Landscape and character connect and crackle in Peter Geye’s second novel, which investigates the wildness both in nature and within ourselves.

Winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize, Eugene Cross puts his winnings to good use with his incendiary debut collection Fires of Our Choosing. With a knack for crystalline, precise moments, Cross pins down characters along the Lake Erie shoreline like a knife thrower at the top of his game.

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s charisma is formidable, and her energy infectious. This same energy can be found in the churning rivers and restless characters of her new novel, the follow-up to Campbell’s acclaimed story collection American Salvage. The protagonist of Once Upon a River is Margo Crane, a teenager who has grown up along the fictional Stark River, obeying its currents and snooping for its secrets.

This week’s feature is Donald Lystra’s debut novel Season of Water and Ice. Lystra, a retired engineer, lives in Ann Arbor and spends part of each summer in northern Michigan, on the Leelanau Peninsula, where this book is set. His short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including Other Voices, The North American Review, [...]