QTL readers, welcome back to the grid! I'm publishing crosswords on a highly irregular basis now, and I've had this one in the queue for months. Get to solving, or don't. I'm not your dad! QTL Crossword: Grayscale Need More?! For more puzzles, subscribe to my newsletter, The New Dork Times. It's now completely free, with three…
Roshani Chokshi reminds us that a heart’s a heavy burden in her newest standalone, The Swan’s Daughter. This magical, funny, and thoughtful fairy tale explores all the ways love can be a boon or your doom. Prince Arris wants to fall in love without his heart getting cut out. Unfortunately, his untimely death is practically…
Stepping out of my comfort zone this week and decided to check out a promising new romantasy book that caught my eye. The Trident And The Pearl, by Sarah K.L. Wilson, is essentially a slow-burning romance about the leader of a nation falling in love with Poseidon. I always felt the god of the seas…
Continue reading ➞ The Trident And The Pearl – Rock The Boat
Terrestrial History, by Joe Mungo Reed, caught my eye with its heavy title and stark cover art. Its premise was just as intriguing, promising time travel and four generations within the same family as they dealt with climate change and the colonization of Mars. And while there are some really exciting ideas at play within…
Continue reading ➞ Terrestrial History – Best Left to the Nerds
The Belladonna series by Adalyn Grace is quickly becoming one of my favorite YA stories. In the second book, Foxglove, Grace crafts a compelling romance and keeps the stakes rising with a new mystery that makes this story even stronger than the first. Foxglove picks back up on a scene in progress: a duke has…
As we leave all the wonder books of 2025 behind us, the Quill to Live team has one more thing we actually want to talk about: novellas. Due to the extremely high number of novels that we tried to review in 2025, we didn’t have a lot of space to review some of the amazing…
Here’s a multiple choice question for ya: What does “Woof!” mean? A. It’s what my toddler calls all doggies. B. It’s the only exclamation that can capture my feelings of returning from a stressful holiday season to write a review! C. It’s how I feel about Stephen King’s Cujo. D. All of the above. Ding…
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao is going to hurt you, and it’s going to be worth it. This is a complicated story that showcases the difficulty of duty, personal sacrifice, and the hard decisions that are required to do the most good, even if people are hurt along the way. Wei Yin helped her…
Ever since their debut novel, Leech, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Hiron Ennes next novel. As you may already know, The Works of Vermin fell into our top ten best of 2025 and for many very good reasons. The city of Tilliard is on the precipice. Its elite, though powerful, is facing stagnancy and rebellion. Its…
Continue reading ➞ The Works of Vermin – Producing Greatness
Birth of a Dynasty, by Chinaza Bado, is something a little bit old and a little bit new. It has the bones of many modern-era epic fantasy hits, and it's dialed in to a lot of the strongest tropes that make this genre popular. While it isn’t reinventing the wheel, it is also an African-inspired…
Continue reading ➞ Birth Of A Dynasty – Noble On Noble Action
