Dactyli are elemental magicians who can access the “memories” of the Earth; as one character explains, “The earth is alive. It lives and breathes and hears and sees, just like you and me.” The group harnesses nature’s power and preserves its narrative as keepers of the sgeulachds, a compilation of objective truths. These mages have encoded and guarded living history for thousands of years, but time has eroded their strength, reducing them to relics of the very past they seek to protect. A deadly threat emerges that could seal their fate: Alev, a rogue fire mage with a thirst for power, is sup ..read more

As a business owner whose patented product has been sold to the Ford Motor Company, the United States Army, and the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, among others, the author is well aware of the difficulties confronting 21st-century manufacturing inside the U.S. Blending his personal success story with commentary on national economic policy, Gardner calls for a renewed national emphasis on manufacturing in this concise treatise and ode to “the unsung strength of America’s core industry.” The book begins with a brief overview of the history of manufacturing in America, suggesting that, as ear ..read more

By June of 1803, 20-year-old Mary Mackenzie has had her fill of the island of Barbados. She and her family have been there for two years, ever since her father was appointed colonial governor of the island, the Crown’s Caribbean center of trade. (Barbados’ wealth is derived from its prodigious production of sugar cane, farmed by African slaves.) It is on the island where Mary first confronts the cruelty with which the British colonists treat their slaves. To her dismay, she discovers that even her beloved father, beset by gambling debts and in need of an income-producing investment, has purch ..read more

The third book in Supplee’s fresh, well-crafted fantasy series Winnie and the “Wizard,” begins with the return of 14-year-old Winnie Harris; her 6-year-old stepbrother, Mikey; and teenage magician Kip to Winnie’s family beach house on Earth after a dangerous mission on an alternative “Frama” world known as Hutra. (The “Frama” worlds, introduced in Book 1 [Frama-12, 2022], are accessed through the use of “Frama-scopes,” magical devices once solely the province of powerful time guardians.) Winnie, famed on Frama worlds as army General Windemere, learns that the pet toad Mikey brought back from ..read more

In their different ways, Blakely Garner, Thera Grey, Grace Howard, and Meg Watson had all been misfits. They bonded at Camp Pendleton, a place for gifted children, with Blakely as their natural leader. Trouble arrived, or was revealed, in the form of tennis coach Jared Crosby, whose good looks made Blakely think she could use an apparently compromising photo Meg took of the two of them to make Clint, a fellow camper, jealous. The prank succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams, and not in a good way. Clint swiped and shared the picture, Crosby got fired, and by the time the dust settled, his ..read more

The folks at the Eastbrook Playhouse have more or less become Tasha Weaver’s family. Under the steady hand of artistic director Arthur Winston, the players have delighted Tasha since she was barely old enough to sit through a show. After Tasha’s mother died of cancer, the sad teen sought solace in the Playhouse’s costume department. While her high school friends went off to college, she stitched gowns and tuxedos that helped make the magic happen. Now, as wardrobe manager, she hopes a revival of Annie Get Your Gun featuring Broadway stars Kurt Mozer and Olivia Grace can boost the Playhouse’s ..read more

Tommy “Stix” Hart is nervous about starting middle school. Already prone to panic attacks after a violent run-in with a bully in third grade, he’s doing his best to get his bearings when a strange encounter with an older boy sets off a chain of events guaranteeing a sixth grade year that will be anything but normal. It turns out that Stix can see ghosts, and Gilbert Greene Middle School is haunted—but luckily not by “the scary, melt-your-face-off kind of ghosts.” Just three deceased kids, Jesse, Summer, and Dante, with unfinished business who need help crossing over. After mustering a great d ..read more

Much like Hamill’s debut, A Cosmology of Monsters (2019), this meaty horror novel is a treat for readers whose nostalgia gravitates to the likes of Stand by Me, Twin Peaks, or, most thematically, Stephen King’s It. In a similar vein to Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black novels or Stephen Graham Jones’ Indian Lake trilogy, Hamill takes some ordinary young people and puts them through the metaphysical wringer to see what’s left at the end. In Clegg, Texas, circa the late 1990s, we meet best pals Hal, Athena, and Erin. Their chance encounter with a lost boy in the woods leads them to classmate Peter an ..read more

“Memory is a labyrinth.” Or perhaps a matrix. Actor Reeves teams up with speculative fictionist Miéville to produce a tale that definitely falls into the latter’s “weird fiction” subgenre. The chief protagonist is the demi-divine Unute, known as B. He’s not nice: “That man does not kill children anymore, when he can avoid doing so, but still, leave him alone,” warns one of the narrators, whose threads of story are distinguished by different typefaces. B is a killer—early on, he explains to a psychiatrist, “I kill and kill and kill again,” adding that he’d really rather be doing something else ..read more

Elyan Hollow was a quiet town on Oregon’s Columbia River until a famous Halloween movie was filmed there. Now it’s a Halloween-themed tourist destination supporting many small businesses, including Lazy Bones Books, which Bailey Briggs’ grandfather is passing on to her. After Bailey’s mother, now a doctor with a second family, got pregnant in high school, Bailey was raised by her grandparents. For the Halloween festival she’s planning, Bailey has extended invitations to three well-known authors, including bestselling Rex Abbot, who graduated from high school in Elyan Hollow. Also in town is a ..read more