Fiction – Page 2 – Ring Reads

‘Fortune’ Pits Truth Against Reputation in Murder Mystery

The cover of Tricks of Fortune features a bright red background with indistinct black tarot-style cards and gold four-sided stars in indistinct constellations. The title is in white and black text, and the author's name, Lina Chern, is in black text.

Rather than being simply a vehicle for plot, Chern’s writing sings with artful composition and delightful turns of phrase that not only make reading easy but pleasant, too.

‘Creek’ a Spooky Summer Tale of Grief and a Curse

A painting of semi-stagnant water with leaves and grasses on it. In the background, we see bones floating (skull, what looks like a tibia, what could be an ulna). In the foreground, a white teenage girl with wet medium-brown hair has half of her face above the water, as if she's about to stand up or go under. The reflection in the water is of a skull.

In the same way grieving is often harder on anniversaries and holidays—times when things feel the same as always except for the loved one’s absence—Glory’s haunting of the titular town feels perfectly fitting in a metaphorical sense well before it becomes literally true.

‘Nightmare Box’ Tinged With Real-Life Horror and Fictional Justice

A bright yellow background with a pair of brown hands lifting a blue lid on a pink box. Monstrous eyes peer out from within while black goop drips down the side of the box.

There are few happy endings in The Nightmare Box, though it does seem that Gómez intentionally left off on one of the more optimistic stories—an unexpected choice but one that ultimately informs the way we leave The Nightmare Box: Fully aware of the horrors, but pressing forward nonetheless.

‘Bat Eater’ Brings New Fears to Pandemic Lockdown

A realistic-looking bat with flowers on its back and its wings outstretched flies diagonally across a black backdrop. The title, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, is in large white font in front of the image. Smaller and at the bottom in green text is the author, Kylie Lee Baker.

Bat Eater is a marvelous friendship bracelet of plot threads that sometimes take turns and sometimes work in tandem but are always engrossing, and all feel like facets of a terrifying and claustrophobic world.

‘Perspective(s)’ Gives Gossip Without the Guilt

A shadowy detail from a Renaissance-looking painting of a young woman's unsmiling face.

The epistolary nature of Perspective(s), along with the framing of the letters as centuries-old discoveries, blunt the unfolding of the unhappier plot elements, letting us sit back and relish the political intrigue.

‘Birth Canal’ a Kaleidoscopic View of Obsession, Trauma

The cover of Birth Canal, which features an untidy rectangular border of vines and flowers entangled around the title and author at the bottom of the cover on a background of orange in the center and purple at the edges.

The most fascinating thing with Birth Canal as a whole is its dizzying range of vibes that can be pulled out of a narrow cast of characters in a handful of places and only a couple of eras in history.

‘Heartwood’ Explores Questions Behind Headline

This is not a story of tricky plot devices and big reveals. Instead, it’s a portrait of a search for a missing person, and how it takes a community of professionals and amateurs, friends and strangers, to locate them.

‘Antidote’ Offers Dreamlike Path to Cure for Hard Times

A rainbow gradient cascades over a black-and-white photograph of an old farmhouse with a weather vane and farming equipment. The image is fuzzy, as though in the middle of a dust storm. The title and author (The Antidote, Karen Russell) are superimposed upon it.

As The Antidote reminds us, there’s no understanding a place, or its people, if there is no reconciliation with the most difficult parts of that person or place.

The Apocalypse Grows Strangely in ‘The Garden’

Flowers and greenery splay across a bubbled surface of glass or thin ice as a background to the title and author of Nick Newman's novel The Garden.

The Garden is as much about the testing, and mending, of a sisterly relationship as anything else. The apocalypse is merely a reason for their cloistering, and the reckoning they face with each other.

‘Beijing’ May Sprawl, but the Stakes are Personal

The cover of Beijing Sprawl, featuring an olive-green background and a series of about 17 bold-type "Beijing" stacked down like a deck of cards. "Sprawl" sits below the stack.

The stories within Beijing Sprawl aren’t cozy or happy, necessarily, but they feel like they capture a moment of life that will become nostalgic, and that growing nostalgia bleeds through the page.