Arieh by Reesa Grushka :: Reesa Grushka travels to Jerusalem hoping to get her footing among the chaos of the city. Instead she meets Arieh, a blind Messiah who claims her as his queen and illuminates her own heritage of signs, prophecy, and disappointment.

Big Jim by Robert Kimber :: During the summers of his youth, Robert Kimber helped maintain his father’s dream, Big Jim Pond Camps in Maine; there he found an unlikely mentor in Don Yeaton, the caretaker. “Big Jim” is an elegy for a person, a place and an era now gone, by an essayist well-versed in the traditions of the nature essay.

The First Week of After by Margaret Malone :: A young wife recounts the agonizing week that followed her husband’s cancer diagnosis, offering a narrative that is both desolate in its rawness and hopeful in its honesty.

Letters to David by Cynthia Miller Coffel :: Looking back on an old friendship, Cynthia Miller Coffel explores her own journey as a young and passionate idealist, reevaluating the fearless convictions that motivated her restless travels as a young woman and shaped who she became.

My Thai Girlfriends by Tom Ireland :: In a complicated move, Tom Ireland takes a year off from work and real life to travel to Thailand. There, in a world where three girlfriends are better than one, he is confronted with culture shock that will either leave him confined to his hotel room or push him to explore the foreign country from a new perspective.

Off the Record by Mimi Schwartz :: An American of Jewish ancestry travels to her father’s German hometown, where her story began, and discovers the complexity of her heritage and the lasting imprint of the Holocaust on those who remain.