Reviews in Brief

A provocative rags-and-riches drama, Intrinsic by W.H.B. recounts the visceral missteps and lost lives of Chris Franklin, the heir to a literary dynasty with a Job-like legacy. After treading a slippery slope of hedonistic impulses, Chris betrays his best friend and long-time love for the fleeting pleasure of metamorphosis, followed by a spiral into sadness and regret. Readers follow his indelicate fall from grace and the clashes of class, loyalty, and morality that bring about his downfall and ignite his spirit of resilience. While the dialogue and narration could benefit from an uncompromising edit, along with more empathy and relatability in this hero’s journey, the hard-won lessons and detail for both character and setting in this gritty plot are engaging and eye-opening about every person’s redemptive potential.

Plunging readers through blood-soaked streets and a storm of bullets, Desert Dirt: A Crimson States Story by Simon Pearce is a relentlessly packed neo-noir drama. When Kyle is released after months in prison for a horrific crime he didn’t commit, he looks to get answers and payback, no matter who lands in his crossfire. However, a crooked cop is looking to settle his own twisted score, which complicates this grieving felon’s crusade for vengeance, blurring the lines between loyalty and old love. Setting a mood that is both eerie and gritty, Pearce excels at establishing each scene, where the atmosphere feels like a character in itself, from ghost towns and strip clubs to plot-driving action of diamond heists and military cover-ups. Both slow-burning and quickly paced, this is a rivetingly grim thriller that never lets up the tension.

Set in the snowbound village of Fénix, Diego Uribe’s Secretos de familia is a chilling, slow-burning mystery. After teenager Emilia Blume is found stabbed, Inspector Zaida Benatar unspools a knot of secrets: arsenic traces, a foreign blade, and a family’s suffocating silence. Uribe blends police procedural grit with gothic unease, as he paces each new revelation with deft restraint. With taut prose, a formidably unsettling atmosphere, and empathetic characterization that is unique to the genre, this cozy noir is both haunting and disturbingly plausible.

Celebrating the legacy of insight from a legendary Japanese swordmaster, Dokkōdō | Reflections From a Journey’s End: 21 Timeless Principles of Samurai Wisdom for Clarity, Courage, and Inner Strength by Selwyn Tengelt is a thought-provoking pathway for contemplation and self-knowledge. Expanding on Miyamoto Musashi’s 21 precepts for life related to belief, desire, restraint, fear, regret, lust, and more, the author translates this ancient advice into contemporary empowerment, coupled with interactive questions to help increase application and retention. The wisdom of this storied samurai duelist is presented with humility and poetic patience, for a strikingly poignant work of self-help that is authentically profound in its principles and scope, and should resonate with anyone looking outside the bounds of modern-day self-improvement, with its ageless focus on principled intention, discernment, and purpose.

A beautifully illustrated book about caution and care, Let’s Look, Not Touch by Kateryna Dronova, with illustrations by Valeriia Pertiia, is a charming growing-up adventure of exploration, admiration, and maternal wisdom. As a mother and her curious son spend their days and seasons wandering through parks, forests, beaches, and fields, they encounter dozens of interesting creatures along the way, and the lesson of the title is reinforced with each new discovery in the natural world. The rhyming and rhythm are not always on target, but the art is vivid and engaging, the wrap-up is sweetly encouraging, and the core lesson is an important one to instill early in every child’s life.

The romantic antics of reality TV collide with authentic off-camera passion in Not My Bachelor by Tricia Heggeness, a quick and steamy read with unexpected depth. When Rina, a jaded New York writer, meets a charming law-school hunk in the California sun, sparks fly fast and hot, but Marcus is already neck-deep in drama as one of six bachelors seeking love on a live-in dating show. Navigating inconvenient but undeniable feelings, they’re both forced to separate life-changing facts from on-screen fiction, rather than letting a real one slip away. For fans of first-person romance that delivers both sex and substance, this is a comfortingly predictable but well-plotted work of romance that also delves into the challenging realities of love and shared emotion.