August 2026 Review Issue
Fantasy & Sci Fi
Literature
Mystery & Thrillers
End as
Lovers
T.Q. Sims
Mars +
Pan Books
979-8234068668
$24.99 Paperback/$4.99
eBook
https://bookshop.org/p/books/end-as-lovers-the-lovers-trilogy-book-3-t-q-sims/96fd1dabeca1fcb7
The third book in The Lovers Trilogy, End as Lovers, concludes a reality-busting sci-fi/LGBTQ+/romance/spiritual series with a hard-hitting wrap up especially recommend for prior fans of the series.
The reality-devouring MaalenKun the Shadow has designs on Earth, with Casey Isaac and his warriors the only force that might be able to vanquish this impossible annihilating force.
Casey grapples with other things besides a mandate to save the universe – his own evolving abilities, the fate which predicts his choices and importance, his uncommon love and its powerful impact, and a team which battles their emotional and physical connections to each other as well as the universe.
Individual dilemmas wind into the pursuit of greater good, as when Oscar Kenzari confronts an impossible situation under a mandate to locate a missing relic that could change everything even though his heart has been broken.
T.Q. Sims shifts character perspectives (clearly indicated in chapter headings) to add a full-bodied feel to evolving events. This allows readers to step into the hearts and minds of a disparate group of would-be heroes as they confront not only their mission, but each other and their own hearts.
From Karma’s wings and angels to emotional responses to these new experiences, the story builds on passion and reaction as much as confrontation and evolving events:
Ehsan rubs his chest with his atypical limb, his airy tunic rippling under his touch. His brow furrows. “There’s this tremble of not-quite-anxiety inside me. Feels like I’m going in the wrong direction.”
End as Lovers will delight prior series readers who have followed the evolution of each of these characters and their challenges to this ultimate grand finale.
Libraries that choose The Lovers Trilogy to enhance their sci-fi and LGBTQ+ collections will find End as Lovers a powerful conclusion that features many unexpected moments of revelation, realization, faith and love. It aptly addresses internal shadows and healing processes with equal passion and compelling moments of revelation.
End as LoversReturn to Index
The Mask
of the Storyteller
Jeff
Zelkowitz
EurekaSignal
Press
979-8-9955215-0-1
$19.95
Paperback/ $4.99 eBook
Website:
https://jeffzelkowitz.com/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7SQ4Y8G
Fantasy readers interested in tales of adventure that open with a theft and evolve into a quest story that tests the hearts and minds of young adults will find The Mask of the Storyteller replete with many compelling moments. The teens are charged with traversing a melting polar ice cap to seek the truth about a conspiracy.
Aggie Brown thwarts the attempted theft of an Inuit mask, leading her and fellow classmate, hockey star Tommy Tulugaq, to embark on a journey to find answers. This involves baring their souls to one another and participating in an effort that makes demands above and beyond their daily lives.
Readers can expect encounters with monsters of all kinds, probes of moral and ethical behaviors and perceptions, and reflections on greed, wealth, and power. These weave into the teens’ venture, depicting vivid, action-packed confrontations:
“This is mindless cruelty, this destruction.”
“No, this cruelty has a purpose. Now you have seen what I can do. You have the power to stop it. Give me what I want, the mask, the island, the powers of the Anernerk. All of it.”
These scenarios embody picture-in-picture portraits as the stories, individuals, and motivations unfold in layers in a dilemma that holds world-changing ramifications.
Jeff Zelkowitz’s depictions of characters’ encounters with Indigenous and other worlds creates a powerful set of inspections that also embraces how Aggie and Tommy are challenged and changed by their mission, one another, and the events that shake their perceptions of their psyches and purposes. At times, circumstances divide them as each struggles to maintain equilibrium in the face of impossible challenges:
She was alone again, alone and angry at her tears.
Dreams filled with stories as vivid as the reality they confront permeate a tale of adventure that will reach a wide age range, making The Mask of the Storyteller broadly appealing to readers interested in fantasy embedded with thrilling moments of tension and discovery.
Replete with insights about friendship, commitment, purpose, and courage, The Mask of the Storyteller is a powerful tale filled with reflections about modern issues, climate change, magic, and love that libraries and readers will appreciate.
The Mask of the StorytellerReturn to Index
Bodies
of Water: Short Stories
Marylee
MacDonald
Grand
Canyon Press
9781963361148
$10.99 Paperback/$2.99
eBook
Bodies of Water: Short Stories is a literary collection of short stories that offer vignettes on life that at first seem disparate both in setting and character perspective. Spanning the globe and many situations which challenge in different ways, these tales offer glimpses into people who adapt and respond to life in ways that also embrace themes of water.
Take the opening story, “Drought.” Here, the absence of water makes as much impact as its presence in other stories in the collection, as seen through the eyes of Fernando Romero, who observes both the demise of Lake Powell and his father as interlinked events:
Papi had been talking about the frogs. The way they used to be. The way they weren’t anymore. Papi wouldn’t talk directly about the cancer. Instead, it was the way the creek had dried up and killed the frogs. What did Papi expect, a frog chorus at his funeral?
Creeks, marriages, and lives dry up as Romero hones new objectives for his life even as he cares for his aging parents and observes the inevitable, uncontrollable ebb of tides and waters that support them all.
Contrast this story with “The Banana River,” set in a Florida backdrop in which Margie Flynn, who has been a caretaker for her ailing mother, then non-relative Herman Snelling upon her death, must make the tough decision to move away for work that allows her to continue paying for his assisted living needs.
Margie seeks an adult who will step into her role helping Herman in her absence, but instead she receives Haitian worker Gaston, his aide, who already has too many responsibilities at the nursing home, and who advises her to do as they would in Haiti and take Herman into her home and life.
Abuse, anger, need, and connection coalesce in this story to produce an especially thought-provoking scenario in which Margie comes to realize the real roots of family and responsibility. Memories of canoeing on the Banana River with him and learning about rhythm and life lend to newfound understanding.
Each story crafts a new world and personalities that teeter on the shores and shoals of life carrying grief, redemption, love, and understanding as baggage. Each tale offers a different insight about the values and perceptions that shape life.
The result is a powerfully evocative set of short stories that will prove especially attractive and revealing to libraries gathering literary works strong in psychological revelation and connection and readers and book clubs interested in mirrors of success, achievement, and better understanding.
Bodies of Water: Short StoriesReturn to Index
Stone
& Star: Poems in Voices
Across Time
Beatriz
Fitzgerald Fernandez
Old
Scratch Press
978-1-957224-56-5
$9.99 paper, $4.99
eBook
www.oldscratchpress.com
Stone & Star: Poems in Voices Across Time represents an intersection of nature, human affairs, time, and place. Its poetic adventures juxtapose the immediacy of modern times with insights about the past and future, using jumping-off points as common as a museum visit (“A Modern Day Amazon visits the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston”) to draw these connections as Beatriz Fitzgerald Fernandez wonders:
Where have you gone, all my sisters?
From these marble stone veins
your blood won’t spill
as it once did—on that faraway plain
we tested our battle axes and spears
against Roman swords and plated armor.
Womens’ lives evolve across vast expanses of time and experience as poems capture a different world, as in “Emily Brontë Addresses Her Creation”:
I named you after the things I loved—
the heath I walked on every good day of my life,
the stone cliffs I climbed as a girl,
yours was the companion spirit I found there,
your face the vision that hounded me,
when clouds churned across those wind-worn heights.
As the literary and historical connections unfold, free verse poetry readers will especially appreciate how these rich veins of natural and human concerns dovetail. From a reflection on Lincoln’s 1865 last journey to the milieu of a winter botanic research lab, Fernandez weaves her poetry through a myriad of places and experiences designed to capture a sense of kinship and connection in an age where both seem too often lacking.
The collection’s foundation rests upon stories of stones that appear and disappear throughout; yet the sense of this book as whole is that it unifies and delights the psyche with interlocking experiences and reflections that ultimately unite the perceptions and fates of men, women, and nature.
Librarians and readers seeking contemporary poetry that is truly haunting and worthy of reading group and classroom discussion alike will find Stone & Star: Poems in Voices Across Time an extraordinarily perceptive, evocative collection, as in the poem “To ‘The Woman’” (Sherlock Holmes Addresses Irene Adler):
Perhaps it’s only the blinking
of one panther’s gleaming eyes
meeting another’s in a fern-filled jungle.
We were ill-met, it would seem—and yet,
I know I’ll never find your like again.
Stone & Star: Poems in Voices Across TimeReturn to Index
Cutting
Loose
Aimee
Zaring
Atmosphere
Press
979-8901742754
$18.99 Paperback;
$9.99 ebook
www.atmospherepress.com
Cutting Loose: My Journey From Survival Mode to Embodied Flow is a memoir of family interaction, healing, and choices that, more than other books about recovery, pinpoint the roots of compulsive behavior patterns and their impact on all kinds of relationships.
Its focus is on blending a memoir of experience with an approach to applying somatic healing for self-regulation, and it weaves these circumstances into a broader analysis of relationship-building approaches that will especially appeal to women who have intentionally chosen solitary lives.
Aimee Zaring paints the portrait of her life choices with compelling insights into these motivations and their results:
Ever since my seventeen-year childless marriage ended four years earlier, I had relished my solitude. I still marveled at not having to continually adjust to another’s moods, needs, desires, or schedule. But I sensed that Tom, a fifty-one-year-old father to two children under the age of five, was beginning to crave more than a part-time girlfriend. Maybe I was beginning to calculate what I would have to give up and take on if our relationship continued its forward trajectory.
But my tears ran deeper than that. I was a forty-four-year-old woman without my security blanket. I couldn’t engage in the one behavior I relied on to quiet every anxious thought or painful feeling—at least not with Tom beside me almost every minute. Not even the bathrooms offered an escape. The fluorescent lighting was too harsh. The mirrors were too large, too close. Too honest.
The account documents society’s struggle to find middle grounds of compromise and health and the applications of a “window of tolerance” which “describes the optimal zone of arousal in which an individual can function effectively in daily life and comfortably experience, process, and integrate a range of emotions and manage everyday stressors.” As it embraces a better way of understanding how nervous systems can be calmed or stimulated, Cutting Loose offers a powerful reflection on how awareness is built, revised responses can build different neural pathways of possibility, and lessons and exercises from a range of disciplines (such as Feldenkrais) can help identify and change patterns.
These elements make Cutting Loose more than a memoir alone, but a workbook of revised possibilities and life patterns that offers readers new options for change.
Libraries can highly recommend Cutting Loose to readers and book clubs interested in not just personal accounts of growth and evolution, but the programs and options that work best for affecting and changing life patterns.
Packed with intersections of personal, political, and psychological change, Cutting Loose is a winning blend of opportunities that readers will find encouraging and enlightening.
Cutting LooseReturn to Index
Finding
the Road Rebels
Doreen
Frances
Trampoline
Press
979-8-9995504-1-5
Paperback
$18.95; Hardback $26.95;
Ebook $8.99
www.trampolinepress.com
Finding the Road Rebels: Fast Cars, Family Secrets, and the Road to the Truth is a memoir that follows a search for a biological father and answers, and reveals a ten-year odyssey in which Doreen Frances chased threads of information to learn about her father and the identity he bequeathed her before he was killed in a hot rod wreck.
Frances was a year old when the man died, and four when her stepfather legally adopted her. Her early childhood memories didn’t include her father, who denied his fatherhood. She was eight before she really formed the questions that would lead her, in adulthood, to search out answers.
From the trauma of learning about her adoption to handling fighting parents and the mystery surrounding her past, Frances creates a probe not just into her own roots, but concepts and impacts of parenting, lifestyle choices, and ideals of family connection:
I had to laugh. My father was a real-life Arthur Fonzarelli. Who knew? But that didn’t make him the “dad” type. Fonzie wasn’t about diapers and midnight feedings.
As her journey leads her into the world of auto racing, motorcycles, and the ways that loved ones can keep secrets, readers receive a multifaceted memoir that moves between family ties and the world of illegitimacy, rebels, and the lives which surrounded her father:
I felt a lump rise in my throat. Glenn, now in his sixties, was suddenly a teenager again. And I was fifteen, hearing about my father’s subtle kindness. I felt a wave of protectiveness toward Glenn. And I wondered, would my father have protected me too?
Anyone who has been abandoned by a parent or has embarked on a search through family secrecy for the truth will find Finding the Road Rebels a gripping saga of discovery that operates on many different levels.
Librarians choosing Finding the Road Rebels for their collections will especially appreciate the opportunity to high recommend it to patrons interested in the intersection of family affairs, social and cultural influences, and paternal and maternal choices in raising, committing to, or setting aside family.
The story’s ability to weave a compelling blend of discovery, recovery, and new realizations brings readers along on a rollicking ride through life choices that are thought-provoking and evocative, as appealing to book club and reader groups as it will be to individuals.
Finding the Road RebelsReturn to Index
Hard
Things
Marc
Hopkins
Atmosphere
Press
979-8901742426
$16.99
Paperback; $29.99 Hardcover;
$8.99 ebook
www.atmospherepress.com
Hard Things traverses Marc Hopkins’ participation in the Bigfoot 200-mile ultramarathon with an eye to exploring inner and outer challenges as he navigates running through the Cascade Mountains and his own approaches to life, both physical and mental.
He pushes through physical challenges by building endurance while at the same time considering the anxiety which has motivated him to tackle seemingly impossible life obstacles. The connection between endurance and anxiety evolves as Hopkins races through the world and reflects upon his connections to it:
The trees welcomed me, ancient sentinels that had survived fires and countless Pacific storms. Every now and then, I would reach out a hand and gently slide my hand along the bark as I eased by, imagining energy exchanged, always receiving more than I gave. This ritual had formed early in my trail running, and the practice really helped late in a trail race. When I was tired and hurting, if I connected with a tree like this, I would get a small boost to revive me for a brief moment. Perhaps all that time alone in the woods brought out the pagan in me. It paired well with my adopted PNW flannel and beard.
Fueled by memories of joys of various wilderness environments, running, and mental challenges, Hard Things is a memoir that is easy to imbibe. It’s reflective of nature and the follies and musings of humans as Hopkins embarks on hundreds of miles of marathon running and thinking.
Readers can vicariously follow his evolutionary process and run in his footsteps as a sense of place, purpose, and perspective weaves into these movements to create bigger pictures of achievement, hope, and belief.
Hopkins uses the memoir of his run to create a running psychological network of transformation offering many unexpected revelations, holding surprises for readers who might have anticipated more of a focus on physical endurance, but proving delightful for anyone looking for something deeper:
I’d spent a lifetime holding emotions back. They got in the way, caused worry, didn’t make me feel good. Rather than suffer pain, I’d learned to bury feelings deep in the moment, later rationalizing them, alone, into something manageable. This way, I appeared strong, my feelings didn’t bother anyone, and I survived. I endured. What if I let my feelings out? I answered myself immediately, without even a second’s pause. That would be wrong. The response was so instinctual, I almost didn’t hear it. In my head, I was automatically labeling feelings right and wrong. Joy and happiness were acceptable, within reason. Fear and anger were not. There wasn’t a place for “wrong” feelings in my life, so I held onto them. Let them go.
This is why libraries choosing Hard Things to add to their memoir or sports collections will want to highly recommend the story beyond these audiences. The hard things Hopkins reveals don’t just come from physical training, but mental shifts.
In this, Hard Things runs right into unexpected territory to reveal powerful notes of discovery suitable not just for sports and memoir readers, but book clubs, psychology discussion groups, and anyone interested in personal growth.
Hard ThingsReturn to Index
The
Missing Child
Paul T.
O’Connor
Torchflame
Books
978-1-61153-716-1
$29.99
Hardcover/$19.99 Paperback/$8.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Missing-Child-Life-Lived-Missed/dp/1611537169
The Missing Child: The Life She Lived and the Life She Missed presents son and author Paul T. O’Connor’s survey of his mother Charlotte Ann Frazier O’Connor’s missing pieces of life as he traces her adoption and mercurial past.
O’Connor was motivated to probe his mother’s life by a series of unanswered questions about not only her origins, but her psyche. As he interviewed those who knew her in various ways, he “...was repeatedly astounded by the troubles she faced and flattered by the people who remembered her kindness, wisdom, and generosity.”
The history began as an investigation of both sides of his family, but soon came to center upon Charlotte, even though it embraces the experiences of four families.
Readers interested in not just memoirs but genealogical research and family ties will find The Missing Child packed with unexpected mystery, connections, and discoveries that may invigorate their own investigations of family members and puzzles.
Charlotte’s story progresses as a series of discoveries that embrace photos, a mother’s writings and reflections, and storytelling documentation. These elements lend appreciation to the impact family tales hold on generations who may later explore their meaning and truth.
Especially notable are passages in which the author reflects on the impact of his mother’s life experiences:
To further her misery in the Rockview years must have been her feeling of isolation and loneliness. Her sisters were twelve miles away, a twenty-five-minute drive, and her friend Jeannie no longer lived down the street. She may have been friendly with the neighbors, but she wasn’t social with them, and she was still only in her mid-forties. Despite her declaration that she was done cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry for a man, it’s hard to believe she didn’t harbor some wish to be with someone again.
Through The Missing Child, readers come to know not just one mother’s trials, choices, and questions, but those of the generations that surround her. O’Connor opens the door of his family’s experiences and allows everyone to walk right in and make themselves at home. He also pulls the lid away from family secrets and genealogical challenges in a manner that encourages readers to embark on their own journeys of probing the past.
The result is a powerfully compelling saga that will appeal to a wide audience who may largely have no familiarity with the author or his family, but will find, by the story’s conclusion, a wealth of insights that can apply neatly to their own quest for family connection and understanding.
Librarians that choose The Missing Child for their collections will want to highly recommend it to book clubs for its accessible moments of realization, its dual probes of family and history, and its insights into the ultimate impact of genealogical research.
The Missing ChildReturn to Index
Swallow
Hell
Robert
Wallace
Exclusive
978-1-83688-859-8
$14.78
Paperback/$8.06 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/SWALLOW-HELL-survival-redemption-REAL-LIFE/dp/1836888597
Swallow Hell is a memoir of survival and recovery that takes true events and weaves them into a chronicle of struggle. It opens with Robert Wallace’s enlistment in the British Army in search of structure and purpose and follows his subsequent honorable discharge, PTSD, and a world that moved into alien territory while he was away, engaged in battles:
Britain had changed. We were now part of the European Union, and the streets felt different— more crowded, more complex, more distant. I wasn’t just trying to adapt to civilian life; I was trying to adapt to a new Britain. One that felt unfamiliar and, at times, unwelcoming.
As his experiences unfold into a special form of addictive hell leads him to be incarcerated in Europe and confrontations with not only authorities but himself, stark passages of realization permeate a saga replete with reflective, thought-provoking moments:
Every decision, every escape, every moment of weakness had led me here. And now, there was nowhere left to run.
Wallace presents his observations and experiences in staccato, short sentences which are captivating:
That’s when I realised how big this prison really was. A supermax. Three compounds - foreigners, Turkish nationals, and youth. All patrolled by armed guards. All humming with tension.
His insights into bipolar challenges, manipulation and desperation, and the quasi-freedom of sedation provide unusual glimpses into the nature of hell, drugs, imprisonment, and freedom. This will prompt readers and book clubs alike to consider the rudiments of sobriety and freedom which lead to life-altering choices.
The result is a powerful memoir of unflinching examination that is very highly recommended reading for a wide range of audiences, from those interested in European prisons and power plays and alliances between inmates to the culture of addiction and sobriety that come full circle for Wallace and many others in his position.
Readers battling their own addiction, trauma, and pain will especially find Swallow Hell a blueprint for recovery and change which ultimately offers hope and assessments of opportunity:
That moment came for me like a whisper, not a shout. A quiet knowing that if I didn’t walk away from the past, I’d never stop dragging it into the present.
Swallow HellReturn to Index
Burning
the Raven Tree
Janyre
Tromp
Ember
and Vine Press
979-8999731340
$18.99 Paperback/$4.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Raven-Tree-Myth-Infused-Historical/dp/B0GTN5C3GC
Burning the Raven Tree blends mystery, thriller, folklore, and gothic intrigue in a tale set in a Northern Michigan small town. Rumors surround seer and child-killer Colwyn Cueny, who lives alone in a forest and faces accusations and innuendos. When Chicago attorney Marcus Lenarsic arrives to board with her, he becomes mired in the myths and legends, lives, and legal conflicts of not just Colwyn but the entire area.
Janyre Tromp builds a compelling atmosphere from the story’s opening lines:
There are good reasons Mama used to call the wee hours of the morning the witching hour. There are wraiths who wake when the clock strikes two. They tiptoe into your sleep, taunting until you wake with real screams scraping out your throat, chased by the desperate prayer that the navniki ghosts aren’t real and the past won’t come crawling into bed with you. They are the reasons I’m standing at the edge of the cherry orchard again, panting, breath puffing into vapor trails as I try to shake off the memory singed into my closed eyelids. The frigid sting of Michigan’s April air burns my lungs, trying to anchor me in the present. But the smell of distant smoke tinges my nostrils and drags me under the dark spell. It’s just the neighbor’s wood stove. Just a wood stove. Unfortunately the mantra has never worked well.
Issues of powerlessness, change, ghosts of the past and lost children who haunt the living, and the lure of a raven tree that fuels nightmares and the specter of a Baba Yaga-type witch makes for a vivid portrait of desperation, terror, and nightmares that lures readers from the start.
As magical realism weaves into everyday reality and suspense marries with folklore and mystery, readers will appreciate how vividly and unexpectedly the plot evolves.
Equally engaging are discussions revolving around family secrets and interactions, revelations about accountability and disappearances, justice system impacts, and possible traitors. These emerge as Marcus finds his life entwined with Colwyn’s dilemmas and the heartache and angst of an entire community.
From traps of forest witches and the lure of vulnerable Elizabeth (whom Marcus has fallen in love with) to Colwyn’s betrayal of his trust, Burning the Raven Tree excels in creating a Gothic atmosphere with twists most readers won’t see coming.
Libraries will find that the novel will widely appeal across genres, from thriller and mystery audiences to fans of Gothic romances, folkloric and supernatural fiction, and psychological twists of fate and circumstance.
Packed with riveting moments of discovery and intersections of belief and choice, Burning the Raven Tree is thoroughly engrossing, darkly atmospheric, and hard to put down or predict.
Burning the Raven TreeReturn to Index
Church
Shoes
Robert
Tucker
Tell-Tale
Publishing Group, LLC
978-1952020377
$25.00 Paperback/$4.95
Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Church-Shoes-Robert-Tucker/dp/1952020379
Church Shoes opens with the specter of a mother abducted. Only her church shoes remain, abandoned on a country road. Her daughter Alice reflects that, despite their stormy relationship, she has needed and still needs her mother. And she doesn’t even know if she’s alive or dead.
Her disappearance after church on a Sunday impacts the family and shows that the “safe house” they’d been moved to has been compromised. Their father, who received threats against the family, knew this was possible, but the sixteen-year-old daughter narrating this tale rejects her father’s view of what might have happened:
Mother valued decency, above all else. Even if we could have afforded class, decency was more meaningful. In my wildest imagination, she would never have had a lover.
Instead, a journey begins in which a daughter resists moving away to a different, supposedly safer place in favor of staying put and getting answers. A year later, she’s still hoping to discover that her mother is alive.
Robert Tucker creates a moving saga that weaves together family connections FBI investigations and drama revolving around fake FBI agents, the involvement of Nazis and Hitler-supporting systems, and more. Readers won’t anticipate the many twists and turns this story takes - which makes it satisfyingly mercurial and filled with surprises.
As the central themes of the book – a missing mother, church and shoes, and mysterious connections in Mapleton – draw disparate characters together, readers are treated to a series of haunting memories and possibilities that evolve as intriguingly as the plot.
Tucker examines various symbolic situations in the course of the story, from what Nora’s church shoes truly represent to a daughter’s quest to regain or gain control of her life and a normalcy which always feels elusive.
The political evolution that impacts family life is as intriguing as the underlying simmering drama that places Alice in a maelstrom of change and moral and ethical quandaries.
The result will please a wide audience of novel readers, those who like thrillers and mysteries steeped in the lives of realistic people confronting their pasts and possibilities, and powerfully unpredictable events and personalities.
Librarians
will find Church Shoes
a fine collection addition.
Return to Index
The Lies
Between the Lines
Sheila
Lowe
Write
Choice Ink
978-1-970181-62-3
$.99 eBook
Website:
www.sheilalowebooks.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Lies-Between-Lines-Handwriting-Mysteries/dp/1970181621
Though The Lies Between the Lines is the 10th book in the Claudia Rose forensic handwriting mystery series, prior familiarity with Rose or her cases is not a prerequisite for thoroughly enjoying her latest adventures.
Events swirl around not one, but two new cases Claudia accepts which involve a forged signature and threatening notes. Claudia’s handwriting analysis skills are put to the test as each case reveals disturbing undercurrents; some of which reach out to touch and affect her own life.
As handwriting analysis techniques dovetail with growing intrigue and threats, Claudia finds the cases hitting far too close to home. Tragedy strikes, and the seemingly disparate circumstances coalesce into a firestorm of possibilities she never saw coming.
The prologue captures the atmosphere of an empty parking structure that turns into a deadly backdrop for one lone man. This sets a stage of possibility that draws readers into the first chapter, which succinctly captures the premise of Claudia Rose’s unique investigative skills. She posits that not only is every handwriting unique, but it reflects “the person who wielded the pen in a way that no other psychological test could.”
As she compares handwritings, draws conclusions about their creators, and becomes fed up with a case that seems to hold no possibility of resolution, Claudia tackles the mystery of a set of hateful cards and the possibilities in a parking garage confrontation.
Sheila Lowe crafts a powerful survey that ebbs and flows as Claudia also tackles a series of rising threats seemingly far beyond her forensic handwriting analysis skills.
Jury proceedings, patterns in not just handwriting but motives and approaches to life, and theories that involve trial stress and dubious testimonies add courtroom drama to the evolving connections Claudia makes in the course of especially challenging scenarios and possibilities.
The result is a study in research, problem-solving, personal struggle, and handwriting analysis which will delight libraries and readers seeking mysteries that sizzle with personality and process.
Newcomers as well as prior Claudia Rose fans will find her latest dilemma thoroughly compelling as ex-husbands, life events, and relationships twist and tangle.
The Lies Between the LinesReturn to Index
Natural
Causes
Nikki
Stern
Ruthenia
Press
9798996092208
$14.95 Print/$4.99 eBook
Website:
www.nikkistern.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H66GDR29
Natural Causes is the fifth book in the Sam Tate mystery series, opening with Todd Fisher’s hike in a national park with his new spouse Elena before the quest for a better view leads him off-trail and into disaster.
The second chapter moves to P.I. Sam Tate as she visits a hospital to see her colleague and friend, FBI Special Supervisory Agent Dakota Williams. The latest case which is revealed shortly thereafter involves the disappearance of developer Todd Fischer in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Questions immediately arise, from what branch of the government is going to be involved in the investigation to lucrative partnerships, eco-terrorism, secret laboratories, and victims of toxic environments.
A host of threads evolves around not just Todd’s work and disappearance, but the efforts of special interests who would participate in suicide bombings and more to achieve their goals. This propels Sam far beyond the usual whodunit case into investigative routines she is both ill-equipped to handle and uniquely qualified to challenge.
From questions about apparently loving relationships that may not be such to motives that include family, Natural Causes creates a powerful embrace of events. Moral and ethical quandaries and questions about betrayal, friendship, and toxic people and substances alike propel the plot into unexpected directions.
Readers already familiar with Sam Tate’s astute, savvy skills will be pleased to find here a different test of her abilities, while newcomers can to immediately delve into her world and imbibe of its special forces.
Libraries seeking a memorable mystery that sizzles with action, twists of plot, and a host of possibilities and characters will find find Natural Causes a winning addition.
Natural CausesReturn to Index
Twisted
Flip
M.E.
Bakos
MEBooks
9798986788951
$15.95 Paperback/$4.99
eBook
Website:
https://mebakos.wixsite.com/author
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/TWISTED-FLIP-Home-Renovator-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0H4YN6PBT
Twisted Flip adds to the Home Renovator mystery series with a new home improvement novel of intrigue, opening with a bang of attraction that neatly summarizes Home Rehab Specialist Katelyn Baxter’s angst about life:
I whacked the wall with all the force I could muster using a sledgehammer. It was too much. My marriage to Don Williams was in limbo. The hunky, cobalt-blue eyed, blondish fox had returned to sheriff’s duties. Eddy Pascal, my devilishly handsome ex, was living in my old townhouse. Don’s housekeeper, Esther, had taken leave to care for her ill sister, leaving an enormous mansion for us to clean and cook. Even Boots, my rescue cat, was difficult, peeing indiscriminately and having zoomies at 3:00 in the morning.
This introductory salvo of overwhelm in Minnesota embraces even more challenges when Katelyn moves from keeping her acquisition of a new Cape Cod home secret from her almost-husband to facing unprecedented issues from a home flip.
A murder investigation goes far beyond home management, renovation, or buying and selling, pulling Katelyn and her readers into community personalities and dilemmas. These steep the home-flipping process with a sense of dangerous past and present threats that come with an added dose of angst.
From squatters in the basement to strange visitors, a murder involving a clown and a bride, and crank calls containing threats, Katelyn marries home renovation efforts with a nose for sleuthing that uncovers undercurrents of unrest in the neighborhood.
As arson attempts and other events force her to reconsider her efforts and perceptions, readers follow Katelyn into the world of home flipping. Intrigue nicely pairs small town sentiments with bigger life challenges and murderous intentions.
As in the other investigative titles in this evolving series, M.E. Bakos captures newcomers and prior fans alike with vivid scenes of confrontation, realization, and the unexpected. These elements, combined with interactions with neighbors and community, keep the tension high, the pace satisfying, and the outcomes thoroughly unpredictable.
Librarians either seeing popularity with other books in the series or encountering M.E. Bakos for the first time will appreciate how Twisted Flip will attract readers interested in a fine mystery paired with home renovation and community special interests.
Twisted FlipReturn to Index
Yucatán
Blue
David
Poyer
Northampton
House Press
978-1-950668-41-0
$19.95
Paperback/$7.99 eBook
https://northampton-house.com/
Joining David Poyer’s other “Blue” thriller novels is Yucatán Blue, a study in escape, redemption, and new challenges as Tiller Galloway, the protagonist of previous adventures, flees to Cancun, Mexico after the IRS begins questioning his fortunes and finances. There, he becomes involved in a dangerous archaeological cave diving study in the company of July Toll.
As they search for the truth of what led to the collapse of Mayan civilization around AD 900, the answer seems to lie not in the usual jungle milieu, but deep beneath a lake where a sunken temple complex offers answers to those courageous enough to brave its lightless waters.
Meanwhile, the waters of political conflict boil on land where looters and corruption abound. Tiller and Max undertake the rigors of deep rebreather diving while confronting forces that encourage the release of a dangerous evil back into the world, which has its roots in Mayan history.
Poyer creates a powerfully atmospheric series of encounters that is spiced by deep diving challenges and personal and political confrontations. As a murder further clouds objectives and survival tactics, readers enjoy a fast-paced adventure that rivals any Indiana Jones story of discovery, injecting interpersonal challenges that deepen emotional connections to physical tests:
“Are you in a bad mood?” The question he hadn’t wanted to ask when she was actually at the wheel.
She shook her head, squinting through the windshield. “It’s nothing . . . no, hell yeah, I’m mad. But not at you. Mostly at myself. How I keep getting mixed up with hombres I shouldn’t be involved with.”
“If that’s aimed at me, not sure I deserve it.” But he was sort of feeling the same way. Remembering how he’d abandoned his family, years before . . . how dangerous this might be getting . . . how he didn’t know where he was going, really, with a blackness ahead as deep as the uttermost reaches of a cenote. Maybe it was better for her not to get stuck on him. Maybe he was a Jonah. For women, anyway.
The result is a riveting thriller that benefits from Poyer’s background as a diver, sailor, and marine engineer. The realistic, thoroughly engrossing story is packed with satisfying twists and moments of life-threatening realizations that readers won’t see coming.
Yucatán BlueReturn to Index
And
Slavery No More
Stan
Haynes
SMH
Publishing
978-1-7377669-7-1
$12.99
paperback/$6.99 e-book
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-No-More-Novel-ebook/dp/B0H4DJWMF3/
And Slavery No More returns to Stan Haynes’ prior 19th century historical novel settings with a story set in 1862 which considers the Civil War’s events, impact, and participants.
Readers encounter a vividly-portrayed Abraham Lincoln and the people who swirl around him as the plot focuses on strategies in managing military forces, and behind-the-scenes and upfront negotiations and arguments which ultimately affected the course of leaders and the war.
Stan Haynes evolves these scenarios
using personal approaches that delve deeply into matters of political
divide and negotiations. This brings these times and their issues to
life, as in this example of Lincoln’s reflection in the outcome of
just one discourse:
“My purpose was to convince them, as leaders of the Negro community, that colonization is in the best interests of their people. I was blunt with them, maybe too blunt. Told them that this danged war is because of their being here. That their race has suffered, and will continue to suffer, from living among us, while our race has and will, in the future, suffer by their presence. Told ’em that we needn’t discuss whether it is right or it is wrong, but that it is best, for both of us, to be separated. That this option in Central America is a good one for all, and that they should support it.”
“I read that their response was less than enthusiastic.”
“To say the least. Resisted it mightily. Said their people have been here, just like us, for more than two centuries, and have earned a right to stay. That here is the only home they, their parents and grandparents, have ever known. Accused me of just wanting to be rid of them. Imagine that.”
Four fictional characters (Lincoln’s friend and advisor, a newspaper reporter, a Confederate officer, and a Union soldier) introduce very different perspectives through these arguments, providing an unusually well-rounded series of confrontations and realizations as the war goes on and its goals shift.
Haynes is particularly adept at integrating the thoughts, influences, and ultimate impact of these diverse trains of thought into a plot which explores and depicts the course of changing social and political norms in the advent of a world- and paradigm-changing civil war.
The result is a powerful discourse that libraries and readers will want to consider essential to any deeper understanding of military might and social impact. Replete with moments of vivid, stark realization, And Slavery No More, more so than most Civil War novels, brings to life the underlying threads of influence upon these times.
And Slavery No MoreReturn to Index
The
Great Awakening
Blake
Anderson
Atmosphere
Press
979-8901742020
$16.99
Paperback;
$29.99 Hardcover;
$8.99 ebook
www.atmospherepress.com
Imagine a worldwide shared dream which changes humanity’s perspective. The Great Awakening posits such an event and opens with Raymond Brunson’s realization that he is home and has just had not just a dream, but a life-shaking experience.
A mysterious light portending to be love has appeared to him, imparting an acute new flavor of the world when he awakens to find everything has changed. Like a newborn, he feels physically and mentally alive for the first time – and like other human beings, the connections built by this newfound awareness ripple into the world as he finds that Veronica, too, has had this world-changing vision.
Not only the presence, but the impact of this awakening emerges to change society ... but not everyone has experienced or enjoys its benefits. Some are left behind in the drive for enlightened behavior and social organization - and in these individuals, the pain of humanity still exists.
The Unawakened are motivated to find out the truth behind this Awakening and its promise of nirvana. What they find reveals something not benevolent, but malevolent, as the story unfolds.
Blake Anderson’s story operates powerfully on many levels. Spiritual, social, political, and psychological forces entwine as the Awakening spreads its tendrils throughout the world. Those who can’t benefit from its light question its wellspring and intentions.
Readers receive a mystery, thriller, spiritual and social inspection, and a gripping tale of the human race under siege and transformation.
Libraries seeking crossover novels that can appeal to an especially wide audience, from sci-fi and thriller readers to those who enjoy tales of spiritual and social possibility, will find The Great Awakening unexpected, deeply moving, and easy to highly recommend.
The Great AwakeningReturn to Index
Jetson’s
Journey
Brock
Alston
Natchez
Press
979-8-9958232-0-9
$18.99
www.brockalston.com
Jetson’s Journey is a novel about life upheaval, a black Lab dog named Jetson, and Michael Smith, who leaves town with his dog after losing his family. Both dog and human feel that a major life connection has been broken, isolating them.
How each finds a way through grief to rebuild those connections is the subject of a story that at first sounds like a typical trip-with-dog tale, but soon proves itself beyond its subjects of grieving, recovery, and new possibilities that emerge from vast life changes.
From the start, Brock Alston builds a powerfully compelling account of change as Michael is called into the boss’s office to suddenly find that his San Francisco job is no more after six years at Stellar AI. It was more than just a job – all his money and savings have gone into keeping his young daughter, Anna, alive. Thus, it’s about more than just getting fired: His ability to save her life just walked out the door with his job.
Michael has spent years trying to manage everything around him. When he loses his job, he confronts his family without the inherent upbeat attitude that has marked his ability to both confront and survive life’s deepest challenges. Jetson arrives in the midst of this chaos, but his introduction at first only portends further struggles.
How Michael decides to accept Anna’s desire for Jetson is the first mark of a new life attitude which Alston succinctly captures:
The weight of his family’s expectations presses down on him the way it always has. He can’t give Anna the treatment yet. He can't promise Amber the bills will stop. He can't fix the big things—not today, maybe not for a while. But he can give them this one small thing—a dog, one yes he can put in their hands right now.
The beautiful new arrival, which can “throw a ball and make angels in the sand,” changes everything as Michael learns how to both let go of and embrace life.
As Michael develops a relationship with Claire, thanks to Jetson’s folly, they begin confronting life together – including the possibility of losing Jetson, which calls forth Michael’s old patterns of response which Claire confronts:
“Your problem?” Hurt mixes with anger in Claire’s expression, disappointment sharpening her features. “We came here together. We got lost together. And now you’re just—dismissing me? Telling me to leave while you handle everything yourself?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me!” The words echo off the trees. “I need you to work with me.”
This powerful journey will attract a wide audience of dog-lovers, people-lovers, and those interested in how forces in life dictate revised responses.
Librarians seeking a moving story powered by a dog, a man’s transformation, and life changes will find Jetson’s Journey uplifting, revealing, and ultimately worthy of many a book club discussion.
Readers will find its powerful assessment of how change is truly incorporated and reflected back into the world makes for a story worth reading – and loving.
Jetson’s JourneyReturn to Index
Lawton
Passage
Tim
Duning
Atmosphere
Press
979-8901742877
$32.99
Hardcover; $19.99 Paperback;
$8.99 ebook
www.atmospherepress.com
Lawton Passage is the first-person coming-of-age story of Southern boy Liam, who navigates his family, childhood, and memories, coming full-circle forty years later to consider the ultimate impact of these times and his early years.
From the start, Tim Duning captures a storyteller’s vivid descriptions and drama as he laces together the entire family’s guidance and progression, starting with his father’s efforts:
Dad penned a record of the good stuff— awards and adventures that had been the collective family’s bounty that year. And then Dad would occasionally throw in a dash of Christianity as both a reminder and encouragement of the good moral values represented by our family legacy, like he did in 1970.
Family values and the Marlowe family name, experiences, and decisions are narrated with the effervescent hand of a storyteller intent on capturing the underlying impact of daily life:
I consider this tale to be in keeping with the maxim: Necessity is the mother of non-convention. Highway disrespect? Nah. The road deserved it. Linus, Smiley, Chien, Tish … it was payback for all those years of pet friends crumpled into roadkill. Deviant, natural, and evanescent. All in one. Think of it as disappearing ink worthy of a spy novel.
The passage of time and hindsight accompany astute considerations of shifting worldviews and changing relationships:
My illicit party days of going down the road had fallen by the wayside long, long ago. Forty-one years, that was how long ago it had been since Lewis and I were at his place in Memphis working on his Poli-Sci term paper.
Duning’s ability to intersect narrative stories with bigger-picture opportunities for reflection creates a literary, absorbing novel that will appeal whether readers are attracted to a coming-of-age saga, a reflection on bygone years, a narrative of family and friendship changes, or its Southern atmosphere.
All these elements weave into a sense of 1960s and ‘70s Tennessee that is vivid and expansive.
Libraries that choose Lawton Passage for its attraction as a leisure read, a book club selection, or for patrons holding special interest in Tennessee or Southern childhoods will relish how the story evolves with a storyteller’s hand to capture the passage of time and its lasting influences in a vivid, thoroughly absorbing manner.
Lawton PassageReturn to Index
Life
After Eve
Cassie
Eickhoff
Ink
& Origin
979-8995863007
$17.95 Paperback/$1.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Life-After-Eve-Cassie-Eickhoff/dp/B0H59HT6PN
Life After Eve is a novel that opens with Eve Jensen’s foray to Nebraska. She hasn’t been home in seventeen years, so her return portends many realizations and changes as she navigates familiar and unfamiliar territory and faces the truth: that she’s only been motivated to return home because of her mother’s death.
She’d thought her mother had nothing, but Eve has inherited her mom’s bookstore, Another Story - though her mother’s will stipulates that she must return home to claim her inheritance.
Her first discovery is basic:
Who was this woman? Eve certainly didn’t know that version of her mother.
What follows is a year in which Eve is challenged to stay in one place to decide what she wants from life, her mother’s last wishes forcing her into uprooting “her great life in Chicago and coming back here—the place that had her scratching and clawing to leave all those years ago.”
As she discovers that her mother was unable to live her best life without her daughter, Eve confronts her past choices, embarks on a journey with attorney Adam Desmond, and is drawn into the drama of the impact her absence has had on a mother who was trying to change and reconcile her relationships without her daughter’s knowledge.
Cassie Eickhoff draws together these two seemingly disparate characters of Adam and Eve, creating a story of new beginnings and surprising confrontations that lead each in unexpected directions of maturity and purpose that many readers won’t see coming.
The story unfolds a rich tapestry of mother/child relationship choices as it examines the fine line between love and hate and how these choices ripple into other lives.
Librarians and readers seeking powerful inspections of past and present connections will find Life After Eve a compelling saga of silence, courage, love, growth, and the motivations behind drives for success and achievement.
All these facets and more make Life After Eve an excellent read that’s also highly recommended for women’s reading group discussions.
Life After EveReturn to Index
Life
After Universal Basic Income: A
Short Story
Paul D.
Edwards
Independently
Published
979-8233819964
$12.99 Paperback/$5.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/After-Universal-Basic-Income-Short/dp/B0H1SQ6MWC
Don’t let the title fool you. While Life After Universal Basic Income: A Short Story may sound like nonfiction, it takes a real-world idea and extrapolates on its future impact in a story that opens in 2027 and concludes in 2163. It’s also not as short as its subtitle might indicate – which lends it further value for its depth.
Here, the United States passed the Universal Basic Income Act in 2027, where every citizen gets $1,000 per month from birth, deposited into a trust until adulthood. The story follows four children born into very different families. The money impacts their lives in unexpected ways.
Universal Basic Income is not a new concept, but Paul D. Edwards takes a different approach in how he extrapolates the impact of the policy. The story imagines a world shaped by the end of scarcity and a vision of financial security for all that proves to hold its own challenges and unexpected results, creating an especially thought-provoking series of intersected lives and experiences.
Edwards contrasts the approaches these inheritors take to reinventing not only their lives, but the wider world. This not only crafts believable, intriguing fictional scenarios, but invites readers already interested in UBI to consider its possible applications in disparate lives:
Across various sectors, young adults were leveraging their UBI to invest in art, renewable energy startups, advanced agricultural technologies, and even experimental space exploration ventures. The common thread was a willingness to embrace risk, a belief in future innovation, and the financial security provided by the UBI that made such risks tenable. Anya, for example, had begun investing in a collective that was developing advanced atmospheric carbon capture technology, a field she was passionate about and one that held immense long-term potential, both environmentally and financially. Her contributions, while not enormous, were consistent, ensuring that the project had a steady stream of funding, and she was building a personal stake in a technology that could shape the future of the planet.
Legacies, leverages, passion projects, and diverse approaches to managing and applying UBI’s largess creates different pathways through characters who hold disparate backgrounds and approaches to impacting their world:
Elias’s legacy is not a sum of money, but a collection of voices—the laughter of children playing in a bygone era, the solemn pronouncements of community leaders, the quiet reflections of everyday citizens. He speaks of the honor he feels in being entrusted with these narratives, in preserving the echoes of lives lived for future generations. "This archive," he explains, gesturing to the rows of meticulously labeled digital storage devices, "is a testament to the fact that every life has a story worth telling, and that preserving those stories is a fundamental act of respect for the past and a gift to the future. My UBI allows me the time and the freedom to be the conduit for these invaluable memories."
The result is a fictional extrapolation that holds many important opportunities for discussion, debate, and discovery by a wider range of readers than fiction or literature enthusiasts alone.
This is why Life After Universal Basic Income: A Short Story is especially recommended for libraries and readers interested in the UBI concept and its fictional applications to society.
The book club and reading group discussions that stem from Life After Universal Basic Income: A Short Story’s characters and ideals will be stimulating and lively.
Life After Universal Basic Income: A Short StoryReturn to Index
Neanderthal
Sunset
Steven
Burgauer
Battleground
Press
ASIN:
B0H3FS4YP1 $3.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Neanderthal-Sunset-Steven-Burgauer-ebook/dp/B0H3FS4YP1
Neanderthal Sunset will delight readers of early Neanderthal experiences and prehistory sci-fi and takes place in the last days of the species. Clan leader Strong Arms observes some puzzling newcomers to his world not realizing that they portend the end of his people:
The cold-adapted, light-skinned Neanderthal peered out from the rock overhang. He was puzzled and somewhat alarmed by the similar-looking but technologically superior beings that confronted him. Though he didn’t realize it yet, these new humans brought with them a new way of interacting with the world, a way that would initiate a slow but irreversible slide toward extinction for the clan. In time, they would drive the clan into peripheral areas of Europe where resources were diminished or less familiar.
Steven Burgauer weaves compelling history into the story to bring this world and its tribes to life, with the rich blend adding immediacy and an unusually deep sense of place and time to this prehistory setting:
Between yawns, he mumbled to her, “Before I went to sleep last night, I left you some sweet porridge in the turtle pot. If you are that hungry, get it yourself.”
“Such a lazy man you are,” Brown Curls growled back at her man, smiling. Brown Curls rearranged the ground-bed before she went outside. The groundbed she and Strong Arms slept on at night was soft and cushiony and made from natural materials they collected — a bottom layer of dry moss acted as a natural cushion and provided insulation; broad oak and maple leaves added soft insulating volume; tall grasses and ferns filled the gaps and could be used as a final topper; several hides taken together made for a comfortable blanket.
This sets the stage for a powerful survey of resource management, perceptions, and even a weaving of possibilities surrounding the origins of myths which have become part of human heritage:
Strong Arms dropped his meat and went to investigate. He knew nothing of fossils or pre-historic animals or even how wind or water erosion might reveal a previously buried skeleton of a long-dead mammoth. Like the fossilized dinosaur eggs and protoceratops skulls found in the Gobi desert, which gave rise to Medieval legends of birdlike griffins; or the elephant skulls found in Mediterranean caves, which led to the Greek legend of the Cyclops; this skull would surely ratify existing legends of giant one-eyed ogres.
Readers of prehistory novels usually receive plenty of drama and action, but the added value of Neanderthal Sunset which sets it apart from most lies in its injection of history and extrapolation of insights and observations Neanderthals might have made in the waning sunset of their existence.
This creates a markedly vivid account as Strong Arms faces the advanced technology of bows and arrows, buries loved ones and grieves loss, and cultivates superstitions that answer questions about his world.
Libraries seeing popularity in Jean Auel-style stories where Neanderthal and homo sapiens clash will find Neanderthal Sunset deserves a prominent place among the classics, while readers seeking a series of especially evocative insights about shifting worlds, places, and peoples – especially those who take over in unexpected ways and change the world – will find this novel exceptionally vibrant.
Neanderthal SunsetReturn to Index
Nothing
Left to Lose
Len Joy
Hark!
New Era Publishing
97981995778998
$9.99 Paperback/$2.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GXLJRYWF?maas=maas_adg_B4EBB8575EB9B0D6A90A787E12049539_afap_abs
Nothing Left to Lose tells of a family fractured by political struggles and vision. It focuses on Tawni Carter, who became alienated from her opinionated daughter Charlotte over her dedication to a Midwestern pro-life nonprofit at the cost of her marriage and family.
Tawni’s story opens in 2018, but the timeline shifts between past and present as events draw readers into the source of these discontents and family angst, which ripples between community involvements and interpersonal loggerheads.
Tawni has instigated a competency hearing that embroils Charlotte in a court battle, charging her adult daughter is unable inability to operate as an adult in society in an effort to prevent her from getting an abortion.
As the backdrop moves through California and disparate lives and choices, Len Joy crafts a moving saga that traverses the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s and beyond as a woman moves through changing times, making decisions that hold wide-ranging impact on her world.
From generations divided by circumstance and choice to the process of how broken threads are woven back together, readers receive a powerful novel of loss, redemption, discovery, and change. This offers numerous opportunities for considering family members and circumstances in a different light.
The result is a novel replete with rich elements of legal and psychological battles that swirl around Tawni’s Pro-Life League and the circumstances that lead her to run an organization and juggle her family ties in questionable ways.
Libraries and readers interested in sagas about family discovery, dysfunction, and connection will relish how all these elements coalesce with social and political challenges, creating a story perfect for book club and reader group discussion about family ties and transformation.
Nothing Left to LoseReturn to Index
Of
Beginnings and Ends
S. K.
Kruse
Deuxmers,
LLC
978-1-944521-26-4
$14.95
Website:
skkruse.com
Ordering:
Deuxmers
- S. K. Kruse
The opening of this story maintains that anyone could have written this account of an inner journey. In fact, S. K. Kruse’s thought-provoking and humorous portrait of Everywoman Evy and her soul-searching quest is a riveting philosophical, spiritual, and psychological saga that many writers could not have produced.
When Evy attempts to rescue a grief-stricken man, she’s propelled into the Hall of Beginnings and Ends, where she encounters the choices of transformation or ennui, with each pathway in the hall leading to a different outcome and challenge.
The threads of humor which balance the seriousness of Evy’s quests appear at unexpected moments and places to offer not just comic relief, but satisfying contrasts to her encounters:
“There are other tailor shops along the way where a person could get a look at you if they really wanted to, but I wouldn’t worry about it—there are things hidden so deep in each of us that even you can’t possibly know yet why you chose half the stuff you did.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Evy said, looking around to see if anyone was checking her out in the window.
From the admonition to arm herself with as much self-knowledge as possible in the course of her journeys to experiences with individuals who inject philosophical reflections into her growth process, readers will appreciate Evy’s many forays into the unexpected. These often conclude with equally novel messages about progression and expectation:
“But where will I end up?” Evy hollered.
And Betty hollered back, “Wherever you need to be!”
From “profound failures of love” to confronting sadness and horror in the world and herself, readers follow Evy’s revelations as she contemplates assuming a greater role in the universe by making different choices.
Libraries interested in literary, philosophical, spiritual stories of transformation and magic will find Of Beginnings and Ends an appealing story. It will appeal both to intellectual thinkers and everyday general interest readers.
Packed with encounters with self-inspection, Of Beginnings and Ends will also attract book clubs interested in novels with underlying messages about change and consequences – topics certain to spark much debate over choices and life perceptions.
Of Beginnings and EndsReturn to Index
A Plea
for Freedom
Raymond
Hackney
Torchflame
Books
978-1-61153-705-5
$19.99
Paperback/$8.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Plea-Freedom-Raymond-Hackney/dp/1611537053
A Plea for Freedom is a novel set during the American Revolution and tells of fifteen-year-old Daniel Asbury. He joins the Virginia militia to see the world, only to find himself embroiled in not just battle, but encounters with Native Americans and tests of his moral and ethical acuity.
Raymond Hackney bases this experience on the true events in the life of an historical figure, adding fictional drama and embellishments to give the novel a sense of urgency, immediacy, and characters that flesh out Daniel’s persona and encounters.
His use of the first person captures an immediacy to Daniel’s experiences that personalizes his struggles with Native Americans, his fellow white men, and the values tested in the course of his efforts to survive:
In the hours, days, weeks, and months that followed, I grappled with having killed another human. I had no problem killing a deer or a bear to feed the family, but this was different. This man had a life. He probably had a wife and children. Not only did I hurt him, I hurt them as well. I was not so sure I could do that again. Was it right to just let him kill me? Still, this brought guilt that I had not anticipated when I signed up for the militia.
As he faces captivity, the unknown in a trek north away from freedom, and is forced on a journey into Canada where he faces the option of being conscripted into hated King George’s army or dying, Daniel defies his conditions to support his values.
Hackney paints a thoroughly captivating picture of this brash teenager who is thrust into adult considerations and concerns. Freedom proves consistently elusive in many ways, and Daniel is constantly forced to reconsider his choices and trajectory. Readers survive the wilderness and follies alongside him, absorbing the political and cultural challenges of these times.
Librarians will want to highly recommend A Plea for Freedom to a wide age range, from mature young adults to adults seeking vivid stories about the American Revolution and encounters with Native Americans.
The novel’s ability to contrast and bring these milieus to life, as well as the values and growth opportunities of the times, will make it attractive to historical fiction book club circles, who will appreciate its vivid opportunities for debate.
A Plea for FreedomReturn to Index
The
Professor in the Attic
Mark
Perretta
Heaven
Above, Earth Below LLC
978-0-9971439-6-6
$19.99
Hardcover/$9.99 Paperback/$2.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Attic-Mark-Perretta/dp/0997143967
The Professor in the Attic is a historical novel set in 1945, as World War II rages and rockets destroy London. English professor Thomas Thorne is one of many who live with this onslaught, but he refuses to simply hide from the bombs, employing his wireless radio to transmit calls for resistance and courage.
His choice to transmit activism over anguish results in a much-needed series of encouraging broadcasts about survival and defiance that hold the power to change all who listen.
Mark Perretta embeds many messages about individual action, consequence, and possibility into his novel, which holds special relevance for modern times and ordinary readers:
“Listen to that,” Elara said, her eyes wide. “One man running fast enough to outpace the dark. That’s what a voice can do, Thomas. It can reach across an ocean and tell the truth.”
A professor dedicated to “catching the conscience of the king” and the injection of literary allusion as history unfolds and the professor and those around him are challenged in many different ways makes for a gripping story. The Professor in the Attic supersedes most World War II scenarios with the added value of literary reflection.
From Sarah’s questioning of her own imminent decision to “bring a child into a world on fire” to the relevance of Shakespearean literature to unfolding events, Perretta creates a balance between individual choices and events that test all manner of men and women.
His focus on how these choices ultimately affect and change life even under the most dire of conditions will prompt many reflective moments in readers:
“Frequency 14.2. He thinks words can keep the ceiling from falling in.”
Words, literature, decisions, and lives threatened juxtapose to create a powerful set of experiences that result in miracles.
Libraries and readers seeking uncommon World War II historical novels replete with hope, defiance, literary and social reflection, and a sense of purpose and possibility not seen elsewhere should consider The Professor in the Attic an exceptional read.
Book clubs and reading groups with many different interests will find the story thought-provoking, engrossing, and surprisingly uplifting as a lone professor uses a radio and his literary insights to influence and change his world.
The Professor in the AtticReturn to Index
Soul
Proprietor
Stephanie
Vance
GFB
978-1967510801
$19.95 Paperback/$9.99
eBook
Website:
https://www.stephanievance.com/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Proprietor-Stephanie-Vance-ebook/dp/B0GXFZ45GZ
In Soul Proprietor, Tiffani Lutatio has logged over fifty years working as a salesfiend for Hell’s Soul Exchange, aspiring for a sales record that will earn her promotion to demon and a coveted spot in Hell’s C-Suite. Her record for renting souls has been flawless – until, in her excitement, she breaks a sacred rule of Hell by renting out a porn star’s recalled soul.
Hell hath no fury like a devil’s rules scorned, and so Tiffani finds herself moving from the cusp of all-time success to teetering on the brink of a failure that will haunt her eternally.
The only way out is to make a bargain beyond the devil himself, granting three wishes to her customer. In the process of redemption, she stumbles into a long-held secret that makes her snafu look light in comparison as she romps through a world of Portland bars, mortal behavior, and the dubious effect of developing a conscience over her choices and opportunities.
Soul Proprietor is delightfully difficult to easily categorize. Its supernatural romp through the underworld and mortal affairs will draw fiction readers who enjoy tales of demons, deities, and dilemmas; while those who appreciate undercurrents of humor will delight in how Tiffani confronts the forces that overlay her life:
“Madam chair, I’m just trying to find innovative ways to make more sales. Isn’t that an activity all salesfiends are encouraged to engage in?”
Mr. Abernathy, a Malice C-Suiter who looked like everyone’s meanest teacher in high school, frowned at her. “It’s ‘in which every salesfiend is encouraged to engage.’”
Tiffani suppressed an eye roll. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a Malice fiend engaged in unrelenting grammar correction. His real crime, though, had been beating the principal of his high school into a coma with a bulletin board because the principal had forgotten the apostrophe in “It’s time for the Spring Fling.”
From her transgression of organizing game nights at her apartment that host mortals, angels, and fiends alike to her confrontation over treachery, her inadvertent impact on her friends when she drags them into her dilemmas, and her wider-reaching impact on Hell itself, Soul Proprietor is at once hilarious, intriguing, unexpected, and delightfully original.
Libraries and readers seeking novels replete with both fun and thought-provoking adventure will find Soul Proprietor just the ticket to recommend to fiction readers who enjoy elements of supernatural encounters, humor, epiphanies, secrets, and funny realizations.
Soul ProprietorReturn to Index
Violette
Henry
Hoffman
Independently
Published
979-8195745929
$12.99 Hardcover/$2.99
eBook
henryhoffman.net
Violette’s coming-of-age young adult novella opens in 1953 as Violette Meadows enters her first year in college facing all kinds of possibilities, from romance to academic success.
Violette has longed for a life devoid of drama and replete with independence and success, but what she discovers in the greater world outside of family and home is a portent of disaster. This begins with a terrible rumor and evolves into a storm of the very drama she’s tried to avoid all her life.
The religious boarding school offers her not just a new life on her own, but new challenges within it that buffet her self-confidence as well as her reputation and trajectory.
Henry Hoffman crafts a short but powerful survey of a young woman’s first experiences away from the family fold. He weaves in many subtle allegorical experiences, as in a rowing experience, which reflects the broader themes of the novella:
Her confidence bolstered, she entered the main current with more enthusiasm than hesitation. Still, the rise in velocity of the flow below them was unmistakable. The river may have been sleeping, but there was no denying its power.
As her encounter with married man Grady Dunlap and the rumor which impacts her life and future grows, YA readers receive a series of enlightening insights into the rigors of adulthood which teach Violette and her readers new lessons about survival, choice, and consequences.
The result is a thought-provoking exploration of growth, soldiers, life meaning, making amends, and first romances that will give YA audiences not only much food for thought about coming of age, but plenty of fodder for book club and reading group discussions.
VioletteReturn to Index
Waiting
on the Sun
Steven
Petrosky
Independently
Published
979-89965595-0-3
$24.99
Hardcover/$15.99 Paperback/$7.99
eBook
www.amazon.com
So this is what it feels like to be handed an expiration date.
The same countdown his father had lived with. Every breath measured. Every heartbeat a subtraction. A faint melody drifted through his mind—a Bob Marley tune: “Redemption Song.” He couldn’t recall the lyrics, but the rhythm matched the ache in his chest. A song about freedom. About endings. About what’s left when time runs out.
Waiting on the Sun opens with Sam in the doctor’s office receiving bad news about a disease which will kill him in a year or less. How will he live with this knowledge? It’s a bittersweet journey of goodbyes, embraces, and new eyes on a world which has both changed and yet somehow remains much the same.
From how he tells loved ones to journeys which lead to new realizations and shifts, Sam, along with his lifelong friends, embarks on a life-changing trip to Jamaica that mirrors much of how he is feeling about his revised circumstances:
Winston turned down the music, his voice calm but edged with caution. “All right, everyone, we’re headin’ into de more challengin’ part of de journey. Dese roads can be a bit tricky. But don’t worry, yuh’re in de capable hands of Dwayne, de best driver in Jamaica. Him made dis trip to Nine Mile many times.” Dwayne nodded, eyes steady on the winding path ahead. Sam watched him closely. The man looked serene. The road didn’t.
There, his life-altering encounter with Obeah healer Atabei changes his approach to illness, end-of-life, and new possibilities as she transmits hope and tactics to live the time he has left with clarity and not in a drug-induced haze.
Important life topics accompany his choices, from the impact of genetics on future generations and the price of these decisions to assessments of risk-taking and the consequences of well-meaning family:
“It’s not a curse. It’s a risk. And risks don’t erase love.”
Steven Petrosky’s novel juxtaposes rare joys, unexpected strengths and realizations, and support systems that make, reveal, and ultimately heal life scars. It is a story of fragile promises, great expectations and realizations, and bitter truths that somehow come together to create bigger-picture thinking and opportunities for union, love, and joy.
Readers can expect an emotional roller coaster of emotions that trace the ups and downs of life’s wild ride with the intimacy and fervor of family and individuals under siege. They also can welcome the changing hearts and minds of individuals who ultimately act from love and strength.
Librarians that choose Waiting on the Sun for their collections can highly recommend it as enlightening, ultimately uplifting reading for those who appreciate sagas of discovery and transformation.
Replete with miracles big and small and the impact of children born of loss, the entire story is a reminder that life ultimately goes on under all kinds of constrictions, conditions, and involvements and, like a sunflower, ever reaches for the sky.
Waiting on the SunReturn to Index
The 5Ms:
Proven Practices to Prevent
Burnout and Reset Your Life
Amrit
DePaulo
GFB
978-1-967510-78-8
www.girlfridayproductions.com
The 5Ms: Proven Practices to Prevent Burnout and Reset Your Life considers the types of business and social demands that encourage burnout. It goes beyond most books about burnout to analyze the social pressures involved and how to recover from a burnout situation.
It also tackles the bigger picture of not just identifying and recovering from burnout, but adopting preventative practices which range from mindful eating and life choices to meditation, music, and resetting brain networks for better responses.
Tips stem from research, the findings of psychoanalysts and health professionals, and a range of research on behavioral change. These translate to specific routines, discoveries, and patterns of adaptation that intersect with Amrit DePaulo’s own efforts, providing a satisfying blend of research studies and personal experience:
At some point during my early experimentation with mindful eating, I tried something that made me generally uncomfortable and anxious: eating breakfast in complete silence and before I had an opportunity to be swallowed up by work. No phone. No laptop. No podcast. No music. Just me, a crispy bagel with a bit of butter and cream cheese, and the sound of my own chewing. The first three minutes were excruciating.
This blends with the feel of a memoir as DePaulo reviews his own life and those situations which injected quandaries or success into his mindset and ventures.
Readers won’t expect the level of personal insight that stems from a book about burnout, nor the powerfully thought-provoking moments of transformation that occur from such everyday experiences as a mother’s boyfriend’s departure:
For years after he left, I would think about him sitting in that living room every morning. I wondered if he was still meditating somewhere in Nepal, still waking before sunrise, still chanting that low hum that made the air vibrate. I wondered if he thought about me. But mostly, I tried not to think about him at all. Because thinking about Tenzin meant thinking about my father, who’d also left and never come back. It meant thinking about how the men in my life kept disappearing, kept teaching me things and then leaving before I understood what they’d taught me. So I stopped sitting on the cushion. I stopped watching the sunrise. I stopped believing that stillness was worth choosing.
These many moments of discovery, realization, adaptation, and life changes inject powerful, unexpected reflections into the subject of addressing burnout which, in turn, propel The 5Ms into unexpected territory.
Librarians will thus want to highly recommend The 5Ms to readers who range from business and self-help audiences to those who enjoy memoirs that center on personal transformation and efforts to effect positive change.
Readers choosing The 5Ms receive much more than a singular attention to burnout, but a broader inspection of life influences and consequences which can easily apply to all kinds of situations. Why place this book at the top of a reading list? Because its promise, for those seeking mindfulness in their own lives, is absolutely compelling:
The 5Ms are training wheels for awareness. Eventually, you forget the wheels are on because you’re already balanced without them. Then one day, you realize you haven’t thought about the 5Ms in weeks, yet they’re quietly everywhere. You find yourself chewing more slowly without effort. You listen before responding. You walk when you’re restless. You turn toward beauty without planning to. Presence is just where you live now.
The 5Ms: Proven Practices to Prevent Burnout and Reset Your LifeReturn to Index
Boost:
Energize Your Life One Small
Step at a Time
Dr.
Volker Hack
GFB
978-1-967510-65-8
$18.99
Paperback/$8.99 eBook
https://www.volkerhack.com/
Boost: Energize Your Life One Small Step at a Time is a treatise on energy level management that opens with Dr. Volker Hack’s own energy loss – a life-changing event, since he was previously a high achiever able to ignore any fluctuations in his energy levels.
His illness taught him how to prioritize those levels, pay attention to their patterns, and ultimately build and preserve a different approach to life, career, and health which is reflected in Boost, a lesson in mindfulness and transformation.
High achievers, in particular, will find these lessons invaluable keys to not just preserving their approaches to life, but fine-tuning them to build more flexibility and awareness into their goal-oriented approaches to life.
The book doesn’t limit itself to Hack’s experiences, but includes those of over twenty individuals who contribute their own energy-management strategies to this book.
Chapters thus build an understanding of energy, management systems, and step-by-step processes for positive change. This will attract action-oriented readers with exercises, revised approaches to life and achievement ideals, and a sustainable long-term approach to transformation.
Readers will especially appreciate the built-in flexibility of approaches which eschew the usual rigid admonition of self-help formula writing to encourage adaptations and creative adjustments to the guidelines and exercises presented within:
Productivity isn’t one-size-fits-all. The Pomodoro schedule may be too rigid for some, especially during periods of deep concentration. For others, frequent pauses could disrupt momentum while you are in a creative flow. So, while Pomodoro is a great place to start, experiment with the length and frequency of your work sessions and breaks. Trust your instincts and adapt your schedule based on your energy levels and the nature of your tasks. When you allow yourself this flexibility, you’ll find it easier to stay focused, energized, and motivated throughout your day.
The result will appeal to readers ranging from business and career goal-setters to self-help, psychology, and health students. Anyone who seeks a combination of applied, tested techniques for revised living and tested “power moves” for long-lasting wellbeing will appreciate this book’s ideological and practical intersection.
Librarians can place Boost: Energize Your Life One Small Step at a Time in the hands of a wide audience of patrons and can also highly recommend it to business and self-help reading groups interested in the foundations of attitude and work adjustment.
Boost: Energize Your Life One Small Step at a TimeReturn to Index
A
Caregiver’s Guide to Palliative
Medicine
George
J. Taylor, M.D.
Atmosphere
Press
979-8901741627
$19.99
Paperback; $28.99 Hardcover;
$8.99 ebook
www.atmospherepress.com
A Caregiver’s Guide to Palliative Medicine reviews the logic, pharmacology, and objectives of palliative medicine – a subject often part of medical and caregiver guides, but which typically receives little in-depth focus.
Not only does Dr. George J. Taylor review the methodology of palliative care, but he takes an even deeper dive into its applications to typical end-of-life diseases, from cancer to heart, neurologic, and liver and kidney disease - right up to and including nursing home care.
Chapters unfold not a singular path to palliative care, but a multi-branched approach that reviews common hospice and palliative applications. More importantly, he delves into the medical rationale for each:
When the hospice nurse detects increasing fluid retention— the weight is rising or there is more edema or shortness of breath—raising the Bumex or Demadex dose works as well as giving IV Lasix. Note that once in the circulation, Lasix, Bumex, and Demadex are equally potent. The issue is getting the diuretic from the gut into the circulation. Use of these more effective diuretics is the essential step that can prevent hospital admission.
As chapters reveal diverse approaches tailored for different diseases and managing symptoms and conditions, caregivers receive in-depth access to articles, research, proven methods, and, best of all, receive a better understanding of why various treatments are applied at the end of life.
This enables the non-medical professional insights into typical routines and choices, allowing caregivers to recognize symptoms, understand their management, and adjust their own caregiving routines with better knowledge of medical choices, impact, and monitoring requirements.
The result is a “must have” reference for any general-interest or medical library and anyone involved in caregiving on any level, whether it be for a loved one or as a profession.
Dr. Taylor’s emphasis on applied palliative care routines provides information not easily accessible to the general-interest caregiver, making A Caregiver’s Guide to Palliative Medicine essential reading.
A Caregiver’s Guide to Palliative MedicineReturn to Index
Common
Ground for US
Carl
Nordgren
Torchflame
Books
978-1-61153-628-7 $19.99
https://www.amazon.com/Common-Ground-US-Carl-Nordgren/dp/1611536286
Common Ground for US was conceived in optimism and rests on an attitude of hope cultivated for over twenty-five years of Carl Nordgren’s life. It’s just the panacea for negativity and angst in modern times, charting the creation, sentiments, and approaches of a notion that thwarts the usual vision of the future as being problematic, frightening, and hopeless.
From the start, Nordgren states his huge capacity for loving others – even strangers such as his readers – and acknowledges that some of the ideas in his book are purposely repetitive to reinforce their importance.
As Nordgren envisions how educators, consumers, and everyday individuals can join together to create something greater for everyone, readers will appreciate the uplifting visionary passages which present this game plan in both idealistic and realistic terms:
The stories of our journey will examine and highlight the many innovative pedagogies proven to help students become producers of their education, developing creative skills as they learn, acquiring new understandings and knowledge of traditional subject matter most effectively.
The creativity that public school teachers have long displayed as they’ve done what they can with what little they have is another important storyline. Teachers will be continually recruited and celebrated as important servant leaders in these stories.
From issues surrounding resource management, preservation, and allocation to changing paradigms through more purposeful language and attitude choice, Nordgren offers solutions and insights based on studies, past experience, and reflections on how such choices could be better made:
What happens to your thinking if you were to say, “I wonder how I can create advantage from this opportunity.” Once again, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will nurture it, care for it, invite others to come and work on it together, but, at least incrementally, using that language directs your thinking that way. In the unknowable future, there will be challenging situations where we have the opportunity to carefully select the best language for the new situation. When COVID arrived and we were told we’d be better off if we respected and maintained six feet of social distancing, did you quickly realize that was the wrong language creating the wrong story?
The result is more than a blueprint for social and personal change, but a lesson in applied positivity that is sorely needed in shifting modern times (indeed, at most any moment in human history).
Librarians who acquire Common Ground for US for their collections will want to especially highly recommend it for book clubs and all kinds of reading groups, from political science students and readers of social issues to those committed to personal, interpersonal, and social change who look for both practical, uplifting concepts and supportive approaches to making a difference.
Common Ground for USReturn to Index
The
Emergent Leader
Don
Gregori
Torchflame
Books
978-1-61153-724-6
$19.99
Paperback/$8.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Emergent-Leader-Building-Leadership-Self-Mastery/dp/161153724X
The Emergent Leader: A Guide to Brand Building, Leadership, and Self-Mastery provides business leaders with a survey of the role and choices involved in company management. The book identifies six key areas: brand building, exploiting gaps, fostering a culture of innovation, driving efficiency, career management, and managing stress, reviewing the situations and options involved in making better executive decisions.
Business readers who anticipate the usual pragmatic blueprint of advice will be pleased to learn that Don Gregori incorporates left-brain thinking into right-brain approaches to business. He marries the creative with the practical to build strategies that come not just from business experience, but all disciplines:
Organizing elements around an idea is a key step for being creative. Steve Jobs definitely agreed, stating, “Creativity is just connecting things.” Being creative is bringing a concept to life by thinking differently. We need to string together components in new ways that may be hard to see, initially.
From what makes for a great communicator who can teach by crafting a compelling story to applying lessons from the flexible mindset of a child, The Emergent Leader offers many lessons from sources business leaders won’t anticipate, allowing for a more multifaceted, appealing read than most business books.
Even more important are sections of “take action” and “takeaway” roundups that synthesize each chapter by solidifying opportunities leaders can take advantage of. Insights on what makes for a winning approach allude to other disciplines and experiences with psychological insights that, again, business readers won’t expect:
The rule books need to be ignored when we recognize that a moment is rife with opportunity. If we were just playing the cards, then the rule book would be a bible. But, the truth is, we are playing the people at the table. We win big not when we predict specific cards that will be played, but how those cards will be played by the person holding them.
The result is highly recommended for a broad audience, from business libraries and reading groups to general leadership circles interested in better understanding and utilizing the tools that stem from life experience and improving understanding of the shared traits of productive people who become leaders in diverse circles.
The Emergent LeaderReturn to Index
Foundation:
A Guide to Successful &
Profitable Writing
Barry M.
Willis
Cresting
Wave Publishing LLC
978-1-956048-34-6
$24.95
Hardcover/$9.99 Paperback/$2.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Guide-Successful-Profitable-Writing/dp/1956048340
Foundation: A Guide to Successful & Profitable Writing: (And to Everything You Didn't Learn in English Class) breaks the rules - some of the rules of standard English teachings about writing, that is. In so doing, Foundation sets new standards for writing for the ear and attractive results, offering a creative focus to successful rule-bending that can result in superior writing.
Important observations emerge in the course of examining a range of writing-related choices and opportunities, from understanding the difference between exposure and exploitation to employing AI without compromising a writer’s style.
Unlike other guides to using language more effectively, Barry M. Willis attends to various kinds of writing and their particular challenges, from handling press releases, ghostwriting, and grammar to knowing when and how to break the rules which confine and limit writing.
Writers who well recall and employ traditional rules of writing will be pleased to learn how to reconsider and break them:
The Star Trek mission statement, “To boldly go where no one has gone before,” has been criticized many times by grammarians who insist that it’s wrong because inserting the adverb boldly between to and go yields a so-called “split infinitive.” While Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise might have been more correct to state “To go boldly where no one has gone before,” it might not have the same dramatic impact. Scriptwriters for Star Trek were probably well aware of how they were structuring the captain’s bold statement.
Don’t worry about splitting infinitives because every native speaker of English splits them all the time.
Examples blend real-world experience with editorial jobs and concerns, judgment calls in applying rules to writing, and a lively historical review of how grammar standards came to be:
Centuries ago, the use of double or stacked negatives was commonplace in English, but it fell out of fashion due to the insistence of grammarians trained in logic. Their persuasive argument was that two negative elements canceled each other, so that I ain’t got none should be interpreted as I have some.
The result is unexpectedly lively, especially considering its topic (grammar, English language, and writing acuity). Foundation draws unusual, important links between the process of writing and its impact on readers.
Writers at all stages of honing their craft will appreciate Foundation: A Guide to Successful & Profitable Writing’s ability to reconsider the basics in a lively, involving approach that is not just informative, but engrossing.
Book clubs and creative writing groups and classes, in particular, will relish its unique voice and passion, as well as its considerations of writer’s quandaries and broader topics that don’t appear in most books about this finer art form.
Foundation: A Guide to Successful & Profitable WritingReturn to Index
The Good
Sales Manager: Life in the
Middle
C.T.
Fitzgerald
RCT
& Associates, LLC
979-8-218-94955-6
$29.99
Paperback/$14.99 eBook
www.CTFitzgerald.com
The Good Sales Manager: Life in the Middle compliments C.T. Fitzgerald’s prior book, The Good Salesman, and is based on experience and fact, giving business readers a solid set of insights which worked for the author. In fact, Fitzgerald points out from the start, all kinds of managers – not just sales managers – will benefit from many of these reflections, making the book wider-reaching than its title may imply.
The subtitle emphasizes that the sales manager position actually stands in the middle of different processes – thus, it represents a unique position in which roles and actions, both internally and above and below the company position, impact a sales manager’s outcomes.
It begins with the basic query of why one would want to become a sales manager before moving to questions of how the position is carried out. Some surprising insights about how that position becomes stronger or weaker stem from Fitzgerald’s forty-something years of observation and experience:
Why do I firmly believe that sales managers should be successful sales trainers, first? A manager who can train (and was probably a salesman himself), knows how to evaluate sales talent, knows how to improve sales deficiencies, teaches company policy, demonstrates how to do things correctly, teaches new people how he wants things done, passes on his enthusiasm, creates a strong relationship with that trainee, and, with time, creates and nurtures a highly effective sales group.
Chapters delve into the training process and qualities which make for superior sales management approaches, providing important tips on professional standards, business opportunities specific to the managerial position, choices involved in developing different kinds of relationships, and more.
At each step, Fitzgerald embeds his advice with real-world experience to reinforce the opportunities and challenges under discussion.
The result can be applied to all types of management positions in all kinds of situations, making The Good Sales Manager: Life in the Middle an appealing, important, and practical slice-of-business-life set of examples, admonitions, and insights that libraries, business schools that teach sales and/or sales management, and business readers will want to acquire and consider one of their tools for success.
The Good Sales Manager: Life in the MiddleReturn to Index
The
Heart of A Special Education
Teacher
Dr.
Vevian D. Salahid
Independently
Published
979-8199078139
$23.99
Hardcover/$18.99 Paperback/$6.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Special-Education-Teacher-Resilience/dp/B0H3H9BNT6
The Heart of A Special Education Teacher: A Journey of Resilience, Inclusion, and Purpose will appeal to memoir and education teachers alike with its blend of a teacher’s experiences and reflections on the challenges and joys of teaching kids with special needs.
Unlike more general stories about teaching, The Heart of A Special Education Teacher delves into the underlying lessons of working with special needs individuals which imparts insights on patience, compassion and inclusion practices.
Dr. Vevian D. Salahid’s concurrent journey as an immigrant from the Philippines to the U.S. lends an extra layer of insights as readers learn of her growing commitment to and training in education, then how this translates to her venture into the special needs community and teaching.
She points out that achieving an effective classroom is only the beginning of community and school involvement in the process of inclusiveness:
Building a Special Education program in the community was only the beginning of the journey. The greater challenge came afterward—changing the way people viewed children with disabilities. In many communities, misunderstanding often grows from lack of awareness. Children with learning disabilities, developmental delays, and behavioral challenges were frequently judged before they were understood.
Even more importantly, Dr. Salahid injects the realities of working in an environment that is as emotionally charged as it is educationally challenging:
There were days when I ended work emotionally drained before even reaching my car. There were moments when I felt physically and emotionally alone inside the classroom. When support staff stepped out for breaks and no replacement arrived, I carried the responsibility of monitoring every behavior, emotional escalation, safety concern, and instructional need by myself. Those moments were overwhelming because behavior classrooms require constant vigilance. Even a few seconds of distraction could become dangerous very quickly.
Her connections between heart and learning and her juxtaposition of personal and career achievements makes for a multifaceted memoir that ultimately reviews the processes, challenges, and adaptations necessary to bring the ideal of inclusiveness and educational opportunities alive not just for students, but the teachers and parents who oversee them.
This is why librarians, educators, parents, and all manner of general-interest readers will find The Heart of A Special Education Teacher attractive and compelling.
Packed with powerful insights about why these endeavors prove “more than a profession,” The Heart of A Special Education Teacher will serve as an inspiration to both up-and-coming teachers and those in the trenches who will here find validation of their efforts and results, and acknowledgement of the importance of their work.
The Heart of A Special Education TeacherReturn to Index
Inheritance
of Memory
John
Kornfeld, Ph.D., Editor
Mango
Moon Media
978-1-948749992
https://book.holocauststoryproject.org/
Inheritance of Memory: Holocaust Survivors and Their Children Share Their Stories is an anthology of insights about the Holocaust that juxtaposes the experiences of survivors with the lasting impact on their children and families.
Many collections gather survivor memories, but Dr. Kornfeld’s focus on intergenerational trauma adds an extra dimension of insight to the experience as children narrate their parents’ lives and how their own childhoods and values were shaped by the Holocaust.
Some may think that these stories of the past are about a bygone era, but as the editors point out, today’s situation with Israel, Gaza, and Palestine are all marked by what happened in the Holocaust, as well as shifting perspectives of modern Jewish people on the concept of “Never Again” and the foundations of their contemporary survival tactics.
These lend yet more dimensions of precedent and understanding to current events which hold their origins in past trauma, and are key to better understanding the perspectives, choices, and lasting impact of these situations on modern life.
Insights on what it meant to grow up with these survival stories come from all kinds of experiences, and are one of the ways Inheritance of Memory differs from most other Holocaust stories. One example lies in Emily Hendel Winfield’s “Terrified and Alone: My Parents’ Story:”
Return she did, terrified and alone, a young Jewish woman who knew that non-Jewish Poles would happily turn her in to the Gestapo if they caught her outside the ghetto gates. I grew up with my mother always telling me that Polish Catholics instinctively knew who was Jewish and who wasn’t.
Inheritance of Memory will attract a wide audience, from middle and high school to book groups and readers of Holocaust memories and literature to book clubs and reading groups interested in intergenerational trauma, healing, and the impact of history on social and political choices.
Packed with thought-provoking ramifications for the future, Inheritance of Memory tracks the origins of traits and behaviors which both support long-term survival and ultimately influence prejudices and the developments and directions of nations.
Inheritance of MemoryReturn to Index
From Lab
to Life: How AI Works in
China
Collin
Hogue-Spears
Gatekeeper
Press
9781662969553 $19.99
https://collinhoguespears.ai/
From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China will appeal to a wide audience, from business professionals and policy-makers to AI governance practitioners, executives evaluating China market entry or partnerships, and compliance leaders tracking how AI regulation actually operates in China.
Collin Hogue-Spears is a technology executive whose background includes AI governance and regulatory authorization. His focus on compliance in China, how decision frameworks are drawn by Chinese AI firms developing models for AI deployment, and his history of fifteen years of Chinese AI development makes for a technical, yet engrossing study. This holds many implications for better understanding AI’s function and development not just in China, but around the world.
The account opens with a historical review of China’s early ventures into AI territory, pointing out the nation’s initial and groundbreaking moves, made long before the rest of the world absorbed AI’s full potential:
China deployed production-scale AI systems years before anyone recognized them as such. By the time the phrase “artificial intelligence” entered public discourse, Baidu’s infrastructure processed billions of transactions daily, the data pipelines fed ever-larger models, and the engineering teams solved problems at scales their Western counterparts had not yet attempted.
The analysis progresses to consider the research and deployment efforts, regulatory responses and processes, and results of large and small firms in China, moving historical developments into the realm of government/business transactions and interactions that business readers will find especially revealing:
The enforcement timing reflected more than pure regulatory logic; it coincided with a broader recalibration of the relationship between platforms and the state, as platforms’ infrastructure role outpaced the governance frameworks meant to manage them. Whatever drove the timing, the operational lesson held: multi-agency governance could enforce, and enforce fast.
Footnoted references allow researchers the ability to follow the threads of these decisions, developments, and deployments with their business, social, political, and regulatory ramifications:
Cross-cultural research from Stanford’s SPARQ lab found Chinese respondents viewed it as “less important to control AI and more important to connect with AI.”[29] The pattern reflects lived experience with state-driven technological modernization, not naivete.
From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China takes a deep dive into history, cause and consequence, government and business interactions, and AI’s evolutionary process as it impacts human vision and achievement.
Readers who enter this discussion with some degree of prior knowledge about China’s business, technological, and political systems will be especially impressed at how these and other forces dovetail to create new insights into how AI is developed and perceived.
Librarians seeking business, AI technology, and political science books to highly recommend to patrons interested in AI’s progression in general and China’s involvements in particular will find Lab to Life: How AI Works in China the perfect blend of science, policy-making influences, and probe into Chinese systems and affairs.
From Lab to Life: How AI Works in ChinaReturn to Index
National
Parks: A Family Travelogue
Adventure Through all 63 US Parks
Antonio
Lopez
Torchflame
Books
978-1-61153-703-1
$19.99
Paperback/$8.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/National-Parks-Travelogue-Adventure-Through/dp/1611537037
National Parks: A Family Travelogue Adventure Through all 63 US Parks outlines the journey of the Lopez family and their mandate to visit all 63 US parks. Few would embark on such an endeavor with their first newborn child, but Lopez framed a vision from a map that became the family goal: “....to visit all fifty-nine national parks with our son by the time he reached the age of eighteen. To be precise, before he went off to college. That would be the framework for the family adventures to knit us together for good.”
The idea was to share experiences as a family. The travels which reinforced family ties receive vivid depiction in chapters arranged by national park which review new experiences in each place.
Armchair readers can enjoy vicarious exploration alongside the Lopez family, tasting the unique atmosphere of each national park:
This park had always been on my mind, and I envisioned visiting in a perfect world. The world was not in a perfect place, but summer solstice had just passed, and we would have the delight of a sunny, long, warm, perfect day with family, sights of a lifetime, and thousands of wild animals.
American and park history blend into the stories, creating a backdrop for better understanding each park’s influences, evolution, and value as the Lopez family navigates different environments and states. Contemporary issues also surface, as Lopez experiences Death Valley as he reflects on its future:
We spent the rest of our days in the park zooming past the desert, walking with our son, and taking it easy. From time to time, I think about climate change. The entire American Southwest one day may resemble Death Valley National Park. By that time, we might not be alive. I wonder how Death Valley will be in the future.
Marathon racing, another Lopez passion, is also narrated in the course of these journeys, which will delight those additionally interested in foot racing.
The result is a delightful interplay of family bonding, national park scenarios, bigger picture thinking, history, and marathon race experience that offer eye-opening glimpses into the park system and the opportunities families have to travel and enjoy nature and one another.
Libraries and readers will find National Parks: A Family Travelogue Adventure Through all 63 US Parks, with its black and white family photos peppered throughout, an especially uplifting read.
National Parks: A Family Travelogue Adventure Through all 63 US ParksReturn to Index
See Us,
Know Us: Profiles of
Disability
Jennifer
Chassman Browne
Torchflame
Books
9781611536461
$39.95
https://www.amazon.com/See-Us-Know-Profiles-Disability/dp/1611536464
The thirty portraits of disability presented by Jennifer Chassman Browne in See Us, Know Us: Profiles of Disability provides rare personal glimpses into the perceptions, abilities, and lives of those living with all kinds of disabilities. Her book mitigates the generalization of the ‘disability’ label with insights into the diverse paths and impact the term and its incarnation can take.
Each person profiled receives a narrative biography, a poem, and a powerful series of insights that defy generalization and categorization—two of the limiting, depersonalized ways in which disability is kept at arms length from the world.
Disability is too often marginalized, erased, and misunderstood. The general term embraces a wide range of conditions and prejudices which remove bigger-picture thinking and humanity from lives.
Chassman Browne’s portraits celebrate artistry, activism, insights, and powerful routes to achievement and living which often can stem from disability’s roots. Such is the case of Eve Clark, who at age 25 was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and forced to adjust her trajectory, moving from a career as an optician, which required fine motor skills, to starting her own construction company. She then founded a travel agency to help those with disabilities more easily move through the world.
As she and others adjusted their mindsets, set new goals, employed creative methods and approaches to life and career, and redefined the nature of success, readers learn about coping methods, all manner of adaptive routines, success, and surprising joys that come from the unexpected wellsprings of disability.
The result is a gathering of biographies of seemingly common people who are, in fact, extraordinary in many ways.
Photos, poems, and reflections make this collection a powerful statement of hope, achievement, and perspective that should be in the libraries and on the shelves of anyone interested in ability, disability, achievement, and positivity.
See Us, Know Us: Profiles of DisabilityReturn to Index
Soul
Damage, Soul Remedy
Mariane
E. Weigley, JD
Weigley
Publications, Inc.
978-0-9884990-6-5
$16.95 Paper/$7.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Damage-Remedy-Emotional-Fragmentation-ebook/dp/B0GYQJKH2Z
Soul Damage, Soul Remedy: How to Heal the Soul from Emotional Abuse and Energy Fragmentation addresses a topic that most everyone can understand but few truly comprehend: how to recover from emotional abuse. Survivors often struggle with long-lasting effects of such abuse with little knowledge of how to banish them forever.
Mariane E. Weigley uses insights gained from energetic healing to address these lasting impacts, guiding readers into pathways of restoration and healing which are often bypassed by traditional therapeutic approaches.
Weigley combines insights from her own life, such as her mother’s death, to blend personal experiences into the bigger picture of energetic healing processes. She delves into the nature, process, and feeling of “fragmentation” to chart survival tactics and their lasting influence, and she helps readers understand how this survival tactic moves from short-term benefit to long-term detriment.
From the healing power of physical closeness to creating an effective journal about the major events of life and the grief threads that run through it, often unresolved, Weigley crafts not one but a series of approaches to ultimate resolution that helps readers not just understand, but grow.
She also emphasizes that the process isn’t just about control – it’s about absorption of grief, negativity, and processes which often result in becoming stuck and fragmented:
When it comes to healing, the Involuntary calls the shots. We can’t always control how our bodies and minds will react.
The result is a powerful self-help guide which will appeal to both self-help psychology readers and spiritual thinkers interested in doing the work to address fragmentation and soul damage of the past.
Librarians
interested in titles that
move beyond psychology circles alone to help a broader audience from
all walks of life who struggle with past abuse, in whatever form it
takes, and present-day reactions and influences will find Soul
Damage, Soul Remedy’s unique blend of spiritual and
psychological advice to be uplifting, accessible, and worthy of book
club as well as individual recommendation.
Return to Index
Allow in
Light
Amanda
LaPera
Adamo
Press
9781965660119
$32.00
Hardcover/$19.99 Paperback/$4.99
eBook
https://amandalapera.com/books/allow-in-light
While Allow in Light adds to the Desert of Dreams series, it also may be acquired as a standalone story. It follows the evolutionary process of once-privileged girl Nicole, whose father has once again left the family. His follies have led the family into financial ruin, and Nicole has absorbed the negative messages and influences of an irresponsible father who shames her for her achievements and a browbeaten mother who has sacrificed everything for the family.
Her interest in science meets with his objection – he wants to direct her into finance and big money. And so Nicole responds with emotional detachment and rejecting friends, connections, and love, cognizant that her dreams will never be achieved.
Amanda LaPera presents teens with an invigorating, lively survey of how Nicole grows a thick skin that leads her to break hearts all around her while maintaining relationships that actually keep potential friends at arms length.
She enters high school with new possibilities and a revised vision for her future, but Nicole has yet to absorb the lessons of maturity which emerge in the course of her life and decisions in this novel.
As the secrets she keeps spills over into formerly shunned new girl Carolyn’s decisions and experiences, issues arise around bullying, sexual abuse and trauma, mental illness, and struggling friendships. These translate to Allow in Light’s special recommendation to mature teens equipped to handle all these topics as Nicole’s life changes.
Book clubs and reading groups will be the perfect setting to discuss the many issues that arise in the course of Nicole’s young life, providing a safe space for lively discourses about sensitive, important issues teens need to think about.
Libraries interested in a story that embraces all these facets while presenting a realistic account of a teen’s efforts to grow against all odds will appreciate the ultimate positivity which emerges from Nicole’s encounters, past, and future potential:
Why keep rehashing something she was powerless to do anything about? She had a future to focus on.
The plot is engaging, characters realistic and compelling, and Nicole’s many considerations inject thought-provoking moments of realization that will encourage many a teen to address and overcome the desire to love and be loved in unhealthy ways.
Allow in LightReturn to Index
The Band
from Another World
Kevin
Garone
Temor
Press
979-8-9913284-7-0
$19.99
Hardcover/$12.99 Paperback/$4.99
eBook
Website:
www.kevingarone.com
Ordering:
https://books2read.com/thebandfromanotherworld
The Band from Another World gives middle grade readers another rollicking alien novel of extraterrestrial encounters as Marv, Jace, and other group members strive to locate aliens within their community. Success is nearly certain when they trace an alien transmission to an abandoned house, but when they confront its makers they discover not aliens, but the lure of abandoned musical instruments.
The bait proves too much for the boys to ignore as visions of becoming famous musicians divert their alien-busting interests in a different direction that involves no aliens at all.
Or, does it?
The instruments may not be as benign as they seem, especially when Marv and his friends seem able to not only play them instantly, but find their personalities and perspectives shifting as a result. Are aliens involved in this transformation? And, what about the unrelenting transmission which seems to be forcing them in unexpected directions?
Advanced elementary to middle grade readers holding a fascination for stories that embrace mystery, investigative problem-solving, and alien possibilities will find The Band from Another World a lively, unpredictable adventure. It explores the realm of evil band members and body-occupied humans whose foray into alien territory has placed them in an untenable position.
Can the boys avoid a similar fate? The mystery brings readers into some satisfyingly puzzling dilemmas as they struggle against not just aliens, but transformed humans. Descriptions are vivid and alluring as the confrontations and realizations evolve:
The man’s eyes turned black, and he launched into a shredding heavy metal guitar riff. His fingers flew across the strings in a blur, and as he played, the red glow in the air grew brighter. I watched him switch into a fast-paced series of chords, my jaw agape. I was nothing compared to this fiend.
Elementary-level libraries and readers who are either newcomers to Kevin Garone’s alien-infused worlds or prior fans of his adventure stories will find The Band from Another World absorbing and hard to put down—especially as it turns in unexpected directions to keep readers guessing and thoroughly immersed in a very different form of alien invasion.
The Band from Another WorldReturn to Index
Benjamin
Bookmark: The Secret Life
of Bookmarks
Marielle
Rebbechi
Brindlemere
Books
979-8-9985502-0-1
$9.99
Website:
https://www.benjaminbookmark.com
Ordering:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/benjamin-bookmark-marielle-rebbechi/1150090701
Benjamin Bookmark: The Secret Life of Bookmarks is the fun chapter book story of a novice bookmark who doesn’t seem to know his place in life. Quietly staying put is not his style, and so Benjamin breaks some rules, even though he’s at the start of his bookmarking career, and scoffs at the teachings he receives in bookmark school.
Humor runs through his reflections and efforts to change his career and add some excitement to his life:
“Well, bookmark is a bit … ordinary, don’t you think? I’ve come up with some better job names. Top of my list are story progress monitor, reading journey assistant, and page location specialist.”
When he's assigned to the Tide Pools book and becomes separated from it, Benjamin must step outside his perception of himself and his future to problem-solve as he confronts challenges that test his commitment to becoming a great bookmark.
Black and white illustrations by Trish Heully mark an adventure spanning more than 100 pages of action and insight.
It represents an engaging chapter book for developing readers, filling its pages with delightful drawings enhanced by a fun character and his uncommon dilemmas.
Elementary-level libraries, adults reading aloud with children, and chapter book readers will find Benjamin Bookmark: The Secret Life of Bookmarks whimsical, inviting, and just plain fun.
Benjamin Bookmark: The Secret Life of BookmarksReturn to Index
Conductoid
M.B.
Lehane
Pounce
Publications
978-1-7635945-0-0
$11.38
Paperback/$2.99 eBook
Website:
https://conductoid.com/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Conductoid-Chronicles-1-M-B-Lehane/dp/1763594505
How can a fantasy superhero live an everyday life in the real world?
Conductoid is the first book in The Conductoid Chronicles for preteens and young adults, and opens with Jack McKay’s participation in a championship game. The calm dispassion he cultivates during playing is followed by a flight from the game’s outcome and his entry into a home and world powered by more than games and winning. The game he plays there holds deadly ramifications for the future and is infused with high-tech devices and an enemy who threatens all life.
The satisfying contrast between an ordinary atmosphere and one in which Jack faces down the dark, evil Varilees is created in just a few pages, providing immediate gratification to readers who will be grabbed, not just drawn, into a vivid plot.
With a twist of action, the beastly encounter morphs into a classroom in which Jack once again has not been paying attention. These shifting scenes arrive with wry humor and observations that deftly capture and contrast the very different environments Jack navigates during the course of daily life:
Butch Redden loved teaching swimming. The man was a walking tank, with muscles growing upon muscles and hands made for hitting things. Swimming gave Butch the chance to parade around like a peacock in uncomfortably small togs—uncomfortable for the wearer and the watcher. While in parade mode, he’d glare down at Jack with those beady eyes of his. Eyes that never blinked. Then the Shark would sneer, pushing Jack back into the treacherous deep.
Jack’s real-world persona struggles with school even as he envisions himself a world-protecting hero in disguise. Kids will readily relate to the shifting differences between reality and fantasy, especially appreciating how the spillovers between them begin to direct Jack in very different courses of action and choices in both worlds.
M.B. Lehane sets the stage for a vivid tale in which Jack’s reality steadily moves into a milieu in which nothing (not even his family) can be predicted. The tension builds upon these realizations and bigger-picture dilemmas that move beyond games, school, and familiar territory into unexpected sci-fi encounters.
Heroism and everyday courage are presented as adjuncts to the revised roles Jack is forced to assume as he steps into a different reality that demands he reconsider not only relationships and life perceptions, but his own role in saving and navigating his world(s).
Even his best friend Ty doubts Jack’s revised understanding, responding to a surprising revelation with a wry description of his own:
Jack searched for the tell-tale twinkle in his friend’s eye. ‘You know, I’m not joking.’
‘Me neither,’ said Ty. ‘My powers were obtained as per usual. I was pecked by a constipated bush turkey who’d been bitten by a radioactive stinkbug, also constipated, but born in Gotham City, having spent its teenage years fighting off villains, bats, and pimples.’
Wry humor enhances action-paced encounters with insights and sometimes-jaded responses that offer psychological depth and reflective opportunities to Jack’s readers. As the nature of Conductoids is revealed, so the future of Jack’s choices and actions become steeped in complexity.
His changing relationship with twin Phoebe and friends around him, powered by the Conductoid vision of new possibilities, nicely juxtaposes dreams and their impact with adventures that redirect Jack and Phoebe’s growth.
Libraries seeking a fantasy that holds revelations about dreams, reality, growth, heroism, and extraordinary circumstances will find this first book in the trilogy to be thoroughly compelling.
Packed with unexpected twists and turns as Jack navigates his dreams and an increasingly bizarre reality, Conductoid will attract middle grade to young adult leisure readers with a fast pace and progressive realizations that pave the way for the next book in the series.
Please be a dream. Please be an incredible fantasy turned nightmare.
He wasn’t sure whether he spoke the words out loud or whether they were simply pleaded from deep within. What was certain is that he’d never wanted anything so much to be true.
ConductoidReturn to Index
Frostbite
Rachel
Nee Hall
Cresting
Wave Publishing LLC
978-1-956048-40-7
$16.99
https://www.amazon.com/Frostbite-Rachel-Nee-Hall/dp/1956048405
Frostbite was written to help kids analyze and express difficult emotional experiences, addressing responses to a parent’s sudden absence in the home and other emotional traumas.
Two little penguins and a first-person cheery invitation open the story with a confession:
Maria looks sad today because she is confused and afraid. And to be honest, I am too.
These penguins were born in Antarctica and loved their beautiful home – but it became too dangerous for them to live there, so they packed up and traveled to the Arctic Circle to create a new life.
Gorgeous, good-sized illustrations accompany a survey of the challenges involved in recreating a new life, making new friends in a foreign environment, and handling threats from shifting social and political milieus outside the home which can result in a parent’s absence or worse.
Kids thus receive tools for considering and handling their emotions in a new way, with the cartoon-like penguins and Arctic/Antarctic environment serving as a backdrop for exercises that promote calming, strength, resilience, and courage.
Elementary-level librarians, child psychologists, and read-aloud adults can employ this book’s lessons in various ways, helping kids perform the easy exercises to better cope with their changing world and trauma.
Frostbite may look like a simple children’s picture book story on its surface, but it contains all the essential ingredients for adaptation, survival, and positivity that kids need in order to adapt to a sometimes-dangerous world that can enter one’s home without notice and change everything.
Its lessons allow a younger audience than usual to consider elements of adaptation and how to survive scary times and help others in the process.
FrostbiteReturn to Index
The
Mustard Seed
Rubén
Rodríguez Ferreira
One
Flock Books
978-1-972626-01-6
$11.99
https://oneflockbooks.com/products/the-mustard-seed/
The Mustard Seed is a picture book parable of planting a seed and observing the wonders that grow from it. While the tiny seed’s beginnings are unremarkable, amazing things quickly emerge, ranging from “Flowers, and more flowers. A bee. Two butterflies” to “Grass, songs, and colors.”
The tree which emerges from this simple beginning gives much to the world: “In its branches, sustenance. In its roots, a home.” Indeed, one little seed holds the power to change the world.
Adults who read The Mustard Seed to kids will want to use this parable as a teachable opportunity to discuss a wide range of topics with the very young, from the interconnectedness of the world to the impact the smallest beginning can have on the biggest things in life.
Though very simple in its perspective and short in its presentation, the parable offers vast opportunities beyond its diminutive stature, teaching joy in small things as it grows big ideas for young listeners.
This is why read-aloud adults and elementary-level librarians should consider The Mustard Seed an appealing winner. Its ability to introduce bigger-picture thinking to the youngest of minds makes it uniquely appealing.
The Mustard SeedReturn to Index
Penny
Bucks Back: A Pony’s Tale
Ellen
Beeler
Wonder
Horse Publishing
9798218895990
$10.99
www.steadytransitions.com
Penny Bucks Back: A Pony’s Tale will appeal to advanced elementary to early middle grade readers with a powerful story not just of horses, but of friendship and compassion. Illustrated with lovely black and white line drawings by Alexandra Bono, Penny Bucks Back gives other horse stories for this age group a run for their money in incorporating elements of emotional connection and understanding that will prove delightfully unexpected.
Penny’s story unfolds in eight parts which charts her emotional connections, growth, and the elements of trust and stubbornness which dictate her actions in life.
An opening note to young readers explains this emphasis on mindfulness that Penny teaches those around her:
Horse time isn’t about time. It’s not about minutes and hours. Horse time is about paying attention. Penny urges us to be curious and to never stop questioning. What do I see? What do I hear? How do I feel? What is above me? What is right in front of me asking for my attention?
Penny’s first-person observations and questions about the puzzling human actions in her life are accompanied by horse terminology sprinkled throughout which are featured in bold lettering for easy later definition, from ‘rodeo’ and ‘bucking’ to ‘bridle’ and ‘grooming tools’ (a glossary of these terms is provided for reader reference). Readers thus receive an education about horse lingo as they pursue Penny’s story.
Her interactions with other horses also provide a sense of horse psyche and habits that kids will enjoy and learn from:
We hooked our necks over each other and began to nibble on those sweet spots on our bodies neither of us could reach. Our backs. Our necks. Our cheeks and the back of our ears. Our bellies. I gave a huff of relief. Aztec was okay!
From relationships that develop between horses in and out of their changing herd and the adaptations this requires to insights about respect, asking permission, and reactions to life and its challenges, the story progresses in surprising directions that each educate kids about reactions to life:
Some horses band together and run when we intuit danger. Some stay and fight. Kind of like me. Some cling to a friend who they think will keep them safe and run. Some, like Little Joe, go limp and stop caring. Humans call this fight, flight, freeze, or make nice.
The result may be horse-centric, but also holds many important lessons for adaptation and survival in human circles which kids will find easy to absorb while learning about Penny’s world.
Librarians seeking a horse story that trots above and beyond the usual light focus on equines will find Penny Bucks Back: A Pony’s Tale not just attractive to leisure readers, but worthy of high recommendation to reading circles discussing emotional turbulence, survival tactics, compassion and kindness, and mindful thinking in approaches to living.
Penny Bucks Back: A Pony’s TaleReturn to Index
Strange
is a Hazard Here
Jim
Hughes
Precocity
Press
978-1972561065
$19.95 Paperback/$9.95
eBook
www.precocitypress.com
Strange is a Hazard Here is a YA fantasy that embraces a range of topics, from coming of age and mother/daughter relationships to the costs of parenting with a heavy hand on the control button. Threats come from a self-taught sorceress mother who employs her art on her own daughter to not just guide, but limit her.
Jocelyn’s birthdays are nothing to look forward to, as death threatens her each odd-numbered year. Mother Iris believes the issue lies within Jocelyn herself, but the truth is much darker as the spirit and life is sucked away from Jocelyn.
Jocelyn is about to turn thirteen – and this portends something different as she struggles to regain control not just of her future and life, but of her abilities and persona.
Jim Hughes crafts what sounds like a complicated fantasy, but builds an age-appropriate, compelling story that will reach into adult circles with vivid accounts of enchantment and power:
“I have done more on your behalf than any mother would,” she asserted. “But you have shown no gratitude. I could perform magic on you to extract Glum, but that would tire me and compel you; it would not make you a collaborator.”
From shapeshifting and spells to the intersection of science and magic, Hughes introduces topics, themes, and choices that compel readers to become absorbed not just in Jocelyn’s dilemma, but mother Idris’s impact on the greater world around her:
From the love seat, Idris, obviously responding to something Oldric had said, cried, “I adore magic!”
Angwyn and Elda turned in the direction of the couple and took a few steps toward them.
“That it is regarded with disdain by your colleagues is a grave error,” said Idris to Oldric. “Natural science is knowledge of nature; magic is the control of it.”
“Well said!” exclaimed Oldric. “If I turn base metals into gold, am I not employing both science and magic?”
“And” said Idris, “if I make use of my knowledge of common plants by turning them into remedies . . . ”
“You are a magician!” affirmed Oldric.
“Also a scientist,” added Idris, “as you.”
These intriguing moments of definition and discovery weave a tale of emotional and physical control, and family entanglements, in a manner that will appeal to readers beyond the usual realm of fantasy. Strange is a Hazard Here is especially recommended for readers of all ages who enjoy stories of personal growth, the subtle mechanisms of control, and thought-provoking satire at its best.
Strange is a Hazard HereReturn to Index
This
Blood Runs Deep
K.
Reed
Rath Publishing
979-8-95080500-1
$18.99
(paperback)/$4.99 (ebook)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2Y7H51
Readers of young adult horror interested in immersive experiences and tales of the unexpected will find all these elements and more in This Blood Runs Deep. The tale opens with the corpse of a fox in a cornfield. First-person narrator Josie is not a child, and this isn’t the first corpse she’s seen – but there’s something especially foul and wrong with this one.
Her increasing involvement in different forms of demise that go beyond a single animal’s death introduces a special form of horror into her life as she and her sibling discover neighbor Samuel and his wife Eleanor (Josie’s sister) dead, torn apart like “cornered prey.”
What evolves is a bloodbath of discovery, impossibilities, and deadly danger. Murder House embraces a special brand of community involvement and horror that immerses not just the surviving family, but everyone around them, in a series of confrontations. Could the killer be a girl of Josie’s own age?
As one of the Fairview kids who are post-high school and somewhat on their own, Shaly enters adulthood cognizant of the impact these events have on her life, but still unaware that the horror is not over, but ongoing.
The Fairview community comes to life under K. Reed’s hand and through Shaly’s eyes as family life grows, guilt rises, and a friendship with Cass is tested by a dead body.
K. Reed shifts the story between “then and now”, different characters and relationships, the blend of new and old unfolding events embedding the progression of this special brand of horror with life. The focus on impact, consequence, and choice runs fine threads of discovery and connection throughout these shifting chapters and characters in a story that neatly segues Josie’s early discovery with the lives of Lem Robertson, Cass, baby Oliver, and others.
The result is an immersive horror piece that mature teens to adult readers will find involving. It’s packed with not just satisfying twists, but characters whose lives shift, intersect, and move forward and backwards in time.
Librarians seeking a YA horror tale replete with interpersonal challenges and revelations will find This Blood Runs Deep evocative, thought-provoking, and powerful:
My whole life has been an endless cycle of seasons that run into one another like diluted paint. I’ve nothing to wait for, and nothing to remove me from my situation. All I have is the farm and my family, and life has shown me, quite thoroughly, that the latter is never promised.
This Blood Runs DeepReturn to Index
Will’s
Decoder
Victor
Hess
Independently
Published
978-0999564097
$9.95 Paperback/$2.99
eBook
Website:
https://victorhess.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H5D3X4FZ
Will’s Decoder: Cracking the Spy Code is a children’s thriller set in 1958 that opens with six kids who have a propensity for attracting big trouble.
Trouble takes the form of a challenge to the Wesley Club they’ve formed, bringing a new adventure to thirteen-year-old William Groves and his friends, who solve crimes become entangled in dubious adult situations as a result.
Victor Hess does an exceptionally good job of exploring problem-solving capabilities and challenges as the kids examine their world, their place in it, and the mysteries which stymie them.
Chapters evolve a sense of collaborative effort as the kids work not just among themselves, but with adult authorities to crack a mystery:
“I want to remind you that what you are working on in this room is secret stuff. You can’t tell anyone what you are doing or what you have seen. After today, you will have to forget about me and the Air Force being here.” The sergeant looked around at each person. The kids looked at each other.
The result is exceptional in its intrigue, which ranges from secret codes and leaked plans to the Wesley Club’s suspicions of and interactions with adult investigators.
The result produces exceptionally well-done collaborative problem-solving notes between adults and kids – something most thrillers or spy stories don’t contain – and will appeal to a wide age range, from YAs to adults.
As the impact of their choices comes to rest on the shoulders of one of their own club members, readers receive thought-provoking moments of connection and consequence which enlivens the problem-solving approaches of all involved.
Librarians seeking a story that sizzles with action and surprises will find Will’s Decoder: Cracking the Spy Code can be recommended to a wide age range, pairing the adult elements of confrontation and battle with the investigative savvy of children who work together for a greater goal.
Will’s DecoderReturn to Index