If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Rachel A. Rosen is the author of Cascade, a fantasy ecofiction about trying to do the right thing at the end of the world. Check out her top reads in 2023 here!
If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Dale Stromberg is the author of Melancholic Parables, a collection of short stories exploring the questions, “Are we the same person we were last year? Or last week? Or last story?”.
His top 3 reads in 2023 includes Night Beats’ own Cascade, plus 2 other amazing books. Check it out here!
by Anarchist Review of Books
Yes, the literal Anarchist Review of Books did a feature on The Sad Bastard Cookbook. I’m not screaming with excitement, you’re screaming with excitement. We’re both screaming.
We’re in Issue 6 (not yet available online but keep checking here!) or read the interview/review below.
by Zilla N.
The first thing you have to understand is that Vita Nostra is perfect. When something is its own ideal, fully encapsulated, how can there be a sequel?
The answer is Assassin of Reality.
Sasha is older now, more aware. They are all. They know what is being done to them, and they know why. They cannot become a concept without deconstructing their humanity; they cannot grow without retaining it, at least a little. Without love, and therefore fear, to trap them. They will trade freedom for harmony. They will become the trap.
Except there are always possibilities. A world where the ice fell on neither mother nor baby carriage, where you bought the fire extinguisher, where you swerved away from the bus. A world where love exists without fear.
Be brave, Sasha tells us.
Bellatrix Sakakino has lived many lives. She dampens electricity. She’s radioactive. She longs for a fruit that went extinct before she was born. She’s not above committing a massacre for the sake of a perfect omelet.
Are we the same person we were last year? Or last week? Or last story? Whimsical and dolorous, ironic and absurd, this slippery assortment of stories dances around these questions with ambiguous aplomb.
Melancholic Parables costs money, but Dale’s made his follow-up chapbook, The Galoofus, free here. Enhance your summer confusion with this delightful read.
After a job gone wrong, Special Agent Olgo is trapped within the bowels of Mars with no means of escape. The device that imprisons the trauma within them is about to fail, and the past terrors kept hidden by it must be contained for Olgo’s sanity and everyone’s safety.
From the darkness comes a tiny voice, and a tinier hope: “Hello?”
Looking for a novella with all the grit of Golden Age Sci Fi and all the heart of The Expanse? Rohan is looking for readers. Get a free copy in exchange for an honest review by signing up here.
by Zilla N.
Eat Me(at) by L.M. Cole reminds me that, as a woman, I am a collection of parts to be enjoyed. That what is kindest to to my body may not be what is best to consume. That the flesh bruises and moistons. That what is craved is uniformity, purity, tenderness. That there are ways to achieve this.
The point of blackout poetry is that what is removed enlargens what is left, so the final poem surpasses the space of the original textbook, if only in the mind. If only in the memory of a good meal.
Get your copy from kith books, an indie press takes no prisoners in poetry.
And in the Before Times when our childhood characters had yet not been tainted, I feel in love with a poem which seems in conversation with L.M.’s book. So I link it here, either printed or spoken.
by JoeAnn Hart
JoeAnn Hart at EcoLit Books reviews Query.
Query, a Novel, is snack-sized, but it took me a while to read because I kept laughing coffee out of my nose and onto the page, the best recommendation I can give for a book.
Read the full review here!
