This is a short and inventive retelling of the story of Penelope (from the Odyssey). It is beautifully told, and well worth the short time it will take to read.

This is a novella about family and resilience, set in the Pennsylvania coal country. George Ferris has worked hard to build a good life for himself and his family, but there's a coal fire burning underground, and it threatens all that he has built. The story follows him as he tries to figure out how to respond and struggles to protect his family from the slow-moving disaster. It was inspired by actual events in Centralia, Pennsylvania, and provides a gripping dramatization of how an external catastrophe can shake the foundations of your life.

This is a detective story set in a strange near future in which anyone who is intentionally killed almost always returns to life, naked, at home. It seems like a ridiculous premise, but Scalzi makes it believable, and provides a great, fast-paced detective story, too.

This is a really fun story, told from the perspective of aliens. To tell you too much about the plot would ruin some of the fun of reading the story, so I'll just say that the aliens are among the most interesting and believable I've ever come across in my reading, and the story leaves you thinking.

I've always enjoyed Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski detective novels, so I come to Wildcat as someone who already knows and loves the adult V.I. This short ebook is not about the adult V.I., though. It is about Warshawski when she is still Victoria, a 10 year old girl worried about her police officer father during a turbulent and ugly time in Chicago's history. Although the backstory it provides for fans of V.I.

This is the story of a boy in rural India who tries to break the boundaries imposed by his caste and attend school. The cost of this decision is beyond what he or anyone else in is family expects. This story has a clear message, but it is an important message and the storytelling is good enough to support it.

This is a set of linked essays ostensibly about loving New York City and then leaving it, but really about growing into adulthood and learning to be comfortable in your own skin. Choi's writing is funny and insightful, and the book is a lot of fun to read.

This is the story of Xin, who inherits a vineyard on a distant planet and moves there to build a new life, only to have an interstellar war intervene. It is very much a sci fi novella, but the focus of the story is on how everyday people survive and build a life in the midst of war, and on the meaning of family and identity. This novella is published by my company, Annorlunda Books, and it is a great example of the type of fiction I like to publish: entertaining to read, but thought-provoking, too.