by Nick Gardner

Indie lit has always been counterculture.

It would honestly be nuts for a small press to open their door to submissions without the desire to fight the status quo. The very idea of indie lit is anticapitalist (small presses probably won’t get you rich), anti-establishment (the “Big Five” can eat it), and, for the most part, small presses like fiction that breaks the rules. But what makes a book punk-as-fuck goes beyond the author’s antiauthoritarian leanings. It must have some other pull. It needs music.

While this list is far from exhaustive, it focuses on books of literary fiction that don’t just have that punk fierceness, that blatant challenging of authority, but those that also have the music.

Think Bad Brains, Buzzcocks, Pere Ubu. You can get behind the lyrics, the message, the ethos, the power, but a punk group is nothing if the sound doesn’t make you want to mosh. That’s what makes these specific literary fiction authors stand out: not only the shared goal of challenging the way the reader sees the world, but also an understanding of the aesthetic necessary to keep a reader glued to the page. 

Here are 7 literary fiction books that challenge the status quo.

(Book lists on Independent Book Review are chosen by very picky people. As affiliates, we earn a commission on books you purchase through our links.)

1. Someone Who Isn’t Me

Author: Geoff Rickly

Publisher: Rose Books (2023)

Print Length: 258 pages

ISBN: 9798987581827

Asterism

Amazon

Okay, some can argue that he’s more post-hardcore than punk, but Geoff Rickly’s debut novel, Someone Who Isn’t Me, hums with musical prose that rivals the best lyrical writers of literary fiction.

A heroin addict and lead singer, the protagonist, Geoff, seeks sobriety through the psychedelic drug Ibogaine. His trip sends him on a psychic spiral through his guilt-laden past, forcing him to contend with the person he has become. Rickly depicts Geoff’s wild tour across the United States, not holding back on the bickering or the drugs. It’s a dirty novel in the way that addiction can be dirty. But it also breaks the trend of stories about addiction. Refusing to pause on the fallout, Rickly writes beyond into recovery and hope. 

2. No Names

Author: Greg Hewett

Publisher: Coffee House Press (April 2025)

Print Length: 352 pages

ISBN: 9781566897259

Bookshop

Amazon

Greg Hewett’s No Names is by far the slowest moving of the works of literary fiction in this list. Think Sleep’s Dopesmoker. Okay, maybe it’s doom metal. Whatever the case, punk is the root.

As Hewett skips around from POV to POV, a large focus is a punk band called, of course, The No Names, and the sketchy European tour that ended the band. But there’s also quite a bit of classical music in the background, as well as a long exploration of friendships entangled with sexual experimentation. Maybe the end drags on a bit longer than expected, but the prose holds up, a song that slowly diminishes rather than ending with a crash. 

Looking for more literary fiction recommendations? Check out our best books of 2024!

3. Earth Angel

Author: Madeline Cash

Publisher: CLASH Books (April 18, 2023)

Print Length: 152 pages

ISBN: 9781955904698

Bookshop

Amazon

Easy to read cover-to-cover in a single sitting, Earth Angel is all power chords, heavy and fast. Cash’s sentences are short and piercing and her endings cut to nothing rather than attempting a summation or even a meaning. Because everything is meaningless, right? 

Think Biblical plagues, Isis recruits, childless millennials and millennials with children that they’re not quite sure what to do with. Think designer drugs, broke city dwellers, homicidal fantasies, porn. Maybe Earth Angel is too modern to hold to the ‘80s DIY ethos, but it’s still counterculture AF. It still questions authority, culture, and god. It’s a witty collection for confused kids who definitely don’t want to grow up.

4. Scumbag Summer

Author: Jillian Luft

Publisher: House of Vlad Press (June 2024)

Print Length: 192 pages

ISBN: 9798320644059

Bookshop

Amazon

More sex, more drugs, more blood and fallout, Scumbag Summer explores smoky bowling alleys and dive bars, the crass scenery of Orlando. Though she’s a college grad, the protagonist seems intent on continuing her nihilistic young-adulthood, refusing to settle into any kind of square, middle class grind.

Orlando for her is No Doz and 7 layer burritos, and as she lodges herself more deeply into the dumpster fire, she spots the pages with social commentary, a distrust of wealth and power and an understanding of  “trash culture,” of those stuck in on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy who sometimes can’t even imagine the climb. Scumbag Summer also contains one of the most punk lines I’ve ever read: “Love is a friendly butcher.”

5. Ghosts of East Baltimore

Author: David Simmons

Publisher: Broken River Books (2022)

Print Length: 202 pages

ISBN: 9781940885544

Amazon

A Baltimore native with a deep understanding of the underground, David Simmons shrugs off the rules in his debut literary crime thriller. As with the other books on this list, there’s a unique and manic music behind Simmons’ prose. It’s rough music, blasted loud. I mean what’s more punk than a protagonist named Worm who gets out of prison to find that he’s the only one who can take out a drug ring smuggling dangerous chemicals into his community?

Simmons raises the bar for punk AF literature with his cutting social commentary, including “crack epidemic” history lessons and a deep understanding of Baltimore’s crime and corruption-ridden past. 

6. Hellions

Author: Julia Elliott

Publisher: Tin House Books (April 15, 2025)

Print Length: 272 pages

ISBN: 9781963108064

Bookshop

Amazon

Witches, Cryptids, Ghosts, and other supernatural entities plague the pages of Julia Elliott’s strange collection of longer short fiction. No flash stories here. But just like when you enter a DIY venue and feel surrounded by like minds, the pages of Hellions is a comforting place for those who have normalized the weird.

In “The Maiden,” a community trampoline allows a witchy girl to show up the popular kids with her otherworldly acrobatics before disappearing to her woodland squat. And in “Hellion,” a tough twelve-year-old tames an alligator. Elliott’s stories are filled with loners and weirdos outperforming their normative peers and youngsters challenging their parents’ conservative ideals. What’s more punk than that?

7. Hey You Assholes

Author: Kyle Seibel

Publisher: CLASH Books (March 25, 2025)

Print Length: 272 pages

ISBN: 9781960988393

Bookshop

Amazon

Seibel’s story of trying to publish this debut book of short literary fiction, Hey You Assholes is filled with almost as many bizarre twists as the book itself. It reminds me of a 21st century reenactment of ‘80s punk bands banging down doors to book a studio or distro a record. He couldn’t have found a better home for his book than Clash Books, a publisher of some of the strangest and most energetic fiction on the market. Energetic is the word, because even the longer stories don’t stop driving. ThinkLandowner Plays Dopesmoker 666% Faster and with No Distortion.

Hey You Assholes is a deep dive into the lives of unpopular people: soft-hearted alcoholics, wiley factory workers, and Navy veterans who feel forever lost at sea. None of Seibel’s characters have money or power and they definitely don’t have any respect for The Man. 

Want some thrills in your bookshelf? Check out the best indie thrillers!

About the Author

Nick Gardner is a writer, teacher, and critic who has worked as a winemaker, chef, painter, shoe salesman, and addiction counselor. His latest collection of stories from the Rust Belt, Delinquents And Other Escape Attempts, is out now from Madrona Books. He lives in Ohio and Washington, DC and works as a beer and wine monger in Maryland.

Thank you for reading Nick Gardner’s “Literary Fiction Books That Are Punk AF!” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Literary Fiction Books That Are Punk AF appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

Queer Black women float, grieve, steal, sweat, and fight back in this thrilling connection of stories that put us first.

“Daisy’s mother tells her ways to stay safe, but they all come off as futile superstitions… Don’t go anywhere silent and gentle; leave marks, bite marks, claw marks, anything that can be evidence later.” In the first and titular tale of this short story collection, we meet Daisy, a young woman who can’t shake the disturbing truth of being a potential victim of violence every day of her life simply by existing. She “thinks of every pair of eyes that could have ever possibly raked across her body,” and does everything she can think of to make herself undesirable, to make people turn away from her. She stops washing and begins avoiding eye-contact, attempting to inspire disgust and disinterest as a means of self defense. It’s a desire every woman faced with these truths has considered, incorporating preventative tactics into our lives—knowing that nothing will ever be enough to protect ourselves from the ever-present threat of gender-based violence, but desperately needing to do something to try. 

As I write this review, there’s a collective sense of fear and hopelessness settling over women of color in South Africa, where I live, because of a recent murder of a young woman. But we still have to go to work, buy groceries, make our parents proud, fall in love. This is a reality for Black women: the reality of dating, the reality of being a mother, a daughter, a wife, a teenager who has a crush, the reality of living life day to day against the already crushing backdrop of classism, racism, and the infuriatingly familiar “quirks” of being noticed in public as Black and queer and whatever specific quality is all your own. 

Author Demree McGhee said “society’s violence against us is hell, but we deserve great fiction”—and gives us twisted, twisting tales that pull us in and take us on a ride we couldn’t possibly see coming. These stories are all so soaked in queerness and Blackness that the identity of our protagonist is always undeniable while they’re on myriad fictional rollercoasters.

Sympathy for Wild Girls explores class consciousness in young people; the tormenting shades of toxic masculinity; the delicate folds of female friendship; and the concept of desire as danger, as a road to death (threaded firmly and fiercely into many of the stories but also captured brilliantly by this line: “I didn’t know what to do with my body when it wanted. I only knew how to smother and scream in place of desire.”) 

Demree McGhee captures the elusive truth behind conversations between teenage girls, both filled with awe and simmering with heavy notes of comparison. She conveys the visceral sensuality of another woman applying your makeup while unpacking the difficulty in seeing the true shape of your body and face after years of avoiding yourself. She also writes about the sense of wonder in seeing women who seem completely unburdened by such concepts: “She sat in her body as if she was the only one who ever had to look at it.”

Sympathy for Wild Girls does a great job on the politics of smell too, introducing us to realistic women who do everything they can to avoid their own bodily odor and those who go to extreme lengths so that the women around them will never know they sweat. There’s a dissection of femininity and wealth inequality in every mention of odor, the author exposing the sick influence of generations of impossible, nonsensical hygiene standards on Black women in particular. McGhee also writes insightfully (and disturbingly) about memory, dreams, and the role of scent in building our futures. “I had worked retail jobs since I was thirteen, and most of them left me with some new fear or sense of disgust. I associated the smell of sizzling meat with scraping spit-logged gum off the bottom of tables in my parents’ restaurant. I was a vegetarian until my freshman year of college.”

While occasionally leaning into the speculative, these stories are deeply rooted in reality, introducing us to women whose lives are as complex as our own, women who could very easily be our neighbor, our co-worker, the woman we recognize from the coffee shop every weekday morning, or the daughter of the family who suddenly stopped coming to church last year. 

In Sympathy for Wild Girls, runaways meet religious groups with a strong social media following and a strict idea of cleanliness in the eyes of the Lord. The author writes all of this so beautifully, offering up moments of contemplation on something otherworldly before turning the volume on real life all the way up again—I’m talking about lines that felt like a sledgehammer to my solar plexus: “My mother always wanted me to be grateful for things she didn’t do to me.” And phrasing like a mother describing the idea of her baby looking just like her with the words “She felt like a mirror I pulled from my body.”

In “She Is Waiting,” we meet Ava, who began to float (needing to constantly weigh herself down with rocks to stay on the ground) after she was kidnapped from the park and held captive for a week. She was rescued, but the kidnapper was never identified or caught. Ava, who “woke up in the air, the bedsheet draping her body like a tablecloth, haunting her own bed.” Ava, who is so lonely while grappling with the complexity of surviving the kidnapping, enduring flashbacks and feeling like she’s back in that moment years after everyone’s moved on around her. 

One of my favorite stories, “Butterfruit,” weaves together the stigma and societal shifts in the acceptable frequency of hair washing, depending on whether you’re white or Black, rich or poor. Demree McGhee brilliantly incorporates threads of the main character’s compulsive coping methods—which involves both cleanliness and inhaling cleaning products (“I didn’t have real faith in anything that didn’t have the power to physically change what it was touched, the way bleach made a room simmer with absence” “I sprayed my sheets until they were wet with Lysol. I drenched my windowsill in Fabuloso, wiped my fingerprints off every surface, and got dizzy off the scent of being washed away”)— and contrasts it against her counterpart, who is part of the church’s social media team, branded ‘clean’ in all the visible forums, but messy in her secrets that begin to spill over. This story should be taught in schools! I can’t help imagining the lively discussions that the many vibrant and vital topics this story touches on will inspire in students. There are many twists in this one, and there’s a reveal that made me gasp out loud.

I’ll be thinking about “Throwing Up in a Gated Community,” the devastating story about two girls of very different social and economic classes, who fall into an intimate friendship the way many teenage girls (and many, many queer girls) do, for a long time.

Sometimes McGhee hits these poetic and thought-provoking endings that feel wholly satisfying, while other stories are concluded midway through their unraveling—when things are about to turn inside out and collapse. It’s like someone closing the door on us right as the conversation we’re eavesdropping on gets really juicy. They are not necessarily abrupt endings that leave the stories feeling unfinished but ones that leave the reader with meaning instead of resolution. Even this is testament to McGhee’s immersive writing, because each time this happens, I sat for a few minutes with all the possibilities I was sure would happen next, imagining all the ways the protagonist would mess it up or get into trouble. I always wanted more.

One of the stories that provides a reflective yet mysterious conclusion, and certainly one of my favorites of the book, is “Exchange,” following a young couple who shoplifts regularly while grocery shopping. They fall into a sweet but blurry-edged domestic polyamorous relationship with a store employee who approached them to say she’s watched them steal for a full year and wants to learn their ways, wants to get to know them. Her presence reinvigorates their relationship with each other, and for a moment in time they are thriving as a trio. But then the temptation of stealing a big-screen TV comes between them and everything they were once sure of changes in a blink.

Sympathy for Wild Girls is a book about how “the men who seek girls’ bodies like flowers to yank from the ground” have shaped generations of women, young and old. These stories explore the systemic and inescapable violence Black women are born into and how it floods into every aspect of their lives, from their self-actualization to their friendships with other women. In addition to the difficult themes I’ve mentioned above, readers should note that many of these stories include descriptions of the both the actions and mindsets of characters who experience: suicidal ideation; child abuse and neglect; domestic violence; unwanted pregnancies; abortions; a kidnapping and time in captivity; and animals being killed and dismembered. 

Demree McGhee depicts the way grief climbs into your bones and reacts chemically with the core of who you are. There are multiple stories focused on compulsive behavior, exploring body dysmorphia and disordered eating, including anorexia, bulimia, and hypergymnasia: “I would excavate the weight from my body until the bones of my throat, my shoulders, my hips breached the surface of my skin. I would carve myself into something gorgeous from all angles.”

I highly recommend Sympathy for Wild Girls for readers of color and especially queer readers of color, who will find that reading it feels comfortable in a way that is so rare. It’s effective, electric storytelling that hits different because it’s you on the page. There’s a thrilling additional level of unsettling achieved in the way the author pulls at threads she knows will make us squirm. Sympathy for Wild Girls is a privilege, an honor, a gift to the community, and a captivating collection I’d be proud and excited to recommend to friends, family members, and fans of Dr. Ally Louks. 

Thank you for reading Dr. Ally Louks’s book review of Sympathy for Wild Girls by Demree McGhee! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post STARRED Book Review: Sympathy for Wild Girls appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Victoria Lilly

A collage of dreamlike, visceral images—an experimental arthouse movie in shifting literary form

VHS is an eclectic patchwork of forms, styles, and formats—an array of vignettes loosely tied to the narrator’s experience of growing up a second-generation immigrant in the United States.

The narrator’s father immigrated to the United States from Cuba in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. His mother moved from socialist Poland to America, and the two met in a toothpaste factory in the industrial zone of Long Island City. The narrator, driven by a mix of ennui and homesickness for a home he never knew, drifts from career to career, town to town, on a vaguely planned trek east to his mother’s native Poland.

Among those chapters with defined settings, most take place in Berlin, Germany; another prominent locale is New York City. Over the course of the collection and the narrator’s journey, he shares snippets of his life—events, sensations, musings—and intersperses them with vignettes from the lives of his friends, lovers, acquaintances, parents, and absolute strangers.

The narrator is a great fan of the visual medium, so the microfiction-style chapters are named after movie classics, such as Only Lovers Left Alive, Total Recall, The Lives of Others, and more. The fragmented, stream of consciousness style blends the essay form with that of diary entries, letters, and poetry—often within the same short chapter.

Boundaries of said fragments are muddled—melted down, one could say—and pieced together without seams or needlework through the use of an even more dizzying array of techniques. Single-sentence paragraphs, graphically broken-up text, ellipses and enjambments, strikethroughs and caesuras, all are deftly utilized to create the stream of consciousness effect. And a stream it is, as the reader has no choice but to surrender to the meandering, confusing, language-breaking and language-loving voice of the narrator.

Some stories are funny despite the overall serious and contemplative tone of the collection. One such section is “Vision Quest,” in which the narrator obtains special newly tinted glasses which he dubs “Tinman Elite,” complete with a “heavy-duty double-lock ‘High Performance Resin Case'” with a handle on it. His students (in this chapter, the narrator is working as a college professor) remark that he looks like “the Matrix;” the narrator muses on the nature of vision and the (dis)advantages of having one’s eyes so concealed as he heads for a rave party in an East Berlin nightclub.

On the other end of the spectrum are dry, grey, melancholy stories such as “Only Lovers Left Alive:” a brief piece about a girl (presumably the narrator’s mother) waking before dawn in a windowless room with bare walls. The girl heads to the immigration office to present her “white card,” dreading the strangeness of the new country she found herself in, bereft among the unfamiliar language and unadorned walls.

As is always the case with experimental writing, summary of individual tales within VHS is a shadow of the true depth of the text, which lies in the playful use of language (even if the author has a sometimes overbearing fondness for the use of parentheses). The immigrant experience is a theme as old as time in American literature, but Campanioni breathes fresh life into this tradition through clever turns of phrase, surprising depths of the narrator’s inner life, and a steady hand with prose and genre alike.

VHS is not a rollercoaster but a contemplative train journey—a shifting, colorful, and surreal landscape of cities, persons, and memories going by—to bring you out of the grey dullness of everyday life.

Thank you for reading Victoria Lilly’s book review of VHS by Chris Campanioni! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: VHS by Chris Campanioni appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

A pirate captain with the soul of a poet. A mission born from vengeance that becomes something far greater.

Author Daniel McKenzie launches readers into a richly imagined, cross-continental epic that sails from the West African coast to the South China Sea in Silken Dragons, the third installment of the Seafourthe Saga.

Captain Lucien “the Wolf” commands the Vengeance, an Ottoman-built warship turned rogue, crewed not by mercenaries but by men of conviction. When the crew rescues a near-dead African chieftain, Azumah, adrift off the coast of Dakar, they are pulled into a mission of vengeance that soon expands into a sweeping campaign against slavers, colonizers, and the machinery of empire itself. What begins as a rescue spirals outward into secret alliances, midnight raids, and an audacious plan aimed at the Spanish stronghold in Maynila.

The novel unfolds in deliberate, sweeping arcs: a jungle-bound lagoon serves as a hidden pirate haven; a tense naval standoff gives way to an unlikely friendship with the clever and calculating Chinese pirate, Captain Hong Lim Ahn; and moments of battle are balanced with long passages of stillness and spirit. McKenzie’s writing is deeply immersive, carving space for both the epic and the intimate. A dolphin named Argos gets nearly half a chapter, and it works (somehow) beautifully.

Lucien is a commanding presence, not so much a pirate as a warrior-poet with a strategist’s mind and a soldier’s heart. He leads with quiet certainty, justice over ego, restraint over spectacle. And then there’s Lady Lynden Seafourthe. She may remain physically out of the action, but her presence is everywhere. She is Lucien’s spiritual anchor, the compass that keeps him from drifting into legend without purpose. She is not a passive figure, but rather the force that steadies his hand, the private devotion that allows him to move through public violence without becoming hollow. In a world of veils and shifting loyalties, her truth is the one constant he never questions.

McKenzie’s prose is often poetic, sometimes archaic, and fully committed to the world it builds. It doesn’t rush, but it never loses its sense of direction. Every chapter serves the story, even when it pauses for tea, or ritual, or a quiet conversation beneath foreign stars. A Chaldean seer named Nur-Mena drifts in and out of the narrative, offering visions, riddles, and a sense that fate—like the sea—is always moving beneath the surface. That tonal balance between the brutal and the lyrical, the playful and the profound, is one of the book’s greatest strengths.

Silken Dragons is for readers who want their adventures with bite, their heroes with depth, and their storytelling rich with both tension and tenderness. One note for readers: many characters go by multiple names or titles, which adds texture but may briefly disorient. It’s a minor hurdle in an otherwise engrossing read, and one that fades as the cast settles into rhythm.

This is not a book of easy heroics. It’s about the cost of honor, the weight of grief, and the quiet resilience of love. McKenzie delivers a tale that is as mythic as it is human and one well worth the voyage.

Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt’s book review of Silken Dragons by Daniel McKenzie! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Silken Dragons appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Eric Mayrhofer

Chip Cater’s short stories shine with compassion, wisdom, wit, and warmth

Memories don’t play out like feature-length movies. They happen in flashes, fits, and starts. Sometimes a memory can bubble up to the surface of your mind with a very clear point, and sometimes they ramble or roll by for no other reason than to remind you of something pleasantly familiar.

Those are characteristics that Chip Cater’s collection Capers and Switcheroos embodies beautifully. Transforming his memories into short stories, he lets readers into his mind and gives them the joy of experiencing his admiration and love, his childhood mischief, and the quiet humility that comes with age.

And it truly does feel like each story is a little door into Cater’s mind. That’s partly due to flourishes like the quick, easy nicknames that pepper his writing. When recalling his wedding in “Blue Velvet,” the opening story, he says, “We were married in the Congregational Church, which stands on the hill over the tiny string of stores and restaurants in Wellfleet. The Congo’s tall steeple towers over the town and is what you aim for when sailing back in from the outer reaches of Wellfleet harbor.”

Those small but irreverent choices, nestled in an otherwise matter-of-fact tone, help readers see that Cater doesn’t take life too seriously, even as he regards it with a sharp eye respectfully studying everything it lands on.

That matter-of-fact voice could also be called openness—even earnestness. In the same story, Cater’s wife winds up having to change into a borrowed dress, a dazzling blue number with sparkling stones. The incident is briefly the talk of the restaurant, and when Cater and his wife leave, “twelve to fifteen ‘fans,’ who had watched the drama unfold, rushed up…They wanted Mary’s autograph. After the scenes in the bar and dining room and the changes of costume, they were positive she was a celebrity. She still is.” Then later, in the story “Something Noticed,” he and Mary find themselves in Vietnam and notice there are no birds; the Vietnamese ate them into scarcity due to food shortages that began in the Vietnam War. Upon returning home, Cater reflects, “We have hundreds of beautiful birds, many of whom sing…it is our palette and our symphony.”

In just a few words, Cater reveals so much: his bounding love for his wife Mary. The couple’s quiet awareness of all their blessings, humble in the knowledge that so many have far less.

There are one or two stories that err on the rambling, rolling side of memory. “Saved by the Belle,” for example, may luxuriate a little too long in the technological details of early digital publishing for some. Even then, however, readers glimpse our narrator’s open-hearted kindness as he remembers a workplace rival. “Dan left and went to our largest competitor,” Cater writes. “He did well and we stayed in touch over the years…we had a shared interest.” Even in adversity, obstacles never become permanent barriers to good relationships, politeness, or decency.

Capers and Switcheroos is a quietly moving piece, a comforting blanket of a short story collection.

Thank you for reading Eric Mayrhofer’s book review of Capers and Switcheroos by Chip Cater! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Capers and Switcheroos appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

Catch Me If You Can meets The Quiet American—a spy thriller filtered through a backpacker’s sunburn and a shot of Red Bull

Bert Mars is a sharp-tongued English teacher chasing big dreams in a small corner of Southeast Asia. What starts as a side hustle at a local TV station quickly pulls him into the orbit of powerful figures like Chiang, a larger-than-life tycoon, and Mike, a charming ex-marine with secrets of his own. Along the way, Bert navigates tangled romances, bureaucratic close calls, and a cast of fellow expats, each more jaded than the last.

In a Country with No Name is a story about ambition, misadventure, and the strange allure of a place where the rules are bendable, the stakes are murky, and survival might just depend on how fast you can run (or talk) your way out.

There’s something delightfully rogue about In a Country with No Name. This postmodern expat noir doesn’t so much grip you as it does jostle you along for the ride. The first in the Bert Mars series offers up a cocktail of bureaucratic chaos, casual espionage, and the unkillable optimism of a young Westerner who thinks rules are more suggestion than structure.

Ron Morris crafts his narrator, Bert Mars, as a kind of morally flexible Ferris Bueller dropped into a Graham Greene fever dream. The prose is light, fast, and often quippy. “I was pure ambition,” Bert tells us early on, “and that’s what Asia was—a place where anything was possible, and we were all going to be tycoons.” It’s the kind of line that sells you on the character’s delusion and charms you anyway.

And charm it does. While the writing occasionally leans on its momentum over its mechanics, the story barrels forward with the kinetic energy of someone perpetually running from visa trouble, and maybe himself. The pace is brisk, the stakes steadily escalate, and the tone stays tongue-in-cheek even as the plot brushes up against government coups and classified surveillance.

The worldbuilding, however, is quite light. You get the heat and the grime, the bustle and the street noodles, but a more immersive dive into the unnamed country’s culture and politics is missing behind the story’s darker turns. Readers are more tourist than resident in this world.

Still, there’s something refreshing about a book that doesn’t posture. It’s not trying to be literary; it’s trying to entertain, and it does. Especially when the story veers into spy thriller territory and suddenly you’re asking yourself, “Wait… was that a directed energy weapon?” The fact that it’s based on true events only adds to the strange, compelling texture of the novel.

Bert’s first-person narration keeps things brisk and full of bite, even when he’s confessing, dodging authority, or accidentally stumbling into international intrigue. “I would never interfere,” he says with the wide-eyed innocence of a man clearly about to interfere. It’s hard not to root for him, even when you suspect he might be the chaos he’s trying to escape.

Morris doesn’t try to impress with overwrought prose or meticulous detail. Instead, he invites you into the haze and hustle of Southeast Asia and lets the chaos speak for itself. In a Country with No Name is a fast, fun, and slightly feverish read that thrives on its unpredictability. It’s great for fans of fast-paced travel thrillers, morally ambiguous protagonists, and stories of accidental espionage. This is the kind of book you devour in a hammock and then recommend with a grin and a warning: “This is one wild ride.”

Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt’s book review of In a Country With No Name by Ron Morris! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: In a Country With No Name appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Timothy Thomas

A thoughtful narrative contemplating the impact of loss & abandonment on faith and the possibility of redemption in its death

Saint Catherine of Secaucus is a moving work of literary fiction from author Ann King that investigates the effects of naïve faith in one’s youth and the life-altering consequences of losing that faith.

King’s pragmatic prose reveals an intimate knowledge of the thoughts, emotions, and internal conflicts that come with the disillusionment of one’s beliefs and the abandonment of a parent, taking a novel that is ordinary in its concept to extraordinary in its execution.

As a child, Catherine Ricci was among the most faithful and idealistic students at her Catholic school, having been inspired by Sister Alberta’s example to such an extent that Catherine herself aspired to the sisterhood. The unfortunate and untimely death of her beloved Sister, however, triggers the end of that dream and, in addition to her parents’ separation, the slow demise of her faith.

By the time she enters high school, she considers herself agnostic, much to the chagrin of her mother and her Aunt Grace, who, though stuck in a passionless and abusive marriage, nevertheless cling to the hope of her Catholic beliefs. The collapse of Catherine’s religious convictions and the bitterness toward her father is accompanied by a growing apathy that strains the relationship with her mother in her teenage years and creates a void of meaning and direction in her life. But when an attempted rape turned manslaughter incident catches up with her in college, her life takes an unexpected turn that brings God back into focus, challenging her agnosticism and apathy as she uncovers new meaning.

Saint Catherine of Secaucus is perfectly paced, grounded, and moving. Catherine’s blunt, focused narration is honest, rarely exaggerating events or details for the sake of storytelling, but still managing to add color to the story with its realism. If a good story is not only in its concept, but in how it is told, then Saint Catherine undoubtedly bears the mark of a good story.

The book also excels in its portrayal of people. Its cast of characters, from Catherine’s Aunt Grace to her high school crush and protester extraordinaire, Gerald, are vividly multidimensional, as though written from memory. Catherine herself is revealed to have quite a bit of depth, as her introspective analyses of the circumstances of her life are both reasonable and measured. Though she may struggle at times with the conclusions she has drawn, her rationale for them is often very understandable.

Ann King’s novel invites us to think more deeply about our lives and how the easily explained and unexplainable converge to generate questions that may challenge our thinking. This book may not give us direct answers to our most-searched questions, but it does provide an engagingly accessible jumping off point for our discovery of truth. A truly worthwhile read.

Thank you for reading Timothy Thomas’s book review of Saint Catherine of Secaucus by Ann King! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Saint Catherine of Secaucus appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Jaylynn Korrell

Only the lucky and the connected survive in this post-apocalyptic world—but here, even the strongest communities become targets.

Nearly a year after a nuclear event devastated the planet, the people from the island town of Cedar Key are still learning what it means to live in the new world.

Disconnected from any other civilization, this small town community is finally settling into their new normal. But the Colonel has just returned with bleak news—most of Florida is a barren wasteland and enemies will soon approach the shores of Cedar Key.

This sophomore novel picks up right where book one, Godspeed, Cedar Key, left off. The town is on the brink of war for their territory. Weaving through the past and present, Bobbitt tells the story of fathers and sons, the losses they endure, and the strength of community in a book that stands strongly on its own.

“There comes a time in every father’s life when they can no longer protect their sons from the dangers of the world, when they have to let them become the men they will become.”

Bobbitt writes so beautifully about the end of times—and no, that’s not a contradiction. This community has suffered great tragedy and the world as they know it has ended, but we focus instead on the ways in which a group of people can flourish when they work together. Through the devastation, the author allows his characters to experience the joys of life through the celebration of love, togetherness, and the friends that turn into family. And when the bleakness of the current time begins to take over, he switches the narration back to the past and provides deeper understanding for how these characters came to be. I was pleasantly surprised at how hopeful this book could be despite being about the end of the world.

The book centers around a man named Isaac Skipjack, who tragically lost his father when he was just a boy. The mystery surrounding his death haunts Isaac his whole life, but community member Mark David and his son give him new purpose just months after losing him. He works with them, planting clams in the ocean, and over time, their relationship blossoms in a way that restores the boy. But then he leaves without a trace.

Thirty years later, he returns with a fleet in tow and with plans to ambush the town. His return rattles the men of Cedar Key as they question his motives and fear his understanding of the land and water surrounding it. This isn’t their first time dealing with intruders, but this fight will be nothing like the others. This forthcoming battle is what drives the book forward with suspense.

Forever, Cedar Key captures the feeling of home better than anything I’ve ever read. It’s not just the physical setting—though the environment does play a big part—it’s also the community that pulls the characters back in when they’ve lost their way. This is why they fight so hard to protect what they’ve built. It’s easy to see and understand these characters’ why after getting to know Cedar Key.

“Life in a small town in like a Shakespeare play—the secrets are constantly being overheard and misunderstood to tragic effect.”

We’re introduced to the impending arrival of Isaac Skipjack in the first few pages of the book, but as the battle draws closer and closer, a sense of stagnancy arrives. I was happy to read anecdotes from the past—those breaks really contribute to the story in a positive way—but the suspense turns into impatience for how and when the conflict will eventually develop.

I left this book wanting to join the community of Cedar Key. Readers will love the sense of community, the hope for the fate of the town, and the heart-wrenching story of a boy who lost his father and never found peace.

Thank you for reading Jaylynn Korrell’s book review of Forever, Cedar Key by Michael Presley Bobbitt! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Forever, Cedar Key appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Zender

A powerful story celebrating love, culture, and the strength of women

The Hindu Festival of Lights, Diwali, is a time of good fortune. Paru’s hopes are high. After two years of clandestine courtship, she hopes her classmate, Harsha, will ask for her hand in marriage. He is handsome, in the right caste, and is nearly top of their class, second only to Paru. It would be a perfect match, like one of those Bollywood stories she loves so much.

But Paru’s brothers, Karan and Vivek, shame the family through their choices in brides, and the elders sever ties with Paru and her family as a result, casting them out of Brahmin society.

Enter Samar, a physician in the United States and the man who will be her next husband. Despite loving another, Paru must marry Samar to help her family get back in good graces. Fast-forward twenty years and Paru is a successful gynecologist and mother in the States. Samar, however, has not been a model husband and upends her life by leaving her for another woman. And Harsha, from all those years ago? He offers an opportunity for Paru to find love—but it comes with a great risk. She’ll have to choose between tradition or a real Bollywood romance.

Anu Koduri dedicates A Bollywood Romance to women who have been in Paru’s position: married to a stranger, sent to the United States, and trying to make the most of an incredibly challenging situation. It’s obvious why Paru would be treated with such love and care by the author. She is always seeking out ways to make her dreams come true even as she deals with a new culture, new husband, and new home.

A Bollywood Romance is an artfully crafted story about what a woman wants and what society allows a woman to want. Paru may be driven to keep herself safe and to achieve her dreams, but she also looks out for her family. The resilient women in this novel continue to find ways to cultivate and utilize power, individually and collectively.

Koduri’s story is rich in Hindu culture. The description and careful detail embedded in the telling of Diwali celebrations, the suitor interviews, and the caste system give the story a strong sense of authenticity. It’s an immersive cultural story heightened by the drama of familial relationships and the delights of Paru’s mind.

Drama, romance, and powerful women—A Bollywood Romance does not disappoint. It inspires.

Thank you for reading Elizabeth Zender’s book review of A Bollywood Romance by Anu Koduri! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: A Bollywood Romance appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Nick Gardner

At times surreal and strange, Current Disasters deftly traces the contours of loneliness and explores how connection can help shape a life.

Weighing in at a mere 100 pages, the 22 stories in Jen McConnell’s collection range in length from the short paragraph to the several page deep dive, with stories as intriguing as that of the worry transference company in “Worry, Incorporated.” 

Each story is strange in its own way. “Stuffed Peppers to Please Everybody” takes the form of a recipe, but with chef’s notes that bring out a deeper story; “The Poles of Inaccessibility” takes the reader to a solitary research station in the South Pole. Some stories are, for the most part, placeless, like “All the Kids Are in Therapy,” while others roam to specific locations like Stonehenge or span a road trip from the East Coast to Iowa. Current Disasters is a quick read that deeply explores a whole spectrum of experiences, especially the seemingly small things that can cause a life to tumble. 

The word “alone” appears sixteen times in McConnell’s manuscript with variations like “loneliness” and “by myself” showing up as well. However, as is the case in “The Uncluded,” which is set at a dinner party, the characters are often surrounded by friends and family. 

McConnell explores her characters with nuance—their anxieties and worries and inability to fit in. These characters are often excluded, or, as is the case in “American Gothic Getaway,” exclude themselves by breaking off a relationship and running away. Breakups are also a theme with an interest in finding oneself and learning to be content alone at the heart of each split. Words like “hope” also appear frequently. Though the characters often don’t find answers, by the final page of each story, there is a sense that they are at least moving away from despair. 

McConnell’s endings are not just inconclusive, but also, often, abrupt. I frequently found myself getting more and more intimate with a character, more involved in a story, only to turn the page and find the final paragraph. A jolt. The way McConnell ties up a short story is expert and surprising. A single sentence can serve as a turn, a move beyond the meat of the story and at least a hint at change. 

Many of McConnell’s stories could easily be turned into novels, featuring characters that are easy to empathize with and plots that leave the reader wanting to complete the story arc. It’s easy to imagine an entire series, for example, springing out of “Worry, Incorporated,” in which a woman is hired to take on clients’ worries for them, to actually worry so that the client can live without that worry inhibiting them. And that is just one of the many fascinating concepts that McConnell inserts into her very short fiction. This is the kind of book that roots deep in the mind and inspires consideration long after turning the final page.

I’m not going to forget these short stories. While Current Disasters satisfies enough as a single collection, it’s exciting to think about what book will come next from McConnell’s brilliant mind. 

Thank you for reading Nick Gardner’s book review of Current Disasters by Jen McConnell! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Current Disasters appeared first on Independent Book Review.