Merrill ties her “Summer of Hush” M/M romance series to the Carnival of Mysteries shared world with this novel that offers the healing-centered bonding of rock-and-roll hearts with a touch of magical realism. Strong and silent Kal emerges from a preternaturally long year as the calliopist of a traveling carnival, with scars, amnesia and a mystical promise that he will have what he needs, directly into a roadie gig on Warped Tour, where he discovers that his instrument wrangling skills work well in the modern world. Backdrop Silhouette’s lead singer Ryan Wells is quickly smitten after finding Kal playing keyboard in their trailer, and they soon develop a mutually protective love and trust that allows them each to engage their past trauma and follow their dreams.

Merrill deftly uses the standard format of romance—alternating perspectives of the two mains—to reflect the difference between Kal’s inner and outer expression, allowing her to share Kal’s perspective on modern life from his place outside of normal time and his slowly returning memories of childhood trauma well before he’s ready to speak, while also leaning into the mystical strangeness he presents to the outside.

Playful tour-bus camaraderie, casual acceptance of gay relationships, and a general aesthetic of goodwill among the members of Hush, with whom Kal and Ryan end up spending most of the book, set an overall light tone that balances the trauma work that Merrill sets as the primary challenge for the characters. Secondary characters are thoughtfully developed, even for readers who have not met them in earlier volumes: music lovers will see a lot of their joy reflected here, and plot arcs around band drama, record-label rules, and creative expression create an enjoyable ensemble story separate from the romance arc. The relationship between Ryan, his dead best friend’s witchy aunts, and the carnival feels emotionally convincing compared to the rest of the characterization, but otherwise the whole novel pulls together organically.

Takeaway: Sweet gay romance with a focus on growth after trauma and a mystic, musical touch.

Comparable Titles: Cecilia Tan’s Taking the Lead, Ella Frank and Brooke Blaine’s Halo.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

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Rachlin’s debut novel combines his legal expertise with the thriller suspense of a nightmare-plagued lawyer in over his head in a world of betrayal, murder, and the drug trade. With a family facing health crises and store clerks threatening to cut up his credit cards, Jake Dalton feels he must go against his wife’s wishes to fulfill his duty as a provider—and to not only salvage his legal career but “rocket” it. Even though selling a jury on this prospective client’s innocence would be like “climbing Mt. Everest in the dead of winter,” Dalton takes on a high-paying cocaine-trafficking case that, inevitably, becomes much more dramatic—even deadly—than he was expecting. Dalton finds himself deep in trouble, not just with drug mules he represents, whose employers have a propensity for throat-slitting, but with the feds as well.

Readers can expect a thriller that charts over two criminal cases with big money and lives on the line as Conspiracy of Lies grapples with questions that Rachlin examines with compelling detail and persuasive authority. How can justice be best served? Who is innocent and how can they be protected? To those legal dilemmas, Rachlin adds an evergreen: How far will Dalton go to protect his family—and will his wife Elenea countenance his choice to defend drug runners? Driven through the eyes of Dalton, a character without extensive expertise in criminal law, the story offers readers the chance to see potential pitfalls that the protagonist himself does not.

The novel particularly shines in courtroom passages offering full accounts of the lawyers, judges, and juries and their complex procedural drama. Also engaging, but pained, is the romantic drama between Dalton and Elena, who is traumatized by childhood experiences with cartel violence in Colombia, and tells Dalton “Protecting the dregs of Miami isn’t why I helped you through Yale.” His constant choices to choose his career over his commitment to her give the book a raw tension.

Takeaway: Thriller about a lawyer defending drug traffickers—over his family’s wishes.

Comparable Titles: Peter O’Mahoney’s The Southern Lawyer, Robert Whitlow’s Relative Justice.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

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Koubourlis (author of A Concordance to the Poems of Osip Mandelstam) offers a thought-provoking collection of auto-fiction stories drawn from a childhood that found him bearing witness to violence both intimate and epochal. The opening pages contemplate a father whipping his son—it’s the narrator’s father wielding the belt, and the narrator’s brother on the receiving end—and also the “60,000 Greek Jews” who “were herded cattle-like for shipment to forced labor or extermination camps.” At times it can be difficult to tell if these accounts are memory-based essays or works of fiction fortified by memory. But it’s their urgency and spirit of restless moral inquiry that matters, as Koubourlis contemplates complex questions of culture, parentage, violence and more.

Growing up in World War II and the Greek Civil War, and crediting his “life's first horrific memory to Mussolini,” Koubourlis was raised by strict parents who did their best to keep him and his brother out of the kind of mischief that might end up in a book of short stories. Often the boys felt the sting of their father’s belt as a result of their horseplay or innocent ineptitude. Readers will feel the terror of a young boy as his first memory is the Italian bombing of his hometown in Greece, but humor is never far away. (Readers sensitive to material should take note.)

In the book’s second half, the stories build in intensity, exploring individuals’ connectedness to the world and our closest environs, with a pained yet tender story of the adult narrator, in Chile with his wife, tending to a wayward kitten, Grits. Sometimes Cruel concludes with an essay on a song heard in a dream and Koubourlis’s searching thoughts about its meaning. A YouTube link offers readers a chance to hear the melody that Koubourlis describes as “powerful but calm, as if to emphasize that everything is alright, as it should be.” This is an enigmatic book that, for readers of a contemplative bent, will linger in the mind.

Takeaway: Searching, enigmatic memory stories of growing up and living in a violent world.

Comparable Titles: Caitlin Forst’s NDA: An Autofiction Anthology, the Tome Stone’s Summer of My Greek Taverna.

Production grades
Cover: B-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A-
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

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Set in a distant future in the year 2998, Ward’s debut is the story of Colonel Thomas “Dead-Smoke” Cade, a hunter of golems—stone beasts that are “intelligent, ferociously strong, and too tough to be dealt with using conventional means"—and once decorated soldier of the 51st Quick Reaction Force, now retired and leading a seemingly normal life on the planet Ophir Prime with his friend, Sullivan Rosewood. Cade’s brought back into the action when an unknown man pays a surprise visit and makes him an offer he literally cannot refuse: he must come out of retirement to hunt down an incredibly dangerous “parent” golem. He, alongside 39 other masons, including his ex-fiancée, Kat, are recruited to go to a planet on the Outer Arm of the Milky Way and lead the hunt.

Cade is reunited with his friends from his hunting days as they drink the bar away, slay evil forces (including “a treasonous bunch of racists”) and golems alike, and even manage to create an earthquake. The journey comes with trials and tribulations, plus a devastating body count, as Ward conjures intense, inventive action that moves quickly. Unknown to the others is Thomas’s pivotal battle with the most dangerous demon—an entity in his head that takes over his mind at the slightest hint of Phantom, the planet that changed Cade forever. The only way towards redemption is accepting and coming clean about the reality of what happened on Phantom.

Narrated in brisk, hard-edged first-person, the story immerses readers in its action and the complex psyche of its protagonist, complete with moments of horror. Ward's skillful storytelling is evident in his ability to craft distinctive backstories for each of his vast range of characters, while treating seriously issues of racism, PTSD, wealth, and power. With thoughtful world-building, Ward will inspire military SF readers to turn the pages frantically to get to the truth of what went down on Phantom. The gut-wrenching climax raises enough questions unanswered to whet appetites for a sequel.

Takeaway: Gripping SF monster-hunt with tantalizing mysteries.

Comparable Titles: Ross Buzzell’s Legacy Earth, J.N. Chaney and Scott Moon’s Galactic Shield.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

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