Army veteran Dr. Dakota J. Miller reviews Alone Together by S.S. Fitzgerald, a post-apocalyptic horror novel that gets pandemic protocols right.
Tag Archives: justreadingnook
#JustReadingNook Halloween Picks
Five horror legends, seven indie standouts, and the double features to read them in. Your October stack starts here.
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.
Publishing Insight by Gaius Konstantine
How long should your novel be? Gaius Konstantine explains why word count matters for debut authors, whether you’re querying agents or publishing indie.
Book Review: Itsy Bitsy Spyder by J.R. Larriba
J.R. Larriba’s Itsy Bitsy Spyder: Evolution starts as a gritty Marin County murder case and ends somewhere far stranger. The genre swerves can jolt you, but sharp banter, a creeping sentient fog, and real heart make this a wild ride worth taking.”
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of September 25, 2026 at #JustReadingNook
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: Bloodbound: Covenant by Noah Raines
Bloodbound Covenant (Book One of the Bloodbound Saga) by Noah Raines leans into that discomfort. Two teenagers meet, seemingly by chance, and are pulled into an old war against ancient enemies. Caleb grows up on a Montana farm with a cold, distant father still marked by Vietnam. A thousand miles away, sixteen-year-old Sofia mourns her father, an ex-cop who died nine years earlier under murky circumstances.
Book Review: Adventura by Ettie Star
Adventura is a fast, original science-fiction novel set on a tidally locked theme-park world celebrating its twentieth anniversary. At its center is Justin “Juzzie” Jayce, a park janitor wrongly accused of corporate treason after a viral fault sends the animatronics on a rampage against performers and guests. To clear his name and save robotics engineer Kara Holt—who also plays the park’s Princess Oriana—Juzzie must cross the park’s most dangerous zones and collect the hidden Guardian Gems needed to reboot the corrupted central AI, Cerebrum.
Book Feature: The Light of Arunzi by Katelyn Peterson
Have you ever picked up a fantasy novel expecting a chosen kid and ended up rooting for a stocky, balding, middle-aged cop instead? That’s what The Light of Arunzi did to me. It’s the debut novel in Katelyn Peterson’s The Magois Chronicles from Convergence Point Press, set in modern-day Toronto, where tactical police work and aristocratic magic share a city and do not get along. A hostage negotiation leads straight into a 3:00 AM knock at Greg’s door. From there, it turns into a story about who protects the helpless, and what that costs the protector. There are lion cubs, magical foals, and noble houses with long memories. But the heart of this book is a sergeant with a very bad habit of putting himself last. I have thoughts. Let’s get into it.