October 30, 2026

New Fiction

Another Name for Red by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala – It has been a year since Oldest Sister vanished before a powwow, and Middle Sister has been haunted ever sine:  By the devastating loss of her beloved sibling, whose absence has torn her family apart.  By her mother and father, who have become ghosts of the parents she once knew.  By her own crushing guilt over her responsibility in her sister’s disappearance. And by John Smith, the infamous white man with red cowboy boots living on stolen reservation land whose obsessive attentions are as repellant as they are compelling.  But most of all, Middle Sister feels like she’s buckling under the weight of thousands of unacknowledged missing and murdered Indigenous women – gone just like Oldest Sister.  With local authorities proving useless and the national news silent, Middle Sister decides to start an investigation of her own, beginning with the mysterious Eric – a white man from a neighboring town whom Oldest Sister claimed to love and who she swore loved her.  Middle Sister’s search for answers draws her closer to the community from which she’s grown alienated, and she starts forming new connections to her coworker Casanova; a stray rez dog; and Nookomis, her grandmother, who has foreseen her own death.  Yet John still lurks in the growing wintry shadows, offering a sort of surrender that Middle Sister can’t help being drawn to. In the end, she will have to choose: either let the guilt consume her – or forgive herself and fight.

Sucker Falls – Drew Hayden Taylor – Ladybug LaFlesche is a hurricane of a woman – a powerfully persuasive con artist plowing through people, places, and even her two sons, Donnie and Reeper, if necessary.  On the run with police hot on their trail, Ladybug and her boys set their sights on Sucker Falls, the community where she was born and raised, and where she swore she’d never return.  Now, Sucker Falls represents a place of rebirth and refuge.  Chasing grandeur, Ladybug sets out to build the greatest casino in the land, but things quickly get out of hand, leaving her family and her home in piles of debt and in search of a miracle.  When the miracle arrives in the form of three strangers with deep pockets, Ladybug and her boys must ask themselves how far they’ll go to protect everything they have worked for. 

Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong – A forested road at night, slick from the pounding rain and eerily illuminated by flashes of lightning.  Just before midnight, a car swerves to avoid something – or someone – mysteriously standing in the road, only to slam into a fallen tree instead.  In the pitch black, four more cars follow in a pileup no one can seem to avoid.  Stumbling out of the wreckage, soaked from the rain and nursing various injuries, five strangers make their way to a backwoods dive bar, where they wait for daybreak and hope for cell service.  But as tensions rise and the storm rages on outside, the occupants of the dive bar start to notice that not everything is as it seems.  Time is moving differently, and they quickly learn that going outside – whether to assist another accident victim or to hike for help – is a very bad idea.  There’s something in the woods that isn’t natural. Could the figure in the road have been a warning?  Or something more sinister?  None of this is normal, and they’ll need to work together to figure out what’s happening if they have any hope of surviving the night.

Mystery Play by Elizabeth Kostova - Clearing out his mother’s possessions after she dies, Jay Turner stumbles on a charred scrap of newspaper bearing the name Gael Brogan. Soon after, a deliveryman drops off a package containing an old leatherbound book—and leaves two bloody footprints.
Jay recognises the book. It was commissioned by Vlad Tepes, better known as Dracula, just before his death in 1477. His mother had always warned Jay how dangerous it was and had donated it to a museum…yet here it is. Jay sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a nineteenth-century actor whose most famous role was the Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper—helped by a mysterious woman named Rhiannon whom he meets in traumatic circumstances—he uncovers the terrifying story of a young actress falling under Brogan’s sway. And then Jay and Rhiannon realise that something implacable is also pursuing them.