Our review of The Lost Company by Michael Maguire, a gritty military fantasy retelling of Xenophon’s Anabasis about soldiers stranded behind enemy lines.
Author Archives: Olive Stevens
The Book of Revelations by Mitchell Hadley: A Life Told in Fragments
Just Reading Nook’s review of The Book of Revelations by Mitchell Hadley, a layered, restrained novel about one woman’s shifting names and the past she can’t outrun.
Nineteen Doors, One Deal, and No Way Out: A Review of The Nineteen Doors of Belferith
A birthday joke becomes a deal with the devil in William J. Burkhardt’s The Nineteen Doors of Belferith, an Atlantic City horror thriller. Read our review.
The Man Nobody Saw, A Review of Fading Away: Dark Bay by Gaius Konstantine
A five-star review of Gaius Konstantine’s Fading Away: Dark Bay, a crime novel about an immigrant boy who learns to stay invisible in 1970s Brooklyn.
Gwyn’s Kingdom by Brian Holshouser Review: A Strong Magic School Fantasy
Seventeen-year-old photographer Sylvia Brooks already lives under the shadow of her father’s crimes when she moves into the Gallo mansion to finish high school. Two people vanish. She wakes with a head wound and a hole in her memory. In a town ready to believe the worst of her, she has to decide whether she is hunting the truth or becoming it.
Book Review: The Gallos by C.J. Simone
Seventeen-year-old photographer Sylvia Brooks already lives under the shadow of her father’s crimes when she moves into the Gallo mansion to finish high school. Two people vanish. She wakes with a head wound and a hole in her memory. In a town ready to believe the worst of her, she has to decide whether she is hunting the truth or becoming it.
Book Review: Heroless by Antoine Monks
Heroless by Antoine Monks takes a two-track look at the superhero genre after the costumes have already failed. One strand is almost domestic: years after Fortune City’s protectors were pushed back into ordinary life, former heroine Elizabeth—once Disk Girl—sits down over coffee and dinner with her quiet confidant Roy, formerly Justice-Hand. Their talk is the book’s emotional spine. Through regrets, jokes that don’t quite land, and vivid flashbacks, they revisit the bright early days of the city’s hero coalition, the fights with super-criminals that kept getting uglier, and the public paranoia that finally made masks look like a public menace instead of a promise.
Book Review: Footprints by Simon Meredith
Footprints by Simon Meredith weaves two timelines—1928 and 1986—into a genuinely spooky supernatural mystery, anchored by a wonderfully original hook: living paint as a conduit for fear and memory. With a richly unsettling setting and memorable characters, this is a creative, gripping read for horror and mystery fans alike.
What the Hands Remember: A Book That Made Me Put My Phone Down and Actually Feel Things
Hands that knead barren dough, turn a breech child in a buried wagon, clutch the last ember in a century of dark, stitch a covenant that outlives the cloth.
Piece by piece, then as a whole. What the Hands Remember — A vignette collection for the times.
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of August 22, 2026 at #JustReadingNook