About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Positive Booklist Alongside the dynamics of culture, identity, and class, Kokui’s journey finely captures the formative shifts and bittersweet revelations of womanhood.
Anna Noyes
Positive Booklist Backdropped by the aura and lore of the island, Noyes’ captivating debut novel is a vivid journey into womanhood, self-discovery, and the bonds of family.
Kimberly King Parsons
Positive Booklist Parson’s captivating novel is wholly alert to the untidiness of life, and Kit’s stream of thought is sensationally alive, a heart-wrenching foray into the complexity of loss and identity.
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
Positive Booklist \"As the characters’ paths twine with fervor, Ruiz-Grossman’s engaging tale offers a vivid exploration of modern-day disparities within the timeless and universal search for belonging and self-determination.\
Delphine de Vigan, trans. by Alison Anderson
Positive Booklist Blending suspense and social commentary, de Vigan’s tale offers various perspectives on social media and its constructs of reality.
Genevieve Plunkett
Positive Booklist Bracing ... Plunkett’s vivid narrative is an intense, dizzying exploration into elusive realities and volatile truths.
Beatriz Williams
Positive Booklist As best-selling Williams’ latest vivid historical novel alternates with measured suspense between present and past, secrets and infidelities are exposed, and Emilia finds herself forced to choose between loyalty and the desires of the heart.
Emma Cline
Positive Booklist Absorbing ... Cline’s captivating narrative effortlessly weaves Alex’s unapologetic boldness into the varied lives she disrupts.
Lydia Conklin
Positive Booklist Embracing eagerness and insecurity, doubt and fortitude, Conklin’s 10 tales resonate through the characters’ dynamic moments of realization.
Nell Zink
Positive Booklist Zink’s winding tale is sly and sharply rendered.
Alexander MacLeod
Positive Booklist Engrossing ... Populated by family and acquaintances of all stripes, MacLeod’s sly tales find characters reconsidering present assumptions and the unknown expanses of their own futures and those of the worlds they inhabit.
Alix Ohlin
Positive Booklist ... riveting ... Ohlin’s engrossing short stories offer sharp insights into her characters’ precarious situations.
Genevieve Plunkett
Rave Booklist Plunkett’s nuanced debut story collection follows characters navigating and identifying the shifts and relationships in their lives, present and past ... With bracing honesty, Plunkett’s richly drawn narratives bring emotional depth to the characters’ struggles and internal conflcts.
Eleanor Morse
Positive Booklist Morse’s engrossing new novel charts the transitions of a family set against the shifting social landscapes of 1960s America ... Morse weaves an entrancing tale that explores the intricacies of familial, social, and personal transformation and the lingering mystery of what may come.
Katherine Heiny
Positive Booklist ... engrossing, tender ... With sharply drawn portraits and acerbic wit, Heiny captures emotions, bonds, revelations, and heartbreak in this tale of unconventional interactions.
Elizabeth McCracken
Positive Booklist [An] assured collection ... McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.
Joyce Carol Oates
Positive Booklist ... stirring ... In these haunting and timely tales, there are no easy answers for Oates’ characters as they contend with life’s labyrinths and provocations.
Shruti Swamy
Positive Booklist ... haunting ... Spanning the geographical and social distance between India and the U.S., Swamy’s 12 tales illuminate her characters’ imperfections and struggles, ultimately forming an attuned and mystical exploration into the enigmas of being human.
Emma Cline
Rave Booklist ... a nuanced story collection portraying a variety of characters navigating uneasy transitions in their lives ... Cline explores her characters’ tricky connections, new and old, to those around them ... Cline’s 10 stories constitute a riveting, timely tapestry of realizations, motivations, and desires.
Araminta Hall
Positive Booklist While the investigation into Nancy’s murder is the electric cord charging Hall’s...absorbing novel, it also tracks the journeys of the friends and reveals Nancy’s perspective leading up to her death ... Hall’s astute novel unravels a gripping mystery and explores the complicated shifts of personal and familial relationships and the conflicts between societal expectations and inner desires.
Jordan Kisner
Positive Booklist In her forthright first essay collection, Kisner explores a variety of topics, from adolescence to mental health, relationships, and religion ... Many of Kisner’s works reverberate with the unease of the unknown, blending experiences both visceral and existential ... Written with resilience and candor, Kisner’s essays offer genuine examination of the realities of here and now and life’s universal paradoxes.
Miriam Cohen
Positive Booklist Cohens’ vivid first story collection captures the vulnerabilities and compulsions of varied female characters as they come of age. The blurred innocence of childhood and realities of adulthood are intriguingly exposed in these linked tales ... Cohen’s 14 stories offer an intimate examination of the complexities of her characters’ lives, particularly their struggles between compassion and obligation.
Iona Grey
Positive Booklist ... an absorbing tale of love, loss, and the ties that bind ... the shifting narratives form a sweeping historical saga that captures the desires and dilemmas of the heart.
Nino Cipri
Positive Booklist ... inventive ... The fantastical landscapes of Cipri’s nine tales heighten the moments of crisis that force characters to confront the here and now as well as life’s gritty unknowns.
Kimberly King Parsons
Positive Booklist Set largely in and around Texas, Parson’s assured debut story collection finds characters on the cusp of uneasy change ... In many of the stories, characters mine and confront unexpected truths ... Imbued with the expanses of their landscapes, Parson’s dozen tales portray characters navigating unavoidable shifts in the realities of their lives.
Jordi Punti
Positive Booklist Puntí’s searing short stories, set mainly in Spain, feature characters searching for control, in spite of their general oblivion, navigating moments of regret alongside unexpected grace ... Puntí is unafraid to explore the uncomfortable rifts of his characters’ lives, particularly the lies they tell themselves to embolden or confront their justifications of their situations.
Olga Tokarczuk, Trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Positive Booklist ... captivating ... Mythical and distinctive, Tokarczuk’s translated novel erupts off the page, artfully telling a linear tale while also weaving in the metaphysical, multilayered nuances of Janina’s life.
Samanta Schweblin, Trans. by Megan McDowell
Positive Booklist Intense ... These 20 tales have a visceral effect as Schweblin navigates the extremes of her characters’ actions and thoughts, both healing and destructive.
Susan Conley
Positive Booklist Conleys’ reflective, mesmerizing narrative crafts a compelling journey as her protagonist opens up to her vulnerabilities and truths.
Jen Beagin
Positive Booklist Mona, the compelling protagonist in Beagin’s smart and funny debut, makes a living as a cleaning lady in Massachusetts, while volunteering at a clean-needle exchange ... Mona’s internal struggles are thoughtfully realized, and Beagin’s sharply drawn characters share the universal longing for connection.
Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Positive Booklist Bhuvaneswar’s compelling stories portray diverse characters grappling with shifts in their lives ... Internal ruminations run deep, and Bhuvaneswar’s 17 tales give voice to a variety of characters, sorrows, and experiences, constituting a striking collection.
Valerie Trueblood
Positive Booklist Terrarium offers a landmark collection of stories from a distinguished author. Selections from several of Trueblood’s (Criminals: Love Stories​, 2016) previous books showcase characters who grapple with relationships, yearnings, and the pull of defiance ... These 19 tales also cast light on the entanglements of conscience ... Closing out the collection is a substantial set of new stories and vignettes, which feature notably succinct ruminations that manage to capture the nuance of her earlier works ... Trueblood’s stories question, explore, and expose as they offer unexpected connections and deeply human realizations.
Victoria Patterson
Positive Booklist Patterson’s...latest story collection follows characters in the throes of addiction and loss, journeying away from spaces in which they no longer belong ... Characters are plagued by their experiences and afflictions, entangled with the need to cope alongside an urgency to break free. Dark yet assured, Patterson’s short stories expose and explore the complicated ruptures of the human experience.
Jen Silverman
Positive Booklist \"Largely alternating between the United States and Japan, characters are at times disoriented and vulnerable, and their struggles are deeply felt ... Vivid and passionate, Silverman’s 11 tales offer affecting and bracing journeys.\
Olga Tokarczuk, Trans. by Jennifer Croft
Positive Booklist \"Characters are drawn to precision, the concept of specimens, and macabre anomalies. Tokarczuk’s tales vary in length and are complex and layered, forming an exploration into the impermanence of existence and experience.\
Christine Schutt
Positive Booklist Online \"Schutt’s restrained, provoking tales hold detailed impressions at arm’s length, as it were, leaving readers to explore life’s uneasy truths viewed through an unrelenting lens.\
Anjali Sachdeva
Positive Booklist Sachdeva’s striking story collection, her first book, explores everyday conflicts in highly imaginative ways ... Though some of Sachdeva’s nine tales bend into the surreal, they never lose the pulse of the human spirit, creating a distinctive, thought-provoking work.