April 11, 2025

New Fiction

The Last Session by Julia Bartz – When a catatonic woman shows up at her psychiatric unit, social worker Thea swears that she knows her from somewhere.  She’s shocked to discover the patient holds a link to a traumatic time in her own past.  Upon regaining lucidity, the patient claims she can’t remember the horrific recent events that caused her brain to shut down.  Thea’s at a loss – especially when the patient is ripped away from her as suddenly as she appeared.  Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote center in southwestern New Mexico, where a charismatic couple holds a controversial monthly retreat to uncover attendees’ romantic and sexual issues.  Forced to participate in increasingly intimate exercises, Thea finds herself inching closer not only to her missing patient, but also to tantalizing answers about her own harrowing past.  However, time is running out, and if she stays for the last session, she too might lose her sanity…and maybe even her life.

Finding Flora by Elinor Florence – Scottish newcomer Flora Craigie jumps from a moving train in 1905 to escape a disastrous marriage. Desperate to disappear, she claims a homestead on the beautiful but wild Alberta prairie, determined to create a new life for herself.  She is astonished to find that her nearest neighbours are also female: a Welsh widow with three children, two American women raising chickens, and a Metis woman who supports herself by training wild horses.  While battling both the brutal environment and the local cynicism toward female farmers, the five farmers with very different backgrounds struggle to find common ground.  But when their homes are threatened with expropriation by a hostile government, they join forces to “fire the heather,” a Scottish term meaning “to raise a ruckus.” To complicate matters, there are signs that Flora’s violent husband is still hunting her.  And as the competition for free land along the new Canadian Pacific Railway line heats up, an unscrupulous land agent threatens not only Flora’s livelihood but her very existence.

Heartwood by Amity Gaige - In the heart of the Maine woods, forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis has vanished along the Appalachian Trail two hundred miles from her destination.  Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hope alive.  At the center of the investigation into Valerie’s disappearance is Beverly, the determined Maine state game warden leading the search on the ground.  Meanwhile, Lena – a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community – becomes an unexpected armchair detective.  As the story alternates among these compelling and vivid voices, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search…as it appears Valerie’s disappearance may not have been accidental.

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch – A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone.  But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles.  Everything changes one Sunday when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors’ Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden and abound woman crying for help in a closet.  As Evie works to free her, the two are spotted – and within moments, they go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.  Suddenly at the heart of a manhunt and accompanied by a mysterious woman who refuses to speak, Evie knows the only way to clear her name is to find the real killer.  But first she’ll have to break down the barriers of her companion, who is quickly becoming the most important person in Evie’s upside-down life.  Their breathless spree takes them across the US as developments in the case shock the nation and the press runs wild with Evie’s story: a gifted kid turned killer.  She’s now on the cover of every magazine and newspaper – anointed the new Charles Manson, a bloodthirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war.  Evie is finally someone.