December 2025 Review Issue
Fantasy & Sci Fi
Mystery & Thrillers
Fantasy
Tales
Short & Sweet
C.T.
Fitzgerald
RCT
& Associates,
LLC
979-8-218-80862-4
$14.00
Paperback; $5.95 E-book
www.C.T.Fitzgerald.com
Fantasy Tales Short & Sweet are not your usual sword-and-sorcery fantasy-style works, but represent philosophical, social, and psychological inspections of life with an overlay of magical realism and thought-provoking attraction.
Take the opening story, “Carry Out.” John “Jack” Hamilton is pushing seventy-five and has seen the best years of his life. When he visits his favorite diner, he decides to order takeout instead of his usual eating in, a new thing for the diner and for Jack, and while he dozes and waits for his food, his life changes dramatically as his past returns to confront him in unexpected ways.
As for his waitress Nora, who had forgotten Jack’s carry-out order and let things come to pass, she receives an unexpected gift in the midst of anguish which gives her great pause for reflection.
Contrast this with “Pete’s Miracle Mile,” in which ex-railroad man Peter (“Peety”), also a diabetic, who has finally succumbed to his condition at age fifty-nine, receives a life review that contrasts with Jack’s world, yet holds similar elements (military men, cops, firemen, dock workers), good and bad decisions that lead to loneliness, and a bar that that provides the place for an alternate wake with alternate rules.
Peety’s shadow-wake reveals a mischievous undercurrent of change sparked by his passing that takes a macabre turn when booze-laden mourners come up with a final escapade that Peety would not have appreciated. The caper is exposed at just the right (or wrong, depending on perspective) moment when, in a morbid twist of humor, Fr. O’Meara discovers newfound purpose in the funeral event:
He saw his great chance for fame and, as a bonus, he had just found meaning in his life.
In this moment, religion unexpectedly delivers a miracle at the most unlikely time to equally undeserving recipients, dead or alive.
Each story offers a twist of perspective concerning life. While the definition of ‘fantasy’ is loose, a bit of science fiction and certainly more than a touch of magical realism elevates these life-changing perspectives into something more indefinable and compelling, which, in the case of this small book, is a good thing.
It would take too long to mention the ironies and fantastic results of each of these pieces (which are truly short and sweet vignettes, consisting of only about thirty pages each), but “Oaths” is yet another inspection of battles, life wounds, and “walking ghosts” in which two men - a knight and a Viet Nam vet - realize the futility of their choices, their participation in war and the oaths they swore to uphold:
The inescapable, corollary was that his way of life, the way of the knight, would soon disappear. This idea angered Timothy. All of the work, all of the skills, the sacrifice, the courage, the requirements of his knightly oath and the society that oath guarded-all would disappear in the name of machine progress.
The struggles that evolve from this epiphany juxtaposes past and present as realizations emerge that are just as life-changing today as they were long ago.
Pointed life inspections, considerations of purpose and meaning, and the injection of a fantasy overlay that impacts and changes life make for short works that are compelling and especially recommended for book clubs looking for discussion material. The stories in Fantasy Tales: Short and Sweet make us look into the carnival mirror of life and, just like the characters in the stories whose lives are changed and, perhaps, distorted, perhaps those of the reader will be, also.
Libraries and readers interested in works which are loosely defined as fantasies but which hold powerful inspections of life’s meaning will relish how each story develops unique characters whose choices impact and change not just their world, but the world of those around them.
Fantasy Tales Short & SweetReturn to Index
Champagne
Girl in
a Budweiser Family
Suzanne
Weerts
Independently
Published
979-8-9994979-0-1
$5.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Champagne-Girl-Budweiser-Family-Stories-ebook/dp/B0FQWJP2C7
Champagne Girl in a Budweiser Family is a memoir told in vignettes that chronicles the culture and trials of coming of age in the 1970s South. These tales from a simpler era held underlying, streamlined guidelines for girls of those times - which was all fine and good until a family experienced a rebel in their midst.
Such was Suzanne Weerts, who details the music, atmosphere, and pastimes of a family in bygone times:
Daddy and Mom have made buckets from Maxwell House coffee tins with wire coat hangers, and we each grab one off the handlebars and begin filling the cans with blackberries, the dark purple juice dripping down our arms. Mom knew this would happen so she made sure we dressed in our oldest clothes.
The memoir helps readers understand the 1970s milieu from the perspective of both a child’s eye and the seasoned hindsight of an adult writer. It captures moments of kindergarten, play, friendships, and fitting in (or not):
This was a tragic, heartbroken, miserable-but-supportive bunch, yet what were we supposed to say when they got to us? They were all one-upping each other with stories of flying plates and brandished weapons. We might have participated in a food fight with Planters Cheez Balls after over-indulging on some Boone’s Farm Tickle Pink at the Lake Johnson dam, but no one got hurt. We didn’t belong here.
From secret societies and buckets of fried chicken to learning to fire a gun at a party, recovering from emotional and physical setbacks, and interacting with the greater world outside of the town she was born in, Weerts presents her life as snapshots of experience that draw readers into the backdrop of her world and young wisdom.
Libraries seeking memoirs that hold a firm foundation of place in general and the South in particular will welcome how vividly Champagne Girl in a Budweiser Family depicts the emotional growth and forays of not just the author, but everyone around her.
Embellished with descriptive interactions and the satisfaction of humor juxtaposed with life lessons, the story embeds philosophical and social reflection in a simple, fun read that is hard to put down and filled with thought-provoking reflections:
Time flies and bands break up.
Flashlights lose their juice.
Friends lose touch.
People die.
Champagne Girl in a Budweiser FamilyReturn to Index
Ghost
Child
Deborah
Jennings
Atmosphere
Press
ASIN:
B0FNS7B8B7 $9.99
eBook
www.atamospherepress.com
Ghost Child: Uncovering Family Secrets from a Back Porch to the Yucatan is a memoir of adoption, a search for family ties and truth, and a discovery about the nature of family, made in the author’s thirties, that sent her on a search for her identity.
Many a memoir has been written about adoptees searching for family, but what sets Deborah Jennings apart from the usual story is the contrasts between her birth parents and adoptive parents, the truths that emerge about her family heritage, her biracial roots, the intellectual and cultural differences between her biological parents, and the resulting impact all these newfound insights have on the rest of her life.
As she uncovers stories about transatlantic crossings, marriage and birth choices, and family relationships, truths emerge about not just adoption, but family dynamics:
There was a certain disdain in the way she characterized her relationship with her parents. Curiously, nothing the grandparents had said to me suggested the estrangement she now described. I found it hard to reconcile the descriptions of her mother, Beatriz, with the warm and gracious, proud grandmother of twenty-four grandchildren, whom I’d just met.
Of special note is the emotional complexity that emerges from contact between these two very different families. This gives readers a fascinating glimpse into social and psychological influences affecting children from their heritage. This will result in many an avid discussion in psychology and reading groups.
From treasured family belongings, legacy, and mental illness to uplifting reflections on interconnected roots, Ghost Child’s many different facets of adoption, heritage, and past and present lives makes for an exceptional story that is ultimately heartening:
Another era, another universe but the same house. I felt the presence of my grandmother and my great-grandmother and the love between them. I savored the images and the moment. Life is so interconnected.
This is why libraries that already have adoption memoirs in their collections will want to acquire and recommend Ghost Child as a special standout in adoptive literature. It will reach into reading groups, adoptee circles, and general-interest audiences with a journey that is surprising, invigorating, and hard to put down.
Ghost ChildReturn to Index
Green
Glitter Girl
Connie
C. Jones, MA, LPC
with Melanie
Davis-Jones
Torchflame
Books
978-1-61153-610-2
$18.99
paperback; $8.99
ebook; $28.00
large print
www.torchflamebooks.com
Green Glitter Girl: A Journey of Hope and Trauma Recovery is a memoir that testifies to the human ability to endure, hope, and heal. It’s a striking story of unresolved trauma’s impact and the process involved in mitigating its effects that follows the paths taken by author Connie C. Jones to confront and heal from her own childhood traumas.
This subject could prove triggering to sensitive readers tackling their own traumas, but in fact Green Glitter Girl does more than relive the past and explore the lasting impact of depression and mental illness. It promotes a positive, uplifting outlook for the future by representing one woman’s journey towards love and connection, drawing important connections between life choices and the early childhood lessons that often surrounded, however subconsciously, these inclinations:
Of course, this tendency fits perfectly with my chosen career because people come to me and tell me their problems. But rarely do I go to somebody when I’m in distress, even now. I found that my grip on joyful things in my life was extremely fragile and easily disrupted.
From how her sister’s death resulted in an underlying feeling that her dreams could never come true to the disconnect between memory and bodily memory reactions which often result in unpredictable or unfathomable behaviors in adulthood, Jones explores the nuances and direction of her life with an eye to revealing how patterns are established, logic formulated from trauma, and (most importantly) how negative messages and responses can be broken.
Included in the recovery process is mindfulness - but Jones goes beyond most books which promote mindfulness by chronicling exactly how mindful practices result in better reactions to life:
My brain remembered all the training I had done to learn to calm my body and mind. I relaxed my body. Then I did my mindfulness practice to quiet the fear thoughts that were screaming in my head. My body started to calm, but then there was the terribly scary moment when I could actually feel my heart go into the V-tach. But I could also feel the ability I had developed to go into an observing and compassionate part of me...
The result is more than another memoir of trauma and recovery, but a series of applied lessons on adaptation and change which reach out to readers who may have felt similarly trapped by their past early influences and their desire to create a better future by changing their reactions and subconscious patterns.
Libraries seeking memoirs that also act as a self-help guide will want to add Green Glitter Girl to their collections, while book clubs and psychology reading groups will find much food for thought, discussion, and debate within these important pages.
Green Glitter GirlReturn to Index
My Joy
Journey
with Amy
Mark D.
Youngquist
Independently
Published
979-8-9926399-0-2
$29.95
Hardcover/$21.95
Paperback/$8.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/My-Joy-Journey-Amy-Through/dp/B0FHV59H8K
My Joy Journey with Amy: A Love Story Through Life, Loss, Grief and Healing is a surprising memoir about cancer - surprising because the loss, grief, and struggles with medical treatment and failing health is more than tempered by a sense of life and joy not typically found in cancer memoirs.
Most people struggle with the specter of dying after a cancer diagnosis. Mark D. Youngquist’s wife Amy was determined to continue to find joy in her life and living even as she faced indomitable medical procedures and challenges. It is this quest for ongoing joy in the face of poor health that gives My Joy Journey with Amy a special power of attraction, making it a standout in the literature of cancer memoirs.
Color photos throughout capture life, from nature scenes to people, while vignettes of reflection not just by Youngquist but those who knew Amy and the couple inject different viewpoints about Amy and her attitude towards life, friendship, and experience. One example comes from friend Jackie:
There were two kinds of people in Amy’s world: family and friends. If you weren’t the former, you were the latter. But only for ten minutes. You could be a neighbor-friend, a work-friend, or a new friend from the next table over. Give Amy ten minutes, and you would feel like family.
Readers won’t expect descriptions of life-affirming family and friend gatherings, pranks, hikes in the outdoors, and other events to permeate a cancer account. But all these facets work together as memories cover Youngquist’s journey through grief and his life of joy with his love. The contrasts between his life with and without Amy are candidly stark and revealing:
I am not sure what lies ahead for me in this new life I have been forced to architect. I imagine I am going to need to continue to rely on my friends and family as I walk this journey. But I know Amy would want me to embrace the joy of this challenge and soak in the beauty of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
The result is both a celebration and a survivor’s guide that blends joy, grief, and adaptation into a memoir as vivid and full of life as the woman Youngquist loves.
Librarians interested in memoirs about cancer, survivors and spouses, and how the joy and happiness one couple experiences continues to spread into life-affirming choices after death will find My Joy Journey with Amy appealing and intimate.
It goes beyond the usual account of medical challenges and grief to tackle the bigger-picture question of life impact, choice, and how joy can be disseminated among one’s circle even under the direst of conditions – a lesson much needed in today’s world.
My Joy Journey with AmyReturn to Index
Things
Left Unsaid
Glenn E.
Wichinsky
GFP
978-1-967510-19-1
$16.95
Paperback/$8.99 eBook
Website: https://globalgaminglawyer.com/
Ordering
Link: https://a.co/d/bHRF0Oe
Things Left Unsaid: My Dad, the Mob, and Growing Up in the Nevada Gaming Industry is a memoir of a father’s questionable choices, a mother’s decision to move his children to a state far from his personal Indiscretions, and a son who grows up sheltered and unaware of that world or his father’s role in it.
Glenn E. Wichinsky was thirteen when he visited his distant father and began getting a sense of what was really going on in his family.
On the face of it, Things Left Unsaid is an expośe of Nevada’s gaming community; but much as Wichinsky reveals this world, he also draws back the covers on family secrets, child-rearing decision-making, divided families, and the impact of discovery and heritage as he makes new life connections and considers how his life should change.
From relationship-building to law school, Wichinsky reveals the course and influences of his life, dovetailing details about his father and his own choices. His involvement in political and judicial processes offers reflections on American social values and choices in crime, justice, and legal processes alike:
I recall a favorite political statement used during those years in the California legislature that “we must examine the root causes of crime.” It sounded good politically, but society is still trying to address the abhorrent level of crime in American society today.
As he becomes more involved in politics, Wichinsky experiences exciting times and family transition points that test his moral and ethical values in unusual ways:
This was not his first offense, and our father was done with it.
“I’m tired of paying for attorneys to defend you in court,” he said to Steve. “You should have your brother represent you.”
I was shocked, and from Steve’s face, I could see he felt the same. “Dad,” I said, “I don’t know the first thing about representing a client, not to mention my brother, in a criminal proceeding.”
“Maybe this is a good time to learn,” he responded.
While much of the story plays out on family and social landscapes, Michael “Mickey” Wichinsky, a respected and noted pioneer in the slot machine and gaming industry, led a life of intrigue that his son only discovered upon his father’s death. The broader history of Nevada’s milieu emerges against a personal backdrop.
Glenn E. Wichinsky’s review of the impact of such secrets and the journey of discovery that probes his father’s strengths and weaknesses creates a thought-provoking memoir that operates on many different levels of discovery.
Libraries and readers seeking an astute blend of family memoir, political and social evolution, and psychological examination into Mob connections and Nevada’s gaming industry will find much to love and learn from in Things Left Unsaid’s vivid approach to exposing the roots of both the regulated global gaming industry and personal pivot points in life.
Things Left UnsaidReturn to Index
Mystery & Thrillers
Brutal Disclosure
Kevin Polin
Atlantic Press
979-8-9935023-1-1 $14.99
www.kevinpolin.com
Brutal Disclosure opens with the death of Declan O’Neill’s brother Sean, an apparent suicide as he jumped from the roof of the family’s apartment building. That event sparks not just grief and confusion, but a series of increasingly deadly confrontations in Manhattan as Declan confronts the Russian forces that prompted Sean’s death as Sean’s killers come after him demanding to know what happened to the hundred thousand pounds Sean allegedly stole from them in England.
Declan’s struggle for peace, understanding, and freedom lead him to New York City and back again in search of answers in a journey which introduces possible new friends, old enemies, and an ever-widening web of deceit and revelation that immerse him in Sean’s world and challenges to his own dreams and life.
Kevin Polin’s thriller takes off from the beginning, with few dead zones as the tension ramps up, romantic interests with Isabella and Marie emerge, and Declan faces brutality not just from Russian interests, but American police who view any foreigner as a possible terrorist. The realistic scenes of his confrontation with forces which ideally should be on his side, but aren’t, create a realistic modern backdrop for today’s readers as Declan finds himself walking a thin line between opposing forces that each seem to center on his life and his brother’s involvements.
Tension is nicely developed, the action nonstop yet realistic, and the plot is satisfyingly unpredictable as Declan moves into different circles only to find his life still is threatened.
Libraries and readers seeking exciting thrillers that embrace a young nineteen-year-old’s coming of age process with bigger picture thinking about one’s role in life, secrets, and family connections will find Brutal Disclosure a winner. Its appealing form of growth, revelation, and discovery operates on both psychological and thriller genre levels to immerse readers in a story that is thought-provoking and powered by a fine blend of high-octane confrontation and personal inspection.
Brutal DisclosureReturn to Index
Hot
Tango in
Argentina
Nancy Nau Sullivan
Torchflame Books
978-1-61153-615-7
$19.99 paperback; $6.99
ebook; $30.00
large print
www.torchflamebooks.com
Hot Tango in Argentina is a Blanche Murningham mystery that opens in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1978. Part-time sleuth Blanche and romantic partner Emilio Del Sierra are enjoying a well-deserved respite from detective work when Emilio’s family crisis draw them into a dangerous situation.
Posing as tourists to root out the truth, Blanche and Emilio investigate a plot threatening his family, only to discover that the perps are World War II war criminals hiding out in Argentina. Their efforts to evade justice are drawing innocent Argentineans into their dangerous secret.
Hot Tango in Argentina opens with a literal bang:
The four of them got out of the car, as if on cue, and pounded up the walk to the house. They hammered on the door, and the maid opened it slowly. A hot wind swept through, moving the filmy white curtains, bringing ill fortune. The boy crouched near the entry, hardly able to breathe. He’d heard about these visits, and now they had come.
Nancy Nau Sullivan delivers a special blend of fast-paced action and personal insights that set the stage for events that evolve in 2005. She ties past to present-day circumstances with a cast of characters that have been featured in previous books, but which require no prior reader familiarity in order to prove easily accessible and understandable.
As Blanche encounters a variety of local characters in her disguise as a tourist, these personalities also come to life to add cultural flavors and insights to the plot. Lusita, who works for Frau Schemmer, and family members interact on an evolving stage of unpredictable danger.
Especially notable is how the tension built into the story leads to powerful moments of confrontation and discovery to keep readers guessing:
The man walked toward her. Her spine straightened. She would not cower. Do not show fear. Instead, she’d turn these tremulous doubts inside out like she’d done so many times before. An instinct for survival was strong, and so was her ability to think on her feet.
The “you are here” feel is potent and thoroughly absorbing as the culture and politics of Argentina plays out against a backdrop of history and special interests.
Blanche and Emilio’s characters shine as they interview people, draw together loose threads, and inject their own personalities into the evolving situation:
“You know about Tomás? Already? And obviously you know Margarita.” Blanche leaned forward, rather eagerly.
Emilio put his hand on Blanche’s arm and murmured, “Baquita.” She held his hand, but he couldn’t calm her eagerness.
Libraries seeking mysteries steeped in Latin culture and family and social interactions will relish how Sullivan delivers a series of revelations that embrace surprise and superb tension. The investigative component is more than a mystery - it’s a story of dealing with tyrants and surviving a tangled web of malevolence that has a long history of impacting everyone involved.
Readers seeking an attractive tango between disparate forces will relish how Hot Tango in Argentina evolves unexpected connections and intrigue.
Hot Tango in ArgentinaReturn to Index
O’SHAUGHNESSY
INVESTIGATIONS,
INC.: Leave Murder to the
Professionals
A.G. Russo
Independently Published
ASIN: B0FRHCZRG9
$3.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/OSHAUGHNESSY-INVESTIGATIONS-INC-Professionals-Investigations-ebook/dp/B0FRHCZRG9
O’SHAUGHNESSY INVESTIGATIONS, INC. Leave Murder to the Professionals is the final Book 3 in the O'Shaughnessy Mystery Series set during World War II that revolves around two PIs who step in to run an investigative agency while family members are at war, only to find their sleuthing abilities challenged from many unexpected directions.
Maeve is more than cognizant of her duty to keep the family business running despite her lack of expertise:
Maeve was aware that her three brothers risked being wounded or killed at any moment. As angry as she had been at them when they left her with the agency and their teenage brother Jimmy, she couldn’t give up doing everything she could to support them and the war effort, along with millions of Americans.
She and Vic tackle not only investigative conundrums, but emotional turmoil resulting from insecurities over loved ones overseas, their return, and their emotional absence and difficult choices. Issues of love, commitment, and family ties swirl into a story replete with gang encounters, murder and intrigue, and Vic and Maeve’s own professional and personal relationships as situations and people change.
One highlight of Leave Murder to the Professionals is its ability to incorporate wartime domestic concerns into the challenges of maintaining a family and a business at the same time.
Another lies in the very different situations Maeve falls into which test her mettle, including interacting with a professional acting company, which forces her onto the stage and into the limelight in ways she feels very ill-equipped to handle.
The emotional conundrums between the teenager she cares for, the partner who helps her get at the truth, and daring, dangerous associations that force Maeve and Vic to walk a thin line between survival and success makes for a gripping story that evolves many layers of possibility in satisfyingly realistic ways.
There are no pat solutions here, either to professional problem-solving or personal relationships - and that’s what makes Leave Murder to the Professionals exceptionally realistic and compelling.
Libraries looking for mysteries that are firmly rooted in other social issues of the times will welcome the opportunity to highly recommend Leave Murder to the Professionals to not just fans of investigative detective stories, but those who look for strong characterization and settings that influence the choices these characters make for their lives.
Replete with mystery and conundrums, Leave Murder to the Professionals is hard to put down.
O’SHAUGHNESSY INVESTIGATIONS, INC.: Leave Murder to the ProfessionalsReturn to Index
Parisian
Detective
Tales Part Three:
The Mother
Marcel
Marquié
Independently
Published
979-8-31780-297-4
$13.99
Paperback/$2.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Parisian-Detective-Tales-Trilogy-Mother/dp/B0FD31M6V7
Parisian Detective Tales Part Three: The Mother is the third book in a trilogy, building upon characters and events that took place in Two Sisters and The Child, each set in 1947. This concluding novel opens a year later, following the siblings’ investigation into the fate of their missing mother when she left her family for America.
P.I. Toni Bonnet and Sandrine’s sister Claudine find themselves in a strange foreign country ferreting out the truth of what happened in the past (the case of the missing child and its tragic outcome), its impact on their lives, and events from the past year which continue to reverberate in unexpected ways:
Toni had a distinct impression of déjà vu: same place, same time of year, same meal, and a similar request to find a missing person. But that would have to be broached when coffee was served. There would be no business talk while the rabbit was being savored. What was different, though, was Sandrine’s absence, and that absence was deeply troubling.
Marcel Marquié brings Paris to life, which serves as the backdrop for an investigative foray into different worlds battered by World War II and family choices.
Of special interest is the way in which Toni’s P.I. skills are challenged by his efforts in America to arrive at the truth, prompting him to assume other personas to disguise his real intentions:
Introducing himself as a private detective in a country where he did not have a license was inappropriate, not to say illegal, so he would be either a French professor or a heartbroken man who had lost his betrothed in a tragic accident and was intent on finding her mother. That was close enough to the truth anyway.
The intellectual and artistic atmosphere of 1920s and 30s Paris comes to life as Toni makes inroads towards the truth, attempts to solve the disappearance of Minne, and navigates the special interests of art gallery owners and the intentions of a murderer.
From Claudine’s drive to reconnect with her mother at all costs to an unfaithful husband’s real intentions, Toni faces a host of professional and personal challenges that mark his interactions between war-torn Europe and America.
Though enough references are made to the previous novels supporting Parisian Detective Tales Part Three: The Mother to make it accessible to newcomers, prior series fans will find this unifying book especially thought-provoking. This audience will relish how the threads of character connection created in the previous books come together in The Mother, offering a range of new challenges to Toni’s evolving struggles here.
Libraries seeking a P.I. detective story that nicely enhances its prior series books while offering new directions that explain matters of the heart and political aspirations alike will relish how The Mother conjoins a variety of characters from previous books in new ways.
The Mother is a top pick for fiction readers interested in stories that build cross-cultural settings to provide unexpected connections, enlightenment, and revelations.
Parisian Detective Tales Part Three: The MotherReturn to Index
The
Slightest
Mistake
J.M. Ridal
Independently Published
9798298384612 $18.35
Paperback/$8.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FZFTK8F8
Thriller readers are in for a real treat with The Slightest Mistake, which fictionally illustrates just how volatile Asian waters are in a story where a terrible miscalculation draws the nations of the world into a possible World War III scenario.
Fans of Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, and Stephen Coonts who appreciate blends of high technology, international politics, and struggles that simmer with realistic possibility will be drawn into events from the novel’s opening prologue:
There are a hundred ways to start a war. Most are reckless. Some are intentional. The worst begin with a mistake.
This premise creates a foundation for events that quickly spin out of control in minutes as forces operating in the Taiwan Strait find themselves facing terrible decisions and consequences that spin out of control.
J.M. Ridal illustrates the delicate, realistic nature of these conflicts as volatile responses emerge on “the world’s most dangerous chessboard,” with the moves and choices of intelligence agents, military men, and cat-and-mouse games involving surveillance and assumption create tense dialogues, instructions, and dangerous possibilities:
“Tango-Six, this is Smalls Actual. Confirm initiation of second-stage logistics operation by PLA. Recommend persistent satellite tracking of Shuiqiao barges. Possible setup for cross-strait heavy movement. Message traffic supports bridging operations within next twenty-four hours.”
What makes The Slightest Mistake a standout lies in the moment-by-moment depth charges of realization that buffet the men and women tasked with either preventing or participating in balance of power and control issues in the arena.
Ridal elevates the tension by describing the logic and fears of those involved, blending strategic with emotional insights that keep the plot fast-paced, the characters realistic in their commitments, assumptions, and dilemmas, and the chain of events frighteningly likely.
This translates to a story rich in its frightening blend of action, reaction, and consequence assessment which places the onus for worldwide disaster directly in the hand of a few major players and nations whose future is at stake.
As readers move from the high seas to war room bunkers, the exquisite tension and pace are maintained by chapters that identify place, date, and time to keep the timeline of events on track and instantly identifiable.
From the “Taiwanese ghost” to the impact of making wrong (or right) decisions, the story simmers with possibilities and twists and turns many won’t see coming.
The result is a vivid, realistic, “you are here” scenario of disaster which will engage a wide audience, from fans of techo-thrillers and military action to readers of world disaster novels who look for exceptional characterization set amidst simmering political and strategic tensions.
Libraries will find The Slightest Mistake a powerful acquisition that deserves top recommendation right alongside Tom Clancy’s classics. It’s that good – and maybe even better.
The Slightest MistakeReturn to Index
Tokyo
Juku
Michael Pronko
Raked Gravel Press
978-1942410386 $6.99 eBook
Website: www.michaelpronko.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Juku-Detective-Hiroshi-Book-ebook/dp/B0FLW78XTZ
Tokyo Juku is the seventh book in the Detective Hiroshi series, and adopts yet a different perspective (one of the strengths of the series as a whole, and why it’s a long-running success) as it tells of eighteen-year-old Mana, who attends a juku, a private Japanese cram school that specializes in helping students pass the once-a-year exams. She’s on track for success – until one morning she finds her teacher murdered.
This opens the door to an investigation that immerses Mana and her peers in issues of crime, achievement, status, and an institution offering an ambitious range of educational services in a competitive, lucrative field that someone would die to get their hands on – literally.
One advantage to these Japan-based mysteries is that each is delivered steeped in the culture and feel of Japanese society, leading readers to absorb interesting facets of daily life in Japan even if they hold no prior familiarity with or even special interest in this milieu:
When he got out in Shinjuku, though, the billboard on the
platform read: “Ganbare, jukensei, Good Luck Exam-takers” in Japanese and English. The heartfelt message was from Kokusai Kyoiku, with the name written in prominent letters. He could follow their trail of ads all the way to their office.
Readers see through Detective Hiroshi’s eyes as well as, here, student Mana, who holds her own ambition, desperation, and a vested interest in finding out what happened at her juku.
These diverse inspections create juxtapositions of insights and attitudes reflective not just of Japanese place, but changing times as the young Mana approaches life differently than the sage investigator Hiroshi and introduces shame into her family for her involvement, which receives damning publicity from the press:
She drank it as she unfolded the paper and read about…herself. The newspaper was the most liberal in the country, but Terui’s murder was framed as a symbol of the decline of Japanese education.
As Detective Hiroshi, forensic accountant turned chief investigator on the case, and Mana, aspiring student with a newfound cause, approach the case from different angles, mystery readers will find the confluence of their processes to be intriguing and revealing.
Usually a long-running series needs prior familiarity for newcomers – but not this one. Detective Hiroshi’s latest case is a winner for prior fans and newcomers alike, standing alone while supporting the rest of the series with new characters, dilemmas, and insights about Japan.
Given the story’s overall involving intrigue paired with a steady, solid infusion of Japanese cultural insights, readers are in for a treat. Libraries interested in multifaceted mysteries with added bonuses will want to highly recommend this latest foray into Japanese society to a wide audience.
Tokyo JukuReturn to Index
Whispers
on the
Mountain
Amanda Lamb
Torchflame Books
978-1-61153-607-2
$18.99 paperback; $6.99
ebook; $30.00
large print
www.torchflamebooks.com
Whispers on the Mountain is set in the mountains of North Carolina and follows the investigations of Celia Finch, who becomes involved in the mystery of missing woman Pamela Stevens and the presence of too many possible perps.
A lost hiker in the mountains shouldn’t be an impossible situation to resolve, but Celia unravels a host of emotional connections and incongruities which bring her full circle into childhood memories better forgotten.
Celia has a history of going down dark holes of emotional revelation, especially with the prior Billy Barnes case she became so emotionally entangled with. Thus, her approach to this latest case forces her to face similar challenges which impacted her so heavily in the past.
Also intriguing and revealing is how Amanda Lamb addresses a sleuth’s challenges both individually and with other investigators, creating a compelling saga with insights into different approaches to detective work
Sometimes, Cindy drove me nuts with her super-sleuthing. Granted, often she was right on the money and saw things that I didn’t. But other times, she was parroting verbiage directly from a true crime documentary or from one of those mystery novels that she loved to read, which had zero to do with solving actual, real-life crimes.
How can real justice be achieved when a woman vanishes? And how can Celia nail down everyone involved when so many have a stake in the case?
Lamb creates a moving story of not just a vanished woman and efforts to find her, but Celia’s personal quest to navigate her past and her abilities. As she considers the result of her obsessive pursuits and the personal impact of her involvement, readers will be especially intrigued by how the case dovetails adventure with personal discovery.
This is why libraries and readers seeking emotionally charged stories of pursuit, discovery, and personal involvement will want to add Whispers on the Mountain to their reading lists and collections.
More than just a whodunit, Whispers on the Mountain tackles the bigger-picture thinking of personal motivation, attitude, and investigative skills to create a winning story of mystery, suspense, and discovery which operates on more than one level.
Whispers on the MountainReturn to Index
Novels
Anatomy
of a Shark
M.G. Akins
Pisgah Press
978-1942016991 $24.95
www.pisgahpress.com/mark-akins
Readers of novels about crime families have plenty to choose from, but Anatomy of a Shark stands out in combining a New York mob family with a young boy’s adoption, growing up with uncommon encounters, and eventual involvement in crime – albeit, of a different kind than he’s known all his life.
From the start, it’s evident that the first-person narrator of these experiences harbors a wry sense of ironic humor about his circumstances and an astute assessment of not just the improbability of life, but its oddities:
Me, formerly innocent me, may have smiled at a fortuitous moment when I was six weeks old, all but sealing my adoption. Perhaps some poor kid next to me soiled his diaper mere seconds earlier and was thus doomed to adolescent life in an orphanage. Well ... any plausible scenario represents circumstances that I simply cannot account for, seemingly trivial matters, which, in a hard world, can make or break a life. Piddling stuff. Take names for instance—blue eyes and blond hair and my name is Vinnie. It’s not that I was named in bad taste, but my name is illusory.
M.G. Akins cultivates a unique voice that captures, more so than most mob crime stories, a sense of place, purpose, and street life that leads readers to live alongside protagonist Vinnie as he cultivates a different form in crime. This involves participating in a 2-man opportunistic shakedown, confronting corrupt cops and becoming a new adult, and dealing with the politics of manipulation and corruption on both sides of the crime picture.
Vinnie’s wry, sassy voice permeates all interactions, emphasizing how the good he achieves in his embroiled life emerges from disparate circumstances that wouldn’t seem to portend a life that incorporates good intentions into its bigger picture:
With a flourish, I swept an outstretched hand above the dash, proclaiming, “Your new home.” Getting under way, I concentrated on driving as the teens were going fractionally apeshit, saying, “What! Where!” heads swinging left and right and in danger of flying off their stems. Fluttering a wave to some indeterminate point behind us, I said, “Back there,” driving them to needless frustration, fun as hell.
The humorous thread, replete throughout Vinnie’s interactions with his world, nicely supplements the very serious conundrums posed by being caught between mob and cop interests on the streets of New York, with the issue of abused kids and teens injecting further thought-provoking reflections into the story.
Readers enchanted by the personal touch of Vinnie’s streetwise life and decisions to enter into the crime world in entirely different ways than he’s observed and been taught will find action, tension, confrontation, and delightful inspections of values and relationships wound into the bigger story of how one boy finds his path by forming new posse relationships.
How does a kid raised to be one thing come full circle to create a different form of meaning in his life?
This, this was my life. As much as I appreciated the fine start, this was my time. This talk around this table was not about selfishness. It was about being in control. I wanted to do things my way.
The revelations are nonstop, the comic interludes outstanding and nicely paced, and Vinnie – well, readers will find themselves forming an unexpected relationship with this likeable character despite some of his decisions.
Libraries and readers seeking a very different kind of crime family story that simmers with social issues, ironic fun, and captivating interactions will appreciate, relish, and come to love Vinnie Renaldi in Anatomy of a Shark, a top recommendation because its character’s unique ‘voice’ stands heads and shoulders above other fictional mob stories.
Anatomy of a SharkReturn to Index
Blade
Rider
Jaime A. Sevilla
Independently Published
979-8-9995163-1-2
$29.99 Hardcover/$19.99
Softcover/$.99
eBook
Website: www.jaimeasevilla.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Blade-Rider-JaimeSevilla-ebook/dp/B0FX8QJYYJ
Blade Rider is a novel that began as a musical, with author/composer Jaime A. Sevilla producing an original soundtrack for its backdrop (which can be purchased separately, with a QR code provided in the book). Luckily for sci-fi readers, Sevilla realized the book’s wider-ranging potential as a novel, and here presents the vivid story as the standalone portrait of an ambitious young woman who literally reaches for the stars.
Raven lives in a multi-species society and longs to become an Air Ranger, a profession forbidden to females. If this were a typical story of personal struggle and social repression, it would join the ranks of many other dystopian and sci-fi communities, but Blade Rider is different – and not just because of its music-driven roots.
The story becomes one of confronting not just personal potential, but repression. In this, Blade Rider shines as it explores the glowing, vibrant world of Aurora and Raven’s place in it.
From the start, Sevilla embeds the plot with a sense of discovery in all kinds of characters and male/female interactions, whether it is from sparring or competing for positions. These encounters tend to embed interesting social reflections into the characters’ interactions:
At first she had tried to teach the student martial arts, but it was ultimately destined to become a lesson about gender inequality. From the start, Chip’s mindset reflected ideologies held by many others, not just being unable to view a woman as an equal fighter, but also being unable to view a woman as an equal anything. His inability to engage her without prejudice was only validated more by his failure to exploit her defenseless stance during their last bout.
As people such as Jax Stratton (a senior pilot in the R.O.T.C. and the son of four-star General Stratton who introduces possible romance into Raven’s life), fighter Lexi, rancher Zed Jackson, and more enter into the world-building struggles, readers receive a full-bodied offering of disparate individuals pursing their individual dreams against all odds.
Of special note is how these efforts unfold in an atmosphere of futuristic technology and choices that define and redefine what it means to be and stay human.
Equally potent are descriptions of these marvels and their potential for transformation as Raven participates in some of the most challenging efforts of her young life:
All along the side of the Speed Rail, thousands of panels extended and unfolded in unison, rotating in concert towards the strongest source of solar energy. A far cry from her father’s holographic 3-D model, the massive scale of the solar array was simply an engineering marvel. Taking in the grandeur of her father’s achievement, Raven couldn’t help but be awestruck.
The result is a vivid story of courage, reassessment, ambition, and perseverance that holds many engaging themes of social and personal revelation.
Librarians and readers seeking sci-fi that lures with the situation of a girl facing the choice of convention over risk-taking and the social experiment of shifting values and outcomes will find Blade Rider thoroughly engaging and hard to put down. It blends lessons in team leadership and cooperative thinking with the story of a young woman’s ambition and vision for a delightful foray into growth, strength, and new possibilities both social and personal.
Blade RiderReturn to Index
The
Bolden Cylinder
Norman Woolworth
Level Best Books
979-8-89820-035-0 $16.95
Paperback/$5.99 eBook
www.LevelBestBooks.us
The Bolden Cylinder is a historical mystery that swirls around arson, a 50-year-old missing person case that has never been resolved, and New Orleans antiques dealer Bruneau Abellard, who becomes involved in an investigation conducted by childhood friend and detective Bo Duplessi. The probe leads the two to join forces as they enter the musical milieu of 1960s New Orleans.
From record collectors and night club singers to jazz notes, mob actions, voodoo influences, and insane asylum inmates, The Bolden Cylinder crafts a powerful blend of force and discovery to keep readers on their toes and wondering about outcomes and connections.
Norman Woolworth brings this world to life via a first-person viewpoint that proves immersive. A host of characters contribute different perspectives and experiences of New Orleans culture, with a rare cylinder recording involving each of them in novel ways that are delightfully unexpected as connections and situations evolve.
Facts about musical collectibles and establishing legitimacy emerge in the course of realistic conversations, enlightening readers while adding authentic notes of culture and slang to the plot:
“There’s science and there’s art. Nico, he’s got people to help with the science, run down provenance, that kind of thing. Could this performer have been in this place at that time, with that band, eh? Me, I help with the art. Me and Nico, we listen together. Does this sound like it could be Fats or Ernie or Fess? Is it just another take or is there something special about it?”
The interviews, investigations, motives, and mystery will intrigue and delight historical mystery readers - especially those with a prior interest in New Orleans.
Libraries and readers seeking atmospheric, engrossing stories of discovery and suspense will find all these components and more in the musical world of The Bolden Cylinder. Its ability to appeal with a combination of musical insights, antique savvy, and the impact of a young musician whose efforts change New Orleans forever makes for an inviting story that is thoroughly engrossing and nicely steeped in the culture of Louisiana’s musical heritage.
The Bolden CylinderReturn to Index
Born
Posthumous
Fish Nealman
Atmosphere Press
979-8-89132-827-3
$18.99 Paperback/$30.99
Hardcover/$8.99
eBook
www.atmospherepress.com
Born Posthumous incorporates wry satire from the start, presenting the talented character Manny Old, a legendary musician whose artistic output doesn’t end upon death, thanks to AI.
Fish Nealman incorporates many experimental, innovative approaches to building Manny’s story, from the introductory chapter ‘signposts’ on guitar frets which indicate a fluid timeline of events to gray bars marking Manny’s birth and death.
Dialogue, too, is musical as the interactions in this world unfold with clef notes and symbols injected into observations and experiences. Events and psyches play out in unusual manners, as well, from a scientist expert in sound describing how music is made and perceived by the ear while he’s under oath in court to characters such as Mr. Odor Smell, sporting names that indicate their underlying countenance.
Manny’s revised abilities and vision dictate not only new boundaries in his world, which embraces a different community, but novel approaches to life and death itself as posthumous and living collide on an AI playing field which levels the opportunities for everyone.
Young musician Emmanual seeks to create a lasting legacy, Holographic Manny complicates the world by changing it, and the quest for immortality both physical and via impact leads each character to reinvent their world in new ways.
Of special interest is how Manny impacts life with his drive, against all odds, with the resulting Zerophyte community just one evidence of his world-altering paradigm for life:
He believed every Zerophyte could be a gateway to sustainability where people were more conscious of their environmental footprint. However, many people were skeptical, believing Zerophytes were too radical and unconventional. But in true Manny style, he persevered, believing change was never easy but was always worth fighting for.
From career evolution to issues of music, noise, and adaptation, Born Posthumous represents an intellectual dance through possibility that ultimately considers a range of questions about humanity and the weighty task of integrating biological, scientific, and intellectual pursuits.
Libraries seeking a novel that represents a delightfully complex, gender-bending foray into future possibilities and artistic ambition, which attracts literature readers with a heady blend of sci-fi, wry satirical observation, and experimental approaches to character-building, will relish how Born Posthumous creates a unique world.
Filled with fun and thought-provoking moments, Born Posthumous is an involving story that doesn’t just break barriers of literary excellence, but shatters them, rebuilding new worlds within its consideration of what it means to create, destroy, or evolve a new melody for living and dying with unique artistic vision.
Born PosthumousReturn to Index
Cassie
Linden
Finds Her Sweet Spot
Linda Avellar
Black Rose Writing
978-1685136925 $21.95
Paperback/$5.99
ebook
Website: https://www.lindaavellar.com/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Cassie-Linden-Finds-Sweet-Spot/dp/B0FLYN1HT4
Cassie Linden Finds Her Sweet Spot is a story that will widely appeal to women, who will readily relate to Cassie’s situation of being called home to care for an ailing father while simultaneously tackling the challenges of a troubled son and her own fluctuating memory as she ages.
The last thing Cassie needs is the complication of romance ... conversely maybe that’s just what she needs—something different, and a positive possibility to enjoy in her overburdened life.
The specter of dementia that took her mother’s life, present now in her father and perhaps in herself, is presented realistically. This will tug the heartstrings of women in similarly precarious positions, as well as those well aware of the ravages of Alzheimer’s.
Equally understandable are the conundrums Cassie faces over her parenting choices:
She’d been trying hard to give him space, and here she was ordering him around like he was twelve. But he’d been foolish, more than foolish. Irresponsible. And now a boy was hurt. How had things come to this? Had she failed somehow as a parent? She’d tried her best, but something awful and unforeseen had happened anyway. Could she have set another course five or ten or twenty years ago? Maybe this terrible thing could have been avoided if she’d put her foot down about joining the frat. Or forbidden him from going to Tulane in the first place. But couldn’t something bad have happened somewhere else? Maybe not this particular thing but another misfortune. Life was a series of pitfalls, some small, some catastrophic. She knew that all too well.
What does beekeeping have to do with all of this? Plenty. It’s one of the foundations Linda Avellar builds into her story as Cassie hires beekeeper Glenn to take over her father’s job of tending the bees on his property, only to discover that Glenn’s opposition to the forces that would force her to sell the family homestead is part of his attraction.
Beekeeper activities permeate the bigger picture, offering inviting details and asides to Cassie’s agonizing over whether to sell her property and how to consider the possibilities of genetic testing which will confirm or deny her own dementia.
Juggling this range of influences and possibilities sounds complex and potentially confusing, but under Avellar’s hand, the story evolves many personal attractions, revelations, and connections. Women will find these issues engrossing, realistic, and hard to set aside.
Libraries seeking recommendations for book clubs and women’s reading groups will relish how Cassie Linden Finds Her Sweet Spot cultivates a proactive attitude towards not only fielding the requirements and challenges of multi-generation families, but in illustrating how its protagonist perseveres against all odds.
Packed with insights about bigger-picture thinking and approaches to overly complicated life situations, Cassie Linden Finds Her Sweet Spot is thoroughly absorbing, nicely written, and filled with many thought-provoking, pleasing revelations.
Cassie Linden Finds Her Sweet SpotReturn to Index
Doors
Eugene A. Kelly
Marshwinds Press
978-1-7341170-8-0 $29.95
www.uniquereads.com
Doors opens with gleeful anticipation on the part of protagonist David J. Hopkins-Wilson, who is looking forward to news of his promotion, a six-figure bonus, and acclaim that will lead him straight into the world of high-level executives. The day turns out to be unlike anything he’d anticipated, changing his life in response to a single mistake he’s made with an elderly client’s investments.
Suddenly he’s not on the fast track, but a slow tumble into failure. And David J. Hopkins-Wilson is unused to anything but upward momentum.
From the opening lines of Doors, Eugene A. Kelly creates a memorable assessment of the cutthroat world of investment companies and the kinds of events that can turn failure into success overnight (and visa versa):
He was being sacrificed to the regulators on the altar of it’s-not-our-fault. He never thought he would be the fresh meat thrown to the regulatory lions to save senior management. It wasn’t fair, but it happened every day.
He is a survivor – or so he believes. As moves are made to eject him from the business world he thinks he knows well, David considers opening the door to a new future. Before he can cross that threshold, however, he must grapple with a crumbling marriage and accept new relationships that further buffet his trajectory. These include an affair with upward-bound Maureen “Musee” O’Hara, whose presence rekindles an ambition for success that never quite died under impossible circumstances.
A variety of characters open new doors for David as an odd long-distance relationship develops between two driven individuals who both work six days a week and live miles apart.
Business concerns intersect with these new opportunities and revised perceptions to give both characters depth and dimension as they tackle the unexpected with new insights into their experiences, ambitions, and motivations:
Her spirits sagged with confirmation of what she suspected, while her anger rose as she thought about all the years she’d given to the store, and now this injustice is the result. Fairness was nonexistent.
As Musee and David merge their business and personal lives, new doors continue to open which offer each of them enlightenment about the connections between business opportunities, ambitious thinking, and real-world conundrums.
Kelly creates a powerful novel that resonates with action, reaction, and two similar personalities who each tackle life and business challenges in assertive, diverse ways.
As family finds a place among discussions of profit margins and potential business expansions, the novel spins interesting avenues of business and psychological reflection which will especially attract and delight business novel readers.
The sense of growth and discovery between these two and other characters is well-developed, adding to the tension and revelations that move from agricultural to retail business developments with unexpected connections and results.
Libraries seeking novels that blend business with relationship pursuits will welcome the opportunity to acquire and recommend Doors to a wide audience beyond business fiction readers.
Its survey of two individuals whose moral, ethical, and business interests drive their individual pursuits and the world around them makes for engaging, intriguing reading that’s hard to put down and easy to recommend.
DoorsReturn to Index
Later
Days
Chip Jacobs
Rare Bird Books
978-1644284926 $28.00
Hardcover/$14.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Later-Days-Chip-Jacobs/dp/1644284928
Later Days is a novel about Luke Burnett and Denny Drummond, two Stone Canyon prep school boys from troubled homes who take turns rescuing one another from their past influences and present-day dilemmas when they are in their senior year of high school, then, twenty years later, find themselves navigating career and health issues in a final effort to reinforce their bond and past connections.
As Chip Jacobs moves his story from a coming-of-age saga in early years to a mid-life coming-of-age encounter, readers receive a satisfying juxtaposition of times, places, and shifting relationship undercurrents that combines intrigue and revelation with growth.
At first, it’s not easy to peg this story. Readers looking for a coming-of-age friendship saga will find it replete with all of these elements that place it in the category of a satisfying story of youth and redemption, but may be surprised (ultimately, pleasantly) at the courses this friendship takes in adulthood.
Those anticipating a story of changing lives facing near-death experiences and challenges at different points of life will find Later Days replete with intriguing first-person observations that capture the milieu of evolving relationship quandaries:
Much as I worried my system couldn’t absorb anymore, I knew I couldn’t be another of Denny’s missing persons. Under a dark, foggy sky flirting with mist, I schlepped behind him for the second time tonight, bundled in my corduroy jacket. Side gate into the backyard, past his mother’s color-coordinated patio set, around the corner outside his father’s study: Denny had brought me here to meet his dad’s alter ego.
Pasadena, California culture forms the backdrop of these evolving relationships and decades as the two main characters spin their lives, connections, and choices against changing times and mortality issues.
Because Jacobs evolves this story over a period of time, the long-term connections between the friends also grows from introductory relationship to a rich baseline of experience that is deftly portrayed as events unfold:
Though we only get together sporadically, our love language of insults has wondrously endured. It’s a target-rich environment, too, with us approaching the interval between the last vestiges of youth and the commencement of the old people we might become. Male-pattern balding where there’d been walls of hair; love handles; corporate, casual-wear, double chins.
As “old ghosts instructed me what to do,” the characters move through time and place to absorb the long-term results of trauma, experience, and a lifetime of connections.
Librarians and readers seeking a growth-oriented novel about shifting relationships and times will welcome how Later Days builds its scenarios and connections from adolescence to middle days. The escapades grow even as the characters develop, making for a powerful portrait of life in the 1980s that simmers with maturity, life expectations and dreams, and satisfyingly unexpected evolution.
Later DaysReturn to Index
Oaks
from Acorns
Grow
Richard Opper
Konstellation Press
979-8-9908181-6-3 $14.99
paperback,
$3.99 ebook
Website: www.RichardOpper.com
Ordering: www.amazon.com
Oaks from Acorns Grow, the last volume in the Mona Oakhart trilogy, follows the businesswoman into further situations of intrigue. Richard Opper grows the story with the same attention to plot twists and the unexpected that drove his previous Oakhart tales.
The first chapter comes not from Mona’s point of view, but that of ex-boyfriend/ex-cop Gary Reines, who is returning from Guam licking the wounds of her sudden rejection. He muses: “My girlfriend tossed me, and I had to fly thousands of miles, through foreign countries, to be told it.” He’s given up his job to be with her and now has nothing left but the wealth he tends to freely spend as a panacea for pain.
As Mona’s perspective emerges to juxtapose with Gary’s, readers come to realize that much more is involved in this unexpected rejection. Decisions are influenced by Mona’s x-rated movies, her magnetic attraction to Paulette, refugee children, Tong mob involvements, and a host of other themes which emerge in the course of a shifting plot as personal relationships and health are buffeted by forces that dictate each character’s life.
As in the previous books, Opper creates an excellent sense of tension and drive, blending unexpected opportunities and challenges into the overall process of battles, healing, and new beginnings. He cultivates a fine tone of investigation and discovery which, at times, also blends in wry humor that appears from various character perspectives. One example is Henrietta Diaz, whose only daughter Tina is Mona’s biggest x-rated movie star:
He didn’t have to know I wasn’t with DPS. I had a weapon and a badge, and I was feeling mighty fine!
As characters such as Mama P, who has long cultivated a double life that comes back to bite her, and Gary’s Flower, born in the same year his father was killed, move into the 1980s, the action settles somewhere between family life and vivid past experience, bringing the sense of discovery and change to satisfying conclusions.
The epilogue by killer Freddie (a.k.a. “Princess”) opens with a shuddering insight into a pathological mindset that has only one regret - that one of the lives he took was that of Mona’s daughter. His strange desire to atone for one death when he’s killed so many is just one of the rich flavors in this story which will draw readers from the start, whether they’re already familiar with Mona’s previous exploits or are newcomers to her world.
Librarians seeking a fast-paced read that holds the solid characterization of a literary novel, the action component of a thriller, and the attraction of a series of seemingly disparate lives and special interests that dovetail in scenarios of confrontation and change will want to highly recommend the concluding Oakhart volume Oaks from Acorns Grow.
While it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story, ideally Oaks from Acorns Grow will be pursued as part of the wider trilogy which brings these individuals to life, flushing out their adventures with growth which is traceable between books and satisfyingly complex and thought-provoking.
Oaks from Acorns GrowReturn to Index
Of Their
Own Free
Will
L.E. Denton
Independently Published
979-8218810795 $15.95
Paperback/$2.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Their-Own-Free-Will-Orleans/dp/B0FSLF5VV7
Of Their Own Free Will: Fort Mims to New Orleans is a gripping military encounter set in 1813 against the backdrop of the Creek War. It dovetails the lives of two very different men who find their heritages and destinies caught up in situations well beyond their ken or control.
Jacob Worley is half Creek and has always resided within two worlds, not wholly feeling a part of either. When war between them erupts, he’s placed in an impossible position where the Creek’s uprising forces him to act out of a loyalty he only half-feels. Complicating matters is his father Thomas’s choices and the barely-repressed hostility of his stepmother:
There was no love lost between he and his stepmother or her family. From the very beginning, Jacob knew she had no use for him. He was, in her mind, tainted by the blood of his mother and her people. She was most vocal about her feelings when his father wasn’t present. When he was, her attempts to be cordial were forced and unnatural.
The deadly confrontation that finally erupts from long-simmering resentments on both sides results in a tragedy that places Jacob directly in the middle of conflict:
Finding the scalps of the poor souls who had lost their lives at Fort Mims had been awful enough. Some of those scalps belonged to people he knew – even distant relatives. Watching what remained of them being buried had left an intense sadness deep down in his soul. So many slaughtered – and for what purpose? His Uncle John had been killed trying to bring justice for them. And yet, there was no justice.
In contrast is French-American Pierre Durand, an educated man whose heritage seems clear even as his heart’s intention is not. Pierre and his proud family have never had much to do with the Spanish and English settlers who came to Mobile when it changed hands. His parents expect much from him, given their own success and adaptations. But his connection with Rosa Alonso as a child changes his trajectory, introducing romance as a childhood friendship turns into something more. With this comes a division in his family:
“You should be showing your favor to someone of your own stature. The Alonsos might be fine people, but they do not have what we have.”
“You mean they aren’t French,” Pierre quickly retorted.
As the politics of Mobile, Jackson's Army and the Indians, and the repercussions of war explode around them, Pierre and Jacob find their destinies entwined and their worlds vastly changed.
L.E. Denton does an outstanding job of contrasting different sides, cultures, perspectives, and battles. These emerge on fronts both physical and mental, bringing with them a force that changes life with implications for the power and strength of an evolving nation.
History blends with personal affairs and cultural foundations and repercussions so seamlessly that the characters drive the background events with personal involvements that are compelling even for those with little prior interest in early American historical affairs.
The result is a novel steeped in blood, destiny, and cross-cultural encounters that test the future of a novice nation.
Libraries and readers seeking early American historical backdrops and military encounters that simmer with underlying personal confrontation will welcome how Of Their Own Free Will brings the 1800s to life.
With its insights on family prejudices, disgrace, redemption, and military and social dilemmas, Of Their Own Free Will is a mighty story of New Orleans, Jackson, army efforts and Native American clashes. These events bring this milieu and its many underlying social and political forces to life. It’s highly recommended reading for anyone who would absorb and understand the skirmishes and battles of early American soldiers during these times.
Of Their Own Free WillReturn to Index
OGALLALA
Eric Eichhorn
Atmosphere Press
979-8891328747
$29.99
Hardcover/$16.99 Paperback/$7.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com
OGALLALA is a fictional foray into the past in search of meaning, following middle-aged Bennett Edwards on a road trip to Michigan to track down college girlfriend Jennifer from his past. Bennett is divorced and disconnected from life, so his venture holds promise for recreating a time when he felt more emotionally engaged with the world.
When he realizes that these past connections are as tenuous as his present-day situation, Bennett enters uncharted territory – especially when he’s roped into driving Jennifer’s daughter Zoe and her MMA trainer Hector to a bout in Utah.
He lands in limbo until he begins to realize something is fishy about the duo and becomes entangled in situations involving murder, dismembered body disposal, crime, and the milieu of fighting matches.
Eric Eichhorn tells the story from the perspective of a disillusioned Bennett and engaged Zoe, whose participation in the world is brutal and effective.
As the road trip from hell evolves on one level, it also incorporates an aura of promise in other areas. The contrasts between Zoe’s exciting bouts and the dilemmas Bennett faces along the way offer revealing insights into the shifts in thinking that each experience as they head into their dreams and nightmares and step out of their comfort zones:
Bennett was avoiding any discussions of reality. He wanted to go to bed, wake up, and get Zoe. They would continue to Utah as if it were a brand-new day. Hank would deal with the body and debris, and he would return to his role as a traveling companion.
Eichhorn’s inviting story leads into the characters’ disparate objectives in unusual ways. He builds up the dreams and frustrations of very different people who, by happenstance, bump into one another to create a foundation of discovery and challenge. These events evolve into a satisfying story of growth and achievement.
Libraries that choose OGALLALA for its sense of adventure, middle-aged escapades, and life-changing contacts between different generations will appreciate how the plot focuses on disconnections, new connections, and a sense of achievement to offset a crime puzzle that evolves alongside these lives.
Filled with unexpected insights on what it takes to be a survivor, OGALLALA is highly recommended for its surprising twists of self-inspection and life engagement.
OGALLALAReturn to Index
Perfectly
Hugo
Barbara Monier
Amika Press
978-1-956872-87-3 $9.95
eBook
Website: www.amikapress.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Hugo-Barbara-Monier-ebook/dp/B0FQNVBGC5
Perfectly Hugo is a novel about a couple that builds a strong relationship and life together. It explores how their creation can continue beyond death. The cutting-edge tech company Assembled Souls offers a rare opportunity to continue life via AI, giving them the promise that they will never be alone and that death won’t part them.
Within that promise lies danger, however, as Enid and Hugo find that it’s not easy to build a future based on unlimited potential and the specter of living together forever.
What does it mean to be human under such conditions? Enid and Hugo forge new territory as they enter into murky, uncharted waters with their AI experiment and desire to remain connected even beyond death.
Barbara Monier establishes a baseline for ethical and psychological examinations of love that stretch the boundaries of connection through Enid and Hugo’s experiences. Her story embraces the humor and give-and-take in a long-term couple’s successful relationship, building a foundation and dialogue of their intimacy before venturing into this strange new world:
“...if Assembled Souls were choosing a décor for me alone, I would expect a lot more… animal heads on the walls. Animal skin rugs…tossed here and there.” Hugo burst out laughing.
Enid hit him lightly on the arm, then hit him a second time for effect. “Oh my God, you’re a horrible human being!” It was an expression the two of them had tossed back and forth for years. “Why am I even here? Why would I want more time with this horrible human beside me.”
Accompanying questions such as whether relationships and bonds are the sum of memories (especially if they can’t transfer within the AI environment) raise issues about the touchstones of what it means to stay human in a world that might be populated not just by artificial constructs, but artificial connections.
The thread of humor which connects the couple provides comic relief, interjecting inspections about long-time habits which are as thought-provoking as they are fun:
“First, I’m perfectly capable of picking out a shopping cart. Second, do you have any idea what percentage of shopping carts you tend to find unacceptable? Honestly, for years I worried that this was a thing with you. Your seeming need to find the first thing you chose completely… deficient. Like you always needed to trade up or something. I thought for the longest time that meant my days were numbered. Seriously!”
As Hugo and Enid’s story unfolds, the delightful interplay between them leads to new choices involving hard decisions. Some are surprising revelations (no matter how much they feel prepared for an unusual future) that outline the differences between AI and human.
Libraries interested in stories that reflect the intersection of technology, psychology, and social inspection in a personal, involving way will find Perfectly Hugo a lovely dance between a couple that faces new challenges that nobody has ever tackled before in what it means to stay human and in love.
Filled with moments of connection and revelation, Perfectly Hugo is an enlightening, moving story that will delight book clubs and general-interest leisure readers with its foray into the costs of staying intimate and connected in a technology-enhanced world.
Perfectly HugoReturn to Index
ROCKSTAR:
Echoes
Zach Taylor
Hump Creek Publishing
979-8-9996797-0-3
$16.99 Paperback/$5.99
Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G23CJHW2
In ROCKSTAR: Echoes, music journalist Clara Cowley has seen music rise, fall, be declared dead, and resurrect with a vengeance. The rock group Aberdeen seems no different, facing demise when their leader dies, but their music contracts demand they keep playing even though death has rocked their sound.
Someone needs to step up...someone with an amazing voice and creative spark, who can reinvigorate the band. That someone is Kline Thomas, whose stunning performance brings him to their attention.
Music documenter Clara has some thirty years of observational and critical writing experience behind her, but even this doesn’t prepare her for what takes place as Kline integrates with Aberdeen and reaches for the stars, taking them with him on a wild ride.
Zach Taylor crafts a powerful story of the rock music business, how stars are born and die, and the differences between male and female musicians as he introduces Rayne Harlow, a single mother and leader of the all-female band The Painted Queens. These revelations will also rock readers who enter this world to receive insights about the music industry’s profession, prejudices, and processes.
Taylor’s lyrical descriptions power these personalities and times:
As he drove away from the store, two cases of beer in hand and only one meant for him, the radio sang out. It didn’t matter what band sang about cold black clouds and heaven’s door. He didn’t know why, but he felt it. He belted it. He nailed it. That’s what he could do. Cigarette between his lips, beer in the console, and windows down. Nobody heard him. Nobody ever would. Still, Kline did the only thing he knew to express himself. He kept singing.
From issues of royalties, music quality, songwriter aspirations, and fallen heroes to how Kline, Aberdeen, and Rayne work the stage and their individual lives, ROCKSTAR: Echoes brings to vivid life the personalities which dovetail on and off stage in the name of creating music.
Readers who are themselves rock musicians (or, just who aspire to be stars) will find much to not just like, but love about this story. Steeped in real music industry conundrums, creative artist motivations and challenges, and interpersonal complexities, ROCKSTAR: Echoes creates a vivid story that transmits a “you are here” feel to its audience.
This is why libraries, musicians, and book clubs will want to place ROCKSTAR: Echoes at the top of their lists of high-quality books that inspire, shock and awe, and capture the milieu of a generation’s musical dreams.
Replete with musical insights that harmonize with emotional connections, this story is vivid, personal, and will draw readers from many audiences with its powerful, life-savvy reflections on music, connections, and attraction:
She’d wanted love. He’d needed escape, seclusion, comfort and none of that needed love.
ROCKSTAR: EchoesReturn to Index
Solitary
Creatures
Anne Clark Kearns
Independently Published
979-8285091998 $17.99
Paperback/$5.99
eBook
Website: https://anneclarkkearns.com
Ordering: https://a.co/d/053ofjC
Solitary Creatures tells of Charlotte Ames, who steps up to become involved in a wildlife refuge in Costa Rica. The story opens from the perspective of sloth Sofia, who observes her enclosed world; and Luna, who struggles with abuse.
It’s fitting that the sloth opens this story because it will reappear later to provide readers with thought-provoking reflections on animal rescue processes, personal involvements and commitments, and the lure of and sometimes conflicts between ecotourism and wildlife preservation.
In the course of describing Charlotte’s revised mission and life perceptions, Anne Clark Kearns builds an involving cultural and wildlife exploration that links the fate of nature with that of human beings who struggle to either exploit or preserve it.
Animal communication and preservation, love of self and the outdoors, and the mystery surrounding the dilemma of a missing sloth that affects people almost a continent away merge to form a delightful blend of intrigue, humor, preservation issues, and tropical adventure.
The joy of this story lies in multifaceted layers of involvement that will keep readers absorbed and not just learning from a powerful adventure, but Charlotte’s growth process, which evolves because of it:
It had become a knee-jerk reaction for Charlotte to say “no” to things. Saying “no” to life was becoming dangerously close to a default setting. Her first reaction to anything new, any opportunity…was anxiety. She could talk herself out of just about anything, quite easily, with arguments that seemed perfectly logical to herself at the time. She strained from the effort of not doing it now.
These emotional reflections permeate the saga of animal welfare and moral behavior, drawing important links between encounters and new possibilities that stem from revised visions of the future:
She felt unbalanced somehow, but not in an unpleasant way. More like her world had just shifted slightly on its axis, but the way it had been leaning before had forced her to adjust so often and hold herself so carefully in order to stay upright that she was never actually comfortable. Now, it was like everything could suddenly be put to rights, and she could breathe with ease and wouldn’t have to work so hard at…whatever it was that she had been working so hard at.
The result is a novel steeped in Costa Rican culture and affairs which brings readers into a jungle milieu in which special interests and transformative opportunities clash.
Libraries interested in stories for women that mix adventure with life inspections will welcome how Charlotte, vet Gabby, and others find their life trajectories turned upside down by events involving animals and humans.
Replete with a sense of purpose and discovery, Solitary Creatures takes an inviting journey into the heart of not just jungle and Costa Rican affairs, but the kinds of decisions that accompany life changes and emotional connections with animals.
Solitary CreaturesReturn to Index
V
Immigratsii
Marina Raydun
Independently Published
979-8-9880859-1-1 $21.24
www.marinaraydun.com
Historical fiction readers seeking a sweeping, epic saga will find V Immigratsii just the ticket for an immersive read. Set in the late 1980s and following a Jewish family’s flight from the USSR, it moves through different character perspectives and points of view as the family pulls up their roots in a repressive regime, become immigrants and strangers in other lands, then face a Covid lockdown decades later that further isolates and confines them.
If this novel feels especially pointed, personal, and emotionally powerful, perhaps it is because it was created from author Marina Raydun’s own experiences as an immigrant to the U.S., as well as those around her who had embarked on similar journeys. This background lends to realistic, engrossing descriptions that incorporate family, culture, old country beliefs, and new world systems in a satisfying contrast between family makeup and identity:
Benjamin is well familiar with the fear of drafts among his family members. If one has a choice between waiting for his appendix to rupture versus risking sleeping in a drafty room, the safer choice would be to wait out the appendix. All sorts of ailments were caused by drafts, from stiff necks to pneumonia. Of course, no one on that train would’ve let his mother or grandmother even attempt to cool down the train by opening windows. No surprise there. There is no need for follow-up questions.
Readers will delight in how this immigrant family evolves and preserves its connections through time, and will easily be able to adapt to its shifting characters and years as time goes by and life changes.
Filled with epic moments of realization about change and the impact of new surroundings and cultures on family values and perspectives, V Immigratsii captures not only the history and experience of immigrants during those times, but adds important insights and questions about the costs of survival and adaptation.
Libraries seeking historical novels steeped in Jewish and Soviet experiences and insights which are delivered with the strength of supportive family personalities and reactions to new lives will welcome the opportunity to add V Immigratsii to their collections. It should be highly recommended to book clubs and readers interested in stories of family ties and immigrant experience.
V ImmigratsiiReturn to Index
When
Hearts Heal
Mara Purl
Bellekeep Books
978-1-936878-24-6 $18.95
Print/$9.99
eBook
www.BellekeepBooks.com
The fifth book in the Milford-Haven novels series, When Hearts Heal, returns newlywed artist Miranda Jones to the spotlight as she settles into married small-town life with her “very amazing and still quite new husband.” After their Alaska honeymoon, they are returning to their Milford-Haven home and living together at last.
Though their journey will attract prior readers of the series, the conjoined lives of sister Meredith and Zach, who are attempting to replicate such happiness in their own dating and choices, and long-time enemies Samantha and Jack, who have fought so long that anything else feels unfamiliar, also unfold against the backdrop of both the small town and Miranda’s success.
Perspectives shift between Miranda, Zack, and other characters to add a full-bodied feel to the story. Conflicts and hearts at odds evolve in different ways, which also lends a feel of authenticity to the story as characters attempt to identify and resolve flaws and fall in love in different ways.
Zack’s reflections, as a result of a difficult recovery from the Bends during a diving accident and self-examination after an epic failure of communication, are just one example linking character efforts to understand and grow with the impact and choices this portends for the world around them:
He reexamined his sense of honesty and began to realize authenticity was the inner strength he was now finding, working it like a newly discovered muscle.
As he navigates ex Cynthia, a possible future with Meredith against all odds, and his own tendencies towards self-destruction, Zack grows in new directions. So do the other characters of Milford-Haven as each heal from different circumstances to discover new pathways towards resolution, love, and life.
Mara Purl cultivates a hopeful atmosphere in her story that keeps an uplifting tone to the obstacles each character faces in their growth and in their interpersonal relationships. This creates an atmosphere of promise as it delves into different forms of healing and growth.
Women interested in romance, family secrets and ties, and small-town community backdrops will relish how all these elements come together in different lives that both dovetail nicely with the other Milford-Haven stories and create new threads of subplot and discovery in When Hearts Heal.
Librarians
looking for
romance novels
that both stand nicely alone and compliment other books in a series
will find When Hearts Heal a fine acquisition. It
can be
recommended to leisure readers, but comes with the added bonus of
enlightenment and thought-provoking developments that grow not only
disparate characters, but readers who become involved in their lives,
dilemmas, and transformations.
Return to Index
50
Secrets Nobody
Tells You in
Hollywood
Mike Kimmel
Ben Rose Creative Arts
978-1953057181 $19.99
www.amazon.com
With all the actor’s guides on the market today, one might wonder what remains uncovered for aspiring actors. 50 Secrets Nobody Tells You in Hollywood: The Working Actor’s Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls and Super-Charging Your Career proves that there are plenty of points that need enlightenment and better understanding.
Since these can be make-or-break situations for would-be actors, it would behoove novices to use 50 Secrets Nobody Tells You In Hollywood to add all the tools to acting success into their arsenals that they can.
Mike Kimmel offers some surprising suggestions. One is for the actor to become a play writer. Why? Quite simply:
Write a stage play. It doesn’t have to be long. It can be a one-act. Or write a short film with good roles for yourself and your best actor friends that you can produce together on a micro budget ... Writing gives you a creative outlet that will keep you energized and inspired whenever the auditions slow down. Writing is also an important intermediate step towards directing and producing.
Another idea seems so simple as to be redundant, but shows that how actors conduct themselves off-stage is as important as their on-stage prowess:
As actors, people are always going to see us as public figures, no matter what our present-day salaries and professional credits may be. At auditions, rehearsals, industry events––and meetings with potential agents and managers, especially––we should keep a close eye on our table manners … and our manners in general.
If these seem too basic for those seeking nitty-gritty industry pitfalls, consider this nugget of wisdom about auditioning:
Keep the main thing the main thing. Remember why you’re auditioning today. You’re here to work. You’re here to book this job. You’re here to build your credits and career. Not everything you see and hear requires your clever commentary. But every person you’re talking to––and every script you’re working on––requires your full, complete, and diligent attention.
Each piece of advice serves as an interlocking journey towards success that, together, forms a unified professional approach to understanding acting’s demands, challenges, and the many ways actors can either hone success or inadvertently barrel towards failure.
Exit stage left if the advice in this down-to-earth guide isn’t followed. But, don’t take librarians or fellow actors along for the downward ride. Librarians who choose 50 Secrets Nobody Tells You In Hollywood will find the surprising diversity of its advice to be accessible, easily followed, and uniformly strong; while actors consulting this book will find its practical assessments of on- and off-stage choices to be thought-provoking and important.
50 Secrets Nobody Tells You in HollywoodReturn to Index
The Art
of
Surviving Bipolar Stigma
David A. Feingold, Ed.D.
Independently Published
979-8-218-82283-5 $19.95
www.davidfeingoldartimages.com/IngramSpark
The Art of Surviving Bipolar Stigma addresses a problem that everyday people too often don’t adequately consider: the stigma of mental illness in general and bipolar conditions in particular. David A. Feingold’s friend committed suicide after decades of living with her bipolar condition, shocking her family and community. Since then, the author has dedicated his life to helping others with the condition.
“Mental illness does not define who you are,” he maintains, and he provides the tools necessary not just for struggling individuals to redefine the condition and their lives, but for those around them to offer better support and understanding.
This is achieved through a combination of art and inspections that move beyond traditional ways of thinking about mental illness, including discussion points to encourage readers to not only think about their lives and connections, but the broader topic of mental illness and its impact and, sometimes, surprising possibilities:
Psychiatric disorders can have significant negative effects on family members. Do you think there could be some positive outcomes for a family? What might they be, and how could they be achieved?
Readers won’t expect poems, questions, black and white large-size art images, and raw truth-telling that review Feingold’s life-changing realizations and moments, the perceptions and approaches to that life that can be experienced differently.
Also surprising are the specific connections between art and healing mental illness which offer keys to not just understanding, but redefining one of the most undiscussed aspects of a mental condition:
...a key concept I call the Impaired Self—a self shaped by stigma and the challenges of navigating life with a psychiatric diagnosis.
This approach to learning, healing, redefinition and ultimate new freedom of expression and insight will lend to a wide audience of readers, from family and friends who will want to reconsider their experiences with mental illness to psychiatrists and medical personnel who will see within this volume the rare opportunity to hopefully enact changes that create better support systems for their client and patients.
Most of all, The Art of Surviving Bipolar Stigma is about the fine art of channeling impulses, reflections, angst and sorrow into art to both create something new and get out of it something revised. Its blend of personal vignettes and insights about living with mental illness and social responses to it is enlightening, powerful, and thought-provoking.
Librarians will want to acquire and heavily recommend The Art of Surviving Bipolar Stigma to a wide audience, especially pointing out its value for book club and reading group discussion.
Hopefully, not just attitudes but lives will be changed because of The Art of Surviving Bipolar Stigma. That’s a rare opportunity not many books about mental illness can offer.
The Art of Surviving Bipolar StigmaReturn to Index
Daughters
of Daring
Chris Enss
Lyons Press
978-1-4930-8786-0 $34.95
www.GlobePequot.com
Daughters of Daring: Hollywood Cowgirl Stunt Women is a powerful survey of the women who made names for themselves in Hollywood as career stunt women, performing dangerous acts. Most readers have heard of stand-in stunt-men, but few will have prior knowledge of these women, who were chosen both for their ability and because:
That scene and nearly every other thrill the audience witnessed in early motion pictures where a lovely girl was in danger was made by one of Hollywood’s forgotten, fearless stuntwomen doubling for movie stars. She didn’t double for the star because the star lacked courage. She did it because, if she were maimed or killed, it would make little difference to the cost of the picture. If the star tried to wreck a buckboard and suffered even a split lip, the cost of delayed production would have amounted to thousands of dollars. Using a cowgirl stuntwoman in Westerns was insurance
for the studios. While beautiful movie stars were expensive, courageous lady equestrians were more common and well within the studio’s budget.
With this introductory surprise, readers are off on a wild ride through the biographical sketches of selected Hollywood stuntwomen whose lives and achievements have, until now, gone largely undocumented.
These portraits embrace how each women got into the stunt-riding act, creating connections between such seemingly disparate circumstances as Lucille Mulhall’s encounter with Will Rogers at the Mulhall’s Congress of Rough Riders and Ropers, which resulted in the teenager’s training and developing extraordinary abilities in roping and riding; or Oregon girl Lorena Trickey, whose early skills with horses and riding led her to work with early film pioneers Mix and Pickford.
Hollywood history, women’s lives, and extraordinary talents of the times meld in a series of stories that are vivid and engrossing, adding depth and dimension to each woman’s experiences.
Enss’s focus not only on what they did but how they became stunt women and often embraced even more achievements outside of Hollywood makes for a vivid collection of biographical sketches supplemented by equally eye-opening vintage photos of the women.
Libraries and readers seeking thoroughly engrossing Western and women’s history accounts will relish how both come to life in this intriguing, unusual survey.
The juxtaposition of U.S. history, western culture, and Hollywood interests assures that, as it deserves, Daughters of Daring will receive broad interest from a wide audience of history buffs, women’s history readers, and general-interest readers alike.
Daughters of DaringReturn to Index
The
Divine Within
Allison Batty-Capps, LMFT
Atmosphere Press
979-8891328426
$32.99 Hardcover/$19.99
Paperback/$8.99
eBook
www.atmospherepress.com
Many books attempt to bridge the gap between spirituality, psychology, and applied living. Some add a memoir into the mix to add personal experience. But few offer the reflective integration of all these approaches to healing as LMFT Allison Batty-Capps achieves in The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World.
Here, the road to healing and recovery is marked by self-discovery in a transformative journey that brings life to readers by introducing the author’s foray into inner spiritual worlds. Her saga reviews common roadblocks that emerge in the course of this experience, incorporating the bigger picture of how humanity can reconcile inner divinity with its self-destructive and growth-oriented impulses.
Here’s where The Divine Within truly shines, bringing readers into a milieu in which not only the author’s experiences, but those of a host of others, support her journey and contentions.
Another strength of The Divine Within lies in its specific explanations. Where other books explore the benefits of following a particular course of action, Batty-Capps explains the scientific and psychological rationale behind her suggestions, clearly illustrating how they link to improvements:
Mindfulness helps you overcome roadblocks, because mindfulness shifts your experience of them and helps heal them. Mindfulness also rewires your brain and nervous system, improving your mental and physical health. Mindfulness changes your DNA. These benefits are compelling reasons to develop a mindfulness practice.
Another standout feature lies in its links between childhood development, adult actions and reactions, and especially the chapter summaries, which recap the wealth of information and guidance each section presents:
In this chapter, you continued your hero’s journey and began to understand the shadow within your unconscious, which sometimes distorts your inner compass. You learned that your inner compass is embodied when you are in a regulated nervous system and your body feels calm, curious, and compassionate. You learned how to access this state through your breath.
Science-minded readers who employ logic in their life approaches and decision-making won’t be left behind by discussions of how science, mindfulness, spirituality, and approaches to health work together to create new possibilities.
A final note is that The Divine Within doesn’t stop with individual change, but then links this process to humanity as a whole, showing how healing on a personal level can lead to healing in much wider circles:
If you have been harmed by others or have witnessed harm, you might be wondering what the divine thinks about justice. It also means that as you are returning from your hero’s journey, you might be called to advocate for change as you bring your own wisdom of the elixir of the divine back into your community.
All these reasons are why The Divine Within is highly recommended for libraries seeking bridge-building stories of transformation and change on personal and social levels, for book clubs looking for vivid discussion material, and for self-help, new age, and spirituality readers seeking a discourse that synthesizes a wealth of scientific, metaphysical, psychological, and spiritual information into what hopefully will lend to a revised blueprint for a better humanity.
Lofting-sounding as this statement is, The Divine Within’s potential for sparking change on many levels makes it a standout.
The Divine WithinReturn to Index
Finding
Joy
Through Food
Chiang Ching and Yanan Li
New Song Media GmbH
978-3910769106 $59.99
Paperback/$12.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Joy-through-Food-Culinary/dp/3910769101
Finding Joy through Food: A Culinary Memoir, with Recipes comes from an actor and dancer who, isolated during Covid, reinvented both herself and her relationship with food. Thus, this culinary memoir isn’t just a recipe collection with a few memories attached, but represents a total reinvention of perceptions about not just food, but life.
Yanan collaborates with Chiang Ching to provide important and revealing visuals that also move beyond the usual photos of finished dishes to incorporate the views of the author, ingredients, and the rivers and currents of life and death that move through those times and Chiang Ching’s life.
These artistic, reflective renditions add further depth and dimension to the dishes, many of which are not the standard Chinese fare found in common cookbooks, but represent remakes due to ingredient substitutions or choices such as mushrooms, gleaned from the author’s mushroom hunting activities on her private island.
Such bites of life, such as Egg-Tofu with Minced Garlic and Squash, are accompanied by slices of life and connections formed against the backdrop of pandemic isolation, juxtaposing memories of the past with revised present-day situations from isolation efforts.
Draped in the clothing of a recipe collection and memoir but embedded with personal connection and reflection, Finding Joy through Food is not just about food’s connection to life, but discovering new ways to reconnect with family and friends during times of crisis.
These artistic visuals, appealing recipes, and even more appealing, life-affirming efforts set Finding Joy through Food apart from any other, showing how to find joy not just in food, but revised approaches to life.
Libraries seeking books that capture pandemic experience and survival traits alike will want to welcome Finding Joy through Food into their collections, highly recommending it to readers seeking more than a recipe collection alone.
With its eye-catching photos of food and life engagement, Finding Joy through Food is a standout well worth its price tag. It can be gifted to anyone struggling to adapt to new circumstances by tapping into the inherent joy of not just surviving, but thriving.
Finding Joy Through FoodReturn to Index
Five
Simple Truths
of Leadership
Dean Crisp
Torchflame Books
978-1-61153-691-1
$24.95 hardcover; $12.99
ebook; $30.00
lp
www.torchflamebooks.com
Five Simple Truths of Leadership: How to Be a Significant Leader in Your Business, Organization, and Life comes from a veteran law enforcement officer and business leader. It synthesizes his life and professional experiences into a survey rich with insights on how to build a strong team and individual leadership skills.
So many titles cover leadership that one might wonder at the need for yet another, but Dean Crisp’s approach pairs insights with case study examples and real-world game plans for success, adopting a plan that involves not just leading a business, but accepting the potential pitfalls to the learning process:
Leadership is not about getting it right every time; it’s about showing up and growing through the process.
What seems like a shortcoming often proves an educational opportunity for growth that then can translate into clear expectations, setting standards, tackling problems more effectively, and changing one’s mindset to produce superior results, from altered approaches to influencing others.
Crisp tackles many subjects that other leadership guides omit. Of special note is the section about intentionality:
In the end, intentionality is about legacy. The question isn’t just “What am I achieving today?” but “What am I building for tomorrow?”
The leaders we remember—the ones who change industries, nations, or lives—were not the busiest leaders. They were the ones who acted on purpose, with purpose, for a purpose.
Discussions also define the difference between good leaders and great ones, exploring various approaches to guiding others which result in creating action from thoughts.
Libraries interested in business books that stand out from the crowd for their blend of history, case studies, personal experience, and philosophical and practical applications will find Five Simple Truths of Leadership not only a top choice for business collections, but highly recommendable to business book clubs and reading groups discussing how leadership qualities are built.
Easily accessed and astute in its game plan for success, Five Simple Truths of Leadership should be at the top of the reading list for anyone who would better listen to their hearts, hone their goals, and guide others around them.
Five Simple Truths of LeadershipReturn to Index
Get Your
Back Back
Alistair McKenzie
Izzard Ink Publishing
9781642281309 $32.95
Paperback/$9.99
eBook
www.izzardink.com
Those suffering from back pain well know how debilitating a back condition can be - and how tricky it is to resolve. Massage therapist Alistair McKenzie has worked on backs for over twenty-five years, blending physical with mental therapies to achieve the best results. Get Your Back Back is the result of decades of successful practice, and is directed to self-help readers and back pain sufferers who would add to their toolbox of solutions.
McKenzie identifies elevated stress levels as one source of back pain, offering specific approaches and information to help readers better understand the often-hidden causes of their pain:
Aching shoulders are a symptom of active pressure points on the front of the neck, brought on by dysfunctional breathing techniques. These dull, throbbing aches are easily misdiagnosed as rotator cuff injuries. Back pains and sciatica are usually stress-related.
His techniques promote healing through a better understanding of where pain actually begins. This requires that self-help readers be prepared to not only adopt changes to their routines, but new mindsets in order to effect whole-body healing.
Case history examples present information about pressure points, going beyond descriptions of those in pain to address how and why treatments work:
This rusty gate hinge could be restored to near-perfect operation with a little TLC. When Mary first presented, her thoracic skeleton was stuck, just like this hinge. If you gave the gate attached to this hinge a kick to get it open, either the hinge would snap or the screws would pull out. But a wee wiggle and a bit of CRC lubricant and it would begin to move. Keep gently wiggling and lubricating and the gate would eventually swing freely.
Readers might think the source and solution will be complicated, but McKenzie encourages understanding through analogies and examples that make sense:
The solution for all muscles compacted by this buildup of nervous energy is the same: release! They are not damaged, only trapped. There are two very effective techniques to self-treat these problem areas: the pin and stretch, and the trap and wiggle.
The result is a back pain management book that addresses more than the back alone, offering insights into lifestyle changes that both add to and supplement some of the self-help routines a back sufferer may be using.
Libraries will thus want to add Get Your Back Back to health collections as an important survey promising a different, often more effective, approach to back pain management. Its ability to go beyond a single method to embrace holistic approaches to whole-body health sets it apart from many, making for a specific, useful set of insights that back pain sufferers can employ for better results.
Get Your Back BackReturn to Index
Inclusionable
Christine Barnes, EdD
GFB
978-1-967510-16-0 $9.99
eBook
www.girlfridayproductions.com
Inclusionable: Transform How You Lead and Elevate Your Team’s Performance joins a host of other business books about leadership and team motivation, but with a difference. It promotes the concept of “inclusive leadership” in daily affairs, defining and elevating this idea as it applies to workplace scenarios.
Christine Barnes draws clear lines and definition between inclusivity and diversity, but of special note are the real-world examples of leadership ideals which run up against snafus in actual translation:
How could they not see what a great metaphor rock climbing is for how we interact as a team? Now I realize how my relentlessly positive cheerleading glossed over any possibility that one or more of the team members might have had a physical limitation or a fear of heights. I used only my own framework of what was fun, interesting, or useful for the team of leaders. There was no opening for anyone to speak up about it, and I’m guessing that no one wanted to admit to their peers that they simply did not want to do it.
This creates a powerful, positive reflective process that uses solid examples to strengthen concepts of applications and changes in leadership roles and approaches:
Real possibility comes when leaders advance to metacognitive knowledge—the ability to reflect on their own thinking and adjust their behaviors accordingly. This is where selfawareness and self-regulation come into play. Leaders who are metacognitively aware can assess their own biases and assumptions about inclusion and diversity, then course-correct in real time. For instance, they might recognize that they tend to favor input from certain employees over others, and as a result, they actively work to change that behavior.
The result is a survey rich in attitude and ideas for team leaders interested in going the extra mile between linking their ideals and assumptions with leadership strategies that have already been tried and tested under real-world conditions.
Additionally, Inclusionable is as much about learning how to create fellow leaders by example and encouragement as it is about individual self-improvement. This lends further value to a process which embraces the entire business structure:
Those operating as professionals in HR, OE, OD, coaching, or DEI are uniquely positioned to help you in your role as a leader to bring inclusion to life. If you have access to such roles, you can amplify, accelerate, or leverage your own expertise to create workplaces where everyone feels seen, valued, and like they belong. This collaborative effort will not only enhance employee engagement but also drive greater business success. Let inclusion be the foundation of your support, and together, you can help leaders build organizations that thrive on diversity and unity.
Librarians who find their shelves already overwhelmed by team leadership business books will thus find Inclusionable a standout in many different ways. It’s worthy of top recommendation to aspiring business leaders who would not only improve their own perception of and approach to team leaders, but their ability to contribute to their organizations as a whole by building more growth opportunities into a traditional business environment.
It’s an opportunity business and community leaders won’t want to miss.
InclusionableReturn to Index
Just Off
the Norm
Norman L. Bender
Sensibility Press
978-1968094089 $29.95
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Off-Norm-Published-Trenchant/dp/1968094083
Just Off the Norm: Published Opinions on American Politics and Culture by One of Its Most Trenchant Observers gathers some sixty years of Norman L. Bender’s observations of shifting American politics and culture - but it’s not just one American’s lone reflections. These writings were widely published in some 500 newspaper columns and op-eds over the decades, even coming to the attention of presidents, making them more thought-provokingly revealing than readers might expect.
More than a series of critiques about American values and experience, the essays point out the intersection of information, disinformation, and response that have shaped American questions, ideals, and attitudes over the decades.
Take the excerpt from a broader essay, “An Affordable Health Potion.” Here, Bender comments:
Be alert because recent studies have shown there is a “health potion” readily available, and you don’t need a prescription. And it’s my pleasure to confirm that it is reasonably priced. There’s only a little co-pay for this drink, or, more precisely co-fee, or of course, its more traditional name: coffee.
As Bender cycles though American experience and presents his own observations of changing life and social issues, readers will especially appreciate how succinct and thought-provoking this blend of history, personal experience, and cultural change can be – as well as how relevant it is to modern American experience:
There are those who would say the only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun, as opposed to preventing the bad man from getting the gun in the first place. But really, weren’t Ronald Reagan and his press secretary Mr. Brady surrounded by a whole bunch of good men with a whole bunch of guns, as in the Secret Service? Yet their presence wasn’t enough.
As subjects range from women’s voting rights to “routine” mass shootings, being a Democrat, and issues of draft dogers and the ethical points of condoned torture, Bender provides a host of thought-provoking arguments, insights, and pointed directions for positive solutions to social ailments. This approach will prove especially inviting to classroom and book club discussions about America’s values and direction.
The result is a collection of hard-hitting observations and history which points the way to new attitudes, progress, and possibilities in a manner that librarians will consider especially intriguing for their collections because it’s accessible to a wide audience of thinkers and ordinary citizens.
Astute in its considerations, literary in its craft, and thought-provoking in its reflections, Just Off the Norm is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of life and culture in America.
Just Off the NormReturn to Index
Mom:
Your Life
Your Story to Write
Karen Hall
Independently Published
979-89991163-0-7
$19.99 Hardcover/$10.00
Paperback
https://a.co/d/8VCwdkL
Mom: Your Life Your Story to Write is a journal that encourages mothers to write a book about their lives and experiences. From this one might expect a journal’s usual blank pages with invitations to fill them, but Karen Hall creates an opportunity far more inviting in a series of prompts that require more than just setting memories to paper.
Conversations are encouraged through checkboxes, prompts that support reflection as much as memory, and notes that can serve as the building blocks for further detail.
Take the section on childhood habits and writing in a diary, for example. Checkboxes for the topic “If you had a diary, what did you write about?” include ‘crushes,’ ‘future plans,’ ‘anger and confusion,’ and more. Through these responses, a writer can build deeper reflections that go beyond merely chronicling a favorite memory or meaningful scene.
Additional pages for writing personal notes to loved ones and stories rounds out the opportunities for memories and connections to loved ones.
In addition to the checkboxes, the journal questions themselves offer food for thought, representing an invitation to self-analyze and discover, then set down the results for self and perhaps others: “If you could change one thing in the world today for your children’s future, what would it be?”
The result goes far beyond the usual journal format, encouraging mothers to reflect on deeper meanings and experiences, sharing on levels which are more interactive and reflective of life values and experiences.
While a journal format’s blank pages is not appropriate for library lending, Mom: Your Life Your Story to Write is the perfect gift for mothers, and should ideally be shared between mothers and children for maximum impact and connection.
Its potential for both chronicling and sharing is truly boundless.
Mom: Your Life Your Story to WriteReturn to Index
Never
Delegate
Again
Brad Federman
Manuscripts Press
979-8-88926-486-6
$27.99 Hardcover/$16.99
Paperback/$9.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Never-Delegate-Again-Uncover-Yourself/dp/B0FM9RW9HC
Never Delegate Again: Uncover the Secret to Growing Your Company, Your People, and Yourself flies against many books that promote the notion that business leader success relies heavily on delegating responsibilities to appropriate underlings. Brad Federman advocates a different approach to building corporate environments not through traditional delegation, but improving the lives, skillsets, and participation levels of everyone involved, creating a rich inspection of growth-oriented paths to empowering all levels of the company for best results.
Chapters delve into the specifics of tailoring to employees for success, inviting leaders to stretch the boundaries of assignments, cooperative ventures, and creative thinking:
The work is too important to be a “training ground,” but it still pushes a capable person to grow beyond their current comfort zone. Leaders should intentionally look for these kinds of stretch opportunities for high performers who are ready to level up—people who don’t only have the skill set but are ready to take on more. When used well, this quadrant becomes a talent accelerator. (Referring to the Growth Matrix Model presented in the book.)
The idea is that opportunities for growth within a corporate structure are as prevalent and simple as turning a typical job description or assignment into a platform for learning and achievement.
This process involves rewriting traditional business approaches to appeal to new generations and team structures to not just enhance their goals and perceptions, but push limiting boundaries in the effort to create more opportunities for all.
The type of business reader that picks up this book and considers its lessons will be innovation-oriented, change-ready, and willing to put to test, real-world techniques that have worked for others in Brad Federman’s circles.
Librarians interested in leadership roles and books that go beyond the typical approach to delegation will find a broad audience interested in Federman’s novel approach to business-building. Ideally, Never Delegate Again will serve as fodder for business book club discussion as well as an applicable approach for broader interests who would promote and build growth opportunities into traditional business operations.
The result is satisfyingly specific and filled with examples and applications geared to success and reinvention.
Never Delegate AgainReturn to Index
The
Thirty-Fifth
Page
Lya Badgley
Atmosphere Press
979-8891328648 $17.99
Paperback/$8.99 ebook
https://lyabadgley.com/
The Thirty-Fifth Page is a page-turner steeped in Balkan culture and legend that opens with the specter of a witch, the curse of war, and centuries of sorrow. A wizard’s magical book holds the power to change the witch’s world for the cost of a mere cup of water - but in reality the price tag is much more, for the wise wizard’s gift comes with a proposition:
“I know your curse,” he said. “It was never real—only an idea, a trick of perception that transformed fear into fate. A warning mistaken for truth, spreading like fire because fear moves faster than wisdom. I held it once, but it slipped free and found its way to this forest. Let me take it back, and I will bind it inside these pages.”
But The Thirty-Fifth Page isn’t a fantasy about the past. It’s a portent of a future that fast forwards from this initial encounter into the world of 1992 Saravejo, where Miri Adler wonders about the old legends as she tackles new revelations while living the life she’s always wanted as an American art conservator on assignment to a land teetering on the edge of war.
Miri’s research project is to study a legendary medieval manuscript. When she uncovers not just the manuscript but a mystery revolving around its strange patterns and a strange, newly-appearing page, Miri finds herself drawn into an impossible world in which folklore, history, and ancient curses threaten the world’s future.
Lya Badgley does an outstanding job of weaving past and present influences into the dilemmas Saravejo faces during its struggles. She shifts the timeline from the 1990s to the 2000s as she follows Miri’s encounter with a spirit.
Research on the Haggadah manuscript unfolds as Saravejo moves from the precipice of war in 1992 to the specter of peace in 2015. Elements of magical realism permeate a vivid story of escape, preservation issues, European culture and legends, and the impact of past choices on present dilemmas:
She stood and crossed the lawn, avoiding the clusters of guests, though her skin prickled where their eyes followed. Not curious. Suspicious. They recognized her. The American. The one some still believed had stolen the book, back when the war made all things murky and uncertain.
The mix of history, magical realism, and cultural inspection is simply delightful, requiring no prior familiarity with Saravajo or the world of art preservation to prove thoroughly engrossing to general-interest readers.
Libraries and readers that select The Thirty-Fifth Page will appreciate how the novel dances through events and decisions of past and present with a delightful eye to intrigue, mystery, and discovery:
Miri crouched, hoping to glimpse whatever lay within—a portal to a mysterious world or a hidden place where dark things were left to be forgotten.
Readers who enjoy adventure stories that lead into unexpected realms to draw surprising connections between legend and reality will welcome how thoroughly immersive Miri’s experience is in The Thirty-Fifth Page, which creates a compelling story hard to predict, put down, or easily categorize.
This makes its reading all the richer.
The Thirty-Fifth PageReturn to Index
USING MY
WORD
POWER: Advocating
For A More Civilized Society Book III: Justice and Equality
Janice S. Ellis, Ph.D.
USARiseUp, Inc.
9798987856178
Paperback: $16.99; eBook:
$9.99;
Hardcover: $21.99
Website: https://janiceellis.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/USING-WORD-POWER-Advocating-Civilized/dp/B0G1BJ4TS4/
Book III, Justice and Equality in the Real Advocacy Journalism® series, USING MY WORD POWER: Advocating For A More Civilized Society completes a triad of social inspection that will guide political leaders, advocates, and participants for decades to come, and receives high recommendation for inclusion in any library collection or reader list where books about democratic and political processes are of interest.
Here lies the nuts and bolts of advocating for not just justice, but change, wrapped in an accessible, thought- and discussion-provoking discourse that marries the power of words and perceptions to social and political challenge and transformation.
How do minorities, women, and the under-served rise up to confront inequality, oppression, and suppression? By not just using powerful words more effectively, but understanding the underlying sentiments, approaches, and prejudices such choices contain. In the interests of exploring these routes of misinformation, misunderstanding, and potential empowerment processes on either side, Dr. Janice S. Ellis creates a discourse examining their foundations.
From the impact of educational processes and the responsibility of not just parents and educators but all participants in society to assure its widespread availability and quality to instances where racial profiling training should not be eliminated but required and how to address atmospheres of racial fear, chapters survey the foundations of not just language and literacy, but oppression.
This book dovetails nicely with the other series title subjects and creates a unifying, concluding set of insights that stem from the juxtaposition of social analysis and individual and community experience. Bigger pictures weave into these examples to provide justification for why certain processes and opportunities need to be better valued:
Beyond the personal devastation a poor-quality education causes, it also wreaks havoc on a community in many other ways ... A city whose public educational system has a poor or negative reputation of putting out graduates with poor basic skills makes many businesses wary of being able to hire workers suitable for available jobs. The location or relocation of many businesses is directly related to the perception of being able to get skilled labor at a reasonable wage.
This approach lends meat and might to the discussions, cementing idealism with insights about what constitutes opportunity for all and how responsibility for so doing lies within each and every individual, institution, and community:
We as a society share the blame in that we, both men and women, have turned a blind eye. We continue to do so by giving men tacit approval to behave badly toward women without suffering any repercussions. Sexual harassment is an entrenched cultural problem.
In exploring a myriad of ways in which justice and equality fail or succeed in current American society, Dr. Ellis creates the stepping stones for better discourses, discussions, and direction that needs to be part of not just an individual thinker’s library, but debated in classrooms from high school into college, reading groups interested in justice and social change, and political circles where advocacy is the heartbeat of the mission.
All these reasons are why libraries interested in the topics of political advocacy, justice and equality, or social condition need to add not just USING MY WORD POWER: Advocating For A More Civilized Society, Book III: Justice and Equality to their collections, but its predecessors (Book II: Patriotism and Politics and Book I: Ethics and Values).
While
the books can stand
individually,
as a whole they form a trifecta of advocacy basics that are essential
for anyone interested in understanding the rudiments of real social,
psychological, and political change. These are especially essential
books for modern times.
Return to Index
Young Adult/Children
Ben
Finds a
Colorful Friend
Axl Dlima
StoryVerse Land
9789819433636 $34.00
https://www.storyverseland.com/books/ben-finds-a-colourful-friend
Ben Finds a Colorful Friend is an appealing interactive picture book that shows what happens when Ben’s lighted shoes attract an unusual new companion, who hides out in his bookcase.
His mother notices the new arrival and helps Ben understand its natural history and special qualities. As Ben learns about his new friend’s color-changing abilities, he absorbs underlying lessons about differences and diversity, how color changes can reflect moods, and other properties about the chameleon which lend excitement to Ben’s learning process and a young reader’s interest in these discoveries.
Axl Dlima teaches the basics of how to keep a reptile as a pet, but also provides a cautionary note about befriending wildlife and the importance of a natural habitat.
The warm story concludes with a brave decision on the boy’s part which will lead nicely into adult discussions with children about the importance of a natural habitat to a wild creature such as Camo.
Filled with delightful insights about reptiles, pets, adaptation, and change, Ben Finds a Colorful Friend features lovely illustrations by Tianna Do, whose contributions enhance the feel and impact of a delightful picture book foray into nature.
Ben Finds a Colorful FriendReturn to Index
The
Constitution
Kids
Gary Gabel
Mascot Books
9798891383906 $16.99
Paperback/$7.14
eBook
Website: www.theconstitutionkids.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Kids-Gary-Gabel/dp/B0DNNS5H35
The Constitution Kids will appeal to middle grade readers and up with a blend of American history and fantasy. Three teens find a magical book which helps them uncover facts about the Constitution by traveling through time to encounter the historical figures and settings that birthed the blueprint for a nation.
Gary Gabel’s intention is to elevate history beyond the usual recitation of dry facts and figures. By injecting this era and its story with elements of fantasy and creating believable, involving characters whose efforts result in surprising discoveries, Gabel creates a satisfying blend of entertainment and education. Quotes from the actual text of the Constitution add important insights to the kids’ adventure.
The idea isn’t just to teach history. Gabel wants kids to be “enthralled” about the Constitution’s underlying messages and how they came to be - and in this, he succeeds.
As the kids discuss political matters with a variety of contributors to the Constitution, the plot contrasts past intentions with present-day interpretations:
“It will take time for the nation to decide,” Bingham said. “But in a democracy like ours, it’s important to have this discussion, and this amendment makes it possible.”
“What I find interesting is up to this point, we’ve mostly been visited by famous historical figures,” Kali said, “but it’s good to meet people like you, Mr. Bingham, who are lesser known but who played such an important part in creating a country where all people are protected under the law. It’s amazing to be able to meet you and hear your story, and of course, hear your description of what led up to the 14th Amendment.”
From the right to vote to how the nation addresses major issues, the kids make discoveries that will help modern young readers better understand not just history, but its present-day incarnation and impact.
Libraries seeking a fictional adventure that rests on the foundations of democratic processes will thus find The Constitution Kids an attractive, important collection addition that ideally will be widely recommended to book club readers and classroom debaters.
Filled with facts and lively interactions, The Constitution Kids is a leisure read worthy of deeper-level thinking.
The Constitution KidsReturn to Index
Felicity
and the
Raccoons
Loralee Evans
Independently Published
979-827389908
Price: $12.95
Felicity
and the Raccoons
Joining her other Felicity middle-grade stories of relationships with wildlife is Felicity and the Raccoons, a story of Felicity the sparrow’s encounters with the wider world. Her friend Mr. Yellow Horse and his family are showing her the world beyond her fellow creatures and fairy world, so Felicity is learning many new things – but most of all, she wants to find out what has happened to her lovely ivory-billed woodpecker friend Augustus.
As Felicity encounters Mr. Honeypants, Rosie, and others, dialogues investigate the science and nature of this world, lending lively debate and structure to considerations that middle-graders will find intriguing as these disparate groups explore their world and voice questions about it:
“But must we understand all the details about something in order for it to be? There are many things that happen in the world and the universe that we don’t quite understand.”
“And yet,” Rosie said as she scurried along the same fence just behind Mister Honeypants, “they still happen.”
Perched atop Rosie’s head like Cairn was perched atop Mister Honeypants’s, Felicity had to nod at the logic in what little Rosie and Mister Honeypants were saying.
“Who knows what dark matter is, or how it works,” Mister Honeypants said.
“Or what’s inside black holes?” Felicity suggested, flapping her wings and hopping a little on the soft fur of Rosie’s head.
As the animals encounter sailors and spectacled men, threats, and long journeys via car and train, an adventure unfolds in which Felicity lends her wisdom and determination to the efforts of her fellow creatures.
Loralee Evans creates an intriguing adventure story packed with nature and excitement. Threads of social observation also tinge the story with subtle insights about human society, prejudice, and interactions:
When the train came to a stop, Mr. Williams swung aboard, and Felicity heard him greeting people as they got on. Men in suits and tall hats, and women in dresses. Some women had those fancy old-fashioned umbrellas that Mister Yellow Horse had explained were called parry-soles, or something, that kept ladies from getting all sunburned. The people who had light skin like Mr. Williams were getting on the train cars closest to the engine. And they were boarding first. The people with darker skin waited until the people with lighter skin had boarded, and then they all started to get on.
Combined with the plight of the ivory-billed woodpecker and the animals’ effort to help Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, observations of human affairs from outsiders’ viewpoints brings the story to satisfying life with historical notes and social reflections that encourage kids to think.
Librarians and gatekeeper adults will especially appreciate the notes of positivity and social responsibility reflections that give Felicity and the Raccoons the added value of hope:
“Do good in the world. Wherever you are. Whenever you are.”
Its engaging animal-centric story of wonders in the world offers a friendship tale that will keep young readers immersed and thinking about new possibilities for viewing their lives and the world around them.
Felicity and the RaccoonsReturn to Index
Folk
Secrets
Brent Wheelbarger
Trifecta Communications
979-8-218-99987-2 $14.95
Paperback/$4.99 eBook
Website: www.folksecrets.com
Ordering: www.trifectacomm.net
Folk Secrets is a young adult time travel mystery involving a mysterious relic, a search through the past, and the worldwide romp experienced by thirteen-year-old Oklahoma girl Elma Quill who, along with her parents and grandfather, experience the intersection of past and present-day events which change her world and perception of her place in it.
A family curse is explored early in the story, drawing young audiences with a sense of history, mystery, and the involvement of the entire family as they confront the terrible storm raised by a book called The Codex and consider its impact on their futures.
Brent Wheelbarger incorporates insights from each family member, from Jonathan and his mother, archaeologist and daughter-in-law Patricia, to granddaughter Elma. Other characters, from Glenda to Mr. Jenner, enter the picture to help the family navigate impossible circumstances and developments that challenge each individual in different ways.
When Jonathan is kidnapped and forced to confront his past, he comes to understand that his hidden family history, extending over hundreds of years and embracing all kinds of individuals, continues to impact the future. As the family fractures, Jonathan comes to acknowledge not only the mistakes that have alienated him from his son, but that his granddaughter Elma may be the only possibility of redemption and saving the future.
The plot seems complex for the usual YA reader, embracing many alternate history and time travel concepts that pique the mind as well as encounters through time and space that challenge any linear concept of history and personal impact.
This creates an especially thought-provoking story that will reach into adult circles, as well, with intriguing possibilities and food for thought that most time travel or alternate history sci-fi doesn’t embrace.
Librarians seeking an adventure-infused story filled with mystery and shifting family connections will appreciate the engrossing interplay between generations and special interests, and will want to highly recommend Folk Secrets to a large audience of time travel enthusiasts of all ages.
Folk SecretsReturn to Index
Poppy
Pendal and
the Wondrous World
Around Us
De Anna Moyes
DartFrog Kids
978-1-965253-55-7
$25.99 Hardcover/$15.99
Paperback/$5.99
Book
www.DartFrogBooks.com
Poppy Pendal and the Wondrous World Around Us celebrates differences with the experience of a young girl who comes home wondering why she’s the only girl in class with red hair, which makes her feel odd and different.
Though her wise mother tries to emphasize that differences are good, Poppy doesn’t think so—she just feels strange. Her mother points out that if everyone looked alike, the world would be not only far less interesting, but more confusing.
De Anna Moyes does an excellent job of describing Poppy’s dilemma and thinking, aided by the bright, large-sized drawings by Ksenia Logovaia and Maria Vyasene. As Poppy explains and explores her feelings, young readers can readily understand her experiences and their impact, absorbing related topics such as kindness, tolerance, acceptance, and similarities and differences.
The examples her wise mother gives Poppy that support san appreciation of differences are especially pleasingly diverse, geared to a young child’s experiences with the world:
On their way home, Poppy stopped to sniff a flower. “Why don’t you make a bouquet,” Mama said. “But only use one flower in the same color.”
The result is an appealing, involving story that teaches the very young not just about self-acceptance and value, but a different approach to diversity that embraces all kind of accompanying values.
Libraries and adults looking for uplifting, educational picture books that support positive thinking about the world will find
Poppy Pendal and the Wondrous World Around Us not just a celebration of differences, but of life.
Poppy Pendal and the Wondrous World Around UsReturn to Index
Santa's
18-Wheel
Chrome-and-Steel
Sleigh
J. Brandon Boron
Shaun Ivie
Mascot Kids
9798891383333 $19.95
Website: https://santas18wheelchromeandsteelsleigh.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Santas-18-Wheel-Chrome-Steel-Sleigh/dp/B0FC4VN1QW
Shaun Ivie illustrates J. Brandon Boron’s Santa's 18-Wheel Chrome-and-Steel Sleigh, a picture book Christmas story about a team of sick reindeer during the holidays and Santa’s dilemma over delivering toys on time.
The flu takes out all the reindeer, but Donner’s creative solution assures a Plan B that will help Santa deliver on time.
J. Brandon Boron’s rollicking rhyme creates a spirited read as Santa and his reindeer embark on a redelivery venture:
“You’ve got that big old rig parked up in the back, and with some help from the elves, we’ll get ’er packed . . . It won’t be long before you’re on your way!”
Adults reading this holiday story to kids will find the illustrations big and bright, the dialogue and rhyme inviting, and the scenario unexpected and fun.
Libraries seeking a different kind of Christmas story will welcome the inviting, innovative problem-solving of Santa's 18-Wheel Chrome-and-Steel Sleigh, which is a cut above most stories about Christmas delivery dilemmas.
Santa's 18-Wheel Chrome-and-Steel SleighReturn to Index
Winnie
and the
Voodoo Trolls
JP Coman
Crimson Dragon Publishing
978-1944644581
$20.99 Hardcover/$14.99
Paperback/$3.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Winnie-Voodoo-Trolls-JP-Coman/dp/194464458X
Winnie and the Voodoo Trolls is an intriguing adventure for young readers ages 8-10. It follows Winnie to New Orleans, where she encounters a voodoo shop, trolls, and bombshells that stem from Cajun country culture and mystery.
From the start, JP Coman builds an intriguing atmosphere into the tale which opens with an unexpected family journey to a town where mother and father first dated. Trolls Adidas, Lazarus, and others tumble into the tale in the second chapter, with fun black and white line drawings by Maïlys Pitcher enhancing the feeling of fantasy adventure and the plot’s inherent attraction.
As the story evolves into a smuggling situation, both Winnie and these trolls assume center position in a delightful romp through New Orleans, magical powers, kidnapping scenarios, and evil enemies the gang must defeat.
Coman mixes family encounters and interactions with New Orleans culture and color to give the story’s progression and lively countenance. Dialogues and confrontations enrich the action. This creates a fun, unpredictable adventure that adds satisfyingly unexpected contrasts between human and troll cultures and concerns as the plot thickens.
Threads of humor also run in the bonus story between encounters with gremlins and other creatures, further enhancing the story’s fun and appeal.
Libraries and middle grade readers seeking fantasies embedded with strong family interactions, a sense of place, and voodoo transformations will welcome the lively pace and memorable characters that make Winnie and the Voodoo Trolls an action-packed standout.
Winnie and the Voodoo TrollsReturn to Index