Closed Season

Monika Herceg

Translated by Marina Veverec

Sandorf Passage

In Croatian, lovostaj means “closed season,” a time when hunting is prohibited. Animals that are hunted by humans are allowed to relax during this time of year, not having to live in fear of being shot. The poems gathered in this award-winning collection by Monika Herceg fuse physics with politics to create righteously angry and alarmingly memorable poems, exploring new ways to express the horrors women the world over have been, and are continually, forced to deal with in a painfully patriarchal world. “Monika Herceg’s poetry is like a wound through which the world shines—painful, true, saturated with memory and anger, but also with hope for new stories. Her poems, arising from the experience of war, exile, and violence, transcend the boundaries of time and geography to stand up for those who never had a voice”—Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Laureate.

Spine of the Hindu Kush

Mike Bennett

Wargate Books

The Warlock. He is unseen and anonymous. A covert agent in charge of a program designed to disrupt one of the most dangerous alliances in the history of the world. Although the black budgets fund his work, no American authority has issued his orders or given him permission to act. He simply does what he must. With Russia and China pulling the strings for the rest of their partners in Iran and Turkey, the Warlock's mission is all too clear: Conduct preemptive operations against economic targets. Cripple America's enemy, not by direct action, but by removing their ability to travel, talk, and trade. As the Warlock pushes against the Alliance, a series of well-orchestrated deceptions puts China at Russia's throat, while the Russians accuse their allies in Turkey of foul play. If the operation hits hard, the Alliance crumbles, and no one suspects the Warlock was ever in play.

Negative Peace

David S. Florig

Independently Published

All he wanted was to create world peace. Negative Peace would have to do. Positive Peace—the presence of justice and respect for human dignity—would just have to wait. Was ending war a bit ambitious? Of course it was. Was it worth trying? Certainly. To succeed, Joshua Sheehan, the first United States President from Maine, would have to be bold, decisive and trustworthy. Trustworthy being the most elusive trait. Along the way, he would have to throw some curling stones with the Chinese president, too. From architectural school to the mayor's office in Bucksport, where he faces down the book-banning Moms For Freedom, Joshua has decisions to make. Will he make the right ones?

Tommy's War

Roger Pepper

Independently Published

In 1939, in the growing shadows of World War II, young Tommy Parker, his mother, and his sister leave their London house for the Midlands to avoid the German bombing. As evacuees, they endure a challenging time living with distant relatives until they find a new home south of London. Tommy’s ambitious father, a Lieutenant in the British Army, joins the fighting in far-off lands—from the sun-scorched deserts of Egypt to the ravaged streets of Italy and Germany. Tommy’s world begins to fall apart when letters from his father grow scarce, and the blast from a German V1 bomb shatters the front of the family’s house. Torn by the harsh realities of War and parental conflict, Tommy fights back.

The Competition of Unfinished Stories

Sener Ozmen

Translated by Nicholas Glastonbury

Sandorf Passage

Set in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, The Competition of Unfinished Stories shadows Sertac Karan, a vehement atheist who teaches at an Islamic school. Subjugated by the Turkish authorities, emasculated by his wife, harangued by his family and students, and jaded by prospects for a Kurdish revolution, Sertac begins to lose his mind. Seeking narrative grounding over his life in the stories he tries to write, Sertac instead finds that the eclectic characters populating his world have fully untethered him from reality. As the novel progresses, these characters—as well as the book’s author and translator—try, and fail, to take control over Sertac’s story, blurring the lines between his waking fantasies, his nightmares, and his fictions. At turns brash, hilarious, unsettling, and poignant, Sertac’s dizzying tale makes it all too clear how language, no matter which one is being used, fails us as often as it helps us.

Brush With Fire

Kim Yesis

Independently Published

Picking up where award-winning Artifice left off, Brush with Fire is Book 2 of the Mayenne Bay Series, continuing the story of Mayenne Bay, a Mid Coast harbor town trying to find its footing. A mysterious fire. Two missing women. Crank letters to the editor. The town is grappling with more than just jobs and housing. Newcomer Claire Munro, practiced people-watcher and unwitting confidante to troubled strangers, searches for answers, but the pull of her old life and the unnerving uncertainty of the new are powerful distractions.