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With I Am Not Alone, Francisco X. Stork has penned a powerful and poignant story. His protagonist Alberto Bocel is an undocumented Mexican in the United States working in order to send money back to Ticul, Mexico, for his mother’s medical bills. Alberto endures symptoms of a mental condition that leaves him oscillating between a cloud of forgetfulness or battling the voice in his head. As a result, he feels broken. When Alberto is accused of murdering Mrs. Macpherson, he wonders if he is capable of such cruelty. Did the voice in his head—whom he has named Captain America—use his hands to commit murder? AtRead More →

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The plot of Pamela N. Harris’s debut novel When You Look Like Us revolves around the life of sixteen-year-old Jay Murphy, his sister Nicole (Nic), and his grandmother Marie Murphy (MiMi). MiMi’s hands are “badges of honor, proof of hard work” (56), and Jay looks forward to the day when she can rest them. He vows that “MiMi is going to retire in Florida, or wherever else she wants to” (17) once he builds her nest egg as repayment for her sacrifices. The family lives in Newport News, Virginia, in a housing project called the Ducts. Despite what other people might think, Jay is livingRead More →

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It starts with a Ouija board. Maria and Lily, roommates and girlfriends at the prestigious Acheron Academy, buy the board for fun, but after it moving on it’s own, strange shadows on the walls, and a fallen chandelier, their lives begin to change…for the worse. Billed as a story of revenge, Robin Talley’s As I Descended is a riveting retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for a modern audience. At Acheron, Delilah Dufrey is the queen. She’s ranked first in the Senior class, captain of the soccer team, and she’s the “unanimously elected homecoming queen” (33). She’s also the first in line for the Cawdor Kingsley FoundationRead More →

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The year is 2118 and New York City is home to the Tower, a skyscraper that spans dozens of blocks and has a total of one thousand floors, “the biggest structure on earth, a whole world unto itself” (7). Telling the sprawling story of five teenage tower dwellers of varying ages, genders, races, and tower levels, Katharine McGee intersects their lives into The Thousandth Floor, a drama worthy of comparison to television’s Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars. Avery Fuller is the wealthiest of the main cast, living on top of the world on the thousandth floor. It’s no secret to her friends that herRead More →