love, and whether redemption awaits those who learn to forgive. A tender story of love and a modern-day parable, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, the debut novel from acclaimed poet Joseph Fasano, guides us into the deepest territories of the human heart.
#9. She Is a Beast
by Christina Rosso
Publisher: Apep Publications
Genre: Feminist fairy tales
About the Book:
She is a Beast is an illustrated collection of feminist fairy tales published by APEP Publications in May 2020. Some are re-imaginings of the classic tales we know, such as Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, while others are completely original. This collection is about women reclaiming their stories and finding agency by embracing their beastly natures and adopting monstrous appetites deemed inappropriate by society. In their wildness they find freedom.
#10. Collective Gravities
by Chloe N. Clark
Publisher: Word West
Genre: Genre-bending short fiction
About the Book:
In Collective Gravities, something magical is always just beneath the surface–the zombie apocalypse happens, but the world stays relatively the same; a woman begins to feel the earth moving beneath her feet. In this fantastical, genre-bending collection, Chloe N. Clark launches readers from Iowa, to outer space, and back again. Lyrical, funny, and full of transcendent beauty, Collective Gravities is a cause for celebration: an astronomically gifted writer, who, in twenty-six stories, shows us an entire world (and beyond) full of heartbreak, hope, redemption, and wonder.
#11. Elegy for the Undead
by Matthew Vesely
Publisher: Lanternfish Press
Genre: Literary Science Fiction
About the Book:
Jude and Lyle’s newlywed life is shattered when a vicious attack leaves Lyle infected with a disease that transforms him into a violent and often incomprehensible person. With no cure for the “zombie” virus in sight, the young husbands begin to face the last months they have together before Lyle loses himself completely. Fond remembrances of young love meet the challenges of navigating a partner’s terminal illness in this bittersweet tale that explores both how we fall in love and how we say goodbye when the time comes far too soon.
#12. The Hole
by Hiroko Oyamada
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Genre: Absurdism
About the Book:
Asa’s husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family’s home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.
One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole―a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.
#13. The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment
by Therese Doucet
Publisher: DX Varos, Ltd
Genre: Historical fantasy
About the Book:
Violaine, a devotee of books and learning, is sold by her father to a mysterious nobleman to become his companion. Fearing herself at the mercy of a monster, Violaine instead succumbs to the seductive spell of her magical new home, and the love of a man she has never seen, who comes to her only in the darkness of night.
The Château de Boisaulne is a place of many mysteries, but also a refuge for children of the Enlightenment in a time when Europe still languishes under the repressive chains of monarchy and superstition. But modern thought meets ancient lore, as the castle borders the forest lair of the roi des aulnes, an ogre said to be the ancestor of Violaine’s unseen lover … or are they one and the same?
#14. What Shines from It
by Sara Rauch
Publisher: Alternating Current Press
Genre: Literary Short Fiction
About the Book:
The eleven stories in Sara Rauch’s What Shines from It are rife with the physical and psychic wounds of everyday life. In “Beholden,” girl meets boy meets the unsettled spirits of post-9/11 New York City, but her future can’t hold them all. In “Kitten,” a struggling veteran and his wife argue over adopting an abandoned kitten, deepening their financial and emotional rifts. In “Abandon,” a ghost-baby ravages a woman’s body following a late-term miscarriage, marring her chances for new love. And in “Kintsukuroi,” a married potter falls for a married geologist and discovers the luminosity of being broken.
What Shines from It is populated by women on the verge of transcendence—brimming with anger and love—and working-class artists haunted by the ghosts of their desires. Abiding by a distinctly guarded New England sensibility, these stories inhabit the borderlands of long-established cities, where humans are still learning to embrace the natural world. Subtly exploring sexualities, relationships, birth and rebirth, identity, ghosts, and longing, Rauch searches for the places where our protective shells are cracked and, in spare, poetic language, limns those edges of loneliness and loss with light.
Nonfiction
#15. The Magical Language of Others
by E.J. Koh
Publisher: Tin House
Genre: Memoir, Mothers & Daughters
About the Book:
A tale of deep bonds to family, place, language―of hard-won selfhood told by a singular, incandescent voice.
The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother’s absence. Her mother writes letters, in Korean, over the years seeking forgiveness and love―letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.
As Eun Ji translates the letters, she looks to history―her grandmother Jun’s years as a lovesick wife in Daejeon, the horrors her grandmother Kumiko witnessed during the Jeju Island Massacre―and to poetry, as well as her own lived experience to answer questions inside all of us. Where do the stories of our mothers and grandmothers end and ours begin? How do we find words―in Korean, Japanese, English, or any language―to articulate the profound ways that distance can shape love? Eun Ji Koh fearlessly grapples with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy, and intergenerational trauma, arriving at insights that are essential reading for anyone who has ever had to balance love, longing, heartbreak, and joy.
#16. The Names of All the Flowers
by Melissa Valentine
Publisher: Feminist Press
Genre: Race & Loss
About the Book:
Set in rapidly gentrifying 1990s Oakland, this memoir—”poignant, painful, and gorgeous” (Alicia Garza)—explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief in a family shattered by loss.
Melissa and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother. But as Junior approaches adolescence, a bullying incident and later a violent attack in school leave him searching for power and a sense of self in all the wrong places; he develops a hard front and falls into drug dealing. Right before Junior’s twentieth birthday, the family is torn apart when he is murdered as a result of gun violence.
The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: “We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss.”
#17. A History of My Brief Body
by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Genre: Sexuality, Race, & Colonial Canada
About the Book:
The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.
For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.
Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray’s writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.
#18. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
by Athena Dixon
Publisher: Split/Lip Press
Genre: Memoir in Essays
About the Book:
A quiet retelling of a life in the background, Athena Dixon’s debut essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, is a gentle unpacking of the roles she learned to inhabit, growing up as a Black woman in a small Midwestern town, to avoid disruption. But after the implosion of the life she’d always wanted, Dixon must explore the implications of her desire to hide as she rebuilds herself in a world that expects freedom to look boisterous. As Dixon presses the bruises of her invisibility, these essays glide between the pages of fan fiction, the rush of new panties, down the rabbit hole of depression, and reemerge on the other side, speaking with the lived authority of a voice that, even when shaking, is always crystal clear.
#19. Before and After the Book Deal
by Courtney Maum
Publisher: Catapult
Genre: Writing & Publishing
About the Book:
“Like sharing a coffee with a kind and witty mentor, Before and After the Book Deal is an ideally conversational guide to traditional publishing.” – Independent Book Review
There are countless books on the market about how to write better but very few books on how to break into the marketplace with your first book. Cutting through the noise (and very mixed advice) online, while both dispelling rumors and remaining positive, Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal is a one-of-a-kind resource that can help you get your book published.
Are MFA programs worth the time and money? How do people actually sit down and finish a novel? Did you get a good advance? What do you do when you feel envious of other writers? And why the heck aren’t your friends saying anything about your book? Covering questions ranging from the logistical to the existential (and everything in between), Before and After the Book Deal is the definitive guide for anyone who has ever wanted to know what it’s really like to be an author.
#20. Suppose Muscle, Suppose Night, Suppose This in August
by Danielle Zaccagnino
Publisher: Mason Jar Press
Genre: Poetic memoir
About the Book:
SUPPOSE MUSCLE, SUPPOSE NIGHT, SUPPOSE THIS IN AUGUST explores how anxiety and escape can shape a life from childhood to adulthood. This hybrid of lyrical essays and poetry weaves a delicate thread across the country, through dreams and nightmares, euphoria and fear, and intimacy and distance, always with particular attention to form and language. With dreamlike imagery, a unique inventiveness, and emotional clarity, the collection dissects that which we are too afraid to touch in our waking hours.
#21. High Cotton
by Kristie Robin Johnson
Publisher: Raised Voice Press
Genre: Race, Family, & Womanhood
About the Book:
Kristie Robin Johnson has lived nearly her whole life in small town Georgia, as did five generations of African American women before her beginning with a slave, her oldest known ancestor. In High Cotton, Johnson explores the social and economic consequences of her lineage, drawing on pivotal moments from her own experience to illuminate the lived reality of a daughter of the Deep South.
Johnson unapologetically describes a life that falls below the standards of black respectability, that of an unmarried young mother, an addict’s daughter, a college dropout, welfare recipient, and willful sinner. The voice in High Cotton is a cry from within the masses. Johnson stretches out long brown fingers as far as they will reach to barely skim the first, crucial rung of the ladder to success, that so-called American dream. She exposes the soft underbelly of black girl magic, celebrating black life in all its glorious vulnerability.
The essays in High Cotton contain all the complication of a post-civil rights era, post-women’s liberation, pre-millennial black woman living in the modern South, conjuring universal truths every reader will recognize.
#22. An Ambiguous Grief
by Dominique Hunter
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Genre: Grief & Loss
About the Book:
“An Ambiguous Grief is a beautiful, unflinchingly honest, poignant and wistful memoir, written with humor, and a graceful sangfroid that is admirable. One thing Dominique Hunter has done extremely well is to reveal her son Dylan’s story in the exact right way: readers know upfront that she has lost him, but they don’t know how. By the time we find out what happened to him, we know enough about his struggles and hers to understand how he came to that point in his life. Although the story is about Dylan, in the end, it tells the story of a mother’s journey through coping with a devastating loss and moving forward – not “getting over it,” but facing it by using her intelligence, humor, honesty, and humanity to deal with it in all its messy, sad, loving, ironic, despairing, hopeful, ambivalent ways. And to survive that journey, she takes us into an imaginative realm where past, present and future align to give her the space to heal.”
— Susan Edwards
#23. A Fish Growing Lungs
by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn
Publisher: Burrow Press
Genre: Mood Disorders & Health
About the Book:
At age 18 Alysia Sawchyn was diagnosed with bipolar I. Seven years later she learned she had been misdiagnosed. A Fish Growing Lungs takes the form of linked essays that reflect on Sawchyn’s diagnosis and its unraveling, the process of withdrawal and recovery, and the search for identity as she emerges from a difficult past into a cautiously hopeful present.
Sawchyn captures the precariousness of life under the watchful eye of doctors, friends, and family, in which saying or doing the wrong thing could lead to involuntary confinement. This scrutiny is compounded by the stigmas of mental illness and the societal expectations placed on the bodies of women and women of color. And yet, amid juggling medications, doubting her diagnosis, and struggling with addiction and cutting, there is also joy, friendship, love, and Slayer concerts.
Funny, intelligent, and unflinchingly honest, Sawchyn explores how we can come to know ourselves when our bodies betray us. Drawing from life experience, literature, music, medical journals, films, and recovery communities, each essay illuminates the richness of self-knowledge that comes from the act of writing itself.
Poetry
#24. $50,000
by Andrew Whitehead
Publisher: Publishing Genius
About the Book:
$50,000 is a long poem that allows Andrew Weatherhead the space to search everything–his cubicle, his relationships with coworkers and friends, and the worlds found in literature, sports, economics, and history–for something more meaningful than mere facts. What arises in these 116 pages is the pure drama of life: the unrelenting passage of time, the inevitable need to make a living, and the foreboding beauty of numbers, names, and friendship. In hundreds of standalone lines that align with Mike Tyson’s peek-a-boo style, this long poem moves like prose but sticks with all the weight and heft of poetry.
#25. When My Body Was a Clinched Fist
by Enzo Silon Surin
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
About the Book:
“Back in the day when KRS-One intoned–The Bridge is over!–he did not prefigure a poet from Queens of the fierce attitude and intellectual magnitude of Enzo Silon Surin. WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST gives the Heisman to such a refrain with lyrical power-packing poetics that settles the score with a succinct–Not! No the Bridge is not over, for Surin’s Queens is alive and well and under the gaze of a master observer who eulogizes lives that though at times are battered have always mattered. Enzo Silon Surin’s poems get you caught up in the deeply personal experiences of growing and visceral all-encompassing knowing from an acute witness of every breath and follicle of Black life from palm trees, sand and sea to street corner projects, suburban houses and fistfuls of black water.
“Surin writes about the confused and disconnected, trigger happy wannabes trapped by outdated notions of masculinity, the cracked head crackheads all held in the clutch of society’s clinched fist through which the trauma that comes with being of color, addicted, broke, lost and tossed, is itself a clinched fist of black bodies caught in the Russian nesting doll America’s clinched fists make. WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST is an elegy for ‘the premature exits.’ It is a blues for the black-on-black black and blue. Surin yields his pen like a microscopic scalpel whereby an autopsy of possibility is performed to un-clinch the remarkable bone gristle poetry in these unflinching heart-wrenching pages.”
— Tony Medina
#26. Ways We Vanish
by Todd Dillard
Publisher: Okay Donkey Press
About the Book:
WAYS WE VANISH, Todd Dillard’s debut poetry collection, navigates the grief following the loss of a loved one while also starting a new life and becoming a parent. It peels back the layers of everyday living to reveal the impossible landscape flourishing underneath—one fraught with sorrow, want, and pain, but also filled with hope, joy, and flight.
#27. Travelers Leaving for the City
by Ed Skoog
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
About the Book:
Travelers Leaving for the City is a long song of arrivals and departures, centered around the murder of the poet’s grandfather in 1955 in a Pittsburgh hotel, exploring how such events frame memory, history and language for those they touch. The poems probe the anonymity of cities, and the crucible of travel. The historical impact of arousal, rage, regret, and forgiveness is seen in visions of interrogations and hotels. These poems explore how family bonds, and disruptions shape, the mind and language, all the while urging the reader to listen for traces of ancestors in one’s own mind and body.
#28. Praise Song for My Children
by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Publisher: Autumn House Press
About the Book:
Praise Song for My Children celebrates twenty-one years of poetry by one of the most significant African poets of this century. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley guides us through the complex and intertwined highs and lows of motherhood and all the roles that it encompasses: parent, woman, wife, sister, friend. Her work is deeply personal, drawing from her own life and surroundings to convey grief, the bleakness of war, humor, deep devotion, and the hope of possibility. These poems lend an international voice to the tales of motherhood, as Wesley speaks both to the African and to the Western experience of motherhood, particularly black motherhood. She pulls from African motifs and proverbs, utilizing the poetics of both the West and Africa to enrich her striking emotional range. Leading us to the depths of mourning and the heights of tender love, she responds to American police brutality, writing “To be a black woman is to be a woman, / ready to mourn,” and remembers a dear friend who is at once “mother and wife and friend and pillar / and warrior woman all in one.”
Wesley writes poetry that moves with her through life, land, and love, seeing with eyes that have witnessed both national and personal tragedy and redemption. Born in Tugbakeh, Liberia and raised in Monrovia, Wesley immigrated to the United States in 1991 to escape the Liberian civil war. In this moving collection, she invites us to join her as she buries loved ones, explores long-distance connections through social media, and sings bittersweet praises of the women around her, of mothers, and of Africa.
Younger Readers
#29. Surrender Your Sons
by Adam Sass
Publisher: Flux
Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller
About the Book:
Connor Major’s summer break is turning into a nightmare.
His SAT scores bombed, the old man he delivers meals to died, and when he came out to his religious zealot mother, she had him kidnapped and shipped off to a secluded island. His final destination: Nightlight Ministries, a conversion therapy camp that will be his new home until he “changes.”
But Connor’s troubles are only beginning. At Nightlight, everyone has something to hide—from the campers to the “converted” staff and cagey camp director—and it quickly becomes clear that no one is safe. Connor plans to escape and bring the other kidnapped teens with him. But first, he’s exposing the camp’s horrible truths for what they are—and taking this place down.
#30. Camper Girl
by Glenn Erick Miller
Publisher: Fitzroy Books
Genre: YA road trip
About the Book:
While her friends head off to college, Shannon Burke is stuck with a dead-end job and the responsibility of saving her mother’s business. The only bright spot is her upcoming birthday and a visit from her eccentric Aunt Rebecca. But before Shannon can blow out her candles, she receives devastating news: Rebecca is dead. When she learns that her aunt has gifted her a beat-up camper, Shannon decides to sell it for cold, hard cash.
Then she loses her job and finds a mysterious map in the glove box, and in a moment of desperation, she jumps behind the wheel and hits the road. Following Rebecca’s maps, Shannon journeys deep into New York’s Adirondack Mountains where she faces her greatest fears and navigates a new reality that is as unpredictable as the wilderness itself. During her scavenger hunt of self-discovery, Shannon experiences the healing power of nature, uncovers a stunning family secret, and comes to realize that a person’s path through life is never clearly marked.
#31. David Tung Can’t Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College
by Ed Lin
Publisher: Kaya Press
Genre: YA coming of age
About the Book:
In David Tung Can’t Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College, novelist Ed Lin conjures up “a fast-paced, acid-tongued, hilarious teen drama for our age,” says Marie Myung-Ok Lee, acclaimed author of Somebody’s Daughter and Finding My Voice. Both playful and wryly observant, Ed Lin’s YA-debut explores coming-of-age in the Asian diaspora while navigating relationships through race, class, and young love.
David Tung, our nerd-hero, is a Chinese American high-school student who works in his family’s restaurant, competes for top grades at his regular high school located in an upscale, Asian-majority New Jersey suburb, and attends weekend Chinese school in NYC’s working-class Chinatown. While David faces parental pressures to get As and conform to cultural norms and expectations, he’s caught up in the complicated world of high school love triangles―and amid these external pressures is the fear he will die alone, whether he gets into Harvard or not!
#32. The Candy Mafia
by Lavie Tidhar
Publisher: Peachtree Publishing
Genre: Middle Grade Mystery
About the Book:
When notorious candy gangster Eddie de Menthe asks for her help to find a missing teddy bear, Nelle Faulkner is on the case. But as soon as the teddy turns up, Eddie himself goes missing! As a seemingly innocent investigation unravels into something more ominous, Nelle and her friends quickly find themselves swept up in a shady underworld of sweets smugglers, back alley deals, and storefront firebombs.
If Nelle has any hope of tracking down her missing client, first she’ll have to unmask the true faces behind the smuggling ring. Can Nelle and her friends find a way to take the cake? Or will they come to a sticky end…?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Bugsy Malone in this page-turning mystery from World Fantasy Award-winning author Lavie Tidhar. With moody illustrations by Daniel Duncan, readers will be sucked into the action-packed narrative as Nelle pulls the curtain back on black-market candy rings.
And that’s all you’re getting out of me this year. Which books from indie presses were your favorite this year?
About the Curator
Joe Walters is the 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.
Thank you for reading “32 Impressive Indie Press Books from 2020” by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.
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This giveaway has expired.
To celebrate the launch of our brand new IBR Group Beta Reading service, we decided to spread around some literary love. As writers ourselves, we know first-hand how difficult it is to receive enough quality opinions on our manuscripts prior to submission or publication. And we also know how important it is.
So we decided to bring an end to the struggle. And this time, for one lucky writer, the end of that struggle is free. The winner of this giveaway will receive 5 professional beta readers’ feedback on their full manuscript (40,000 to 110,000 words) within 5 weeks.
If you have finished a draft of your fiction or creative nonfiction manuscript, this giveaway is for you. Fill out the boxes below to enter for a chance to win. You have until 11:59 PM (EST) on Sunday 3.24.2019 to enter. The winner will be announced via email and social media on Monday 3.25.2019. We’d really love to see your name in there.
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Laura Morrison wins the IBR Book of the Month Contest with her thrilling, spine-tingling, and wonderfully weird novella Come Back to the Swamp!
IBR’s editor-in-chief Joe Walters sat down with the author to discuss main characters, evil swamps, the “don’t go in there!” trope, and more.
Interview with Laura Morrison
What Readers Want to Know:
IBR: Laura, thank you so much for writing Come Back to the Swamp. It enthralled us from beginning to end, proving to be an excellent choice for IBR’s Book of the Month. The book’s strange plotline and even stranger characters created a truly unique experience for our readers. What made you first begin this project?
LM: About ten years back when I lived in New Jersey, I worked at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge removing invasive plants. One day, out of nowhere, this crazy old lady rose out of the muck. This chance encounter started me down a terrifying, supernatural, life-changing journey that I just had to get it down on the page so the world could know terror that dwells within the swamp. And that’s all a lie except that I worked at Great Swamp NWR.
Really, it’s just that when I was out in the swamp getting all scratched up by thorny plants and getting eaten by mosquitos and ticks, I started thinking what a great setting a swamp would be for a story that was unsettling or scary in tone. It took me a few years to get started on it, but eventually I sat down and began writing, and Swamp just sorta happened.
IBR: As you may remember from our review, we admire Bernice for her ability to embrace her conflicts and drive this entertaining story forward. Not only does she approach her issues with bravery and strength, but she also does it with humor. If you could compare her to a few real-life and fictional characters, who would they be and why?
LM: As far as real-life individuals who inspired Bernice, first and foremost is Jane Goodall. I love her bravery, strength, and curiosity. A woman going off to research gorillas in the middle of the jungle when she was in her 20’s–in the 1960s no less–was quite a thing.
Another real-life influence is myself, of course. I’m an environmental scientist by training, I worked with invasive species, and I like space operas. My younger sister was also an influence for Bernice. She studies snakes and turtles, and her stories about her fieldwork were often in the back of my mind when I was writing.
As for fictional characters, I’d say Bernice is a mix of Hermione Granger, Westley from The Princess Bride, and Marina Singh from State of Wonder. Hermione has Bernice’s determination, intelligence, and bravery. Same for Westley, except he’s not exceptionally bright–sorry, Westley! I call it like I see it. He does, however, know a thing or two about swamps, seeing as how he got Buttercup through the Fire Swamp alive. State of Wonder is one of my absolute favorite books, and the main character, Marina Singh, is a pharmacologist who goes down to the Amazon and has a pretty hellish time; she only manages to get through it as well as she does due to her strength of character.
None of them really have Bernice’s sense of humor, however. My sister and I are the only people in this list of influences who are very funny.
IBR: Come Back to the Swamp opens with a riveting passage describing the invasive species in the swamp and how they illustrate “the sad downsides of globalization.” Because this opens the novella, we consider the environmental aspects of the novella to be quite important. What else do you believe that readers could take away from Come Back to the Swamp from an environmental standpoint?
LM: While I didn’t intentionally plant an environmental message in the story, my opinions definitely bleed through in this book and everything I write. For instance, the swamp in this story has a very definite power. I love the idea that no matter what people do to the natural world, and no matter how much they encroach on it, in the end nature will always be able to bounce back in some capacity–perhaps not in the way it has evolved to be through the millennia, but nature really does have a powerful ability to keep on going.
IBR: What is one thing you would like readers to know before they start Come Back to the Swamp?
LM: Be prepared to be nervous next time you’re out in the wilderness alone. It’s probably rather evil of me, but I love the feedback I got from beta readers that after they read Swamp they found themselves looking over their shoulders when they were out hiking, and wondering what might be lurking behind the trees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDZ38Hm3-o
What Writers Want to Know:
IBR: Like any good horror film, your book has the ability to urge readers to yell out, “Don’t go in there!” at any moment. But with your book, you make it clear why the character feels like he/she must “go in there.” Do you have any advice for how writers can effectively move the plot forward in such a believable way?
LM: I find that it’s helpful having thoughtful characters who go into the “Don’t go in there” situations with their eyes wide open. They see why they shouldn’t do it and they also see why they might want or need to. They weigh the consequences of both options and make their decision. It’s the characters who stupidly go running from safety and into obvious danger with no thought at all that I feel are unrealistic. The more they have a spirit of “Yes, I know this is dumb but here are reasons A, B, and C that I need to do it anyway” the better it is because the reader can then see that though the character is still doing a stupid thing it at least makes a bit of sense on some level.
Also, my main character Bernice clings quite tenaciously to science and logic, even in the face of what most others might see as the blatantly supernatural. Consequently, she finds it very hard to accept the supernatural, and her mind is quite good at finding ways to explain it away. Once she has pushed herself sufficiently far into denial, it’s easier for her to go into supernatural-related danger than it would be for a person who accepted the supernatural things.
IBR: Writers love to hear about a published writer’s early struggles, and unfortunately for you, we do too. What was the most difficult aspect of writing or publishing this book?
LM: If we were talking about general writing struggles I could rant for hours about the difficulties, but since we’re talking about Swamp specifically I have to honestly say the whole process was oddly easy. Usually I have to jam a bit of writing time in between parenting and gardening and beekeeping and all the other non-writer aspects of my life. But when I wrote this particular book I happened to be visiting my in-laws; when my kiddos are visiting grandparents they want nothing to do with their parents anymore because grandparents are much more fun, so I had an entire week where I had unlimited writing time. Since Swamp is only about 33,000 words, I was able to finish it in a week. It was amazing. I haven’t had as easy a time of writing a book before or since.
One of the characters, Kevin, did give me a lot of trouble, though. He was a headache in edits. I couldn’t make him a consistent character. I was only able to sort him out with the help of two of my writer friends who gave excellent advice.
As far as finding a publisher, there aren’t that many places that take novella-length stories so I didn’t have many places I could query, especially when I discounted the ones who turned up their noses at speculative fiction and humor. When I found Black Spot Books’ website I fell in love. They felt like such a perfect fit. I’m still stunned and grateful that they felt the same. Once Swamp was in their hands it was smooth sailing. The editing, the design, the marketing. Swamp and I are very, very lucky.
IBR: Before you leave us to create your next scintillating thriller, could you share some specific advice for an author looking to get published?
LM: In my case, all I had to do was go to the nearest crossroads at midnight and wait until this mysterious, dark figure materialized out of thin air before me. I asked, “Hey, will you give me a writing contract?” and he intoned in a voice to chill the marrow, “Sure thing, but the price is your soul.” Since getting published is really hard, I was like, “Cool, let’s do this,” and the next day Black Spot Books contacted me!
But also, write a book you love and believe in, share it with a few writers whose writing you respect, get their opinions, fine tune the manuscript, and begin hunting for a publisher. If you don’t personally know any writers whose writing you respect, join a writing group and find a few people; it takes a while and a lot of reading to make meaningful connections, but it is so, so worth it; finding a good group of writing friends is hands down the thing that has helped my writing the most, and with the magic of the internet any writer can find like-minded people, no matter how obscure their genre of choice or style. Never, ever give up. If you give up, you’ll certainly never get published. The more you try, the greater your chances.
| Laura Morrison lives in the Metro Detroit area with her husband, daughters, cats, and vegetable garden. She has a bachelor’s degree in applied ecology and environmental science from Michigan Technological University. Before she was a writer and stay-at-home mom, she battled invasive species and researched wood turtles. Come Back to the Swamp is her first novella and second book. |
| Website: Laura Morrison |
| Pre-order Come Back to the Swamp from Amazon: Here |
| Twitter: @PonyRiot |
| Goodreads: Come Back to the Swamp |
| Facebook: Writer of Stuff |
| Other Review: Publishers Weekly |
| Author Interview: Black Spot Books |
| Independent Book Review: Come Back to the Swamp |
To have the chance to be the next book of the month winner, get your book reviewed here.
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