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“Upton’s gift for smart and funny lines lighten the novel’s darkness…. As mysteries go, Upton has tapped a few cracks and added a few bends in a time-tested mould, which makes for a solid, surprising, and entertaining read. On the surface, this is a playful novel, but its heft comes from questions about art, reading, writing, and the darker side of human nature.”

—John Baum, in Necessary Fiction

Ria Dhull on Dan Tremaglio’s The Only Wolf Is Time:

“Dan Tremaglio’s The Only Wolf Is Time is a novel told through fragments. These fragments initially seem like discrete objects, pulled in from all sorts of sources—some of these scraps are graffiti tags, some are photographs of sculpture, some are dictionary definitions or screenplay dialogue. There’s a little of everything. But the beauty of Tremaglio’s novel lies in his transformation of these objects. The fragments, although physically separated on the page, cannot be metaphysically separated from one another. Every fragment produces the following fragment and is produced by the preceding fragment; in this way, a narrative is formed—a narrative not written out on the page but formed on the page, pieced together in the style of a stained glass window…. [The Only Wolf Is Time] is a small cautionary tale … a fable, a single scene in a stained glass window. Tremaglio’s craft is astonishing.”

—Ria Dhull, in Heavy Feather Review

Kirkus Reviews on Lee Upton’s Wrongful:

“Upton’s novel operates quite effectively as an Agatha Christie–like whodunit, complete with a lineup of colorful suspects and a twisty conclusion. The narrative is further enriched by the author’s musings upon the illusory aspects of real life and fiction…. A captivating depiction of an elusive quest.”

—Kirkus Reviews

In Electric Literature’s a Spring small press roundup, Wendy J. Fox reads Devin Jacobsen’s new story collection:

“In this wide-ranging collection, the stories move from the American South to Europe and are knitted together with an indelible sense of longing. The characters have wants and needs, yet they are often as dissatisfied as the tourists who visit the Dalí Museum in Florida, and leave in a state of bewilderment. In The Summer We Ate Off The China, Jacobsen captures the human impulse to hope, and our inevitable disappointments.”

—Wendy J. Fox, in Electric Literature

In her “First Chapters” column, syndicated in the Irish press, Anne Cunningham takes on Thomas Walton’s Unsavory Thoughts:

“[F]unny, and tragic and ironic and all shades in between…. wholly and spectacularly original. His seemingly chaotic spill of words is in fact marshalled out on the page with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel and it’s a joy to see. Highly recommended.”

—Anne Cunningham, in The Anglo-Celt

“The prose itself [is] straightforward in a way that reflects institutionalization itself—a soft surrealism in a hazy calm without distracting flourishes…. Like much of the vital heart of this story, the most important elements seem to shimmer just off the page, willing us to find them with a carefully averted gaze….[M]uch of the interest lies just between the lines, just out of sight….”

—Carrie Callahan, in Miracle Monocle

Jen Paul gives 4 stars to Lee Upton’s Wrongful in Making Good Stories:

“The ending satisfactorily mirrors the beginning’s roving structure … while expounding on the baser emotions of greed, festering guilt, and desire for respect, adoration, and notoriety, that form more complex motivations…. In offering many characters as potential culprits, each of whom harbors possible reasons for acting against Mira, the story unfolds gradually, following Geneva’s dogged pursuit of uncovering the truth no matter the consequences or mishaps that arise. The literary, and generally artistic, lens applied throughout offered an easy entry point for viewing and relating with the various perspectives presented, as attaining recognition, if not praise or adequate remuneration, was an evident incentive driving events.”

—Jen Paul, in Making Good Stories

Emily Webbers reviews Lee Upton’s Wrongful in MER Literary:

“This is Upton’s ode to Agatha Christie mysteries. The novel starts with a dead body, and later another one turns up. There are also many characters, and the reader must puzzle together the real relationships between them and Mira and their true intentions because there is a killer in their midst. Wrongful is a fun read—a delightful mix of snark, quirky characters, and murder—where the reader gains insight into how we often fail to perceive others properly, how easy it is to get things wrong particularly when one is so desperate for answers, and when one wants to relieve themselves of guilt.”

—Emily Webber, in MER

Anthony Howell is clearly having a good time in this Fortnightly Review article, “The University of Closed Minds: On Julian Stannard":

“Julian Stannard’s novel combines SF and satire. But the story it tells happily wanders off into Rabelaisian humour, fireworks of vocabulary and exuberant nonsense. Here William Burroughs meets C.P. Snow. Stannard is a poet, and his novel is the sort of book the reader can open anywhere and enjoy the lighting switches from one sentence to the next, the elusive allusive phrases…. The narrative is a clothesline hung with flimsy characters, often shat-upon by their robot hybrid pets, and it glories in its adjectival and acronymic subject clusters—breaking most of the rules about adjectives churned out so thoughtlessly by writing workshops. But the novel does not neglect drama…. Well worth a read, Brave New World for academia, if you like.”

—Anthony Howell, in The Fortnightly Review

In Gnome Appreciation Society, Jason Denness raves over Lee Upton’s Tabitha, Get Up:

“Far more experimental than your run of the mill romance novel…. crammed with brilliant characters…. There are some challenging scenes of loneliness and depression and even at its darkest moments Tabitha’s humour shines through. There is a real nuttiness to this book…. Tabitha is the sort of person you can see bits of yourself in…. Moving away from chapter structures we have notes, lists, voicemails, texts, therapy sessions, email exchanges and panic attacks…. The funniest book I have read this year and it is gonna take some beating. Highly recommended.”

—Jason Denness, in Gnome Appreciation Society