Category Archives: Small Press Book Reviews

Mystery!: The Origins Game Fair 2018 Anthology (Down & Out Books) Edited by Chantelle Aimée Osman This short story anthology has something unique. Usually a book of mystery stories is either mundane or mystical; these stories could be either, and … Continue reading →

The Artifacts: A Flint Hills Story by Eric Reynolds (Hadley Rille Books) The Artifacts is a great name for this book, because much of the mystery and action (and paranormal effects) swirl around historical objects in an old, run down … Continue reading →

Glorious Madness: Short Fiction by Jude-Marie Green I’ve known Jude-Marie (Kelly) Green for a long time, ever since I bought one of her stories and she misheard the name of our magazine as Abyssinian Pets. And I am a fan … Continue reading →

Draigon Weather  by Paige L. Chistie Draigon Weather follows the woven lives of its main characters, Cleod and Leiel, and you have to keep track of when you are in each of their timelines: an effort not all readers will … Continue reading →

Simon Says by Bryan Thomas Schmidt Coming out on Oct 15, 2019: This is a police procedural/scifi hybrid with a cop who ends up getting sort of an android partner, almost by accident. Certainly, John Simon was not looking  for … Continue reading →

The Passing of the Pawns (The King’s Daughter, Book2) J. Kathleen Cheney Set in the same world and sequel to The Amestrin Gambit (reviewed here), The Passing of the Pawns tells of further adventures of Ellis, neglected daughter of the … Continue reading →

Fanonymous by M. C. Joudrey Excellent, occasionally lyrical prose, but the narrator does something I found difficult to deal with: he sets up far too many questions in that 31-page opener without giving the reader any answers. It became irritating … Continue reading →

Mouse by Richard Ford Burley Mouse is a book that is never quite what it appears to be. The novel opens on a young autistic boy, the titular Mouse, attending middle school. I tend to read books without having examined … Continue reading →

In Dreaming Bound (Palace of Dreams Book 2) by J. Kathleen Cheney This is a sequel to Cheney’s Dreaming Death, reviewed here, and set in the same world as the series that contains Oathbreaker, Original, and Overseer (all also reviewed … Continue reading →

The Vessel of Ra (Klaereon Scroll, Book 1) by  Catherine Schaff-Stump The book, set in the 1800s, starts with a nice young man, Carlo, a hidden descendant of the Italian renaissance’s famed evil Borgia family, rescuing Lucy Klaereon who tries … Continue reading →