“Life is pure misery for the women and children in HARD TIMES (Bronzeville Books, 184 pp., paper, $12.99), Les Edgerton’s bone-cracking, Depression-era yarn set in the backwoods of East Texas. Even someone like Amelia — smart enough to win school prizes and cunning enough to carry a machete — gets caught up in the brutal cycle of life for women in these parts. (“Just try to stay out of the way,” her mother advises her when her father forces her to marry Arnold Critchin, who assaulted her on their first date.) When Arnold’s moonshine business lands him in jail, Amelia is left to fend for their four children and her husband’s pack of vicious dogs. The novel veers straight into thriller territory when Lucious Tremaine, a fugitive from Louisiana, stumbles into this treacherous backwater and Amelia becomes his only hope of eluding the savage locals. Dogs, husbands, killer outlaws — we know which beasts we’re rooting for.”

“ Ghosts On The Block Never Sleep is the debut novel by hardcore Chicago author Tia Ja'nae (out in October on Uncle B. Publications). A singular tale of a female car-jacker who, because of her high-demand, acts as conduit to some of the most dangerous criminal elements in the city. It's a fast-talking, relentless yet introspective meditation on life/death, survival/deceit, and how far a woman's constitution for death can stretch before the reader begins to question her own sanity. It's a novel that is so vividly informed by time, place, politics, and culture that its immersion drops the floor from beneath you. The narrative doesn't arc, it straight descends — where street-level warfare sinks into psychic terror.``