Keith a. Miller

Apollo Kagwa is an independent black book dealer, a rarity in his market. He and his wife have just welcomed their first son Brian, named after Apollo’s own father who disappeared from his life. Emma is a librarian and the two have an urban storybook life so far: morning father and baby support groups in the park, dinner with the in laws, an occasional opportunity to steal away for a mommy-daddy date and possible quick but inspired sex.

All is well until Emma starts to experience difficulties and become removed from Apollo. Soon she starts to shift into self imposed seclusion, giving the impression of postpartum depression. As Emma devolves into herself the impossible and unimaginable happens and Apollo’s life spirals into a fucked up episode of American Horror Story that leaves him handcuffed to a radiator while his wife carries out the unimaginable in the very next room.

troll in the city.jpg — Changeling

by Victor LaValle

What follows is a walk through hell beginning in a hospital stay to a prison adjournment and a quest of revenge that can only end in justifiable homicide.

Lavalle seems to have continued ideas from his short story, I Left My Heart in Skaftafell, in Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond curated by BIll Campbell (Rosarium 2013). The story featured a Troll....ummm...trolling the narrator during his fated trip in Iceland. Changeling uses the elements of a European fairy tale and modernity to weave current political themes and subtleties of American race relations to create the tense spine of this narrative leave us begging for a happy ending.

If a man on edge hell bent on a quest for vengeance with the opposing mentors of a sketchy programmer with a reddit account and an independent book dealer with a penchant for the dark fantastic moves you… this book needs to be on your “to read” pile on GoodReads or better yet by your bedside book stool.