It can be easy to dismiss popular culture as trite and inconsequential. Superhero movies, fantasy television shows, romance novels, Korean pop music; it can all seem a little meaningless, even to the fans. I, personally, have been known to lose interest in something if I sense that it is becoming “too popular.” But Martin Puchner’s […]
Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11pm tonight. But our narrator does not know that yet. In fact, he does not know anything, including his own name. Minutes ago, he woke up in the woods yelling the name Anna, heard a scream that was abruptly cut off, and was sent back to a crumbling manor […]
Ganymedes Piscero is in the last place he would ever want to be: on a magical ship traveling toward the most magical place on the continent, surrounded by the heirs to the provinces of Concordia – who all have magical gifts, and who all hate him. Ganymedes – he prefers Dee, actually – is also […]
Becky Chambers’ A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT is a small book, but it means a lot to me. I’ve actually read it twice: once when the library bought it back in 2021 and now a second time. I love its optimistic view of the future and the ways that Chambers’ world incorporates nature and technology […]
Adina Giorno is born in September 1977 at the moment that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is launched into space. Voyager 1 is a probe designed to record data about the outer Solar System and transmit that data back to Earth. Adina has been sent to Earth with the opposite mission. When Adina is four years […]
Miye Lee’s THE DALLERGUT DREAM DEPARTMENT STORE imagines a world that our subconscious minds visit while we sleep. We do not remember this world when we wake up, but it is where we purchase our dreams every night. The novel is set almost exclusively in this dream world. The main character, Penny, has just been […]
The unnamed narrator of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s PIZZA GIRL is an eighteen-year-old pregnant woman working as a delivery driver for a local pizza restaurant. She feels unmoored from her life – overwhelmed and directionless – and unable to connect to the child growing inside her. Until she meets Jenny Hauser. Jenny is also feeling overwhelmed […]
A halt to her archeological dig and the vague mention from her brother that something seems off with their mother send Sam Montgomery across the country to her mother’s house in North Carolina. The house on Lammergeier Lane was never her favorite place to be. It used to belong to Sam’s grandmother, Gran Mae – […]
One year ago, author and paleobiologist Sal Drake died in a car crash on a winding mountain road in Italy. He left behind a wife – Jane – and two teenage daughters, Eve and Vera. Each of them has been struggling with this loss in her own way. Vera, barely thirteen, longs for stability and […]
Natasha Pulley’s THE KINGDOMS opens in an alternate London – one controlled by the French following their victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The city has been repurposed as a hub for industry. Written English has been outlawed and French citizens own most of the remaining homes and businesses. In this other London, Joe Tournier discovers […]
1901 East 20th Street
Joplin, MO 64804
Phone: 417-623-7953
