New this week
The latest additions to The Library's collection
If you have a complete or in-progress work you’d like added to The Library or an indie-published book to include in the Buy Indie section, follow this guide, and we’ll help spread the word.
And thanks again to everyone for helping us support indie authors!
In the stacks
Short Fiction
The Belles of St. Anthony's | Alex Scott | YA Flash fiction (S) (I) (F)
A series of slice-of-life flash fiction stories about some eccentric girls at St. Anthony of Padua High School.
Speculative
Shadowtime | Alison Bull | historical fiction (N) (I) (F)→($)
First 8 chapters are free
March 1918. On a military base in Kansas, 20-year-old budding doctor Theda Evora is visiting her father...and hiding from a group of anarchists who want her dead. It would be the perfect place to lay low, if only young soldiers weren't mysteriously disappearing. Theda's father, a renowned doctor recruited by the military to develop a remedy for gas attacks, is distant, as if he doesn’t want to see his favorite daughter and is anxious for her to go home. Then a stranger appears who knows too much about Theda’s past…and about her future. He's from the 1940s searching for a doctor known as Thrax, one of the leading scientists developing time traveling technology who also has a penchant for disease. And in 1918, one of the deadliest diseases known to mankind will be unleashed: the 1918 Flu. Caught between reality and knowing that something is terribly wrong, Theda searches for the truth of the missing soldiers as the clock runs out to the known day when the first sick man will enter the infirmary. If she can find the soldiers, Theda might be able to stop the deadliest pandemic known to mankind, even if the truth means confronting her own father.
Young Readers
Elixir of Fear | Bretigne Shaffer | Horror (NA) (C) (F)
A creepy charlatan from the 19th century is back to terrorize young Harrison's hometown. He offers the perfect potion for what everyone fears - but at an unthinkable price. Will Harrison figure out the right kind of magic needed to stop him? More importantly, will he be able to summon up the courage? ...Or will the pill-peddling sorcerer manage to get the whole world under his sway - including Harrison's own parents, grandma and grandpa?
Are you publishing a book, comic, or story/poetry collection on Substack that you’d like to add to The Library? Send it our way!
Buy Indie
Contemporary
Lilies Bloom, Lies Fester | C. Elyse | Chick Lit (NA)
All families are dysfunctional. In consequence, the distance between truth and fiction is marked and marred by habits of discretion, and birth order. But what happens when secrets coveted and shared by and between family, the people worthy of trust, begin to weigh down perceptions and distort the space between truth and the context of the damage caused? The youngest of four, Adeena McGoine, is fiercely independent, resilient, and anxious as she travels cross country to visit her ailing oldest sister. What will she learn about family? Can Adeena truly go home again? When do collective efforts to protect the innocent become overshadowed by pretense? Will this trip forever change Adeena’s perception of the truth? Lilies Bloom, Lies Fester is a contemporary novella about habits of discretion, birth order, and the damage caused by the secrets coveted and shared between family members.
Poetry Collection
Drowning Dragon Slips by Burning Plains | Khải Đơn | Nonfiction (P)
Drowning Dragon Slips by Burning Plains ventures through the land of abundance, "the rice bowl" of the country in the Mekong Delta, where mothers have to leave their children home, seeking a living in exhausting sweatshops when the land exhausts itself in extensive rice plantation, salt intrusion and continual droughts. The poetry collections explore the meaning of being a woman in a land robbed of its innocence, being a child witnessing the future dimmed in the land of rice and fruit. Her questions intertwine the fate of the land with the fates of unrelated forces faraway who are buying exported rice from the sinking regions in climate change. Through a collage-like approach of personal history and fables, Khải Đơn's poems tell tales of the old bombs turning into mangoes, rice germinating out of bullet holes, and every woman losing her way home.
Can readers buy your indie book from your author's website or favorite online bookseller? Provide us a link and some details about your book, and we’ll help get the word out!
From the Archive
Featuring a different, randomly selected book every week
Song of the Red-Legged Birds | Bill Bradbury | Speculative (N) (I) (F)
Boston, 2117. A futuristic dystopian backdrop with one bright spot. Something called 'The Event' is happening each year to everyone on their birthday. The Event fills you with a sense of enlightenment, for just one day. So why are the trees screaming? Why are mysterious flocks of red-legged birds killing themselves? And what have Holly, Takeda, and his dog Triscuit uncovered, which makes them a threat? Because now they're running for their lives from secret forces who work in a Hawaiian volcano, retro-hackers, mild-mannered assassins and a little girl in a red dress. But mainly, they're running out of time. We all are.
Thanks for the feature! I hope people take a chance on my piece.