Hey Reader, When I was a kid, I got in trouble for reading. I’d hide a novel under my desk and disappear while the teacher droned on about fractions or ecosystems. I wasn’t being rebellious. I just didn’t want to be where I was. Fiction gave me somewhere else to go. It was an escape, sure, but more than that, it felt like a kind of safety. I could drop into a story and everything around me faded. The bracing, the noise, the tension, it all went quiet. The world in front of me became the one I...