The story unfolds amidst a world of compelling innovation, and yet much of its tension centers around the age-old dilemma of familial relationships.

Adam McOmber’s Fantasy Kit is a slender compilation of thirty-five flash-length stories that are predominantly gothic in subject matter, surrealist in method, and genuinely unsettling in effect. The story “The Cornfield”stands apart for its realism, and yet clearly has much to say about the collection as a whole.

This World Is Not Your Home ultimately coheres as a collection committed above all to exploring the ramifications of emotional candor, a task it approaches in subtle ways that can alternately charm, haunt, and leave one wanting.

When I sat down to read Emme Lund’s debut novel, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest, I was expecting to encounter a playfully didactic allegory; however, while the story is certainly playful and arguably didactic, I quickly realized that it was also much more: invitingly poetic, defiantly queer, and lyrical to boot.