June 2025 Review Issue
Fantasy & Sci Fi
Literature
Mystery & Thrillers
The Assassin, the
Traitor, and the
Prophecy
Jeff Altabef
Evolved
Publishing LLC
ASIN: B0DYP8PBQ2
$5.88 eBook
Website: http://www.jeffaltabef.com/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Assassin-Traitor-Prophecy-Kingdom-Fantasy-ebook/dp/B0DYP8PBQ2
The Assassin, the Traitor, and the Prophecy is the first book in a ‘Four Kingdom’ fantasy series. It introduces Cassara, a young Wingless Magic Shaper and Master Assassin whose hatred for the Wingots who enslave her people fuels a dangerous endeavor. Tasked with saving a Wingot Prince when a seer predicts his death, Cassara is placed in an impossible position that pits her beliefs and hatrid against a mission that leads her to associate with and discover more about this prince than she wanted to know.
Jeff Altabef creates an engaging story based on an intriguing female character whose training forces her to look beyond assumptions and prejudices from the start:
He nods. “How do you know those two behind the Wingots are Blood Traitors?”
“They’re both armed with daggers inside their coats and no one else has a weapon.”
“And the townspeople? What of them?”
I shake my head. “Fear, thick and acid smelling. They’ll do nothing.”
“Right, and what else? What else do you hear? I’m not training you to be ordinary, or am I wasting my time with you?”
Deeper-level thinking carries the story into more complex territory than the usual fantasy about repression and confrontation—a notable, delightful component of a tale that compliments action with insight:
“Isn’t there something we can do?” I ask.
“I’m doing something rather important.” He glares at me. “I’m teaching you both a lesson, Little One. Remember this feeling. This is what it feels to be helpless. One day we will rise up and seek our revenge. One day, but not this day. On that day you will remember this feeling and realize we fight so we never have to feel it again.”
First-person reflections, experiences, and insights develop a personal foray into adventures that many readers won’t see coming. Those temped to align with Cassara’s initial perceptions of what is good or evil in her world will find thought-provoking intervals of conflict that force them to acknowledge the borders between right and wrong may be murkier than imagined:
“The Resistance is real. My father is an authoritarian ruler, harsh, unjust, and not just to the Wingless. He’s made many enemies among the Wingot lords who are not his favorites. They’d like to dethrone him. That’s the way it works. Those out of power want power.”
In juxtaposing the lives, prejudices and perceptions, and objectives of two very different individuals and showing how their vast differences can work to bring them (and their people) together, Altabef crafts a story that is vivid, unexpected, and delightfully action-packed.
Libraries seeking fantasies that evolve not just kingdoms and conflicts, but ideals of employing magic and power in novel ways will find The Assassin, the Traitor, and the Prophecy easy to recommend to patrons who love action tempered by psychological insight.
Readers who choose The Assassin, the Traitor, and the Prophecy for its promise of heady reading will especially relish how enemies come to better understand not only their disparate visions and experiences, but their relationship with one another in the bigger scheme of what evolves from their choices.
The Assassin, the Traitor, and the ProphecyReturn to Index
The Book of Devils
Rod Vick
Penmore Press LLC
978-1957851907
$20.50
Paperback/$5.50 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Devils-Rod-Vick/dp/1957851902?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
In The Book of Devils, heroine Ricky Crowe has sacrificed many things, leaving her with scars despite her successful world-saving efforts. Some of these are psychological and internal. Others involve still being in the bull’s-eye of sinister groups and billionaires convinced that her powers could fuel their special interests.
When she is kidnapped by one of these forces, Ricky discovers that being a survivor brings its own ongoing angst and attractions to life that doesn’t always represent her best interests.
The book’s prologue opens not with Ricky, but with Mason Crockett. Ricky has finally relinquished her guard to form a rare, important personal connection with another. Despite their budding intimacy, Mason feels that the bond they’ve created during the course of defeating evil is perhaps too fragile to last. He’s right. Just because they saved the world together doesn’t mean that she will come home to live with him.
As the story progresses, Ricky faces her own demons, from splinter groups, zealots, and fanatics to supernatural forces. She deals with her struggle over wanting to stay with Mason versus assuring her own safety (and his, as well) by leaving.
From the ongoing legacy and impact of a supernatural race that existed thousands of years prior to a foray into early Egypt, where Ricky pursues both her adversaries and peace, Rod Vick’s heart stopping adventure presents readers with confrontations and realizations many won’t see coming.
It should be cautioned that some graphic violence (i.e. torture) is part of Ricky’s journey. Sensitive readers will want to look elsewhere, but Vick’s descriptions are in keeping with the story’s evolution and are designed to support it, not unduly create drama through shock and horror.
Libraries seeking fantasy adventures that traverse time and space to feature a powerful heroine determined to regain control of her life will find The Book of Devils a fine collection addition. Vick takes artistic license with the ancient Egyptian setting, which adds interest to the story.
Readers will find Ricky’s journey and discoveries a powerfully alluring saga in which she navigates disparate forms of treachery, challenge, and relationship quandaries in pursuit of more than one goal.
The pairing of powerful protagonist and unexpected twists keeps the action and plot engrossing, making The Book of Devils an outstanding read. The impossible situations Ricky keeps barely escaping create a page-turner nearly impossible to put down.
The Book of DevilsReturn to Index
Demon Amulet
Margo Carey
Wild Rose Press
978-1509261543
$19.99
Website:www.MargoCarey.com
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Amulet-Watcher-Margo-Carey/dp/1509261540
Demon Amulet is the second book in Margo Carey’s Watcher Clan series and introduces murder and a cursed amulet into Lia Ferguson’s life. These challenges lead her to uncover another Watcher Clan, romance, and a new revelation that threatens this budding connection as she moves from a deadly wedding’s impact to discoveries that test her skills and wrench her heart.
Cousin to Alexandra Ryan (from previous adventures), Lia also taps the abilities of her Templar ancestors as she forges new roads into a revised life. Her special healing powers are tested, as is her knowledge of her past and abilities. What really propels Demon Amulet into fascinating new territory is the juxtaposition of her involvements in everyday affairs and the challenge of juggling these with her extraordinary abilities and insights:
She was on her way back to her office from the third floor, where a young tyrant had broken the hair dryer during a tantrum. This was what she needed to clear her mind and escape from her family’s overbearing concerns. Work helped her put things into perspective. The thought that those men had tracked the amulet so quickly sent a slight quiver along the back of her neck.
Alex advises her that “...love doesn’t depend on psychic powers.” But they sure can’t hurt, as Lia quickly discovers.
Readers seeking a blend of paranormal fantasy, romance, and the feel of a heart-stopping, action-packed thriller will find Demon Amulet a nice foray into all these elements. Lia’s character and those who swirl around her are powerfully portrayed, cementing the circumstances which drive her into a new position as the only one who may be able to kill a dangerous demon.
The story comes to life with a blend of confrontation and revelation which keeps Lia and her readers reflecting on her role, why the Templars chose to create a cursed amulet, and how she should confront a monster.
Libraries seeking paranormal fantasies will find that while Demon Amulet can stand nicely on its on, its strength comes from its complimentary role to the first Watchers Clan book, The Convent House, which initially set the stage with a different character and dilemmas.
Readers seeking vivid confrontations, surprising discoveries, romantic entanglements, and life-or-death scenarios will relish the involving events that draw Lia into dangerous territory while forcing her to step into a role of dominance, tenacity, and life-preserving choices.
Packed with unexpected twists, Demon Amulet is hard to put down.
Demon AmuletReturn to Index
The Healing Stone
John Newton
Firesmyth Press
978-0-9995712-1-7
$16.95
Paperback/$3.99 eBook
Website:
www.NewtonSciFi.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Stone-Medieval-Historical-Science/dp/0999571214
The Healing Stone is the first book in the Shadows of Time historical sci-fi/time travel series. It is set in 1212 medieval Spain, where teen orphan Francisco is living on the streets, in possession of a family heirloom that holds the power to heal anything.
He employs this stone to heal the world around him, trying to keep its knowledge a secret so it and he can stay safe. But when strange figures appear and reveal that his precious stone actually comes from a high-tech future and is part of a war that threatens to split apart not just time, but his world, Francisco confronts knowledge and challenges far beyond his control.
Time-travel sci-fi is not uncommon; nor are stories whose sci-fi roots are rooted in history. What is satisfyingly novel about The Healing Stone is how vividly the story comes to life in a spiritual, reflective manner. John Newton juxtaposes social and political concerns with growth experiences and challenges that readers will readily relate to no matter what the era under consideration.
Readers may anticipate that this story will open in 1212, but its introductory world of a hospital where an elderly man represents a mystery in more ways than one emphasizes that no expectation is likely to be easily fulfilled ... and this makes the plot a delight for those who love surprises and eschew formula writing.
Newton does more than create an action-packed adventure. He fills it with quandaries and reflections that keep the characters believable, their dilemmas understandable, and their choices compellingly complex:
Francisco almost cried for his friend. I will, of course, heal you, he thought, but I won’t be able to do it until you’re asleep, if you can ever sleep with this pain. Papa’s rules of secrecy. Stone silence. How can I let you suffer until you fall asleep? Papa didn’t wait. He prayed for people all the time, but he didn’t show the stone. How can I do any less for my friend, my only true friend? He deserves more. He deserves to know.
Contrasted with Francisco’s increasingly complex responsibilities over his magic stone are the equally challenging decisions that must be made by those from the future who better understand and field temporal abnormalities and conflict:
While he was telling the story, she had used her cell phone to do a quick internet search on the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. The battle truly happened over eight hundred years ago. The article she found mentioned the major combatants, like King Alfonso and Muhammad al-Nasir, but it said nothing about Francisco or Sancho. No surprise there. “No, I’ll be all right,” she said, “but you can’t kill off Francisco.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Well, no. I mean … you can’t let him die.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I can’t do anything about it now.”
The story’s fights, progression, encounters and contrasts between past and present, powered by an uncertain young hero who is called upon to act and believe beyond his upbringing and familiar world, is simply exquisite. The yarn plays out with high drama but takes the time to build likeable characters whose different perceptions and purposes are thoroughly understandable and completely engrossing.
Action-packed clashes are supplemented by astute reflections and uncertainties that build from new knowledge and situations:
Did the ultramontanos ride into a surrendered fortress and start killing everyone? This is not what I came for. Killing men at arms is war. But children? Pregnant women? He clenched his fists. And it is the Lord’s Day. How could they do this on a Sunday? Maybe that’s it. Maybe God has called me here for this purpose, to heal those who should not die in war, if indeed anyone should. The more he watched, the stronger his conviction grew.
Libraries and readers seeking sci-fi time travel tales that go above and beyond the norm in the strength of their characters, cross-time connections, and discussions of impact and surprises will welcome The Healing Stone’s revelations.
Filled with satisfying twists most won’t see coming, The Healing Stone’s foray into ethical dilemmas and bigger-picture thinking is nothing short of totally engrossing, making this page-turner hard to put down.
While the plot concludes with many answers, it more than leaves the door ajar for further thrilling series additions.
The Healing StoneReturn to Index
In Search of the
Return
Joshua Raymond
Lumen Fidei Press,
LC
979-8-9884300-2-5
$17.99
Paperback/$24.99
Hardcover/$7.99 eBook
Website:
https://www.insearchofthereturn.com/
Ordering: https://a.co/d/fU5XagO
In Search of the Return will appeal to readers of magical realism and mystical fantasy who are attracted to vivid tales of enchantment and other realms. It opens with an intriguing prologue that answers the query, “But is this true?” Though the characters are fictitious, the reader is invited to consider the intersection of truth, spirituality, and myth as the story progresses.
The tale opens in a forest of ancient redwoods where the first-person narrator observes a setting that “clearly isn’t in America.” How can he know this? Because its lighting and feel isn’t California, but indicates he’s in an ancient past as he walks a path that has been “gifted to him.”
As the narrator wonders, wanders, and experiences this world, philosophical reflections spring to life to create atmospheric, poetic insights readers will find thought-provoking and alluring:
Man drew his breath in rhythm, in and out, in and out. Man circulated his life force to an internal beat. He ate in cycles, he slept in cycles, he did everything in cycles. And all the while he thought about his world and sought to manipulate it, either for good or ‘evil’. The tree was different. It did not breathe in and out in cycles. There was no rhythm, only a constant flow of air through its essence. So long as conditions would allow, the tree was ever inhaling, ever exhaling, ever drinking in water, ever growing, ever living, and it was not set to a beat; it was constant.
All the while it sought to do nothing other than ‘be’. Man was different from plants, and even from other animals, chiefly because he had the ability to conceive of what the world ‘ought to be’, and to create that world by altering the natural state of things in fundamental ways. But to deny the worth of all that you are not, is to miss the point of your own existence.
Past and present connections between nature and mankind emerge in a series of encounters and reflections that shift between consciousness, dreamscape, and otherworldly experience.
As Walker, Aiyana, and others move through this surreal landscape, touching base with one another and building bigger-picture thoughts about life purpose and connections, readers will enjoy the literary depth of a story that weaves magic, truth, and psychological and spiritual revelations:
“You already paid. You should get something for your money.” The thought tried to infect his mind, but he laughed at it. That was a trap designed to keep him from where he was supposed to go. He drove the thought away, and once it was gone, there was a heightened sense of the spiritual at work in his heart. Two forces were at war. One was trying to keep them from something, and the other called them to find Its Will for their lives and love. There was a place and time that was designed for them together, and if they were willing to search, they were going to find their way to it. There was no understanding the spiritual forces in the world, but he knew that they were present, and he could feel them intensely in that moment as they sped through the darkness toward an unknown morning.
The combination of a powerful journey through self and the world and the elements that introduce miracles, dreams, and revised concepts of God into their lives results in an ethereal, moving story rich in its connections between lives, nature, and journeys made in search of understanding:
As we strive to build a better world, let us recognize that it is in the quest for justice, equity, and unity that the true purpose of our systems is revealed.
Call it a romance, a quest novel of magical realism, or a fantasy, as you wish. In Search of the Return is as much about the journey as its results, and deserves a prominent place in library collections strong in literary and spiritual blends of fantasy and magical realism.
Replete with atmospheric and psychological depth that’s enriched with many surprises, In Search of the Return expands its journey. It embraces issues of human and nature rights, finding balance in the world, experiencing reality in diverse and novel ways, and growing new paradigms of connection and understanding from the fruits of alternative thinking.
Book clubs, especially, will find In Search of the Return promises many different topics for discussion and debate as Walker and Aiyana’s story opens new doors to understanding life in novel ways.
In Search of the ReturnReturn to Index
Storyteller: A
Tanith Lee Tribute
Anthology
Julie
C. Day
(Lead Editor), Carina Bissett (Coeditor), Craig Laurance Gidney
(Coeditor)
Essential Dreams
Press
979-8-9925954-0-6 $21.99
paperback/$12.99 eBook
Website: https://essentialdreams.press/
Ordering: https://tanithleestoryteller.com/
Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology is a top recommendation for prior fans of fantasy writer Tanith Lee. Its contributors mirror her in literary strength and the ability to spin a compelling, epic story.
Many of these writers will be new to most readers. Such names as Mike Allen, Amelia Mangan, Maya Deane, and others may not be household names, but their exceptional contributions are still standouts that will delight fans of Tanith Lee’s style and productions.
As for the stories, they are as diverse as Lee’s landscapes.
Powerful tales include C.L. Hellisen’s ‘Makers,’ in which Ru, the ugly duckling daughter in a family of seven children, proves their worth in an unexpected way that brings life to objects in a manner that defies the accepted notion that “Only men plucked from good families for their natural power were trained and bound to become makers.”
A female can be a maker, too. Perhaps, even a powerful one whose productions are unequalled. Gender fluidity in this story is expressed through its language:
Guilt stirred in their chest. They were a sinner, a wrong thing, and they had watched women burn for lesser crimes.
What Ru doesn’t realize is that their efforts to remake and create will ultimately revise their life and the world around them.
Contrast this with ‘Where Walls Once Rose’ by Marisca Pichette, in which Dyan’s world is literally burning up—starting with her own skin. The fire is not just engulfing her. It’s changing everything around her, dissolving it in flames and taking her memory with it.
Books give her a touch point of connection beyond the laboratory that had been her home, creating a focal point for her pursuit of language, truth, and self-empowerment.
Each story is emotionally and atmospherically charged with images that reflect inward and outward challenges. Each pays tribute to the inspiration and gifts of Tanith Lee in a way that can only be fully appreciated by Lee’s audience, but can also be noted by those who may stumble upon this gathering first, then will want to go back to Lee’s works to discover the true magic of their connections.
Libraries looking for a literary, compelling adjunct to Tanith Lee’s writings will find Storyteller a celebration, a tribute, and an important acquisition that nicely compliments Lee’s effusive creations.
Packed with diversity, supercharged with emotional and philosophical revelation, and full of surprises and power, Storyteller is a special ‘must have’ acquisition for readers and libraries who have felt the power of Tanith Lee’s voice and will be delighted to find it mirrored by her most ardent fellow writers.
Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute AnthologyReturn to Index
Downriver: Memoir
of a Warrior Poet
Ryan McDermott
Koehler Books
979-8-88824-706-8
$19.95
softcover/$28.95
Hardcover/$7.99 eBook
www.koehlerbooks.com
Few memoir writers can claim to be among the first U.S. troops to cross into Iraq in 2003 and part of last associate class to join Lehman Brothers in 2008. Ryan McDermott’s experiences thus embrace milieus atypical of either military or financial memoirs alone, fostering a mix of insights and influences that is unique.
Downriver: Memoir of a Warrior Poet also chronicles the process of becoming a poet and then being deployed into battle, there to apply a survivor’s resilience to the fine art of building a new life and facing a financial meltdown in the U.S.
Unlike most memoirs about active duty, Downriver juxtaposes a poet’s eye with self-inspections that link military experience with personal transformation and examination:
The imagery in this poem captured my ongoing search for purpose, for a way out of the metaphorical cave in which I often found myself. Hope kept me moving forward, even though the path was unclear.
September 1999
As September arrived, my thoughts turned to the concept of quests and personal journeys we all undertake. I reflected on my own journey, visualizing myself as a knight on a mission, searching for something just out of reach.
These seemingly disparate elements connect Ryan McDermott’s life events, injecting them with a flavor of discovery, recovery, and literary observation that leads readers through his company’s tour in Iraq and beyond, into a much-revised civilian life.
Of special interest are the pivot points which cause him to reassess his ideal of service, his participation in any war, and the results of his engagement:
When the medic arrived at the gate, he used supplies meant for US soldiers to dress the boy’s wounds where possible, but the prognosis for his life remained grim. We weren’t humanitarians. This horrific memory later changed how I thought about this war—about any war... he constant awareness of death overseas gradually took its toll on me, and my nightmares greatly influenced my decision to leave the Army for good.
From team-building lessons and the responses of combat training that emerge in civilian life to fielding Wall Street workplaces on the brink of its collapse in 2008, and building a family, McDermott’s story embraces many facets of military and civilian life. This allows for many intriguing psychological insights and contrasts.
Also especially notable are the impacts his decisions have on his family. These are reviewed in candid discussions that will spark equally memorable reading group debates among all kinds of readers, from those building their own families to veterans, business professionals, and memoir enthusiasts:
“I used to think my biological father was heartless for being absent in my life, and now I’m the absent father. How did that happen? For years, I suppressed the fact that he owed it to me to be my father. He should have acknowledged me years before I entered West Point. He only cared about me when it reflected well on his stature—when it fed his ego.”
Libraries and readers interested in life lessons learned on and off the battlefield, poetry, and more will find Downriver absolutely enthralling. It’s rare to see a literary embrace so wide-ranging.
Packed with tense moments, eye-opening confrontations, and literary history, Downriver represents a departure from most military memoirs in that it embraces bigger-picture thinking about what is most important in making life choices.
Downriver: Memoir of a Warrior PoetReturn to Index
In the Company of
Strangers: Stories
of Going
Fred Anderson
Palavr Publ
978-1-7368454-4-8
$12.99
Paperback/$1.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Company-Strangers-Drifters-Dreamers-Long/dp/1736845446
In the Company of Strangers: Stories of Going takes readers on a journey into the past, reliving diverse experiences via short works and one novella. This disparity is reflected in a broad cast of characters, from a modern-day Hollywood cowboy whose nomadic life holds an important difference to a treasure hunt in the French Quarter that connects not just individual lives, but adventure and growth which propels characters into unpredictable, novel arenas.
Take “Anna Cabana,” for example. The story opens with a thought-provoking reflection:
Everyone likes to think they came of age in a unique and fascinating place and time. They didn’t, but Lev Wroblewsky did.
Lev is riding a San Francisco trolley when a lady is hit by the train he is on. The deceased is artist Anna Cabana. As he reads in the newspaper about the tragedy of her death and comes to view Anna as a person rather than a body on the tracks, Lev confronts the mystery surrounding her death, choices, and the surprising beginnings of a new relationship.
Politics, San Francisco stories and culture, and the intersection between witness Sky Wilson’s life and the artistic Anna Cabana weave thought-provoking moments of intersection and connection. These steep readers in San Francisco’s heyday while introducing insights that force Lev to confront his own choices and their consequences:
When Sky walked away, Anna Cabana dissolved. She made an impetuous decision. A very bad choice. This was all guesswork, of course, the kind of background and motives people ascribe to unknown tragic figures. But it was riveting. Maybe this was why he was in San Francisco—maybe this was what his movie was about.
Contrast this scenario with “Seven Snow Whites: These Are Their Stories.” In this fairy tale, the seven are young women from Vassar College. Their connection:
The women in The Group and the dwarfs with Snow White are all characters in a story, but each also stands for something, a single trait or a set of characteristics.
What do two young men having fun in New Orleans in the early 1970s have to do with The Group and its Snow White incarnation? Plenty.
As Gail, Diana, Rachel, and other characters come to life and grow, Fred Anderson contrasts lives, personalities, and connections in a thought-provoking manner that ties together seemingly disparate personalities with revelations that prompt them to change:
I wish I could just say that’s-six-months-of-my-life-I’llnever-get-back and move on. In fact Joey-boy gave me a valuable lesson: I can’t be someone to someone until I am someone to me.
Filled with reflective moments, characters whose life encounters transform them, and environments that batter carefully erected, strong emotional barriers, In the Company of Strangers: Stories of Going is especially highly recommended for literary library collections that appreciate short works embedded with powerful reflective forces.
Realistic, engrossing, and filled with surprising contrasts between seemingly disparate lives, In the Company of Strangers: Stories of Going also deserves recommendation to book clubs interested in tales where Americans change in response to the politics, pressures, and the connections of their times.
In the Company of Strangers: Stories of GoingReturn to Index
It's No Fun Anymore
Brittany
Micka-Foos
Apprentice House Press
978-1-62720-5856
$16.99
Paperback/$26.99 Hardcover/$6.99
eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Its-Fun-Anymore-Brittany-Micka-Foos/dp/1627205853
It's No Fun Anymore features eight short stories about bodily trauma and recovery. Readers who anticipate the usual progression of assault, damage, grief, anger, and recovery will be surprised to note that these stories embrace these elements, but are not entirely defined by them. Each tale offers a different perspective on trauma and recovery that will prove eye-opening and surprising.
Take the opening story “The Experiment,” for one example. Here, Leah and her husband devise a concept they call “The Experiment” as a solution to Leah’s tendency to immerse her mind in possible horrors and their outcomes.
Leah’s reading, through which she involves her husband in surprising new concepts, sets the stage for her next decisions:
“There is covert strength in submission. To observers, a magical woman is meek and demure, but inside her is the power of all creation. Just as her body nourishes her offspring, through her charms she cultivates her environment. Her childlike demeanor invokes an inborn need in a man to cherish, to protect. The result is a satisfying and secure domestic life.”
The Experiment comes just in time to address a child’s murder in the community. Through it, Leah’s own life undergoes a sea change as she devises an escape plan that revitalizes a form of control she gave up when she gave birth to their first child:
How could she explain the whole of it? The shameful need to feel in control of something. Anything.
The events that ensue represent a dangerous foray into new possibilities and difficult decisions.
Contrast this with “Estate Sale,” a first-person exploration of dreams and nightmares, disappearances, and Alzheimer’s which buffet an estate sale attendee who reflects:
“It is a shame,” I mutter to myself. “A goddamn shame what men do to their daughters.”
Brittany Micka-Foos’s stark, sterling, descriptive voice adds engrossing impact to these characters, employing atmospheric, rich language that is startling not just in its color, but its revelations:
Somewhere, my own father sits in a small house like this. My father, with hands like broken branches, who leers with his one good eye. Is he expecting me?
Does he wonder who will take care of him as his memory fades and his grip weakens? Does he clutch at his memories in the growing dark, or is he grateful to lose them?
My father is very sick and he needs me.
My
father. His eye a globe,
containing the world, reflecting me back to myself. He was always
looking at me. And all I ever wanted was to be seen.
Libraries will want to very highly recommend this literary collection of women’s experiences to reading groups that enjoy vivid debates about all kinds of issues surrounding motherhood, trauma, and male impacts on women’s’ lives.
Literary in its language, astute in its psychological contrasts and considerations, and hard-hitting in its diverse examples of women under psychological siege, It's No Fun Anymore is thoroughly engrossing and completely empowering.
It's No Fun AnymoreReturn to Index
Tracing Bodies
Virginia Watts
Old Scratch
Press/Current Words
Publishing LLC
978-1-957224-59-6
$9.99
www.oldscratch.com
Tracing Bodies is a poetry collection steeped in everyday experiences that will prove especially attractive to non-poetry readers who seek immersive, accessible descriptions delivered in free verse.
“Snake 1” opens the collection, capturing Virginia Watts’s hard-hitting attention to juxtaposing nature and personal experience:
As the story goes
my
grandmother’s grandfather
was the
county jail keeper
small
town, deep mountains
ring of
clanking keys
volunteers
who delivered hot
meals
In the
jail yard an ancient tree
held up a
wood plank swing
where my
grandmother played
pushed
her doll or pushed it
empty
not much
of a story until the
first gift fell
from a
fourth story cell
landed
like a bird feather
at a
little girl’s feet
pencil
drawing of a black bear
cub
so
realistic she kissed it
transfixed
by its friendly, shiny
eyes
Watts continues to blend “you are here” moments of revelation and discovery with a special thread of personal insight in a Proust-like manner. Her approach places readers in the position of not just observing life moments, but experiencing them vicariously.
Forged in hometown encounters, the collection is ripe with experiential draws that keep readers not just engaged, but literally walking the path of description and emotion:
My purple
snow boots
punch
holes through the
ice-crusted sidewalks
that loop
the Catholic church and
Parish School
on my way
to Daniella Sabatini’s
tenth birthday party
strolling
the side of my hometown
where the
families live who built
this town
generations
who toiled inside a
factory
opened a
grocery store, shoe
shop, restaurants
birthed
squalling babies and
baptized them
Take the poet’s writing and walk these roads, explore this town, and feel life past and present as she reflects on her world, inspects lives through observation and revelation, and immerses readers in big and small life experiences that truly matter.
Libraries seeking contemporary free verse poetry collections that are exceptionally strong in their atmospheric approach to daily living will find Tracing Bodies an excellent acquisition.
Vivid in its connections and reflections and filled with both personal experience and reflections, Tracing Bodies provides a wealth of insights that are delightfully experiential and emotionally evocative. They’re highly recommended even to those who think they won’t like or understand poetry. Here is a door to what modern free verse can achieve, accessible to not just literary readers, but to all.
Tracing BodiesReturn to Index
The Wanderer's
Notebook Volume III
Christopher Emrys
Undying Curiosity
978-1-7357249-6-6
$13.00
Paperback/$4.99 eBook
Website:
http://www.undyingcuriosity.com/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Wanderers-Notebook-III-Christopher-Emrys-ebook/dp/B0F3MT69WY
The Wanderer's Notebook Volume III adds to the Wanderer’s Notebook series, blending fantasy, science fiction, and horror elements into a set of short stories that center on odd characters and creatures whose strangeness intersects in unpredictable ways.
From wood elves and jinn to Reman warriors and armored wolves, these encounters introduce many surprises and action-packed scenarios. Each results in unexpected turns as the various characters tackle their worlds and the forces that direct their lives.
Newcomers will find it easy to delve into this third book, even though there are two others in the series. Each character’s quest embraces a different dilemma, a new set of unusual forces and challenges, and emotional revelations that stem from the character’s unique makeup and influences.
One example is Rue’s discoveries about family ties and love:
She paused, fingering the bracelet that Rhys had made for her. She could not deny the hope and love in his voice. Despite all that had happened, he still loved his mother and wanted to be with her. If she died, he would never have that, and it would break his heart.
Another character, Julia, studies test subjects under combat conditions, considering their ultimate fate and influence even as her identity as a scientist vies with her mandate to create malleable personalities for a greater purpose:
The desired result would be individuals who are strong both intellectually and physically, but who are also loyal. This has proven to be a difficult combination to achieve as superior ability frequently breeds its own ambitions.
What do you plan to do with the current batch?
Those who are not sufficiently loyal will be executed. Those who are sufficiently loyal will be placed in various positions within the empire as best suits our needs.
Each character faces a unique scenario that forces them to reconsider their life trajectories, from Julia’s search for a suitable mate despite her age (100 years and counting) and service to Wyrm, to teens Cassie and Harriet in “A Long Dark Road,” who drive into an unexpected world of darkness and danger.
Each story both stands alone and contributes to the overall eerie and compelling worlds that reside alongside them under the same cover.
Libraries and readers seeking works that represent the edge of eerie horror, sci-fi, and probes of philosophical and psychological developments will especially appreciate how this collection’s diversity unfolds circumstances and discoveries that are unexpected and compelling.
Packed with engagements with aliens and folk of all types who reside both in changed worlds and internally, in changed perceptions, The Wanderer's Notebook Volume III is absolutely engrossing, easy to recommend, and satisfyingly resistant to stereotyping, fixed genre reading, or quick categorization.
The hallmark of an especially creative effort lies in building something different, alluring, thought-provoking, and nearly indefinable. Such is The Wanderer's Notebook Volume III.
The Wanderer's Notebook Volume IIIReturn to Index
From
the South Side
Larry Klimas and
Anthony F.
Siciliano
Independently
Published
979-8862509878
$39.99
Hardcover/$14.99
Paperback/$9.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/South-Side-memoir-Larry-Klimas/dp/B0CJXDKMQC
From the South Side is a memoir of growing up to become a musician—but embedded in this personal story of family, community, and culture is the immersive draw of building a band that eventually became the first white jazz and rock band on the predominantly all-Black Motown Records label.
Why choose From the South Side from the myriad of “we built a band” memoirs already on the market? Because this band experience is uniquely successful:
We started in a garage in Bridgeview, Illinois and did what many bands did during that era, playing high school dances, then night clubs, before going on the road. What set our band apart from countless others, is that we eventually signed a recording contract with Motown Records and recorded our first album in Detroit, at the legendary Hitsville U.S.A. recording studio.
Larry Klimas and Anthony F. Siciliano bring readers into the joy of musical growth and discovery. They entered the business world as kids, learned hard lessons from their supportive families about taking responsibility for their choices, and became part of a social and cultural movement that propelled their band Puzzle (it held several names; but this is what it wound up with) to the doorstep of fame.
The authors root their observations, experiences, and growth processes amidst the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s. The setting helps readers absorb influences on the band’s evolution—more strongly than many similar memoirs. This cements the connections between band members and the ideals that directed their sound.
They also cultivate a unique voice in this book, exploring their relationships and professional evolution in a compelling manner that embraces influences, goals, and experiences with the music industry during these times:
After the gig, every night, we hung out listening to new music. We talked about playing original music and having our own sound. Jake had great musical taste and had his finger on the pulse of the artists he loved. The Beatles, Chicago, Crosby, Stills and Nash, James Taylor. Jake turned us on to more obscure artists like Harry Nilsson. Looking back, a career like Nilsson’s might have been a more comfortable fit for Jake. Writing songs and making records but not going out and performing. But Jake was in a band, and most of us were his best friends. He was the tide, and we were the boats.
The memoir’s “you are here” feel can’t be beat. Anyone who loves pop and rock music, or once aspired to participate in it (or in a band), will find From the South Side thoroughly engaging. The fact that the band made history through their connections and achievements, and that it’s captured here for the world to read and remember, makes for an important review of these heady musical times.
Libraries seeking memoirs that offer bigger-picture thinking about the growth of popular music in this nation, the ambitions and dreams of young band members who joined together to affect and reflect the times, and achievement in a demanding music industry milieu will relish From the South Side.
Its ability to connect the dots between personal and professional achievements, its reflections on the 1960s and 70s music world, and its candid, vivid tales of clubs, recording studios, and musician connections and adventures makes for an absorbing winner that’s hard to put down:
It wasn’t until after finishing the album that Ralf told me he discovered a great place to practice... I took my horn case from the van while Ralf grabbed his trumpet case and a six-pack of Coors. We walked up a dirt road about a half-mile before seeing the entrance to a cave.
“A cave Ralf? I’d rather practice in the fucking parking lot.”
He smiled and said, “Trust me, Lorenzo. You’re gonna love this.”... When we came out of the cave we were in Bronson Canyon ... Ralf set his case on a giant boulder, pulled out his mouthpiece and buzzed it for a few seconds before putting it on his trumpet and blowing. What a sound! Natural reverb. I got my sax out. I will never forget the incredible feeling I experienced—well before the first beer and joint. Over the next few years, Ralf and I went up to Bronson Canyon countless times and played millions of notes into the walls of the canyon.”
From the South SideReturn to Index
My Pretty Baby
Wendy B. Correa
She Writes Press
979-8896360049
$17.99
Paperback/$12.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/My-Pretty-Baby-Seeking-Healing_A/dp/B0DWLPCHJS
My Pretty Baby: Seeking Truth and Finding Healing―A Memoir reviews Wendy B. Correa’s turbulent childhood and her adult mandate to heal from her past. It joins other similar-sounding stories—albeit, with a difference.
Correa’s journey away from a dysfunctional home led her to explore all manner of possibilities for her life, from Buddhism and yoga to Native American spirituality, AA programs, and musical worlds. There, she met Joni Mitchell and other musicians while honing her own special abilities.
Eventually she moved to Aspen, where she became a radio DJ, assisted writer Hunter S. Thompson, and met her future husband, setting the foundations for building her own family in a revised manner.
Hers is not a linear journey, however. Often lured back into her origin family’s dysfunctional ways, Correa must not only create a new life for herself, but figure out how to field the ongoing influences of the past.
These moments of return to past connections not only differentiate Correa’s journey from others, but creates thought-provoking contrasts between enlightenment, ideals, and the realities of interacting with dysfunction on a very different level. The hopefulness and idealism which sparks some of her desires to reconnect are particularly insightful, as when Correa, after an encounter with Siddha Yoga traditions, feels she is strong enough to handle her family:
That summer of 1981, at twenty-five years old, I decided it was time to visit my family. I hadn’t been home in several years, and I was thinking the visit would be a good chance to catch up—I especially wanted to see my adorable nieces, who wrote to me often. I was hopeful that my newfound skills would help me to feel less bothered and more peaceful around my family, no matter how they decided to act. I may have been overly optimistic.
Her experiences reflect more than just instances of personal growth, but impart insights into how to handle forces that have influenced her psyche and which emerge from very different choices and perceptions.
This vision gives My Pretty Baby a compellingly novel flavor in comparison to other memoirs of dysfunction and recovery, inviting readers to consider not just flawed psyches, but how choices such as vision quests may not just provide answers, but raise questions:
“You can learn a lot about yourself by asking questions and listening for the answers,” he told us. “Who am I? What do I believe in? What do I stand for? What have I accomplished so far? Am I in the right place and in the right job? Am I a role model to anyone? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? How do I fulfill my potential? Ask yourself these questions while you are on the hill. Then be quiet and listen for the insight and the answers.”
Libraries seeking memoirs about personal transformation will find that Correa’s life, packed with musical encounters, cultural revelations, psychological growth, and insights into handling dysfunctional forces in the world, is thoroughly compelling. It will be easy to recommend to patrons and book clubs alike, whether reading groups stem from spiritual, psychological, or literary circles.
Filled with a flavor of discovery that is delivered in different forms through a life that weaves through many disparate environments, My Pretty Baby offers a journey not just through one woman’s choices, but the music, mindfulness, and meanings that result in a better, more peaceful life:
I’ve spent a lifetime striving to put together the pieces of my family puzzle. To cut through the Gordian knot—the unsolvable, troubling enigma—believing that if only I knew when, why, and what, I could save my family and make it whole again. Now, I can accept that there are some answers, some solutions, I will never have.
My Pretty BabyReturn to Index
Squirrel Pie: A
Memoir
Deborah Brannigan
DartFrog Plus
978-1-965253-40-3
www.dartfrogbooks.com
Squirrel Pie: A Memoir addresses subjects common to many memoirs—family trauma, emotional abuse, and the legacy handed down to future generations. From a mother’s mental instability, which resulted in absences from the home as she recovered in a mental health facility, to a father’s alcoholism, Deborah Brannigan’s candid story of her own poor choices in leaving home for a familiar scenario of alcoholism and abuse mirrors similar stories of many middle-class children.
What differentiates Brannigan’s memoir from others is its focus on how she turned away from these familiar relationships and impacts to achieve a better life. Brannigan traces the roots of encounters which led her to not only break free, but come full circle to accept her family’s past, love her mother, and build her own family from healthier foundations.
Moreover, her unique voice describes a host of dramatic, eye-opening personalities and encounters to power a memoir filled with revelation and reflection:
I look out the window at the telephone poles marching by in perfect staccato time, imagining I’m in a virtual film strip and these are the frame breaks. Will the movie ending be happy, tragic, or unremarkable? Happy seems optimistic and unlikely, while tragic implies something sudden and unforeseen. That fits better than unremarkable, which hints at long, drawn-out misery. I am not interested in that.
Libraries that choose Squirrel Pie for their collections will find it an astute, thought-provoking account that considers such subjects as personal responsibility, growth, guilt and redemption, and how individuals can grow healthier even from roots in dysfunction and poor choices.
Readers will especially appreciate how Brannigan confronts her past and describes moments not just of anguish, but hope:
In seconds, our giggles build to a roar, and we fall against each other. The invisible wall of disappointment, hurt, and frustration built over the previous days crumbles in an instant.
The result is a heady ride through family relationships, a kidnapping, murder, and an interstate FBI manhunt that lead, surprisingly, to her freedom.
Remarkable in its outcomes and discoveries, Squirrel Pie is engrossing, unexpected reading that portrays an outcome possible not just for the author, but for all her readers.
Squirrel Pie: A MemoirReturn to Index
Twice Tested: A
Story of Survival
and Grace
Victor Hess
Independently
Published
978-0-9995640-8-0
$12.95
https://www.victorhess.com
Twice Tested: A Story of Survival and Grace takes a deep dive into a year of Bill Northcutt’s life, and is a top recommendation for memoir readers seeking inspirational stories of faith and survival.
The story documents author Victor Hess’s foray into Northcutt’s life, which was recounted to him through a series of over twelve interviews.
From Northcutt’s search for a kidney and his determination to live a full life (including travel) despite the need for daily dialysis due to the hunting accident that changed his life and produced sixty years of experience, Hess captures a life fully lived. His story is packed with remarkable twists for audiences who don’t need to have known Bill Northcutt in order to appreciate him.
The story reads like a novel, packed with high drama, psychological profiles of family and friends, and insights into the lasting impact Northcutt had on those around him.
It celebrates survival, adaptation, and resilience in a manner that transmits inspiration to readers also undergoing their own life challenges, creating an immersive experience through a “you are here” feel that follows Northcutt’s efforts to remain engaged with life even when his was on the line:
It was a lovely, lively chaos, a welcome change from the monotony of days with nothing to focus on but his pain. Bill was happy, even as he felt his energy threatening to wane.
Readers will appreciate the shifting viewpoints between Bill’s life, the surgeons who attempt to help him numerous times, other medical professionals, and family and friends who remain by his side for what turns out to be repeated odysseys through health challenges.
In many ways, Twice Tested is a saga documenting the human spirit’s will to live and to forge a meaningful life even from impossible circumstances which often challenge survival itself.
Hess cultivates a warm, introspective tone that guides readers into not just Northcutt’s life, but related subjects about physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological survival tactics. This, in turn, will encourage and inspire book clubs and reading groups with all kinds of discussion topics.
Libraries seeking memoirs of medical challenge, dubious recovery progression, and the impulse of one man to embrace life and the kindnesses of friends, family, and strangers alike will find Twice Tested not just inspirational, but haunting.
Its ability to take a seemingly singular story of survival and translate it to deeper-picture thinking about the consequences of staying alive makes for a story that will attract and influence readers seeking examples of hope and resilience under the most adverse of conditions.
It’s just the ticket for surviving modern angst.
Twice Tested: A Story of Survival and GraceReturn to Index
A Casebook of
Crime
Andrew &
John McAleer
Level Best Books
978-1-68512-894-4
$16.95
Paperback/$5.99 eBook
https://www.levelbestbooks.us
A Casebook of Crime: Thrilling Adventures of Suspense from the Golden Age of Mystery is a short story and novella collection featuring the adventures of 1920s London investigator Henry Von Stray, packaging them in a series of engrossing encounters with baffled Scotland Yard investigators, bankers, fraudsters, spies, and more. This whimsical juxtaposition of cases will attract detective fiction readers who enjoy colorful investigative characters as much as the puzzling crime scenes they investigate—especially those familiar with the atmospheric trappings of the Golden Age of detective fiction writing.
Of course, private detective Henry von Stray sports an equally powerful and affable sidekick: Professor John Dilpate, who narrates von Stray’s exploits in the Watsonian tradition. This dynamic duo combines their talents to prove a formidable force against crime.
Readers familiar with the detective genre may find von Stray a familiar-sounding name. That’s because son Andrew has taken his father’s (Edgar winner John McAleer) original stories and added more elements of action and intrigue to create new adventures in keeping with his father’s legacy, expanding the von Stray persona and legend into new cases and times. The same blend of humor and puzzle-solving conundrums provides newcomers and prior fans with stories filled with twists and turns that are satisfyingly unpredictable, flavored with the tones and approaches of the past.
Take ‘The Case of the Illustrious Banker’. Scotland Yard is not above tapping the renowned prowess of von Stay and Dilpate for a puzzle they can’t seem to solve. How can a bank president have been murdered behind locked doors? There’s no escaping the crime scene—but somehow, the perp has managed the impossible. Or, has he?
In ‘The Big Push,’ von Stay and Dilpate battle the disguising forces of Mother Nature as they race against time to solve a crime in a “hopeless endeavor” that introduces all manner of social conflict and possibilities. This case, unraveled in a multi-part series of chapters that edge ever closer to the truth, also excels in atmosphere and character descriptions, flavored with a classic touch of McAleer wry humor:
When we arrived on the ground floor and were greeted by Sir Ambrose, I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe this was the same young man we had met earlier. When he had leaped out of the motorcar, he had scampered for the front door in such a hurry I hadn’t noticed his change of attire. He now looked every bit the working fisherman from head to foot. A tattered wool sweater, battered trousers, and scuffed rubber Wellies stretching up to his knees. I regret to say the odor of the day’s catch completed his attire.
Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts will delight in how these step-by-step cases evolve with increasing suspense, complexity, and discovery.
The result is hard to put down, thoroughly engrossing, and representative of the best of Golden Age approaches to impossible clue-solving and intrigue.
A Casebook of Crime also includes the classic who done it ‘A Little Birdie Tells Von Stray’ and a clever caper story, ‘Von Stray and the Five-Fingered Fraudster.’
Libraries seeing popularity with Sherlock Holmes-style books will want to direct patrons to this even more compelling crime-busting duo, while readers seeking immersive, delightful forays into impossibilities and unexpected problem-solving approaches will relish the adventures and discoveries packing A Casebook of Crime.
A Casebook of CrimeReturn to Index
Dance
of a Phoenix
Wilson Semitti
Atmosphere Press
979-8-89132-623-1
$18.99 pb, $8.99
ebook, $27.99 hc
www.atmospherepress.com
It is easier to move a mountain than a human mind.
Dance of a Phoenix is the first book in a thriller series that proves to be about more than suspense alone. Central to the events is the point that changing the human mindset is neigh-on impossible, frought with danger and satisfying new possibilities ... if it can be done.
Keep this premise in mind as international espionage and intrigue unfold in Shanghai, where Yang struggles to gain leadership of Wei Textiles. Thriller readers will find delightfully unexpected the focus on psychological undercurrents of confrontation, struggle, and success which drive the story from its opening lines:
He told himself; I must get my mind to let go and get completely in alignment with what I want. It took him a couple of days to convince himself that no matter what, he would be fine. This brought him to think about how difficult it is to change our mindsets and belief systems.
This gives the saga philosophical and psychological reflection and strength as channels of creation and ambition open up new worlds and revelations. These propel Yang and his readers in unexpected directions.
Bigger-picture thinking about destiny, romance, and life’s purpose weave with intrigue to embellish the nonstop action with a delightful overlay of intellectual discourse.
As characters probe the relationship between Yang and his mentor Will and note “...that things around Yang just magically happen,” the tale examines rich possibilities. It introduces a wide cast of characters. One is Guo Chang Seong, conceived in South Korea and born in the UK, whose upbringing by a British intelligence couple after his parents are killed leads to tracking down his parents’ killers. He then becomes an international “fixer.”
Each character is forced to confront their mindsets in different ways. Each choice and encounter leads readers to not only experience unexpected twists in pathways and journeys, but to consider new definitions of attraction, love, and, ultimately, connections to the universe and higher purposes.
Libraries and readers will find all these elements juxtapose nicely with fast-paced action and intrigue, giving this thriller a markedly unique flavor. This translates to a top recommendation for those who like their action spiced with reflection.
Packed with psychological, philosophical, political, and personal revelation, Dance of a Phoenix’s unexpected complexity makes it an equally powerful pick for book club discussion groups. This audience will especially appreciate its out-of-the-box thinking and opportunities for lively debates:
...with this knowledge, we can all be deliberate creators. Because once you know this, you can never unknow it. You will also know that everything that is in alignment with that frequency is doing its utmost to come to you. And everything that is not aligned with that frequency is doing its utmost to get as far away from you as it possibly can.
Dance of a PhoenixReturn to Index
The
Everest Enigma
Jeannette de
Beauvoir
Beckett
Books/Homeport Press
979-8-9925942-0-1
$17.99
Paperback/$6.99 eBook
www.jeannettedebeauvoir.com
The Everest Enigma is an Abbie Bradford mystery that takes place in Nepal at the Everest Base Camp. It involves an investigation by a seasoned sleuth who saw her first body when she was nine years old, so is no stranger to death. Nor is international travel foreign to her, as she travels the world with her father.
Now she’s an adult from a self-admitted “eccentric family” where “each has something wrong with them.”
Her flaw? A penchant for trouble.
When her brother answered Emma Caulfield’s ad seeking a research assistant for a journey to Nepal, Abbie doesn’t expect that she’ll be drawn into a mystery that demands every ounce of detective savvy.
Emma writes historical romances, and her in-person sojourn to Nepal to solidify the setting of her latest book seems to be fairly cut-and-dried to Abbie, who is still uncertain of where she wants to go in her position as an academic historian.
As she becomes immersed in the shifting weather and politics of the Nepal expedition, Abbie observes changes that buffet her knowledge base and expectations of not just her job and Everest, but the climbers who aspire to conquer its summit.
Descriptions of this atmosphere are realistically rendered:
The weather on the mountain can change literally from one moment to the next, from brilliant sunshine to howling winds, the light loose spindrift morphing into white-out conditions in minutes.
From the motivations of climbers around the world and confrontations which emerge on Everest to dangerous scenarios that develop from environment and man, readers receive an exciting story of intrigue and tension that develops nicely from the start and grows to embrace Nepal’s background and Abbie’s shifting position.
(Fictional) journal excerpts from George Mallory, a real-world figure who experienced the mountain in the 1920s, intersect with present-day attitudes and concerns to create a moving story. Jeannette de Beauvoir pays particular attention to capturing Mallory’s ‘voice’ in these fictional representations via the letters he wrote.
Of special note is how these modern concerns have changed not only visitors to Everest, but those who guide them:
“Sherpas are trying to take away all garbage,” said Dawa. “Now, the peoples all know about it. Before, no peoples know about it. Only the mountain. We take better care of her now.”
Her portraits of trekking and climbing tourism realistically capture some of the issues of visitors to the area and the changes they introduce.
Libraries seeking a mystery nicely rooted in place and characters will welcome the heart-stopping confrontations and unexpected discoveries of The Everest Enigma.
Readers seeking an engrossing mystery will find that the real-world issues of Nepal that are introduced during the course of the story add value with vivid representations. These add depth to the thoroughly engrossing puzzle, making The Everest Enigma a highly recommended choice for a wide audience.
The Everest EnigmaReturn to Index
Invaders
of the
Heartland
James Bultema
P.D. Publishing
979-8988075189
$17.99
https://www.jamesbultema.com
Invaders of the Heartland opens with a bang—the Los Angeles Police Department’s Gang and Narcotics Division Fugitive Detail is successfully tailing a bank robbery suspect with a hostage. All goes according to plan until Detective Jake Dalton kills the suspect and rescues the hostage, only to find his career on the line.
Disgusted with big-city politics, Jake returns home to the more sedate (crime-wise) atmosphere of Fairview, Oklahoma, only to find that the Chinese mafia has infiltrated the town. Combine federal indifference with local authority ennui and Jake feels like the only person actively engaged in taking them down.
James Bultema’s fast-paced thriller about crime, home front threats, and a savvy detective’s resistance of forces that change normal life makes for a thoroughly engrossing story that’s hard to put down.
Action-packed scenes are cemented by moral and ethical values handed down from father to son. These also contribute to the bigger picture of law enforcement motives and experiences:
Jake wondered how his dad, Earl, would have handled the FID’s grilling. His dad was gone now, but Jake would never forget the wisdom of the hardworking auto mechanic who had run a small repair shop in Fairview, Oklahoma, a quaint town of 2,342. Earl had taught him to have a strong work ethic and a practical, hands-on approach to problemsolving. Jake remembered how much his dad had valued perseverance and integrity—and how that had rubbed off on him.
Jake’s political intersections from his new role as the town’s chief of police are presented through dialogue, relationship-building processes, and insights that are realistic and compelling:
“Welcome, Jake,” said the mayor from behind his desk. “It’s nice to see you back in Fairview, and from what I hear on the street, you’ll be staying.”
Jake chuckled at the statement. “Thanks, Mayor Waterhouse. You sure can’t hide anything from anybody in this town. But then, the ex-chief of police learned that the hard way.”
As events progress and Jake finds himself unsupported and alone in his mission, readers will become thoroughly engrossed by the issues of criminal justice, personal redemption, and problem-solving which test Jake’s mettle and perceptions.
Bultema also adds romance into Jake’s world as both characters navigate big moves from their personal lives and visions of their futures:
The move from LA was stressful enough. Going from a bustling city of four million to a town of two thousand was definitely a culture shock.
Readers will especially appreciate the dilemmas which force Jake to consider the importance of home, connections, and new possibilities which place him in the crosshairs of action and intrigue.
Libraries seeking thrillers with strong components of romance and interpersonal relationship growth and development will welcome the many issues that emerge from Invaders of the Heartland. These redefine concepts of invaders, action-packed versus “unhurried” lifestyles, and what it costs to preserve love and life against all odds.
Readers who enjoy the intersection of personal and political challenges as Jake grows into his new job and arrives at a revised sense of home and life’s importance will find Invaders of the Heartland action-packed, eye-opening, and filled with many thought-provoking moments of revelation.
More than a police procedural or investigative tale alone, the thriller marries with personal growth in a manner that creates a thoroughly compelling, memorable plot driven by characters forced to consider if small-time life is truly what they want.
Invaders of the HeartlandReturn to Index
Lucky
Secrets
B.T. Polcari
The Wild Rose
Press Inc.
978-1-5092-6142-0
$22.99
Print/$5.99 eBook
www.btpolcari.com
Lucky Secrets is a Mauzzy & Me mystery series addition that not only explores a puzzle, but embeds one in the book itself. This invites reader participation in the problem-solving effort, providing clues readers can consider and solve. This requires familiarity with the other Mauzzy & Me title plots (Against My Better Judgment and Fire and Ice), which also hold clues that can be pursued in conjunction with the final reveal in Lucky Secrets.
Readers will appreciate the thoroughly engrossing progression of intrigue that returns dachshund Mauzzy, business student and amateur sleuth Sara Donovan, and others to the center of yet another puzzle.
The story opens with Sara’s regrets over her choices. Her latest lesson, that “things are never what they seem,” seems to spill over into decidedly unlucky situations that open, here, with an invitation to participate in a strange two-week contest that could “drastically change your life for the better.”
In Sara’s case, the lure of participation is accompanied by a diamond worth fifty thousand. Diamonds are not always a girl’s best friend. In this case, it introduces conundrums and dangers that propel Sara and her chosen associate Zoe into a wasp’s nest of trouble.
Polcari embeds Sara’s confrontations and quandaries with an appealing overlay of personal growth and situations that continually demand Sara reconsider her approach to life. Riddles keep her on her toes, demand resolution, and create a special sense of connection and magic that draws in Matt and other characters.
The philosophy and impact of Occam’s Razor emerges to influence Sara’s broad inspections and deductions from very few clues as readers become thoroughly engaged in the evolving mystery.
The characters fuel a search that is thoroughly unexpected, engrossing, and filled with twists most readers won’t see coming. The added value of Lucky Secrets lies in how it probes problem-solving in a step-by-step manner that educates readers about the dual processes of logical and creative thinking.
Libraries and readers looking for a mystery that either stands nicely alone or enriches the prior books in the Mauzzy & Me series will welcome Lucky Secrets. Its ability to help readers sharpen their own deductive skills while following the adventure and gift of a girl and her dog’s unexpected success makes for a riveting read that is hard to put down.
The door is more than left ajar for another Mauzzy & Me story. Readers will welcome this opportunity.
Lucky SecretsReturn to Index
Mai
Tai Malice
Tanya Westlake
Impractical Press
979-8985642582
$16.99
Paperback/$2.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Mai-Malice-Kalliope-Brooks-Mysteries/dp/B0D8SW9VPP?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
Mai Tai Malice places amateur sleuths Kalliope Brooks and Tess Russo in another dilemma that requires them to step out of their familiar Florida milieu when a beloved Gasparilla Parade turns deadly and Kallie is jailed as a suspect.
Her whole family is attending the pirate-themed drama, which includes a huge pirate ship sailing up the river into Tampa to present a pirate threat of invasion—complete with noisy cannon firings and a flotilla of accompanying boats. The mayor gives up the key to the city, as has been planned. And then the unexpected sails into town.
Tanya Westlake crafts a tale that features the trappings and appeal of a cozy mystery, yet takes place in the bigger Florida city of Tampa. This approach lends depth and attraction to the family and political relationships under consideration, bringing to life both Tampa and Kallie’s celebration and connections:
"Are you sure you don't want to stay with us, Mister B?" Tess asked, when the parade had finished, and they were leaving their enclosed seating section. "I included you in the dinner reservation."
"He and Anna have a date," Kallie replied with a smile.
"It's not really a date; we're just fixing dinner together at her house, but—"
"Sounds romantic," Tess observed, adding to Kallie, "I'd ditch us, too."
"We'll walk you back to the trolley, Dad."
"Thanks for thinking of me, Tess. We'll all have to come back down here for dinner someday when it's not so crazy."
They walked back up the street through the teeming crowd, dodging left and right to avoid pirates of all sizes. Some were singing or dancing, some stumbled, and others seemed tired and bound for home too.
Atmospheric descriptions profile both Kallie’s world and that of the Tampa mystery and history she’s stumbled into:
There were still a lot of tourists in town for Gasparilla season, she noticed. Even though the largest parade was over, there were still a lot of events planned in the next month – dozens of parties and huge charity events, plus a fifteen-kilometer race and a music festival. Add to that the State Fair, the huge Strawberry Festival in Plant City, and football and ice hockey – plus the beautiful weather, and this was the busiest tourist season of the year in the Tampa Bay area.
The Florida embrace is hot, muggy, and thoroughly powerful as Kallie and Tess root out the possibilities of whodunit, exposing gory details of thievery, drugs, and those who harbor false alibis for different purposes.
Phone threats, wrong leads, and interpersonal clashes add realistic drama to the story which will particularly delight those who enjoy mysteries that simultaneously play out on personal, political, and social levels.
Westlake is particularly powerful in wielding the sword of Kallie’s self-determination and inner voice. This keeps her character both realistic and engaged in puzzles that keep readers on their toes:
Don’t look guilty. Don’t look behind you. Don’t look scared.
But don’t walk blindly into trouble, either.
Libraries seeking a cozy mystery that translates to bigger city problems and personal dilemmas will relish Mai Tai Malice’s special ability to place these two women in circumstances that test their abilities and, possibly, lie outside their control.
Readers can be prior Kallie and Tess fans or newcomers to their actions and investigations. Either way, the compelling blend of personal and perp revelations is riveting, packed with satisfying twists readers won’t necessarily see coming, and is cemented by Florida’s community and color. The result is a deep sip of trouble and tension that is exquisitely well detailed and thoroughly engrossing.
Mai Tai MaliceReturn to Index
Miss
Understood
and the Case of the
Missing Locket
Melissa G. Wilson
Networlding
Publishing
978-1-959993-36-0
$8.00
Paperback/$3.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Understood-Missing-Locket-History-Stories/dp/1959993364
Miss Understood and the Case of the Missing Locket follows Grace Underwood to a small island, where she is to be a teacher. Nothing about this venture promises excitement, yet somehow Grace falls into a situation in which her teaching ambitions cross over into supernatural realms when one of her students claims to be communicating with the ghost of a Civil War soldier’s son.
Good thing she attended Mrs. Pink's History Mystery School, because she’ll need all the historical research and investigative skills she can muster to uncover the truth behind a strange locket and a family torn asunder by a past war whose impact resonates into modern times.
Melissa G. Wilson crafts a compelling children’s story from the start as Grace journeys to the island which is to be her new home and Ashley engages with the ghost to uncover clues:
But it was the old steamer trunk that really caught Ashley's imagination. It looked just like a treasure chest from one of the pirate stories she loved to read. "I wonder what's in that trunk?" she said to Charlie, her voice hushed with excitement.
"Just a lot of old junk," said the little ghost with a shrug. "Books and things. Go ahead and open it, if you want. See for yourself."
Kids attracted to detective sagas, mysteries, and stories of ghosts and discovery will all find Miss Understood and the Case of the Missing Locket compelling reading. The history component and research insights are nicely embedded in the mystery to keep young readers on their toes and thoroughly engrossed.
A wide age range will relish this story, from advanced elementary into middle grades and even early high schoolers. One of its strengths and attractions lies in how its characters interact through the ages, bringing past concerns to life in present-day dilemmas.
Libraries seeking historical mysteries that sizzle with discovery, quandaries, and memorable characters who face unpredictable circumstances and outcomes will relish Miss Understood and the Case of the Missing Locket.
Think Nancy Drew—but with much more historical allure to its problem-solving savvy and its engrossing twists. This makes for exceptional, highly recommended reading.
Miss Understood and the Case of the Missing LocketReturn to Index
Morgan’s
Landing
Linda Griffin
The Wild Rose
Press Inc.
978-1-5092-6130-7
$2.99 eBook/$6.95
Audible
https://www.amazon.com/Morgans-Landing-Linda-Griffin-ebook/dp/B0DZY1YR6V
Cozy mystery readers seeking a story packed with intriguing small-town twists will delight in the surprises presented in Morgan’s Landing, where a small-town teen’s disappearance involves an investigator whose own son may be a suspect.
Several adults could be involved in Julie’s disappearance, but Detective Jim Brady knows his son is hiding something. What this secret has to do with Julie is something he’s forced to investigate in the course of uncovering a truth which turns out to be as unpredictable as his son’s moods.
Linda Griffin’s story delves into a family’s life, the truths they deny or accept, and the dilemma faced by a father who finds his long-time role as a member of the police force conflicts with his equally important role as a father:
“You’re talking about our son—our fourteen-year-old son. I’m almost sure I know who took her, but even if I didn’t, I would know Colin wouldn’t—and couldn’t—have done it. He’s a kid, Frances.”
“And I’ve been telling you for a long time that something is wrong with him, but you don’t listen.”
“Stop it! There is nothing wrong with him.”
His relationship with Colin receives both challenging blows and encouraging moments of intimacy as Jim fields a range of questions, both in his heart and from the community, and gains new perspective on his son’s maturity process:
Jim felt the need to take his son in his arms, to hold his face against his chest, but he couldn’t do that anymore. Colin was almost a man, nearly as tall as his mother, his voice deepening, the little boy in him almost gone. Jim stopped on the sidewalk. “Colin? You do know how much I love you, don’t you?”
The boy ducked his head, embarrassed. “Yeah, Dad.”
These personal insights and elements are powerful strengths in a story that builds increasing tensions between father and son, community issues, and new possibilities.
Mystery readers seeking a cozy mystery immersed in blossoming interpersonal relationships as well as impressive intrigue will find Morgan’s Landing chooses directions and twists that are delightfully difficult to predict.
Libraries and readers seeking cozy mysteries that draw with personal conundrums and lace small-town experience with bigger-picture thinking will welcome Morgan’s Landing’s outstanding ability to create a thoroughly immersive plot.
Filled with insights and unexpected moves, Morgan’s Landing is a winner that revolves around a police officer and father’s search for a truth that may prove to hold different, powerful impacts on dissimilar levels.
Morgan’s LandingReturn to Index
Secrets
of Whitney Portal Ranch
Shannon Cook
Independently
Published
979-8-218-62643-3
$18.99
Paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.amazon.com
In Secrets of Whitney Portal Ranch: In This Eden, Danger Grows Wild, retired L.A. detective RJ Kirk has had enough perps and perplexing cases to last a lifetime. His retirement to a remote California ranch below Mount Whitney, paired with his involvement in the medical marijuana business, seems just the ticket for more staid involvements, even if they do draw local law enforcement attention.
His legacy to his daughters proves more than a quiet life, however. They inherit a virtual rabbit warren of cartel involvements, intrigue, and mystery surrounding the truth about their father’s choices.
Shannon Cook introduces RJ and builds his character, life, and psyche before moving on to his daughters’ uncertain inheritance. This creates both an intriguing atmosphere surrounding his life and the need for readers to move from RJ to several characters affected by the impact of his choices.
Cook creates attention to Sienna and others through compelling dialogue and descriptions that juxtapose RJ’s life and legacy with their inheritance’s impact:
“Wait,” Sienna replied, unable to tear her gaze from the photograph. “Not yet. We don’t know the full story. There’s more here than we understand. These files—they look old, but if we go to the police now, we might ruin whatever Dad was trying to do. We have to understand why Dad hid all this.”
As truths emerge and Sienna and Bailey face dangers they’d never known existed because of their father’s career and actions, readers are treated to an action-packed, thought-provoking thriller that evolves a cat-and-mouse game between the daughters as well their father’s real legacy.
Dialogue keeps events fast-paced and realistic, characterization is compelling so that the daughters become as involving and realistic as their dad, and unexpected twists and turns keep readers on their toes.
All this emerges in rural California, drawing readers into a Western-style backdrop with issues rooted in modern times and crimes that pose not only challenges to survival, but moral and ethical dilemmas.
Perhaps one reason why Secrets of Whitney Portal Ranch feels especially compelling is because the novel holds its roots in a true crime scenario. Cook’s father was an undercover detective and adventurer whose legacy shaped RJ’s character. Many events in the novel, including his law enforcement past and especially those set on the ranch, are drawn from real life, embellished with drama and fictional tension that make the most of emotional ties and dilemmas.
The result is a tense buildup to a surprising confrontation that will keep readers on edge and thoroughly engaged.
Libraries will find it easy to recommend Secrets of Whitney Portal Ranch to those seeking vivid mysteries and local backdrops. Readers who choose it for its promise of thriller-style action will find much to love as the daughters edge into dangerous territory and find themselves reconsidering their father’s real legacy.
Engrossingly realistic, Secrets of Whitney Portal Ranch is hard to put down. It lingers in the mind long after its family-reinforcing conclusion.
Secrets of Whitney Portal RanchReturn to Index
The
Truth About
Anton Van Zyl
John Constable
Troubador
Publishing Ltd.
978-1836281948
$14.99
Paperback/$1.99 eBook
Website:
www.john-constable-author.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Anton-Van-Zyl/dp/1836281943?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
The Truth About Anton Van Zyl is a mystery (and the second in the Sol Nemo series) that swirls around mentally troubled PI Sol Nemo, who takes on a case involving political bigwig’s missing son-in-law Anton Van Zyl. This crosses the troubled line he must draw between political and criminal special interests.
Sol is well aware this case will be trouble before he even interviews his client:
As soon as I realized where Moti lived, I should have turned the car around and headed for home.
Gritty description and dialogue fuels the plot with a noir-style atmosphere from the start:
I think for not much more than the price of a match, he’d have slugged me into the middle of next week. But he decided against and instead gave me a look that would have vaporised granite. Looks are like words though: they don’t break bones.
Despite Sol’s background of working for Detective Services for years, his nose for trouble leads him into dangers he is both uniquely equipped to handle and ill prepared to analyze properly.
Mystery readers who enjoy detective procedurals that operate outside of the law while probing both perp and investigator psyches will relish the dance John Constable develops. Events flow compellingly between the perp, a wide cast of suspicious characters and situations, and flawed detective Sol, whose ability to elude investigative agencies, including state security, is tested as his latest case unfolds.
Sol navigates uncertain terrain as his search pulls him deeper into a major conspiracy that tests his resolve and his abilities.
Constable’s ability to create a edge-of-your-seat page-turner filled with unexpected twists and turns also enters into personal territory as Sol becomes involved with advocate Moses, hits a brick wall in the original search for Anton, and finds himself tackling a completely different scenario than he’d first envisioned or been hired to probe.
Sol is a likeable character despite his shortcomings. His persistence and conclusions power an engaging mystery. The tension is well-developed, a wide cast of characters introduce new possibilities that test Sol’s decisions and quest for evidence, and the question of what he’s going to do with the information he does find injects a heady sense of discovery and conundrums mystery readers won’t see coming.
Libraries seeking a mesmerizing story of truth, deception, the unexpected consequences of decisions, and a detective’s escapades and confrontations as he edges ever closer to what revelations about Van Zyl will do to his world will find The Truth About Anton Van Zyl outstanding.
Deft and realistic in its descriptions and characters, compelling in its shifting situations, and filled with colorful moments of angst and discovery, The Truth About Anton Van Zyl is a standout winner.
The Truth About Anton Van ZylReturn to Index
Winter
H.N. Hirsch
Pisgah Press, LLC
978-1-942016-96-0
$22.95
www.pisgahpress.com
Winter is the fourth in the Bob & Marcus gay murder mystery series, continuing the theme of a couple who apply their skills as the college professor and lawyer simultaneously solve mysteries and build their relationship.
Marcus’s grad student Kenny is accused of murdering his girlfriend, prompting Bob to step in to defend him in court. There’s no defense like a good offense—meaning that the couple once again becomes personally involved in solving the whodunit mystery.
Because the students are involved in acting, their interests spill into the story as readers learn who is playing a part, what is real, and who is constructing a dangerous role.
Readers anticipating a simple series of quandaries about the perp’s identity will be especially satisfied to see the injection of moral and ethical quandaries that lead Bob and Marcus to re-examine their own ideals and decisions.
This special blend of intrigue, relationship and personal values examination, combined with a setting firmly rooted in California culture, embraces many interesting subplots. H.N. Hirsch takes the time to present ordinary gay family life experiences as well as tense encounters, creating a delightful interplay between personal and professional developments that impart a sense of relief from action-packed scenarios:
Bob and Marcus built a fire and listened to some old jazz records, with Zelda at their feet. Bob laid his head in Marcus’s lap on the couch.
“Come on, old man, let’s go to bed,” Bob said after a while, pulling Marcus up from the couch. “I’m going to ravish you.”
This heightens character authenticity as the probe evolves a series of interviews with California socialites (and possible perps), considers campus politics, and edges closer to a truth which will surprise not just Marcus and Bob, but their readers.
Hirsch’s blend of the gay lifestyle with investigative quandaries and unexpected outcomes gives Winter a multifaceted feel fully in sync with previous Marcus and Bob experiences.
Prior enthusiasts of the couple will find their latest challenge continues to buffet their relationship, grow their personalities and values, and immerses them academic intrigue that draws the duo into danger.
Libraries seeking mysteries that embrace gay lifestyles and the dynamics of interpersonal relationship growth will welcome this powerful Marcus and Bob story into their collections.
Readers need not hold prior familiarity with the couple in order to fully appreciate the many ways they are forced to confront family, each another, and suspicious elements in the community that enhance the story’s tension and discovery.
Packed with unexpected twists, a host of characters who each hold their own special interests and possible connections to events, and family life that moves in different directions, Winter is a thought-provoking saga that draws from the start and concludes with a cliffhanging bang portending further dilemmas.
WinterReturn to Index
A
Witch Awakens
Ellis Elliott
Hawkshaw
Press/Current Words
Publishing LLC
978-1-957224-47-3
$15.99
www.currentwords.com
A Witch Awakens is a ‘Fire Circle Mystery’ steeped in an Appalachian backdrop and traditions. It delivers a punch with the hard-hitting story of Cece Chagall, who moves back to her hometown of Eureka Grove in search of peace, only to find herself involved in a murder.
Cece is forced to become involved in an investigation foreign to her career as an artist and teacher, but burrows into the mystery surrounding her connections to the town’s elders, women who seem to harbor supernatural connections, and backwoods mountain history. These elements merge in a dangerous manner.
Cece’s unexpected visions emerge from endeavors she is familiar with, such as dollhouse construction:
Cece walked behind the table in order to see the interior of Nana’s dollhouse, which, given her attention to detail, always promised to be even better than the exterior. In an instant, her previously fuzzy-feeling head cleared into hyper-focus. Filling her mind’s eye, and crowding everything else out, was a scene of a staircase with the distinct scent of something stale and molded. And then, as quickly as it came, it was gone.
These visitations ground her in familiar territory while pushing her to accept that her skills may include more artistic pursuits alone. Her realization creates a dangerous milieu as Cece realizes that the murder and threats may be emerging as a response to her return, though they already were components of a community that she’d never known about or accepted.
Cozy mystery and private eye investigative strengths appear side by side as Cece examines her town with new visions and insights and learns from Hazel new truths that will lead her to step into a very different role in her life:
“What you’ve got is a knowin’. It’s a powerful part of where you come from and who you are. Once you accept it, you’ll understand it better. Our family’s women just were born with better antennae, that’s all. We pick up things other folks can’t.”
“But what if I don’t want it? What if I don’t want any more weird in my life?” Cece said, her voice faltering.
“You are neither strange nor weird,” Nana said, her volume rising defiantly, “and you never have been. The fact is the more you work with your intense peculiars, the more you’ll feel in control.”
Ellis Elliott does an outstanding job of making Cece’s character not just accessible, but compelling. Readers will readily relate to her new challenges and the mandate to revise her perceptions of not only her roots and hometown, but herself.
Also powerfully rendered are special interests and threats that emerge from these newfound realizations, forcing Cece to choose actions and directions she’d never thought about before as she redefines her identity.
Libraries that choose A Witch Awakens for its promise of a cozy mystery hometown experience will find so much more offered via Cece’s evolutionary process. It’s highly recommendable to a wide audience beyond the usual cozy mystery ‘whodunnit’ reader.
Readers
seeking
vivid, engrossing
stories that weave supernatural overtones into issues of murder,
discovery, and transformation will relish the combination of
realistic characterization and community awakening that make A
Witch Awakens a vibrant,
thoroughly
immersive experience.
Return to Index
The Bootlegger’s
Bride
Rick Skwiot
Blank Slate
Press/Amphorae
Publishing
9781943075935
$18.95 Paperback/$9.99
eBook
www.amphoraepublishing.com
Twelve-year-old A.J. Nowak’s life with his aunt and uncle has been predictably supportive. He obeys them easily, fearful of being sent back home to live with his mother after his father’s death in the war. But when he discovers a body under the ice of the frozen lake he’s ice skating, everything changes, sending him on a lifelong journey.
The novel moves back and forth in time, from the late 1920s to the 1950s, as events unfold. These fluctuations are included in chapter headings that make their transitions easy to understand as Hazel Robinson, A.J., and others face a blackmailer, unexpected truths, and indications that revenge may be in order.
From gangs to trust fund influences, the efforts of a single mom to protect her son, and the legacy left by dangerous associations that result in A.J.’s recruitment in a deadly affair, Rick Skwiot spins a complex yarn that involves generations of a family in events that impact their legacy and place in the world.
As an evolving adult, A.J. struggles with his bootlegger father’s legacy and his mother’s self-destructive ways. The question becomes one of not just survival and life purpose, but unshackling himself from the past.
Skwiot creates a story that develops different characters in thought-provoking ways. The plot is particularly strong in how its connections between past choices and present lives play out, creating bonds and dysfunction that emerge from and buffet the persona of a boy who must acknowledge these family ties to overcome them.
The vision of a “wandering warrior” who searches for the meaning and place called ‘home’ is particularly evocative, tying together many threads of intrigue and discovery to create a story not just memorable, but thoroughly compelling.
This is why libraries should consider The Bootlegger’s Bride a top pick for their collections. It embodies and embraces world’s events from the 1920s to the 1970s that impact and grow its protagonist, propeling him in new directions.
Packed with mystery, intrigue, psychological twists and turns, and many different kinds of discovery, The Bootlegger’s Bride’s world is easy to enter and hard to leave.
The Bootlegger’s BrideReturn to Index
Candlewood
Evelyn Ann Casey
Three Towers
Press/HenschelHAUS
Publishing Inc.
979-8-9908203-2-6
$18.95
Paperback/$8.99 eBook
www.henschelHAUSbooks.com
Candlewood’s powerful blend of Christian faith and romance, documenting a young female priest’s coming of age in 1970s America. It will attract readers from its opening atmospheric lines:
RAIN GLANCED OFF MY SHOES like spilled secrets. A June downpour in Minnesota’s St. Croix Valley left the street a blur of wet shadows. For the first time since graduating last year, I stepped off the curb in front of old St. Gabriel’s arched wooden doors and crossed over to attend prayer group at the Campus Ministry Center.
Evelyn Ann Casey employs the first person like a sword of discovery, revealing new parish member Meg’s special challenges as a woman of faith fielding the attention of males who dominate the parish. They offer her both unexpected adversity and love from their positions of male privilege.
Simmering under the cloak of faith and selfless effort is an underlying thread of ambition that influences both her choices and the political perceptions she harbors about the men who comprise her world:
When Ruth said she could use some help setting up starter plants for the garden she was planning, Darren clarified that he meant help with the upcoming Holy Week liturgies. To me, it seemed he was angling for a bigger stage for himself, not satisfied with his chapel duties across the street.
When power plays out on a stage of both attraction and control, it can prove daunting and seemingly uncontrollable—especially when forbidden love enters into the mix. Under such conditions, where is God?
The journey Meg undertakes as she settles into her chosen world and navigates its barriers and opportunities introduces themes that one might expect from a much more seasoned writer. And yet, this debut novel effortlessly considers many complex moral, ethical, and social conundrums that simmer under cloaks of parish life and group dynamics.
Christian reading groups, in particular, will be drawn to the many ways Meg comes to question not just her world and the men who surround her, but her strong belief in God:
Is this how love affairs between priests and nuns, and other women, play out? Would God ask them to submerge their human love to show His love? It didn’t seem to be working. God was not who I saw when I looked at these people. I saw brokenness, loneliness, fleeting moments. A high price to pay, no matter how noble the aspiration ... It wasn’t that I didn’t see any happy, healthy priests and sisters. I saw many. I believed someone could choose to show their gratitude for God’s steadfast love by putting themselves entirely, viscerally, bodily in his service. Rare, but not unknown. Others, like bachelor uncles and maiden aunts lived their lives and did their work. These people taught me in grade school and college. But I also saw men and women, too many, neither happy nor healthy. They hid a part of themselves, an open sore, a wound that never healed.
Powerfully rendered, unique in its portrayal of Meg’s psyche and concerns, and filled with material suitable for book club debate, Candlewood will appeal to a wide audience, from those interested in women’s issues and the 1970s to Christians attracted to stories of parish life, rules, and challenges. Candlewood is a highly recommended, vivid read.
Libraries and readers will find Candlewood thought-provoking, enlightening, sometimes troubling, and always relevant to the beliefs and actions of Christian leaders and groups navigating modern times.
CandlewoodReturn to Index
The
Champagne Crush
Caroline O’Connell
SparkPress
978-1-68463-334-0
$17.99 for
paperback, $9.99 for
ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Champagne-Crush-Romance-Novel-Femmes/dp/1684633346?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
The Champagne Crush is a romance novel joining the ‘Les Femme’ series, and covers much more than the spark of romance between two people. It will delight romance readers seeking more psychological depth from romance stories, adding intrigue, unexpected revelations, and head-butting action into an evolving connection.
Catherine Reynolds has enjoyed a luxurious life thanks to her parents. But when they finally cut the purse strings, she is left floundering, searching for new ways of supporting her lavish needs. A job as a PR consultant for a champagne company seems just the ticket—except for a difficult company president who clashes with her affluent style.
Joined by business objectives, yet separated by personal perspectives, Catherine and Chris are forced to work together for the purpose of promoting the sparkling wine company’s wares. This involves international travel and navigating an elite French atmosphere.
Suddenly, Catherine and Chris don’t seem so different. Further rivalries emerge which force them to act, more appropriately, as though they are on the same side (which, actually, they are). This creates a better understanding that propels their initial disparagement in new directions that romance readers will appreciate.
Opposites traditionally attract. But when they don’t, that doesn’t mean love isn’t possible. Part of Catherine’s romance dilemma is that nobody seems to fulfill her vision of the ideal partner:
“What are you looking for?”
“For starters, someone who cherishes me and is attractive inside and out.” Catherine gazed out the window. “Recently, I’m understanding it’s important to find a guy who is passionate about his goals, has a worldview.” She laughed. “And then, of course, he has to be good with kids and animals.”
Caroline O’Connell creates a thoroughly engrossing story powered by expectations, realities, and professional and personal associations that come to a boiling head in the course of business conundrums.
She matches her characters’ strong personalities as they butt heads, then come to realize that they may hold more in common than was first apparent.
The Champagne Crush is also adept at contrasting American and European culture, how differences can fit together to form a greater good, and how romance can blossom even in adversity.
Libraries seeking a romance that also contains cultural insights, psychological revelations, travel, and close considerations of shared life goals will find The Champagne Crush meets all these requirements with a heady, sparkling tone that is inviting.
Romance readers will, of course, predict the romantic component. What they won’t see from the start (and so will find pleasantly surprising) are the cultural revelations that emerge from a foray into American/European business worlds, as well as the sabotage that Catherine and Chris must confront.
The story is delightfully rendered, firmly rooted in realistic atmospheres of France and America, and provides a satisfying outcome as Catherine and Chris edge closer towards realizing their dreams.
The Champagne CrushReturn to Index
Charlotte's
Control
Maggie Sims
Independently
Published
979-8890444046
$4.99 / $17.99
http://www.books2read.com/CharlottesControl
Readers of Regency romances and tales of passion will embrace Charlotte's Control’s vivid saga of 30-year-old widow Charlotte, who finds her newly unwed status places her in an uncomfortable position between both women younger or older than she, who are seeking mates.
William Stanton, heir to the Earl of Harrington and barely twenty, is attracted to this lovely young widow, but other forces at work, both politically and socially, thwart his infatuation.
Nonetheless, the two consummate their passion in an affair which holds unexpected complexity as they begin to realize the ways in which each can bring them their hearts’ desires even as age and status differences seem destined to drive them apart.
Maggie Sims deftly juxtaposes the lives of these very different individuals, creating many nuances that prove steamy, compelling, and surprisingly unexpected.
Of special note is the age difference which creates boundaries of status and questions about family that they may be unable to overcome.
Another satisfying feature is how measured and logical Charlotte is about her status, her age, and the potential for a lasting romance with William:
“I am willing to have the same arrangement as last summer. But we need to set an end date. At some point you need to find a more suitable girl to marry. I know you have many responsibilities already heaped on you, but heirs are important. You’ll need to consider them soon.”
"I want to consider them with you.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t you mean ‘shan’t’?”
“No. I mean I cannot. William, do you know how long I was married?” She raised her hand to caress the heart pendant that hung on a chain around her neck.
“Uh, I believe it was close to ten years?”
“Yes. And what is the next thing anyone says about my marriage, when you hear others talk about it?”
He thought. She could see when it registered.
Passionate scenes sparkle throughout, but these practical revelations about the impact of a love connection when conflicting values permeate heirs and family status make Charlotte's Control vivid, reflective reading.
The result is a spicy romance story that is satisfyingly sexual, packed with unexpected thoughts about age and family, and peppered with the traditional atmospheric embellishments that make for a truly engrossing Regency romance.
Regency romance readers are in for a treat, and will find Charlotte’s passion and practicality as attractive as younger William’s experiences of love.
Charlotte's ControlReturn to Index
Closer
Miriam Gershow
Regal House
Publishing
978-1646035892
$20.95
Paperback/$9.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Closer-Miriam-Gershow/dp/1646035895
In 2015 in the small town of Horace, Oregon, white students taunt a Black boy in the library, causing a disruption that spreads throughout the community and fractures many a long-standing relationship. In Closer, guidance counselor Woody, student Lark Stevenson, mother Stefanie, and others find themselves in the center of a struggle that tests their lives and resilience when a student’s suicide changes everything.
Miriam Gershow creates a thoroughly compelling story that shifts from the viewpoints of Woody, Lark, and the others whose lives are affected not just by their choices and actions, but by the politics of an era when Obama was president and the past and future of America is changing.
She portrays vivid community and personal interactions that stem from and are impacted by these larger political experiences emerging within the dialogues, perceptions, and encounters between family and community members:
Deborah was holding forth on the detestable Republican candidate for president, newly announced. Everything from Deborah was a shout. Alison, his Al, was nodding to Deborah, who said: “Not that I’d vote for Hillary. She’s a crook and she should’ve left Bill as soon as he stuck his bleep bleep in that intern.”
These influences on the town’s youth embrace social and political perceptions, adding depth to topics of racism and bullying. Gershow traces these ideas from adult thoughts and discussions to their incarnations in young people who struggle with these issues in their own separate ways.
Astute dialogues between characters bring to light the various manners in which prejudice emerges from assumptions and perceptions:
“You haven’t met him yet?” Stefanie said, turning to Derek. “Sometimes it seems like Livvy is trying to move in! Doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t, no, I wouldn’t say—” Derek said.
Something faltered in Susan’s face.
“Fair warning,” Stefanie said. And then in a stage whisper, as she leaned over Susan’s desk: “He’s Black.”
As the dance between parents, children, and social circles continues, Gershow creates a powerful saga of desperation, adaptation, change, and historical undercurrents which buffet one small town with old and new ideas.
Libraries seeking a story of transformation and challenge that explores both young adult and adult culture will find it easy to recommend Closer to a wide age range.
Replete with thought-provoking psychological profiles, twists, and experiences, Closer epitomizes small town America and the contemporary forces and changes that can fracture or draw people together.
Book clubs that choose Closer for discussions of these social conundrums will find it encourages thought-provoking discourses and lively debates.
CloserReturn to Index
Dances
with Pucks
Debbie Charles
Independently
Published
979-8-89044-410-3
$5.99
eBook/$17.99 Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Dances-Pucks-Texas-Tornadoes-Book-ebook/dp/B0DTNZZ8Z9
What is the difference between a fling and a deep relationship? Sometimes the answer lies in how attraction combines with life ambitions in novel ways, as is portrayed in Dances with Pucks.
Blend romance with hockey and ballroom dancing for a sense of this vivid representation of the love that develops between Cam and Christina. They hold different passions before they meet, only to find their set courses in life and career changed by what at first seems a steamy but likely a brief encounter.
Both have fallen into hockey from very different circumstances. Each has a different background, interests, and passions—and yet, against the backdrop of hockey, they meet and grow together against all odds.
Readers seeking a steamy romance won’t be disappointed in the dance between these two. Debbie Charles crafts a delicate balance between professional interest and passion which comes alive both inside and outside the bedroom. She employs the first person and shifting viewpoints to emphasize the differences and similarities between these characters, as well.
This translates to a hot read in different ways as Austin, Texas heats up in summertime and political and hockey playing goals assume center stage.
Charles takes the time to build the political arena and its different influences on each character’s goals:
I’m certain either Buzz or Gabe will be our Captain, and I want to impress them. I tug on my protective pads and switch sticks. As I do, I sneak a glance up at the suites. A couple are lit, and I can only hope members of management or even one of the owners—preferably the guy, Greg Donovan, who seems to be the face of the Donovan family owners—are watching, so I can impress them too. I’m determined to have the starting goalie position by the end of training camp.
Sexual encounters are tempered by emotional overlays to give the story a gritty appeal of connection as the characters delve into relationships in different ways:
Has no one worshiped this woman the way she deserves? No matter, I’m here to remedy that.
Exercise, personal, and sexual discovery blend in a story replete with unexpected developments as Cam and Christina embark on a workplace affair, only to uncover deeper connections than either anticipated.
Set against the backdrop and development of the Texas Tornadoes NHL team, fans of sports and emotional ties will relish the different ways this romance evolves.
Libraries accepting novels with powerful characters will find Dances with Pucks fits the bill, while romance readers who like engrossing dances between characters’ pasts and reshaping their future will love how the story’s characters develop.
Replete with hockey and dance references and realistic experiences, Dances with Pucks creates a winning game between two already-strong individuals whose shared interests prove too inviting to resist—and too involving to stop reading about.
Dances with PucksReturn to Index
The
Gimirri
Invasion
Colleen M. Story
Midchannel Press
979-8-9926172-1-4
$18.95
Paperback/$28.95
Hardcover/$7.95 eBook https://colleenmstory.com/story/the-gimirri-invasion/
The Gimirri Invasion, a sequel to Colleen M. Story’s The Curse of King Midas, returns to the world-building scenario of the first series title to expand a journey fraught with historical figures from 696-700s BC.
The Cimmerians that threatened King Midas’s kingdom are profiled in a fast-paced historical saga that proves vividly atmospheric, flavored with a range of character experiences.
Story takes the time to develop multifaceted scenarios and characters, adding many personal touches and concerns to her sweeping historical saga. This invites even non-history readers to consider the rule of King Midas and the special challenges he faces from invaders and family members alike.
The dilemmas of daughter Zoe and others who either align with or confront the King’s vision of how to preserve his kingdom lend personal, reflective insights into these struggles:
Zoe went to her room, but all she could do was pace back and forth. This decision was so wrong. How could her father not see it? With one hand on her hip, she thought it over again and again, but in the end, felt powerless to change anything.
Elanur Savas, who has escaped King Sargon II's city of Durukin, dreams of reuniting with her brother, King Midas, in his grand castle, yet struggles with various forces as she, Little Bird, and Zoe make important decisions that impact their present and future.
Dark underworld goddess Katiah is present both at the beginning of and through the story’s progression. She reveals insights and the unexpected impacts of choices which fly in the face of repressive family forces:
“That horrible man,” Katiah resumed. “He took everything from me. I should have left him to die on that plain. Instead, I had to save him, take care of him, keep him safe.”
Libraries that appreciated the vivid historical fantasy blend of myth and pre-Roman Empire affairs that made The Curse of King Midas such a powerful work will want to add The Gimirri Invasion to their collections, while newcomers lacking this background will still find this sequel a vivid, engrossing story.
Readers seeking fiction that rises past any hint of dry historical fact to embrace vivid characters, shifting perceptions, and the intimate interplays of myth and reality in ancient times will find The Gimirri Invasion thoroughly absorbing, unpredictable, and powered by strong forces that represents an incredible page-turner.
The Gimirri InvasionReturn to Index
Half
Moon
Burt Mango
Independently
Published
979-8311131780
$14.99
Paperback/$.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Half-Moon-Burt-Mango/dp/B0DXKR63MN?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
Half Moon is the Western story of a strange young woman captured on the frontier who sports an unusual face: “one half white as salt, the other dark as a moonless sky.”
Emmet and Doug have come upon her while scouting for nomads. They capture her, and Emmet is thwarted in an attempt to have his way with her by his Captain, who has saved her for some unknown purpose.
Oshke Mennit, another resident of this lawless world, finds his life inexplicably bound to that of a very odd young woman when he is offered a trade opportunity that portends riches if he can fulfill his side of a strange bargain. It seems like easy money, making him a courier well able to outrun the nomads in pursuit. But money is never easily made, as Oshke realizes through a series of strange twists of intention and discovery.
Burt Mango may set the scene in the old West, but its action and adventure employ more than formula writing. Oshke’s mission is challenged not by nomads, but by the ambitions of his own people. He comes to know Amma and matters of his own heart that were previously hidden to him as events unfold.
Mango crafts a novella that is succinct, powerful, and injected with flavors beyond traditional Western landscapes and people. This adds to action flavored by intriguing concepts of crime, justice, and duty as Oshke and others face their hopes and fears and a beautiful (albeit strange) young woman drives many changes.
Libraries seeking uncommon Westerns that inject eerie characters with special interest and purposes will find Half Moon a compelling novella. It’s especially recommended for readers of Western literature seeking satisfyingly different scenarios and characters.
Packed with revelations, unexpected twists, and action-packed adventure, Half Moon is a story delightful in its unexpected main character and the events which swirl around her to change lives, perceptions, and destinies.
Half MoonReturn to Index
Higher
Love
Joanne Kukanza
Easley
Red Boots Press
979-8-9867133-7-3
$4.99
eBook/$14.99 Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Higher-Love-Joanne-Kukanza-Easley-ebook/dp/B0F574FCGV
Higher Love opens with Lauren preparing for her combined sixty-second birthday and twenty-fifth AA anniversary party. Both are milestones that represent positive changes after her tumultuous past—but the introduction of a teenager into her somewhat complicated life sends Lauren into a tailspin.
Sixteen-year-old Stephanie claims to be the daughter of a child Lauren had given up for adoption decades ago. When Lauren uncovers the child’s troubled past, and Stephanie demands answers from Lauren, the stakes rise ... Lauren’s recent remarriage to Brett after decades apart is impacted by the girl’s arrival and connections, however dubious, have been forged between this needy child and a woman of a certain age who must learn she, too, has unresolved issues and needs.
Is Lauren prepared to become a mother, or grandmother, to someone she really doesn’t know?
Joanne Kukanza Easley builds an engrossing story of family ties that are questioned, shaken, and which deliver up new definitions of bonds – and surprising possibilities. Lauren is a woman still trying to come to terms with her past and present, who struggles with how to handle a troubled teen and the decisions she must make about Stephanie’s future.
Excellent dialogue between generations illustrates the challenges of entering into relationships where family ties are fragile and boundaries need be set:
“I understand you need friends. And I also see that you need clear directions and boundaries, since you were at a loss about what time to be home. From now on, if you plan to go somewhere after work, a therapy appointment, or any other time, you’ll ask for permission in advance.” I softened the words with a smile.
“Who do you think you are? My mother?” With that, Stephanie shoved back from the table and ran down the hall. A thunderous door slam followed.
Brett and Lauren find themselves raising an almost-adult child, and their own lives change in unexpected ways. Each day introduces new quandaries:
Just when I thought we’d reached a period of relative calmness, another problem arose—Stephanie behind the wheel of a car.
Unforeseen circumstances test all involved as events spiral out of control and echoes of the past intrude.
Easley’s thought-provoking reflection on family ties and the sacrifices made out of love will attract librarians and readers interested in thought-provoking stories about how connections are made, broken, and grow.
The ways in which Lauren and Stephanie address their separate and conjoined issues provides much food for thought not just for individual contemplation, but book club discussions about how family connections are built and tested.
Filled with “aha” moments of discovery, Higher Love is a foray into finding home that will appeal to a wide audience of readers.
Higher LoveReturn to Index
Iguana
Vincent Traughber
Meis
Fallen
Bros
9780997672886
$15.99
Paperback/$6.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Iguana-Vincent-Traughber-Meis/dp/B0DZK49FJR?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
Iguana will attract readers of literary queer romance novels who look for relationship developments impacted by cross-cultural encounters. Its heady mix of the two provides a startling, compelling story that embraces a wide range of dilemmas as Dawson Wozniak’s sojourn to Mexico in the wake of COVID to reinvent himself instead introduces new adversity alongside new opportunities.
As Dawson’s relationship with Ivan develops, questions of how friendship crosses into love and clashes between male psyches and perceptions give Iguana an involving overlay of social reflection that readers may not expect.
This even expands into issues of racism:
“I’m exhausted trying to educate my white friends and acquaintances about being a Black man in our society, how it’s not enough to be non-racist. They have to be an anti-racist. If they’re serious, they need to do the work. Like I used to tell my students all the time, ‘I’m not here to hold your hand.’ I can give them some tools, maybe a little inspiration, but they have to walk the walk.”
“Kendi’s book was an eye-opener even after growing up with progressive parents who taught me to treat everybody the same. I always feel like I’m not doing enough.”
“If you can say that, you’re on the right path. One reason Stef and I are in Mexico is to get away from that constant undercurrent of racism in the States, day in and day out, even when it’s not obvious...”
Iguana is all about turbulence and attraction. As the story unfolds, it delivers a powerful inspection of a “fallen angel,” a quest for identity, truth, and love, and a survey of the male psyche and sexuality which juxtaposes candid emotional and graphic physical scenes with thought-provoking social inspections.
Vincent Traughber Meis has created an immersive exploration of best options, relationship considerations, lifestyle and cultural inspection, and evolving connections. All come embedded with emotional revelations:
“I hate you,” I said.
“Sometimes love and hate are very same.”
Is Dawson really in love, or “just in it for the sex”?
Readers seeking compelling stories of gay relationship-building, cross-cultural experience and confrontations with different forms of racial perception, and a probe of new feelings which emerge from familiar patterns and habits will relish how Iguana contrasts all these experiences through one man’s journey.
Filled with captivating “aha” moments of revelation, Iguana is a powerful psychological and social exploration that proves thought-provoking, engrossing, and hard to put down:
“I just want you to be aware of the reality of what you’re involved in. I’m not trying to discourage you. Ride the highs, but be prepared for the lows.”
IguanaReturn to Index
Jerome
v. God
Jeffrey
Melvin
Hutchins
Pisgah
Press, LLC
978-1-942016-98-4
$25.40
Paperback/$3.99 eBook
www.pisgahpress.com
Jerome v. God is a novel about the extraordinary Jerome Light, a non-believer who gets worked up about so-called miracles and decides to legally confront the mysterious ways of God in court—especially when a sinkhole opens up right under his house. Coincidence? Probably not.
Jeffrey Melvin Hutchins cultivates a wry sense of ironic humor as he reveals Jerome’s mission to confront his world in novel ways. He reviews Jerome’s psyche in a compelling manner that considers not just motivations behind choices, but the reasons for his disbelief and angst:
Jerome had a peculiar ethos: He wanted never to appear weak in those areas where he could possibly have some hope of being courageous or strong.
Family impact leads to Jerome feeling like a pariah for his obsession and perseverance while curious courtroom processes and confrontations show readers that more is at stake than a singular legal pursuit of justice or proof. Jerome’s supposedly simple case attracts widespread attention from special interests, portending impacts even Jerome hadn’t seen coming:
“I’ve been approached by other interests. There may be others jumping in to this case.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry; I’m still your lawyer. But we’re going to need a lot of help for the appeals, especially if we win. If you think this case is tough now, wait’ll you see what the wrath of God’s agent looks like if he loses.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Several organizations have offered to file amicus briefs in support of our case. And we’re going to need their support. I mean, ultimately, this thing could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The result is a fine dance between legal, spiritual, and moral processes which is simply a delight to follow. It weaves unexpected developments into a seemingly staid life that spill over into bigger questions about God.
Libraries and readers looking for thought-provoking, sometimes hilarious, and often pointed stories about fate, God, self-determination, and legal system flaws will welcome Jerome v. God. It sports thought-provoking and engaging characters and, most of all, features a court case that reaches for the stars and winds up grasping the unexpected.
Filled with provocative ways of identifying good and evil, Jerome v. God is worthy of high praise and promises much fodder for book club discussion:
“Gideon Calhoun trades in people’s fear. He is a multimillionaire because people fear the Lord their God and want someone to protect them and tell them how to live. Yet when that God he serves acts to destroy someone’s life, Gideon Calhoun says it has nothing to do with him! And then he asks for more money. In fact, he had the temerity to mention the sinkhole hitting the Lights’ house and then ask for donations to his church! He would reap benefits from someone else’s tragedy, and yet he says he has no responsibility. That’s just wrong. That’s just wrong.”
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Losing
Austin
Michael
J. Bowler
Independently
Published
979-8-9886110-6-6
$4.99
eBook/$12.99
Paperback/$18.99
Hardcover
https://books2read.com/LosingAustin
When temperamental brother Colton is accused of killing his older brother Austin, he is consumed with confusion, guilt, loss, and rage:
I made my big brother disappear. Not like a magician makes an elephant disappear, but I did drive him away, and he did disappear.
Nobody will believe that Colton didn’t have something to do with this. This survey does not focus on outside assumptions and judgments, but is delivered in the first person as Colton expresses his anger and anguish, embarking on a search for the truth which eventually leads him into the murky world of other missing kids.
Many novels have considered missing children from different angles, but Bowler creates a truly compelling voice from the perspective of a brother who is both a suspect and a victim of loss and guilt.
The story’s setting (the affluent community of Mill Valley in Northern California) is nicely portrayed, realistic, and cements the mystery of a child’s disappearance in a supposedly safe community setting.
From the start, Austin has been different:
Even when I was old enough to understand that my big brother was “different,” he’d never spoken a single word and hated being touched.
This adds further intrigue and emotional complications to the story of a family that has adjusted to two very different brothers, only to lose one of them (well—both, really, as the story reveals).
As the family adjusts to an impossible unresolved situation, Bowler does an exceptional job of capturing just how this puzzle impacts all involved:
Dad didn’t believe everything Alysse had told us, but he still considered the abduction scenario a “possibility.” Sure, kids vanished all the time and their bodies weren’t discovered for decades. But the idea that Austin was still alive and aboard some alien ship somewhere was better than picturing him moldering away in an unmarked grave, so Dad clung to that feeble tendril of hope.
As a drive to make things right unfolds confessions, discoveries, and revised relationships, the novel takes many surprising twists readers won’t see coming. Those who have digested other stories of intrigue and psychological anguish over a missing child will find Losing Austin far more complicated and satisfying than many just because of its elements of unpredictability.
Help and revelations come from unexpected sources as Colton seemingly finds answers, only to discover they raise even more questions about relationships, love, and resolution.
Libraries seeking novels about loss, discovery, and growth will find Losing Austin offers a potent, fresh viewpoint on losing an older child that involves its readers in deep psychological and social inspections.
Powered by the realistic, flawed, likeable character of Colton, the novel is quite simply gripping, often surprising, and hard to put down.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Red
Clay Running
Waters
Leslie
K. Simmons
Koehler
Books
979-8-88824-171-4
$38.95
Hardcover/$21.95
Paperback/$9.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Clay-Running-Waters-Leslie-Simmons/dp/B0CLF3Z5R7
Red Clay Running Waters is a work of biographical Indigenous history set in the 1818 Antebellum era. It follows the events which preceded the Trail of Tears.
When Cherokee chief’s son John Ridge leaves his tribe to attend school, the last thing he expected from his choice was to learn a controversial new way to bridge White and Native worlds.
This arrives in the form of Sarah Northrop. As their relationship develops, a storm of controversy ensues that challenges the beliefs of the Calvinist community around them, sending them back to his nation to forge a life for themselves, as well as an independent Cherokee Nation.
While their choices appear the best opportunity to grow a family, provide them with freedom, and preserve their different cultures, the reality of political entanglements and prejudice soon emerges. The surrounding Georgia milieu provokes confrontations between the Cherokee nation, the southern states, and the federal government.
Perhaps nowhere else is the personal impact of these times and prejudices so enlightening and powerful as in Red Clay Running Waters. This may be due to its astute blend of fiction, with its dramatic and emotional connections and overlays, and nonfiction. Leslie K. Simmons builds upon both to create a novel steeped in both real-world events and realistic, albeit fictional, characters and confrontations.
Vivid descriptions bring these dilemmas to life:
“The Georgians taunt us,” he said. “It is an insidious tyranny they exercise, stripping us of our rights. Few in the Capital dare oppose Jackson’s wishes, fearing either his popularity or his rages. Try as I can, I cannot see a way out of this but to look to the courts to intercede.
“You should see the great hordes coming to the cities in the East,” he continued, “an ocean of them, hungry to replace us wherever we reside. It is inevitable we will always be next to White people on this continent, so why not let us keep our heritage and our homes?”
As events impact John and Sarah’s love and dreams of peace, readers become thoroughly immersed in the perceptions, choices, and impacts of both sides of the cultural divide.
Libraries seeking a historical novel steeped in love, risk-taking, politics, religious ideals, and moral challenges will relish the many paths Simmons links to present a full-bodied, experiential story of White and Native relations during these times.
Far more than a singular production or focus, the expansive breadth of Red Clay Running Waters creates a story that is immersive, inviting, revealing, and quite hard to put down.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
A
Second Innocence
Ron
Morin
Independently
Published
979-8309815463
$18.99
Paperback/$4.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Second-Innocence-Ron-Morin/dp/B0DWKFVGHK
A Second Innocence follows the isolated lives of four individuals who have very different ways of hiding from the world—and themselves. At first glance, Raphael who becomes a priest, Daphne who serves a twenty-year sentence for murder, Jordi who is an artist of moderate renown, and Angela who has epilepsy caused by an inoperable tumor seem to have little in common. But as shared perspectives and experiences draw them together, readers receive a story of flawed individuals who grow into a new, more positive awareness about the world and their place in it.
The opening lines of the prologue succinctly condense what each of these characters represents, however differently they appear:
. . . not sure what went wrong; they only knew when it went wrong, and they wondered if their underlying fear had been what caused the problem in the first place.
The mirror Anne and Bill hold up to themselves after they summon the courage to tell their twenty-one-year-old son Raphael that he’s adopted shatters their world. In reaction, Raphael flees to Europe. New truths and revelations will resonate in the lives of Angela, Jordi and Daphne when they interact with Raphael’s natural goodness.
The “second innocence” referred to in the title evolves from a new acceptance of flawed people and lives that nonetheless hold riches beyond limitations and ugliness.
There’s no better time for A Second Innocence to appear than now. With varied themes of murder, depression, death, and emotional entrapment, readers might initially think the story will be difficult to absorb emotionally. However, within with these conflicts and confrontations lies discovery, hope, and redemption:
In the heat of my hope for grace, the grief in my heart began to thaw.
The result is an unexpected journey towards different forms of belief that ultimately prove fulfilling.
Libraries that choose A Second Innocence will discover that its strength lies in building emotional connections between seemingly disparate experiences that contributes to this overall feeling of hope and grace.
Filled with diversity, different forms of anguish and revelation, A Second Innocence is compelling reading that will reach all kinds of audiences and book club discussion groups with its message of optimism against all odds. It is highly recommended as a path to hope in a world of postmodern angst.
A Second Innocence discovers its strength in building an emotional experience that leads to the overall feeling of grace.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Shadows
in the
Pleasure Gardens:
Regarding Robberies and Racehorses
Elaine
Mary Griffin
Black
Rose Writing
978-1-68513-612-3
$19.95
Website:
elainemarygriffin.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Pleasure-Gardens-Regarding-Robberies-ebook/dp/B0DGVN4LX5
Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens: Regarding Robberies and Racehorses is a historical novel that opens with Counselor Lindsay Worthingham’s mandate to young witness Chester Carter to write down his views of mind-boggling events he’s experienced. Worthingham expected brevity, or possibly nothing … especially when time passes with no results. Two months later, Carter returns to the office with a thick stack of papers reflecting extraordinary insights. The lawyer discovers them to be a thoroughly unexpected chronicle of justice, redemption, and struggle.
Elaine Griffin crafts a compelling story using a first-person narrator’s voice to capture the atmosphere that surrounds these events:
I reckon the robbers were gone long before we quit running after them. I finally caught up with the Sheriff, who had pulled up his horse at the bridge over the Schuylkill. The road continues beyond, but it’s flanked by dense wood, and the Sheriff said he couldn’t see the robbers anymore. I couldn’t see them either, but I couldn’t see much, and I couldn’t hardly breathe, either.
Carter is all too happy to leave his usual paperwork assignments for the pursuit of justice, but as he becomes entangled in dilemmas he never saw coming, his exploration of banking and personal involvements immerse him in situations he’s ill-equipped to understand, much less handle:
“They might’ve well stolen gold for what they got. We’ve no way of knowing which notes were stolen and which were rightful.”
A coming-of-age story emerges as Chester is kissed by a lady, cursed by a frustrated sheriff, and challenged by Corinne. Horse racing, investigations, and requirements to testify on the side of justice in court proceedings create dilemmas over courses of action designed to remedy problems.
Will his involvements land him in jail, too? Will the connections between stolen bank notes and racetrack events draw him further into uncharted territory?
Elaine Griffin weaves her historical backdrop with the dialogues, personalities, and perspectives of characters whose motivations and interactions shine with realistic feelings.
Her ability to juxtapose Carter’s growth and realizations with the kinds of choices that land him in untenable and unexpected situations creates a fine tension and suspense. These keep readers engaged in Carter’s life, times, and ultimate redemption.
The story is delivered with an attractive focus on legal proceedings and impact. This approach will delight historical fiction readers who hold a special interest in judicial and courtroom tension.
Libraries seeking historical novels that combine elements of mystery, suspense, coming-of-age, and investigative prowess will appreciate all these elements and more in Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Soul
Retrieval
Shanna
McNair
High
Frequency
Press
978-1962931021
$30.00 Hardcover
Website: www.shannamcnair.com
Ordering:
www.highfrequencypress.com
Soul Retrieval is a literary novel about Mary Dixon, who has overcome a family history of mental illness and abuse to evolve into a healthier person with better patterns of interacting with the world. Soul Retrieval introduces the journey that further challenges Mary to develop her writer’s prowess via a French writing residency—despite the fact that she doesn’t speak French.
En route to her new effort, she opens Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and receives an epiphany about her life, her perceptions of its value and purpose, and her future. This discovery sends her on the path of reviewing her traumas, her childhood, and her adult choices in a new light—all of which give a deep literary bow to The Prophet—which will be especially appreciated by fans of Gibran’s poetic and spiritual classic.
Shanna McNair creates descriptions that are evocative and revealing, enhancing the dance between Gibran’s original work and its structure and Mary’s connections to his art and progression. This book’s reimagining of The Prophet takes Gibran’s world focus and self-discoveries and adds the twist of Mary’s contemporary world and experiences.
The story even opens with a Gibran-style self-portrait, transmitting this entwined textual and artistic familiarity throughout Mary’s story by profiling Shanna McNair’s color artwork. The mirror offers two sides of the same reflection as these soul connections and similarities evolve parallel lives of spiritual and philosophical reflection.
Mary’s re-read of The Prophet comes at the same time as she encounters all kinds of new people on her road to self-discovery. These move from “suspicious acquaintances to friends-in-bondage” as she investigates such related issues as power and privilege, cross-cultural connections encountered in the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and the impact of trauma on her life.
Mary observes:
Trauma is not the flag of my identity. And yet, I’ve nailed my colors to the mast.
Readers seeking a literary, psychological, spiritual journey that grounds its experiences in Gibran’s influential masterpiece, yet moves away from it in unexpected ways, will relish Mary’s journey and the discoveries embedded in Soul Retrieval.
All facets of life are reconsidered, from the basics of eating and drinking to clothes and homes and loftier thoughts surrounding freedom, pain, work, and life’s meaning. Mary’s reflections on her childhood and mental illness are particularly powerful reflections when steeped in Gibran’s special style of inspection:
There is a lot of love between a mother and daughter. And between a daughter a father...A lot of love between Elliot and James and I. We had sickness in our home, that’s all, that’s all, all.
As a tale of survival, self-inspection, cross-cultural revelation, and a rich survey of spiritual truths and new beginnings, Soul Retrieval is a major attraction not just for general-interest libraries, but to readers seeking contemporary literary works outstanding in their descriptions and explorations ... and especially in their connections to the always-meaningful Gibran.
Filled with a powerful narrative voice about awakenings, new realizations, growth, redemption, and purpose, Soul Retrieval’s ability to provoke self-reflection and spark reading group discussions amongst literary, spiritual, and philosophical circles makes it a top recommendation. It cultivates an uncommon strength through hard-hitting reflections.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
To
Walk Humbly
Frank
S Joseph
Literary
–
Publishers
979-8-9904409-4-4
$19.95
paperback/$5.95 digital
www.frankjoseph.com
To Walk Humbly is the second historical novel in Frank S Joseph’s “Chicago Trilogy,” centered on 1960s Chicago. The story opens in 1952 in Chicago’s South Side, where white teenage Steve is attacked by four Black youths. This sets the stage for a charged atmosphere in which various families consider fleeing the neighborhood they call home for a place of safety far from the racial struggles which emerge to threaten families, children, and life.
Joseph’s story isn’t just a linear focus on one boy’s experience, however. Through dialect, dialogue, and shifting perspectives, he contrasts the viewpoints and lives of different peoples, from Blacks to Jewish and white residents who each experience prejudice and changing times in different ways—with different reactions.
Danger comes in diverse forms, from stickups that endanger family businesses to kids who find that their lives are changing ... and not for the better:
That night we get a stickup, a bad one. Just after the last show starts, cat sticks a .38 through the box office slot and gets the whole take. The guy has to come inside to get the money. He makes it into the box office without no one seeing but Momma starts screaming when he busts out. I chase him into the street but he’s a big guy with long legs and I can’t catch him. I get a quick look at his face though. Teeth like Bugs Bunny. It’s Friday night and we’re showing From Here to Eternity so it’s a lot of money.
The social, political, and psychological forces which buffet Chicago during this period of time come to life through vignettes and lives impacted by a city that literally is on fire.
Passions run deep—but so do clear objectives for living better lives. Joseph explores each of these characters’ influences, backgrounds, and impact in a story that follows how encounters between disparate individuals become ugly, threatening, or dangerous.
Add in the evolution of an uncertain friendship between Black and white families that is threatened not just by outside influences, but personal choices, for a feel of the gritty, streetwise individuals who come of age and grow into new options under revised circumstances in To Walk Humbly.
Libraries seeking authentic novels about these turbulent times, especially those interested in Chicago neighborhood culture and settings, will relish To Walk Humbly. Part of the story’s strength comes from portraits gleaned from real-life encounters and the author’s own world. Perhaps this is why the tale shines especially brightly in its personality development, as well as with a sense of the social and political influences of these years.
Filled with thought-provoking encounters, uncertain relationships, and choices that shift the boundaries of prejudice, isolation, and hope, To Walk Humbly’s vivid exploration is highly recommended for readers seeking realistic stories of the ultimate impact of prejudice and hate.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Who
I Thought You
Were
Michaela
Spampinato
The
Permanent Press
9781579626839
$29.00
https://thepermanentpress.com/products/who-i-thought-you-were
Imagine being suddenly widowed at a young age when a train collides with a spouse’s pickup truck. Toulouse Salazar experiences this in Who I Thought You Were, then begins to realize that what she thought was an accident may be more purposeful than she could ever have imagined.
As a chain of events brings more questions and doubt into what really happened to her husband Luke, Toulouse enters a shadowy realm of possibility which ensnare her in her own investigation of the truth. What she uncovers will shake her beliefs, her marriage, and her future.
Michaela Spampinato crafts a vivid story of discovery and mystery that juxtaposes the ordinary with the suddenly remarkable from its opening lines:
It was an unremarkable intersection unless your husband happened to have died there. Just the crossbuck, the X of a sign marking the spot.
What do border patrol cops, Luke’s possible lover, small-town corruption and developer special interests have to do with Luke’s demise? Plenty, as Toulouse uncovers both by accident and by an increasingly desperate, purposeful investigation of her own.
Spampinato excels in building forceful personalities at odds with the realities of their lives. She immerses readers in the secrets and lies of a small town’s various factions, possible miracles and more evident realities, and moral and ethical considerations that arise to test Toulouse’s mission and peceptions:
The land, her children, and their children. How much was it really worth to her? More than Luke’s life?
Equally potent are the novel situations which propel Toulouse in new directions, challenging both in her ideals of life and its values and her experiences and perceptions.
Astute political insights emerge from her push for the truth which are injected throughout the story to provide additional moments of revelation and insight:
Everything’s about water and money in New Mexico, Krystal had said. Even when it’s not.
Toulouse’s confrontation of these individuals and forces are nicely described as both physical and mental assertion empowers her and drives her to navigate the lives of such disparate characters as Luke’s employee and possible girlfriend, the pregnant Lilly, flirty drinker Max, and friend Krystal.
Each of these individuals adds insights and new possibilities to Toulouse’s unfolding dilemmas that creates a powerful and twisting plot.
Libraries and readers seeking a vivid story of widowhood, mystery, discovery, and adaptation will find Who I Thought You Were immerse and compelling reading.
Filled with an atmosphere of discovery and surprises cemented by first-person insights, Who I Thought You Were proves hard to predict and nearly impossible to put down.
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21st
Century Paradigm Shift
Carol
E. Leutner
MegaShift
Publishing
979-8-218-58555-6
$3.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/21st-Century-Paradigm-Shift-Thrive-ebook/dp/B0DTZQ5X8B
Carol E. Leutner’s 21st Century Paradigm Shift offers a powerful twist on the idea “Everything is a brand,” linking discussions of Newtonian and quantum physics with the observation that capitalism’s paradigm is not set in stone, but can be shifted to redirect human nature. The greed commonly associated with capitalism need not become humanity’s lasting legacy to the world.
A broader understanding of such paradigms is required for survival and adaptation—thus the cross-disciplinary connections presented in Leutner’s book are not just thought-provoking, but essential reading, because we are all caught in a paradigm.
First, it should be noted that while 21st Century Paradigm Shift: What It Is and How to Thrive In It offers a blueprint for surviving modern social, political, and economic shifts, this doesn’t translate to the book’s pat categorization—or easy adaptation. It analyzes a myriad of weighty problems that demand revised thought processes:
The Newtonian paradigm through which we view reality and future options does not provide an escape hatch from this pressing dilemma. One reasonable response is to change the paradigm not because it is moral, in our self-interest, or necessary for our survival. No, we need a new paradigm that changes the narrative about who we are as homo sapiens in the natural world...
A revised paradigm built on quantum physics can help us do this. Scientific discoveries have proven that reality is fundamentally multi-dimensional, relational and that the observer influences outcomes. These three principles of quantum physics create a new frame work for understanding the linked and existential crisis of our time and Leutner applies them throughout her analysis.
Leutner’s review of economic, scientific, and philosophical disciplines could reach non-academic readers, but will especially attract and enlighten academics with backgrounds in science, math, or history. Such audiences will more easily accept that science, itself, is a paradigm whose model is subject to fluctuation and interpretation.
Discussions unleash a “torrent of controversy, doubt, and backlash” about ancient to modern history, revising inherent European-centric prejudices as new perspectives are gleaned from cultures around the world.
Contrasts between different ways of viewing intersections between science, economics, and history require of readers an interest in such thinkers as early economist Adam Smith, who is among those portrayed in a different light:
...the human characteristic of self-interest not only drove economic movement like gravity drove the planets, but it also fit with the second Newtonian precept. Nature can be unraveled by breaking it into its smallest indivisible unit. For scientists, the atom was the basis for experimentation and analysis. For Smith, the smallest unit was an economic man, who could be measured as a unit of toil and even substituted for a unit of capital.
Leutner probes the roots of present-day social, political, and scientific crises, considers the threat of too-fast technological changes, and then explores their incarnation in daily life and social systems. This encourages dialogues between readers and thinkers who would better understand their subconscious emotional reactions to modern events:
We are deeply worried and confused because we no longer know whom to trust or what to believe. Is the future being written without us?
What will it take to survive the future? Rewrite old paradigms to evolve better paths and sustainable alternatives not just for mankind, but the planet. How is change recognized and then enacted? Via writings like this.
“We see ourselves as globally connected,” Leutner writes. But not necessarily species-connected, she adds: “We don’t see ourselves connected globally as one species, where trust and cooperation are needed to survive.”
Keys to survival and transformation are clearly outlined, linking disparate issues such as climate change to loftier paradigm analysis:
Unless everyone urgently participates in correcting the climate trajectory, humanity’s future is bleak. Separating humans from nature was perhaps the scientific paradigm’s greatest metaphysical flaw.
21st Century Paradigm Shift thus serves as a historical revision, a deep reflection, and a call to action that will prove particularly thought-provoking for college-level group discussions:
Do the actors understand that they have the power and responsibility to create an economic playing field that is respectful, balanced, and sustainable—one that Mother Nature would approve of?
Librarians interested in surveys that link paradigm shifts of the past to what is happening now—particularly books packed with material suitable for contemplation and debate—will find 21st Century Paradigm Shift highly recommendable to a broad audience.
Leutner’s wide-ranging survey of how humanity got to where it is today and the possible paths it can choose for its future creates a scholarly yet accessible, thought-provoking read. 21st Century Paradigm Shift should be on the reading lists and bookshelves of anyone interested in long-term adaptation strategies and the far-ranging consequences of consumer, political, lifestyle, and economic decisions.
More so than most books connecting science, philosophy, economics, and history, 21st Century Paradigm Shift encapsulates important, eye-opening revelations:
...the capitalist economic system that dominates the planet today ... is constructed on a Newtonian view of reality that the universe operates as a machine and is knowable through mathematical calculation. Centuries of applying this metaphysical worldview to economic relationships has corrupted moral and humanitarian values once considered sacrosanct. For example, almost all new SUVs are advertised as a form of escape, and escape brings joy. Home warranty protection is promoted as a warran-chi, like in tai chi. Insurance takes on a spiritual quality. Connect the dots—all of life, from toilet paper to happiness, has been reduced to a commodity. Everything is a brand.
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Absolute
Ibis
Monarchy
John
Houston
Atmosphere
Press
979-8-89132-642-2
$16.99
pb, $7.99
ebook, $25.99 hc
www.atmospherepress.com
Absolute Ibis Monarchy presents a consideration certain to be controversial in modern philosophical and spiritual circles: how does the human race’s evolutionary process influence a greater state of awareness and God? And what does politics have to do with this process?
In order to fully appreciate the conclusions John Houston draws in Absolute Ibis Monarchy, it’s important that readers have grounding in The Sacred Ibis Speaks and Ibis Initiation Time, the former two books of the trilogy. These writings set the stage for this concluding volume, and are essential to understanding Houston’s contentions and the expansion of his insights into new territory.
Readers should also appreciate and have some familiarity with ancient history in order to follow the threads Houston draws together in this book. Scholars, especially, will appreciate the extensive footnoted references which accompany much of the book’s contentions, conveniently placed on each page to make it easy to refer back to source material.
From Egyptian to Greek traditions, Houston considers the evolution of civilization around the world, the driving points of philosophy and spirituality that underlay many human movements, and the likely future progression of social and political systems around the world as humans evolve and grow. Lively debate and discussion material emerges that will prove particularly accessible and interesting to book clubs and classroom discussion groups:
...it is my contention that it has been the ancient Scots, or Gaeldom, which has been the driving force that has empowered the growth of Human civilisation. As such, the British Empire existed not only as the primary means of delivering the Human Race from the Dark Ages, which had been imposed on Europe by the Vatican, but for the scattering of the royal seed throughout the planet; furthermore, it is my considered contention that the next stage towards the appearance of a truly global civilisation on the planet, to unite Humanity for the preparation necessary for entering the new age, will be the resurrection of the British Empire.
The controversy of making a case for a progressive world monarchy will delight thinkers and teachers who will want to reflect on the progression that, Houston maintains, is logical and critical for humanity’s next steps.
Libraries seeking a scholarly debate about the future and evolution of human civilization will want to choose all three books for their collections. They can be highly recommended them to philosophers, politicians, spiritual thinkers, and historians, who will find the blend of all these approaches to be unique and thought-provoking reading.
Challenging? You bet. Shocking? Many times. Enlightening? Absolutely.
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Becoming
Mature: A
Practical Guide
for Disciples of Jesus
Matik
Nicholls
Authentic
Joy
979-8315866893
$12.00
Paperback/$20.00
Hardcover/$.99 eBook
Website:
http://authenticjoy.org/books
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Mature-Practical-Guide-Disciples-ebook/dp/B0F2PSD7ZM
Becoming Mature: A Practical Guide for Disciples of Jesus is a treatise on “...the hard work of becoming like Christ” that explores and promotes life approaches and activities which may not be visible to others (nor sources of acclaim and praise), but which ultimately enrich the soul to lead followers closer to God.
Matik Nicholls maintains that “this is God’s heart desire for His daughters and sons. He longs for us to come to maturity.” How to achieve this lofty goal comprises the heart of an examination of spiritual maturity that juxtaposes insights from modern society with the author’s own experiences, considering their translation to Christian ideals:
Jesus offers us the opportunity to enter His rest and exit the striving of survival mode. This is quite counter-cultural in our modern world. The value-system of the world values busyness. We wear busyness like a badge of honour. How are you going? Busy, so busy! Jesus has in mind a different values system.
Chapters outline the process of achieving maturity, tackling underlying assumptions, erroneous paths of choice and religious interpretation, and—even more importantly—revised definitions of what “maturity” translates to in a broader Christian perspective.
More than an ethereal psychological, philosophical, or spiritual analysis alone (though elements of all these approaches are present), Becoming Mature tackles the nitty-gritty of what maturity actually means:
In the Trinity we find:
• Diversity – different characteristics, identities and roles
• Oneness – a shared or common nature and identity
• Unity – voluntary accord between persons that are fully capable of independent action
• Intimacy – mutual vulnerability and authenticity
• Fellowship – mutual enjoyment of one another
This is our heritage. Maturity in our identity at this level looks like:
• We are different and we value and celebrate those differences.
• We are also the same, connected at a fundamental level, and we also celebrate that common
bond.
• We submit our individual wills to one another in service of the common good.
• We allow others to see our true selves and give and receive unconditional love in that reality
of nakedness of soul. (Remember Adam and Eve before the fall?)
• We genuinely enjoy being with each other and the shared bond of love.
All of this is fuelled by love.
Becoming Mature arrives at a point in time where many Christians may be re-examining their connections to Christ, God, and the messages their churches and leaders are delivering about these relationships.
Thinking Christian readers who would delve deeper into the heart of their beliefs, actions, reactions, and values will find much to enjoy about the approach Nicholls takes in Becoming Mature. It is highly recommended not just for Christian libraries and thinkers, but for reading groups and debate circles seeking to draw better connections between Christ, God, and how religious and moral values play out in the world.
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Bethlehem
Road:
Stories of
Immigration and Exile
Judy
Lev
She
Writes Press
978-1647429980
$17.99
Paperback/$12.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Bethlehem-Road-Stories-Immigration-Exile/dp/1647429986
Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile opens with a hard-hitting preface:
“I went up to Jerusalem in 1967 and stayed thirty-eight years.”
Bethlehem Road’s vivid stories are a product of these years and experiences through the eyes of twelve characters, most of whom wind up immigrating to Jerusalem in the three decades following the 1967 Six-Day War. The contrasts in their lives, expectations, perceptions, and worlds is impeccably done and proves so immersive that the book is hard to put down.
Take the story opening the collection, “Ingathering of an Exile.” The tale opens with a loving father’s letter to his nomadic son, who has chosen to travel to New Zealand, progressing through his memories of the ’67 war and its lasting impact as generations of experience are traversed and embraced.
Judy Lev excels at illustrating cross-cultural connections in a manner that brings Jews, Arabs, and all manner of immigrant experiences to life:
...he’s lucky because after the War of Independence, the state put him and his wife into an apartment on Bethlehem Road with some other family, and he tells me how Baka was Arab, but after the war the state filled it with Jews from all over, and how the state gave him a falafel shack as compensation for the eye and how he raised three kids on falafel balls, tahini, and pickles. The pickles his wife made.
Under her hand, Bethlehem Road’s diversity and peoples blend their lives, perspectives, experiences, and hopes and dreams in a manner both reflective and enlightening, yet powerfully commanding and challenging.
These individual lives draw together the identity crisis and adaptation processes facing immigrants of all ilk and color, layering their experiences with loss, diversity, and change. The manner employed to do so illustrates ways they grow both apart and together, united by hopes, dreams, the impact of violence, and the knowledge of being different.
From neighborhood personalities to military and social clashes, an explosion heard by the narrator broadens its impact to fuel the lives and stories of those who have lived with explosions, both emotional and physical, most all of their lives.
Atmospheric revelations bring these people and the narrator to life. More importantly, they each address some of the diverse reasons why an individual would want to be an immigrant and enter a new world, as captured in the very first story:
As I walked down Rehov Yehuda to Ulpan Etzion on Gad I kept thinking of the stories those people told me in the waiting room, about their explosions and my own. I thought about the people on Bethlehem Road. They were like so many actors on a stage, playing their parts every day. I was an observer, walking by, applauding this, struck by that. As I approached the ulpan, I looked down at my hands. No shaking. They smelled like sweet cheese. The idea crystalized. Everyone saw it but me, maybe because I was only twenty-one or maybe because of the tensions of the war, I don’t know. At that moment I wanted to come home, to Israel. I wanted to be a player, an actor on the stage, to take part in the miracle, not just watch from the sidelines. I knew Jerusalem, not Chicago, would be home. I knew my parents and my grandparents would be devastated, but my gut told me I wanted to stay in Israel. I wanted to join the victims struggling to be heroes. I wanted to build a new life in an old language. I wanted to forfeit the expected trajectory and to dive into the unknown.
Rich in its comparisons of diverse lives and astute in its portrait of peoples under siege in many different ways, Bethlehem Road is a top recommendation for all kinds of libraries and readers, from those interested in building collections of Jewish experience, literature, and history to others looking for literary blends of memoir and cultural insights into immigrant experiences.
It also goes without saying that book clubs will consider Bethlehem Road a terrific kick starter for discussions about Israel, Jewish lives, immigrant choices, experiences, and observations, and more.
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Beyond
Fear and
Suspicion
Vicky
Pinpin-Feinstein
Atmosphere
Press
979-8-89132-637-8
$30.99 paperback,
$9.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com
Beyond Fear and Suspicion: The New Americans in Little Ethiopia chronicles the experiences of immigrants, refugees, and different people who reside in Washington, DC’s suburb “Little Ethiopia.” It provides an appealing snapshot of the Ethiopian expat community’s social and political makeup.
Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein visited Little Ethiopia regularly between 2015-2018, gathering stories of its residents and immersing herself in the lives of people displaced from their homes and communities. As an immigrant and a person of color, Pinpin-Feinstein’s background gave her special insights into the issues facing this community. These emerge in the course of interviews about their lives in Ethiopia and in America.
Her book departs from many similar accounts of immigrant experience because “My intention was to write about immigrants far removed from my own racial and cultural origins.” She thus both learned about and documented their lives from an outsider’s vantage point that produced engrossing insights. The results are compelling cross-comparisons with her own culture’s experiences that could not have stemmed from a more singular source:
A considerable number in the Ethiopian diaspora came because they criticized their government and suffered because of it. One government after another squashed their rights to protest. One government after another did not provide adequate services like education and health. Ethiopians found to their dismay that no matter who ran their government, there was never any intention to fully serve the people. They believed the government was only for those who wanted to remain in power. I understood. Filipinos experienced roughly the same in their history.
As these stories emerge and converge, readers gain perspectives and understanding that benefits from this blended experience. No prior knowledge of either Ethiopia or immigrants is required in order to absorb this history and these backgrounds. What is necessary is an initial interest in how these arrivals to the U.S. made their journeys, experienced different political climates and struggles, and contribute their insights to the melting pot of American culture.
Many astute reflections come from these interviews and portraits to interest and engage not just individual readers, but reading groups, book clubs, and classrooms. The material will fuel discussion and debate for such audiences on many levels:
Without my prompting, Miruts shared what he thought of the Americans he met. He believed native-born Americans were friendly and outgoing, unlike the more reserved Habeshas. Before coming here, he thought Americans were not respectful of elderly people but changed his mind when he realized this wasn’t always the case. For all his positive impressions of Americans, there were also things that bothered him. He complained about how some were unsophisticated. The questions they asked about Africa or about Ethiopia surprised him. Or disappointed him. Miruts believed people living in the wealthiest nation in the world should have known more about what was going on in the rest of the world. Convinced that this wasn’t difficult, he pointed out the way information technology had seeped into every corner of American life. Surprised one day to be asked by an American if he spoke African, he didn’t know if the man understood there were many countries in Africa.
This accessible, involving collection is highly recommended for many audiences, from memoir readers and those interested in the combined experiences of immigrants to readers with a specific interest in Ethiopian communities and international political experiences.
Packed with discussions that touch upon the latest concerns of Americans and those who journey here, Beyond Fear and Suspicion seeks to alleviate misunderstanding via a discourse that gathers and contrasts experiences and ideals.
Beyond Fear and Suspicion’s discussions are important, compelling accounts that will engage and interest anyone concerned about fundamental American values, influences, and community lives:
...did those who came here shed all that they brought with them to qualify them to be real Americans? What did it even mean to be a real American?
Simply outstanding in its scope and presentation, Beyond Fear and Suspicion should be required reading for all Americans—now, more than ever.
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Brotherton’s
Travels: Memoirs
Greg
Boyd
Coyote
Arts
978-1-58775-054-0
$34.95
www.coyote-arts
Brotherton’s Travels: Memoirs will appeal to readers of memoirs, adventure travel, and philosophical reflection alike. It presents a thoroughly engrossing account steeped in facets that move from DIY asylums to paradise, creating sweeping stories that can’t help but be a draw.
Greg Boyd embeds his memoir with a lively, descriptive, confessional, experiential tone that draws from its opening lines:
Call me Brotherton. It’s how I sometimes think of myself. He’s my double, my alter-ego, a character who sometimes appears in my books. A silent film comedian, a sleight of hand huckster, a failed artist, a literary trickster, he surfaces under various guises and names: George Body, Edouard Jouvret, Aristide Nambuli, and, of course, Brotherton. Yet despite these fictions, Brotherton really does exist, albeit as a family history lost to deception several generations ago. It’s complicated, but what I’m trying to say is that while Brotherton is not my name, it could or even should have been.
The flowing story moves from this confessional to flashbacks about childhood, growth, literary education and connections, and various incarnations of other Greg Boyds which become associated with his life in unexpected ways.
The romp through his life and literary evolution moves into forays into the worlds of book publishing and teaching as he makes mistakes, chooses new paths in his career, and moves within and outside of civilization, both unintentionally and purposely:
Though dangerous to walk alone in the wilderness, it felt good to get away from civilization. Coming home again made me appreciate the love and companionship I sometimes took for granted, as well as the comfortable life I had.
The diversity of these journeys and self inspections enhance a free-flowing memoir format that moves back and forth in time, grasping different incarnations of Greg Boyd and his alter ego, Brotherton. Cross-cultural encounters prove particularly enlightening reading:
When people in Spain talk to me about the United States, they generally view it as a progressive and moderate society. Like most American citizens, Spaniards seem to know more about our myth-making than our actual history. Consequently, they don’t understand much about our politics. Though we hate to admit it, the United States of America has a history of institutionalized racism, intolerance based on twisted religious beliefs, gun violence, and political corruption fueled by greed and irresponsible, under-regulated capitalism. Those influences continue to deeply affect and undermine our society. Unless we face the past honestly and commit to change, the United States will never escape the toxic legacy of “The Lost Cause.”
His travels overlay marriage, medical conundrums, family-rearing, and more, immersing readers in different journeys through absurdity, cultural ironies, and counterculture encounters.
Libraries and readers appreciative of a wide-ranging journey that takes the time to explore how literary and social roots develop from unexpected encounters will appreciate the diversity of Brotherton’s Travels: Memoirs. It thoroughly reflects the challenges and conclusions of a soul raised in New York state who becomes immersed in 1970s Southern California culture.
Packed with eye-opening moments, Brotherton’s Travels: Memoirs is a highly recommended winner for libraries adding to travelogue and biography collections, as well as book clubs looking for vivid, exciting writing.
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City
Nature
Martha
Retallick
Western
Sky
Communications
9798986857701
$99.95
www.westernskycommunications.com
Martha Retallick has photographed, designed, and written City Nature: Tales of Ornery Plants, Opinionated Birds, Gardening Triumphs and Tragedies, and Capturing It All Through a Lens. The magnificent, oversized volume enlivens the issue of water harvesting and droughts, but this short descriptor doesn’t mean the book’s simply another conservation advisement.
City Nature is actually a work of art, a mandate for change, a passionate story of transformation, and a celebration of nature and water usage in landscaping. It documents Retallick’s personal endeavors to utilize, conserve, and direct water in better ways—away from a home’s foundation and into the garden and nature where it belongs.
This was no light feat. Her passive watering focus freed her from reliance on Arizona’s municipal water system in an area where 40 percent of water is traditionally used for landscaping.
Introductory insights pair Retallick’s personal life experiences, travels, adventures, and challenges with accounts of how she honed many values and goals from her journeying. These ultimately translated to near-revolutionary thinking about landscapes and conservation.
The oversized presentation’s top-quality full-page images does justice to such close-ups as her backyard fig tree, “The Mighty Figster,” and her ironwood tree’s flowers, which are captured in light and dark from her front yard display.
Botanists and gardeners will relish the fruits of labors, brought to life both by art and by Retallick’s creative written appreciation of the plants that fill her landscapes and life.
The pairing of intimate relationships with plants, photography, and landscape choices makes for a thoroughly engrossing, artistic celebration of plants and nature.
City Nature is very highly recommended for a wide range of library collections, from arts and photography schools to libraries interested in botany, landscaping and gardening, and the intersection of art and nature appreciation.
Perhaps nowhere else is this bond so thoroughly explored (and so compelling) as in City Nature, where every large-size, high-quality color image is displayed in a captivating manner that captures the abundance and life in a landscape that does not require a high infusion of city water to prove abundant and successful.
City Nature stands in a high-quality arena of its own. It is highly recommended for libraries interested in top-notch artistry, conservation issues, discussions of Arizona nature, water, and landscape challenges, and botany.
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Framed:
A
Villain's Perspective on
Social Media
Tim
O'Hearn
Luscious
Ventures
LLC
979-8-9924681-1-3
$14.99
Paperback/$1.99 eBook
Website:https://www.tjohearn.com/links/
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DW2X8YSK
Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media is highly opinionated. Don’t expect any punches to be pulled as Tim O’Hearn tackles the heady subject of social media and the internet, juxtaposing candid observations with an overlay of wry humor to soften the blows.
His delightful approach to examining and profiling rule-breakers, influencers, media personalities, and marketing theories runs from exposés of deepfake operations to probes of familiar social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and others involved in social manipulation and marketing.
The first chapter is a confessional that draws reader attention from its first admissions:
I
bought
my first batch of fake
followers in 2012. Around that time, I decided to become a software
engineer. Over the past ten years, my code, methodologies, and
business ventures have been responsible for hundreds of millions of
illicit automated engagements on Instagram.
This lends authority to O'Hearn’s inspections as one of the instigators and leaders in the realm he analyzes, making Framed a notable standout from the beginning, as compared with “outsider” discourses on social media operations and topics.
Readers enjoy a deep dive into internet addictions, apps, Big Tech, and the elements that constitute a villain in a cyberworld environment where everything seems both allowable and achievable.
The challenge of creating such an exposé as this is readily admitted from the start:
The villains and those generating massive revenue from services built on top of social media platforms have no incentive to talk. One scoundrel responded to an interview request with, “I'm good bro, hope the launch goes well.”
It helps that O'Hearn has “been the puppeteer as well as the puppet,” is willing to tell all, and thus unfolds an insider’s perspective as well as assessments which reveal underlying influences on social media operations, creations, and objectives.
Chapters are thoroughly engaging, pairing his quirky sense of humor with serious experiences and examinations that blend personal experience with bigger picture thinking. In the interests of making this discourse accessible to a wider audience, O’Hearn narrows his focus to irony and the special circumstances of Instagram and its “platform misbehavior.”
This allows readers to delve deeply into one popular social media site’s operations, using it as an example of the kinds of villainy that likely occurs on other platforms, as well.
From algorithms and outright scams to underlying perceptions affecting user results, O’Hearn creates a history and memoir that is thoroughly involving and forces tech users (i.e. all readers) to think:
Search engines may be the ultimate reflection of credence in things perceived as difficult to build. They are respected, and their results are rarely questioned because it’s mind-boggling to think they could be wrong.
Libraries and readers seeking vivid, engaging explorations of high tech ironies, oddities, history, and experience will want to place Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media at the top of their reading lists.
Its attention to specific circumstances only an insider could know, its focus on moral, ethical, and business quandaries buffeting social media systems, and its exposure of creator intention and user experience force readers to think about delightful and frightening issues, making it a special recommendation for book clubs and social issues classrooms, as well as general-interest readers.
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A
Guide to Jazz in
Japan
Michael
Pronko
Raked
Gravel Press
978-1942410379
$19.99
Paperback/$4.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Jazz-Japan-Michael-Pronko/dp/B0F5NJDLX2
A Guide to Jazz in Japan explores the vibrant jazz scene in Japan, reviewing over forty clubs and hundreds of musicians to capture the influences, history, nuances, and atmosphere of jazz music in Japan.
While some may think this guide would be perfect for destination travelers who love jazz (and, it is!), a bonus lies in how Michael Pronko weaves jazz notes with an overall history of music culture in Japan to create observations and insights unavailable elsewhere.
One example lies in the contrasts between neighborhood jazz clubs which are mainstays of the Tokyo and Yokohama jazz scene and more corporate, business atmospheres whose jazz is equally powerful but presented quite differently.
Pronko’s personal love of his subject is evident in how he describes these experiences in a manner that brings to life not just the jazz music, but the atmosphere purposely cultivated to support and present it:
These small clubs are usually run by jazz fanatics, so they give top priority to the music, but also to providing an intimate human experience with the music. No club owner is in it for the money, but these neighborhood clubs are hives of friendship, interaction, and devotion to music. They are clubs in the sense of being a collection of like-minded individuals, as much as a space to hear music.
Contrast this with the section on ‘Corporate-International’ clubs and how they achieve their goals of presenting top-quality jazz music under very different conditions:
The clubs in this section have nothing particularly Japanese about them. You can reserve, order, and pay in English. Their websites are translated perfectly into English. If you were blindfolded and dropped into one of them, you wouldn’t know what country you were in. That sounds critical, but because of their large scale and corporate stature, they bring in world-class music and present it in near-perfect conditions. You can see most of their monthly lineup at any other similar club in any city around the world. And yet, it still feels Japanese.
Readers receive more than a travel guide’s usual outline of places to go and things to see. Through Pronko’s eyes, they get to experience the options and shifting atmospheres of Japan’s jazz scene in an intimate, revealing way that eludes most traditional music guides.
Another plus lies in how Pronko covers the changing history of these areas and jazz music presentation in general, weaving these observations into the overall jazz and cultural scene in a way that will satisfy historians as well as those seeking a music guidebook:
When Japan’s economy moved into the so-called bubble years of the 1980s, jazz clubs were often a place for socializing in the evenings. With land prices and the stock market soaring, company expense accounts were generous, and salarymen used them for entertaining clients, often lavishly. Living here and going to hear jazz in the late 1980s, I was always a bit startled by salarymen spending their evenings at jazz clubs. Drinks flowed freely, and that was after dinner and before more drinks before catching the last train home. Jazz clubs proliferated, with many offering a “bottle keep” system, where customers could buy a bottle of whiskey from the club, write their name on it, and then buy ice and mixers each time they came. That kept customers coming back and kept the jazz clubs full.
The result goes beyond suggesting clubs and venues to visit. It integrates jazz music into Japanese culture so seamlessly that jazz aficionados who must remain at home will still feel and enjoy the currents and climates of Japan as it represents and experiences music.
Filled with the specific places and their access information that makes for a perfect guidebook and paired with the cultural insights of how jazz and Japan interact to create engrossingly creative music, A Guide to Jazz in Japan is very highly recommended.
It will reach libraries seeking Japanese travel guides and jazz music explorations, patrons and readers looking for both destination and armchair reads, and historians interested in absorbing the nuances of jazz over the decades of its appearance in and support by Japanese culture.
Riveting, personal, informative, and practical, A Guide to Jazz in Japan is everything a guidebook, history, and music celebration should be.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
The
Hypomanic
Toolbox
Todd
Hagopian
EBITDA
Publishing
979-8-9926072-0-8
$29.99
Hardcover
http://books.hypomanictoolbox.com/thehypomanictoolbox/dp/B0F5NJDLX2
The Hypomanic Toolbox: A Business Parable to Revolutionize Your Business Using Bipolar-Inspired Strategies belongs in any library and on the reading lists of those who would intersect bipolar psychology with business pursuits. Sound like a stretch? Surprisingly, it’s not. It’s a logical dovetailing of strengths that result in a truly revolutionary approach to redefining business strategies and success.
Todd Hagopian’s own eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder allowed him to make sense of the success-and-failure ups and downs of his business and personal life, but the meat of his discovery lies in progressive adjustments to decision-making based on this new knowledge.
Why should his epiphany prove so attractive to business readers? Because Hagopian didn’t just accept and live with a bipolar diagnosis ... he used it to develop a unique formula for success that others need to know about and consider:
The Hypomanic Toolbox is for anyone who’s ever felt like they had to choose between success and sanity. It’s for the high-achievers, the dreamers, and the innovators who want to push their limits without pushing themselves over the edge. It’s for people who want to get more done in less time so they can leave their peer group in the dust. It’s for those who believe, as I do, that with the right tools, we can turn our greatest challenges into our greatest strengths.
Chapters review his creation, examining the tools in his tool kit as they present case history examples of their applications and circumstances that indicate their use ... but they don’t employ the usual staid, methodical approach of nonfiction.
Hagopian presents these applications through the business confrontations and challenges of fictional character Jack Whelan, president of a struggling shopping cart manufacturing company who is “smart, hardworking, and dedicated, but he’s running out of ideas and time.”
When Jack encounters self-made billionaire Eugene Spark, who has bipolar disorder, he enjoys a new opportunity to revitalize his business and life approach through the tools Spark has applied to his own success.
Business novels offer readers a powerful opportunity to learn new, applied business principles while becoming absorbed in fictional characters and turns of events based on real-world experience.
This approach makes for a much more readable, hard-hitting book that packs in opportunities for reflection and better understanding of new business tools while pairing them with the engrossing story of one man’s challenges and transformation:
“This is brilliant,” Sarah said, her earlier stress melting away. “It solves the immediate problem and sets us up for a stronger long-term relationship with MegaMart. I love it.”
Jack nodded, feeling a surge of pride in his team’s ability to turn a challenge into an opportunity. “Excellent. Sarah, I want you and Claire to work together on this. Develop a comprehensive proposal for MegaMart. Let’s turn this potential loss into a big win. In the interim, I approve keeping their cart SKU alive while we complete the negotiation.”
Libraries seeking to expand their business novel collection with examples of new ideas and how they can change both individuals and businesses will welcome the opportunity to add The Hypomanic Toolbox to their collections, highly recommending it to entrepreneurs seeking something compellingly different.
Between its thought-provoking progression, involving characters, business challenges based on real-world experience, and insights on different successes, The Hypomanic Toolbox is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It delivers a potentially complex series of insights in a form that is not just educational, but thoroughly engrossing.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Iconoclast;
or,
the Death and
Resurrection of Lazarus Keaton
Dave
Walsh
Powerbomb
Press
9798218610760
$7.99 ebook, $21.99
paperback
Website:
https://dvewlsh.com
Ordering:
https://links.dvewlsh.info/oyl6dzs9v9
Iconoclast; or, the Death and Resurrection of Lazarus Keaton will attract readers of cyberpunk, mystery, and thriller stories with a crossover title difficult to neatly peg and satisfyingly complex in its plot.
These genre strengths emerge from the story’s opening lines:
There was something perverse about riding the rails of the magtrain across the Atlantic on the way to investigate a derailment mass casualty incident. It was downright voyeuristic, and Lazarus couldn’t help but be unsettled while he shifted in his comfortable vat-grown leather seat and gazed out the window while the train whipped along the tracks.
Lazarus is the lead field investigator of a large-scale disaster—a glorified futuristic claims adjustor for a company that uploads consciousness into a digital afterlife. His latest mission is to investigate a deadly train crash, but his encounter with a hair dresser whose last wish was to be granted sainthood threatens him with unwanted attention from the Vatican and his bosses, who realize that his latest mission should be suppressed, not promoted.
Unfortunately, Lazarus is not just in over his head, but is sufficiently intrigued to forge ahead despite obstacles and encouragements to set aside his latest assignment.
Joining forces with a local detective only introduces more conundrums and mystery as the two become embroiled in a plot that shakes the foundations of their world.
Readers may not anticipate the wry humor which is injected into this futuristic dilemma, but it emerges at unexpected moments to provoke laughter and introduce comic relief:
“Rico, I don’t know what any of this means and I think that I may be in trouble. Did you know that I got called into a meeting with Eeekerpkerret?”
“Who?”
“One of our executives, really high up on the ladder, he’s… he’s…” He leaned back in and cupped his hands around his mouth, “a dolphin.”
Delightful irony permeates a tale that revolves around intrigue, difficult decisions, issues of control and perception, and contrasts between those who have and those who do not:
“The difference between you and me, kid, is that you get to feel bad about that. I get to feel bad about having nothing.” There was no way to candy coat it, as bad as he felt for the kid, he’d never know the struggles Bodie went through.
Various characters reflect on aspects of Lazarus’s character. These also introduce satisfying reflections and dilemmas into the story, expanding Lazarus’s psyche through different encounters:
At the heart of the matter, Lazarus was simply an overgrown child, something she alternated between wanting to destroy and shatter his fragile view of reality or let him live gleefully unaware of how ugly everything was. Although Silvia felt pangs of guilt for looking down upon him, this childlike wonder was dangerous when it went this far.
Even death won’t halt his quest for truth ... or its impact on the world.
Dave Walsh creates a vivid, engrossing story in Iconoclast, crafting a world close to the dilemmas and shifting values of modern times.
With so many subplots, characters, and threads of discovery, the story may sound overly complex. But Walsh’s attention to action-packed scenes, psychological and technological revelations, and surprises many readers won’t see coming keeps the tale fast-paced, easily understandable, and hard to put down.
Libraries seeking a bridge between mystery’s problem-solving focus, futuristic technology’s allure and challenges, and the moral and ethical dilemmas of characters on the cusp of psychological revelation will find Iconoclast easy to recommend to a wide audience.
Filled with moments of discovery and underlying questions about feelings and what it means to be alive, Iconoclast is a powerful story for modern times. It uncovers the goodness in adversity and angst and introduces a powerful story of genetic experiments, survival tactics, and what it means to be (and stay) human.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Love
&
Murder
Katie
Christine
Bishop
Black
Heron Press
978-1936364466
$18.99
Paperback/$14.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Murder-Katie-Christine-Bishop/dp/1936364468
Why would a murder story appeal to fantasy readers? When it’s not about murder ... at least, not in the usual sense.
Murder and Love are two cats whose intelligence allows them to comment upon the world and the human condition. Their differences and connections, described in the opening lines of the story, also reveal powerfully atmospheric writing:
She was black, and he, an indecisive tawny combination of taupe and gray with a few wispy white strands in between. Each was what the other was not; each was what the other wanted to be. Regardless, they were one and the same—a seamless pair of pampered house haunts indebted to their inscrutable feline forms.
The interplay of emotion and philosophy is absolutely delightful:
And there it was: love and murder.
It was the beginning—their beginning. It was how they’d come to know their world. And he, Murder, hated it, detested the slightest thought of it, railed at what it meant, seethed about how it made him feel.
But, this is more than a story of Love, Murder, or mystery. It probes the impulses of cats, people, and the murky moral waters which lie beneath behaviors and their outcomes, all the while injecting vivid scenes with thought-provoking life. This translates to scenarios which aren’t what one might initially think:
The old woman fell to her knees at the scene of the massacre, crying and holding the little girl’s severed head in her hands. “You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!”
As Orange Devil, the Beater, and other animals make their appearances, Katie Christine Bishop crafts a tale that is not quite a cat story, most decidedly not just about adversity, and which will delight readers with its noir atmosphere and playful attention to the predicaments of both “kept cats” and those who live on the streets and outdoors.
At any given point, readers may pause their pursuit of Love & Murder for deeper reflections about human impacts on animals and life, the ulterior motives of both, and battles in which the war has already been decided and won.
“If we live in the shadows,” Murder’s lips mouthed his own words as she spoke them, “how long until we too are shadows?”
Libraries and readers looking for literary delights that purportedly present sci-fi scenarios from animal perspectives, but enlarge the life-viewing platform to embrace deeper philosophical, social, and moral issues will find Love & Murder compelling, rich, and hard to put down. It is highly recommended for reading groups seeking novels replete with deep connections and reflections, as well as individuals seeking vivid stories of survival that operates on many levels.
Uplifting, engrossing, and deserving of slow reading (if only because the alluring story must eventually, sadly, conclude) Love & Murder is a top recommendation that both defies pat categorization and tantalizes the heart and soul.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Our
Love Affair
With Commercial Real
Estate
Charles
Feitel
Atmosphere
Press
979-8-89132-634-7
$13.99
pb, $22.99
hc, $7.99 ebook
www.atmospherepress.com
Our Love Affair With Commercial Real Estate: How to Be Successful differs from the usual investment advice guide in that it narrows its focus to real estate opportunities that hold special attractions often missed in home-oriented investment approaches.
The world of commercial buying, selling, and leasing is not for the casual home flipper. These tips on changing one’s career into a focus on commercial real estate assume that readers hold more than a casual interest in the subject.
That said, this audience rarely receives in-depth surveys of the ins and outs (and pitfalls) of commercial investing, much less a candid book that holds the feel of a “love affair” with commercial investing.
Enthusiasm and practicality blend in Our Love Affair With Commercial Real Estate in a manner designed to both attract excitement and attention and impart the basic pros and cons of a different approach to real estate.
Chapters address a myriad of subjects, from how to build and utilize key online platforms and apps to creating community relationships via participation on committees, associations with nonprofits, and more. Real estate agents may initially balk at the involvement level of some of this advice, but as Charles Feitel notes:
... it’s essential to contribute to your industry, especially in your local market.
Tips also include psychological approaches and self-assessments which are key to commercial real estate connections and success:
Personal responsibility is crucial for achieving your personal and professional success. It involves discipline, hard work, and cultivating positive habits and relationships.
Pro Tip: When you hold yourself accountable, you are more likely to stay committed to your goals, face challenges head-on, and persist through setbacks.
The wide-ranging nature of Charles Feitel’s approach embraces creativity and innovation on levels that will prove exciting to neo-professionals and those already used to the world of non-commercial real estate, offering many exciting options and reflections.
It’s a rare pleasure to see a real estate book so personally enthusiastic about and engaged in its subject. This is why Our Love Affair With Commercial Real Estate is a standout, why it should be in any library where real estate topics and investments are of interest, and also why it should be on the reading list of anyone who would delve into a career that promises more than monetary riches alone.
Well-written, packed with professional insights, and savvy about the pros and cons of the commercial real estate world, Our Love Affair With Commercial Real Estate is a winning, top recommendation for a wide audience.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
The
Savagery of
Man: Operation
Homecoming
Nikki
Yanu Kanati
and Mark McMillan
Black
Bear Lucky
Hunter Publishing
978-0-9838179-9-4
$2.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Savagery-Man-Operation-Homecoming-ebook/dp/B0F1P71VC8
The Savagery of Man: Operation Homecoming represents an unusual mix of thriller and sci-fi, providing thoroughly engrossing, heady reading to readers who like realistic scenarios of political overtones with just a touch of sci-fi influence.
A prologue referencing Odysseus moves quickly into 1954 Ethiopia, where an archaeologist who is running out of money investigates rumors of a prehistoric-age skull residing in some ruins. What he uncovers will change the world.
Events play out on the world’s political stage as characters emerge with special interests and perspectives to impact a fractured, changing global political scene. In this futuristic story, America has been divided by a second civil war, Russia’s dictatorship is overthrown and the nation carved up between oligarchs, and China melts down after America defaults on its debts.
Spies, assassins, conquests, and confrontations mark the evolution of political states and characters as the story builds thought-provoking scenarios and dialogue, enhancing the plot’s tension:
“Myth or legend, who can say when time distorts what is real from what is not? The President has asked me to help him destroy the suitors circling our country like vultures, people who want to pick her bones clean thinking the king is dead. Welcome to flying saucers and slaughtering suitors Marine.”
“Good to know the mission, Doss. I’m dying to know, is Mother human or AI or something in between?”
Freelance agent Max Doss is not only ensnared in an arms race, but a bid for alien technology whose recovery will either make or break this vastly revised world.
Of special note are descriptions of power plays, motivations for assuming command and control, and the delicate dance and interplays between leading characters who analyze their adversaries and disparate motivations for changing the world:
“...he has the power to whip the mob into a frenzy with promises of peace and a good life for all. Still, in so many words, he intends to rule the world. He claims Allah has shown him the way to accomplish his holy mission here on earth and has showered him with gifts from the heavens. Unlike Hitler, he appears rational and sane. He’s quite good-looking. He comes across as likable and charming.”
Discussions of power, intention, and outcome mark a heady blend of action and reflection, keeping The Savagery of Man: Operation Homecoming readers on their toes and thoroughly engaged in shifting outcomes.
Underlying these descriptions of joint ventures, war and peace, and new leaders who spring up seemingly from nowhere is a solid attention to details both political and strategic. This will delight those who enjoy realistic blends of futuristic influences and nonstop action.
Libraries that choose The Savagery of Man: Operation Homecoming will thus wish to highly recommend its crossover plot to both thriller readers and sci-fi audiences interested in near-future political calamity and change.
Book clubs will see excitement from its unexpected possibilities and descriptions, which foster discussions about humanity, brutality, and the lasting effects of choices made on different battlefield fronts that probe the foundations of political and social choices.
Thought-provoking, complex, and action-packed, The Savagery of Man: Operation Homecoming is a thoroughly engrossing inspection of humanity’s dance between war and peace and the types of decisions that either build or destroy empires.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Taking
the Stairs
& Liking It
Lauren
Speeth, PhD
Elfenworks
Productions, LLC
979-8-9895846-2-8
$17.95
https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Stairs-Liking-Seven-Amazing/dp/B0F6HV4JX1
Taking the Stairs & Liking It: Seven Steps to an Amazing Life is highly recommended, inspirational reading for those seeking a blueprint filled with examples on not only how to lead a more purposeful life (at any age), but are interested in revamping their vocational, cultural, psychological, and spiritual focuses. So, of necessity, it’s the reader actively engaged in making change who will choose this book and benefit from its riches.
Dr. Lauren Speeth provides her blueprint in a format that is much more accessible, enlightening, and inspirational than most, and opens with a surprise discourse with former President Carter which helped her cement seven basic elements to his success which could translate to equal benefits for herself and all her readers.
These notes included clarifying vision and honing skills, practicing partnership and sharing credit, gathering feedback and staying the course in any endeavor. The foundation created for her program works well under all kinds of conditions, as her book outlines through many examples of “trials to trailblazing”:
I knew one drug abuse counselor who had been through a hellish addiction-to-recovery journey. This had given her the wisdom to see through the self-delusions and lies told by the addicts in her programs, and the knowledge and credibility to help them along their paths to sobriety. Each of us goes through trials. Once we survive these hardships, we may be left feeling a little bit wounded, a little bit broken. This very brokenness can be what allows a glimmer of light to seep through, and we have the option to become wounded healers, sharing that light with others.
All the information here is designed to promote well-being not just in oneself, but throughout life. This heady proposition takes on very achievable elements as she breaks down the effort into digestible, understandable, and even exciting advice paired with examples from real life.
Speeth also outlines the bigger picture in adopting these values and pathways:
Imagine a town mayor publicly acknowledging a beautification society member for initiating a garbage removal project. The honoree will not only feel acknowledged but also be motivated to step up involvement in future projects. Credit-sharing advances the vision.
Today, more than ever, readers need these reminders of how to cultivate a bigger picture and vision of their present and future than ever before.
That’s why Taking the Stairs & Liking It is especially recommended as a panacea for self-centered focuses and negative thinking. Libraries that choose it will find this book a top recommendation for not just book clubs, but reading groups focused on a myriad of success-oriented topics, from vocational and career meetups to those focused on self-improvement or worldview adjustment.
Specific in its examples, worldly in its practical applications and observations, and not only understandable but achievable, Taking the Stairs & Liking It promotes a mindset that, if followed, will ultimately improve not just self, attitude, and personal circles, but can ripple out into the world. That’s a big picture—and the “how to” component outlined here is key to its realization.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Walking
With
Awareness
Timothy
Shuttle
and Rose Bell
Shuttle
&
Bell
979-8-9928147-0-5
$9.99
eBook/$15.95 Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7NYHYH1
Walking With Awareness: A Dad and Daughter Hike the Appalachian Trail and Process an Adolescence Derailed by Addiction follows a father and daughter’s emotional connection in journey which solidifies many things between them. It serves as both an inspiration for other parents struggling with wayward children and as a road map for growth, awareness, and enlightenment, unfolding a candid sense of self-reflection delivered with some unexpected fun.
This thread of humor emerges throughout Timothy Shuttle’s reflections:
“You got this, Dad. Are you still glad Uncle John didn’t kill us on the way here?”
“Well, if he did, at least we wouldn’t be so exhausted.”
It instills both a sense of comic relief and a serves as a satisfyingly unexpected juxtaposition to more serious reflections about choices, consequences, and life encounters which are explored during the course of this life-changing joint expedition:
I have to imagine that most of the people on the Trail are naturally introverted and like their alone time, but after a while I think we all crave connection. We saw it on the Trail with the excitement of human conversation after days of silence and the mere sight of a living, moving creature among the solitary trees and rocks. I saw it in my daughter who continually sent herself back to the hospital, at the risk of intentional death, to connect and reconnect with peers when doing so on the outside was difficult. I have learned that we may need food, water, and shelter to survive. But we need connection to thrive. And what an ironic place for that knowledge to be absorbed, I thought.
Parents seeking to grasp the possibilities of a relationship-altering journey will live these vivid moments of reconnection and growth through reflective moments that Appalachian Trail encounters impart:
“The two biggest fears in life – not having enough and not being enough. The desire to grow our being is undeniable. There is something inside of all of us that wants to grow. We can ignore it, push it aside and bury it, but we will rot from the inside out until we become aware of its presence. And when we do, we begin to decide differently. Life then begins to open up; we see things in a new light and life becomes life magical. Not easy, but magical, kind of like the Grayson Highlands.”
I
paused
and then added, “And
you don’t even need mushrooms.”
Black
and white
photos capture the
ups and downs of Trail experience and life, while Shuttle’s
opportunities to speak with his daughter from the foundation of a
shared experience and effort provides enlightening moments that all
parents seeking such a connection with their adult child will find
inspirational and hopeful.
Even more notable are passages that propel readers into their own internal journeys of relationship examination and life values where bonds are made, changed, and broken by departures in life and new experiences.
Libraries and readers seeking a novel form of Appalachian Trail experience that shares a father and daughter’s physical and mental growth will welcome the lessons embedded in Walking With Awareness. They give cause for hope and offer many insights suitable for parenting groups, outdoors enthusiasts, and book club discussions.
Compelling both for its deep psychological and philosophical observations as well as for probing the process by which a father and adult daughter join their lives, Walking With Awareness is intimate, revealing, and an adventure in discovery that covers far more than the physical rigor of walking the Trail.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Where
Have My
Other Mummy and Daddy
Gone
Nigel
Utton
Atmosphere
Press
979-8-89132-638-5
$13.99
pb, $7.99
ebook, $22.99 hc
www.atmospherepress.com
Where Have My Other Mummy and Daddy Gone is both a memoir and a study in past-life regression. It chronicles a journey which began when Nigel Utton’s son asked: "Where have my other mummy and daddy gone?"
His pursuit of answers sent Utton on a challenging voyage of discovery that wound through such diverse subjects as plant medicine, family abuse, ancient Egypt, medical conundrums, and more.
Readers who join Utton on this search for insight and truth will find startling contrasts between his original intentions in undertaking a past life regression mission and insights which emerge in unexpected ways:
At the start of the ceremony we went around the circle before the Ayahuasca was given, I said that surrender was my purpose for being there. After the usual silence, then prayers, Ayahuasca began to reveal herself. For the first time I was aware that I was talking to an actual being. She had no physical form and communicated telepathically. She asked me my intention and I stated that it was to learn to surrender. She said, “No, it isn’t. You want to know in what ways you were sexually abused.” Who was I to argue? I agreed and said I did want to know that. She said, “Are you sure?” I could see no reason not to be, after all I had been working on it for thirty years of counselling.
As he embraces philosophical, spiritual, and psychological alternatives and new truths, Utton comes to guide others’ sessions, learning how to extract the nuggets of information, insight, and past influence that lead to better recovery, healing, and transformation.
Why care about past life regression? Anyone interested in probing past influence and life decisions will find these outcomes of special interest:
I went into the life of Konrad Schäfer agreeing that I would live through the second world war as a person who would inflict pain and suffering – even murder – on large numbers of other humans. I went into that life deliberately so that I would learn what it was like. I knew that when that life had finished I would have to pay back the karma of causing that much suffering and that I would have to bear equal pain in my subsequent life. It was all part of the plan. Fortunately, I came out of that learning with a clear knowledge that unconditional love is far better for all concerned than inflicting suffering and pain. Just as we need to know darkness to see the light, so, in our past lives we have given and received pain in order to truly know the need for forgiveness and unconditional love.
Libraries that seek books able to clearly draw connections between past life regression therapy and its therapeutic results will find Where Have My Other Mummy and Daddy Gone a standout—particularly because the author’s background and profession lends thought-provoking analysis to the experience that isn’t present in competing books on the subject.
Readers will find Where Have My Other Mummy and Daddy Gone vivid, thoroughly engrossing, and especially important in connecting the dots between past lives and present-day choices and outcomes.
The results of many of these connections will also drive book club discussion groups with spirited topics about life’s impact and the meaning of its experiences:
I am increasingly allowing myself to feel the joy of existence in this earthly realm. Patterns creep back in to pollute my mind with distress, and certain situations re-stimulate old hurts and trigger me. But then I remember the words of Ram Dass – “this too shall pass.”
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
The
Wonder Effect
Adam
Haston
Izzard
Ink
Publishing
978-1-64228-113-2
$22.95
Paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.izzardink.com
The Wonder Effect: An Adventurous Guide for Igniting Your Passions and Pursuing Your Calling is a guide to personal transformation that requires only a reader’s enthusiasm for making change to prove successful.
Adam Haston pairs real-life stories with insights into what makes such changes possible. He tackles the bigger, harder questions of what crushes ambition and spirit and avenues for successful transformation with a clear vision of considering not just new possibilities, but the harsh realities of what stifles dreams.
A tantalizing piece of insight appears early on to propel readers into the idea of the wellsprings of both positivity and negativity:
We live in a world that dispenses information like candy, except we’ve been largely exposed to false information and have suffered for it. It’s time to break free and pursue our potential.
Haston also reinforces the reason why his examination of “The Wonder Effect” offers important keys to making such changes:
Being open-minded is an excellent start to crushing false idols and getting to know ourselves, but it is not enough. In order to achieve success, you need to become wonder-minded—a central tenet of The Wonder Effect.
Readers might think that being open to new opportunities would be enough, but Haston’s focus on being wonder-minded is different. Much of the book defines the novel approaches to cultivating this state of mind and approach to life, while the rest displays the results of wonder-minded efforts, discussing how these appear and play out in different ways.
Unlike many a self-help title which promotes positivity and attitude change, The Wonder Effect goes a step further in cultivating the kinds of observations and reactions that encourage adaptation, address limiting belief systems or scheduling requirements, and influence what one’s personal life compass identifies as being valuable.
Another difference in Haston’s approach lies in how it addresses the inherent definition of happiness, life satisfaction, and influential forces at work in individual choice and perception. All these features tie into The Wonder Effect in ways that illustrate new insights about growing skills, talents, and experiences.
Libraries and readers interested in actionable courses that clearly exemplify the types of experiences that support bodily, emotional, and intellectual transformation will welcome the specific examples that support philosophy in The Wonder Effect.
Quite simply, Haston provides a recipe for change that’s designed to re-inject a sense of uplifting wonder into daily living and aspirations:
Wonder-minded people go beyond the curiosity of openmindedness by also behaving with optimism and creativity. With curiosity, creativity, and optimism, you create connections between things that may not have obvious connections and, in so doing, you and the world are given the capacity to uncover new things. Being wonder-minded is nothing short of making new discoveries about yourself and the world.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Not
Lucille
Mike
Steele
Creative
James
Media
978-1-956183-04-7
$14.99
Paperback/$5.99 eBook
www.creativejamesmedia.com
Ten-year-old Lucille Contento suffers in school from being loud, expressive, and disruptive ... so say her teachers. The only place she can feel normal is at the nearby Trenton Academy for the Deaf, which she visits in secret whenever she can. There, she meets lonely deaf girl Florence, who can’t speak at all. A new language must develop between them, if they are to be friends.
And so Lucy sets aside mannerisms that land her in constant trouble at school for a greater cause, which involves circumventing her family’s poverty to earn money to meet an impossible goal.
Mike Steele creates young Lucy with surprising emotional connection and care, transmitting her many concerns to middle grade readers who will come to see the world and its challenges through her eyes.
Whether he’s outlining Lucy’s confrontation with older school bullies or developing friendships, young readers will find Lucy evocative and colorful, her experiences realistic, and the dialogues surrounding her to be thoroughly involving:
Ann yanked the back of Lucy’s special occasion dress. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “We’ll be late.”
“Go on,” the mammoth boy chimed in. “And take big steps with those short legs.”
The whole herd laughed. They sounded like a small zoo.
Wry humor offsets the very serious subjects of family poverty and secrets, Italian immigrant challenges and experiences, and interactions between Lucy and her caring parents:
“Don’t run in the house,” her mother hollered. “If you knock me unconscious, who’s going to clean up after everyone?”
All these elements drive a story in which Lucy discovers more to her life than school angst or family concerns. Readers will appreciate how Steele dips into Lucy’s world, extracting nuggets of wisdom, revelation, and ideals that surround not only everyday behavior, but kids that operate on the spectrum. Kids like Lucy.
Libraries adding appealing stories for their middle grade book collections will find Not Lucille compelling on many levels. It also will prove appropriate for young reader classroom and book club discussions about kids on the spectrum who face daily life at school and home with spunk and determination.
Positive, problem-solving efforts on Lucy’s part make her story a standout for kids interested in better understanding peers who do not quite fit into normal behaviors and definitions, but who make their memorable marks on their world.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
The
Tale of Mr.
Crocodile Takes Tea
Lance
Lee
LWL
Books
979-8218306144
$31.50
Hardcover/$17.95
Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Crocodile-Takes-fable-children-parents/dp/B0F12VK8BB
Author Lance Lee and illustrator Cecilia Woods create a beautifully rendered, appealing story in The Tale of Mr. Crocodile Takes Tea, the fun survey of a crocodile that enjoys a High Tea, complete with sandwiches and cream scones.
It’s not just the tea which is a surprising appeal to a croc ... it’s the company. A Great White Hunter sets aside his passion for a refined social event that takes place not in England, but on the edge of an African village.
These delightful, surprising refinements add to the story of an event during which an astonished Hunter observes the crocodile, Sandbank, helping villagers. Village life is surprisingly undisturbed by the crocodiles who reside in the waters beside them.
One day Sandbank (soon Mr. Crocodile) decides that “Eating, swimming, eating; there must be more!”
Boredom changes everything. New revelations come to light, such as the thought that a Crocodile is “...a person, too.” As a Person, they are subject to the same limits as civilized humans.
Lance Lee creates a winning story in which crocodiles and people learn not just to live alongside one another, but to understand and accept their differences.
This tale is about more than sharing tea—it’s about sharing values and respect. These basic lessons about not harming others move between human and croc worlds as the story expands beyond its African village setting.
All kinds of adventures are delivered with moral insights as the traveling croc points out that, if they are to be respected, the killing must stop. After all, if this croc is dressed and talking and taking tea, crocs MUST be Persons!
Elementary-level libraries seeking vivid picture book stories that lend nicely to read-aloud and group discussion will relish the educational opportunities packed into The Tale of Mr. Crocodile Takes Tea.
Fears are addressed through thought-provoking encounters:
“Are people safe around you?” asked Raphael.
“Am I safe around you,” asked Mr. Crocodile, “or do you see me as shoes and bags and belts and leather jackets?” he rumbled.
Whimsical and delightfully thought-provoking, The Tale of Mr. Crocodile Takes Tea’s winning reflections in a delightful series of encounters translate to effective, hard-hitting, and fun family and reading group enjoyment.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index
Whisper
of Fate
Molly
Crowe
Yorkshire
Publishing
978-1960810991
$19.99 Paperback
www.YorkshirePublishing.com
Whisper of Fate, Book 2 in the ‘Sol Defenders’ series, continues the story begun in Shadow of Hope and is highly recommended for teens and young adults interested in a fantasy that explores a young woman’s expanding world.
Here, Kalista is stepping up to become Queen of her kingdom. She faces assassins, dangerous missions, and forces well beyond her control despite the fact that the Spirits and two young men who love her stand by her side.
From its opening lines, vivid first-person observations bring Kalista to life from the perspective of General Luke, who has stood beside her through thick and thin:
It was a terrible day for a funeral, but I suppose that’s what he deserved...I hoped my face looked sad instead of how I truly felt. Surely no one would suspect my anguish was anything but grief. I hoped they wouldn’t see the anger underneath the surface of my stoic facade. He had betrayed me. Betrayed the queen. And now she was honoring him.
Questions about heroes and their perceptions, family ties, and loyalty emerge within the first few paragraphs as a funeral, the last of the post-attack results, progresses. This builds background for newcomers while giving prior fans a delightful foundation for understanding character quandaries and reactions.
The love triangle between Kalista, assassin Raine, and Luke plays out as political events buffet their relationships. Molly Crowe is especially adept at using dialogue to cement dilemmas and dances which evolve between the three characters:
He put up his hand to stop me. “It’s fine, Kalista. You probably want me to get dressed, too. Wouldn’t want your friend to find us like this, right?” He walked to the door as I stared after him, unsure of how to react.
“I … Raine, wait,” I said, scrambling to the door before he could reach it and pressing my back against it. “Stop! I’m not ashamed of him finding us. I’m just … trying to be considerate. That’s all.”
Raine’s shoulders relaxed, and he let his eyes rake over me for a beat before he ran his hand down his face again. “I’m sorry. I had only hoped we’d have some time alone before the world reminded us it existed.”
Crowe also shifts perspectives between them in a delightful manner that is easy to follow, adding depth to the psychological entanglements each faces over adversaries and special challenges connected to ruling the kingdom. Chapters that are titled by these changing perspectives offer instant ease in understanding who is speaking and how their experiences direct their decision-making.
The dance between love and ruling a new, conflicted kingdom exquisitely plays out with the characters offering different insights into Kalista’s choices and rule.
Of special note is how they all respond, grow, and change in the face of challenges that personally and collectively drive their lives, as well as how love is admitted, embraced, and evolves even during the heat of battle:
I turned to Kalista, who surprised me when she attacked me with a hug. As she squeezed me, she whispered, “Be careful, Luke. Raine’s not the only man I love on this mission. Alright?”
I pulled back and held her at arm’s length. “I’ll see you soon. Find that Gateway,” I said, and I turned and jogged after Asher as Noah and Sebastian kept pace beside me.
Libraries seeing popularity with Shadow of Hope will want to include Whisper of Fate in their collections—but will want to highly recommend it beyond the young adult age group to adults who look for fantasies nicely stepped in personal and political growth. Patrons will appreciate the depth of this focus, as well as its realistic characters and situations.
Packed with compelling scenes of confrontation, realization, and different forms of challenge that emerge from love and struggle, Whisper of Fate is a powerful continuation of a story of love, ruling a kingdom, and juggling family ties into the mix. It is easy to love and hard to put down.
Bakersfield Boys ClubReturn to Index