March 2026 Review Issue

Table Of Contents
Prime Picks
Fantasy & Sci Fi
Literature
Mystery & Thrillers

Fantasy & Sci Fi

The Age of Serpents and Scorpions
Tom Cladis
The Black Spring Press Group
978-1-915406-92-7   $21.99
www.blackspringpressgroup.com

The Age of Serpents and Scorpions represents epic fantasy at its best. It’s a Christian fantasy that revolves around two teens and their guide, The Fortune Teller, who may be able to help Jimmy finally deal with the death of his beloved mother.

The story opens with a concerned father, the sudden connection Jimmy feels with Sasha, and their encounter with extraordinary situations that challenge not only their concept of reality, but also their concept of good and evil.

The Fortune Teller is haunting and mysterious:

The fortune teller’s response sent shivers through the teenagers’ bodies. “I see the world not as it is, but as it should be. In my world, nothing is impossible.”

It turns out that, rather than telling fortunes, he’s more a listener and a guide who offers the teens insights into God and spirituality:

Sure enough, as Sasha looked deeper inside her mind, she did find herself – but not on the side of the wall she would have preferred. “I’m on the wrong side,” she groaned.

Jimmy discovered the same thing about himself. “Why am I on this side?” he objected. “I believe in God.”

“Yes, you do. You both do,” the fortune teller replied calmly. “But, do you believe what He says? He sent His Son not only to save us from ourselves, but also to remind us of our divine inheritance.

“Jesus assured us that if we had faith and did not doubt, nothing would be impossible for us. But, no one believes Him...and that’s what puts you on the wrong side of the wall, as you call it.”

As the teens embark on a journey, elements of a dystopian thriller and time travel experience enter the picture to expand the Christian themes and discussions with a kiss of fantasy adventure.

Fans of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series will find these spiritual messages more overt than Lewis portrayed in his young adult series, but just as engrossingly entwined with action and confrontations that keep the plot immersive and hard to predict.

As parallel universes evolve and bigger picture thinking about good and evil emerges, readers of all ages will appreciate how deeply and provocatively The Age of Serpents and Scorpions delves into transformative thinking and experiences.

Librarians seeing patron interest in Christian fantasy will appreciate a story that holds many opportunities for discussion and debate in book club and spiritual circles, and will want to add The Age of Serpents and Scorpions to their collections.

Filled with disparate characters, compelling confrontations with self and changing milieus, and issues that provoke readers to self-assess and think about the nature and processes of good and evil, The Age of Serpents and Scorpions is a rich fantasy worthy of acquisition, recommendation, and discussion.

The Age of Serpents and Scorpions

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Enheduanna’s Song from the Sands
Ellen Rachlin
Histria Fiction
978-1592117543    $19.99
https://www.amazon.com/Enheduannas-Song-Sands-Ellen-Rachlin/dp/1592117546?nsdOptOutParam=true

Enheduanna’s Song from the Sands is a historical fantasy surrounding the life and actions of Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon the Great and High Priestess of Ur, a powerful religious and business leader who lived approximately two-thousand years before Virgil. Ellen Rachlin entwines her history with myth in a novel about the world’s first named author, who finds herself the focal point of conflict, transformation, and choices surrounding an extraordinary power rising in ancient Mesopotamia.

From the start, the first-person story builds an evocative, compelling scenario that draws readers with passion and insight:

Inanna, supreme in Heaven and Earth, ruler over all gods, I beg of you: restore me to my temple, bring me home! In the ancient city of Ur, I no longer breathe the salty air, lift myself from the sacred bed or unravel Ningal’s dreams for my followers. The southern stars have slipped away from me; Now I walk the thorny brush of the northern mountainside. As I sing your blessed song, I am dying.

A host of equally memorable characters enter Enheduanna’s life and chambers, from Darda, the son of Purushanda’s former king, to her mother and father, Sargon and Tashlultum, Uanna and Nidintu, women who are part of a core circle Enheduanna thinks she can trust, and others from different sides of an evolving rebellion.

Enheduanna tries to fulfill her destiny, but often winds up feeling isolated and uncertain:

“...in this forest of knowledge, the faces of some of my closest friends are becoming increasingly obscured.”

As Enheduanna faces riots, rebels, and intrigue, her world comes to life with a host of social, political, and personal issues; all of which she navigates with authority and, sometimes, uncertainty: “I fear we’re losing real ground to our enemy.”

Suffused with rage, she then documents the history of her world in vivid detail that readers will find engrossing and realistic.

Librarians and readers seeking a story of ancient history come to life will find Enheduanna’s Song from the Sands rich with detail, personalized by the protagonist’s reflections as she steps into her power and makes difficult choices.

Filled with dramatic action and confrontations with self as well as the outside world, Enheduanna’s Song from the Sands will appeal both to leisure readers and scholarly students of ancient times. The former will appreciate the high drama and personal touches; the latter the footnotes and references which cement events and fantasy in a layer of real history.

An important footnote by the author clarifies why this novel should be in any serious collection of women’s history, as well as in fantasy and historical fiction holdings:

I stumbled across Enheduanna while researching Sargon the Great. No one I knew, including poets, had ever heard of her or her hymns. When I began to uncover what was more broadly known about Enheduanna, it astounded me that the first-named author in history was not only a virtual unknown, but a woman who lived in a male-dominated culture.

Enheduanna’s Song from the Sands

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Terratron: A New Frontier, Volume 2
Nathaniel Bernadeau
Independently Published
979-8271126147
$29.99 Hardcover/$24.99 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Terratron-Frontier-Vol-2-Nathaniel-Bernadeau/dp/B0FXG5ZJSR

In Terratron: A New Frontier, Volume 2, Emperor Abukar Kenessit is the sovereign of the Milky Way Galactic Empire, a vast interstellar kingdom that is beginning to fall apart.

Military and political sci-fi fans are in for a treat with this sweeping story of space pirates, bounty hunters, emperors, and the ongoing struggle for peace which plays out on a larger scale than most stories represent.

The Empire’s rule may have been strengthened since the last conflict, but that doesn’t mean it’s solid by any means. Imperial control and local governance teeter on the brink of disaster.

Readers new to this world will find it easy to edge into its special challenges as the story opens with Grand Viceroy Boris Drexel’s report on the state of affairs, which rounds up the progress and obstacles facing the kingdom.

As mercenaries, freedom fighters and rebels, and Empire holders clash, the saga introduces fiery confrontations on all sides that contain thought-provoking passages of defiance and action:

Korrath, seizing what she believed was another opportunity to spread her rhetoric, appeared in person. She was apprehended mid-speech, her fiery defiance giving way to fury as the Marshals dismantled her security detail with flawless precision. “You may have me,” she spat as they dragged her away, “but you cannot silence an idea!”

The struggles on individual and community levels hold interplanetary ripples of effect which also are intriguing:

The triumph was not merely military; it was a resounding reaffirmation of the Empire’s vision. The Xyveran and Rylka coalition had sought to exploit the fractures within the galactic expanse. Instead, they had unified it.

Headings within the chapters (“A Glimpse of the Bigger Picture;” “Reflection on Power and Legacy”) also offer food for thought, reflecting the major themes of each event, making it easy reading for book club discussion groups.

The result is a powerful sci-fi story of invasion, redemption, and struggle that cloaks its characters in the mantle of historic decisions and confrontations that evolve on an epic scale.

Librarians and readers seeking a massive world-building saga of control, choice, and the influence of heritage as a pursuit for peace that at times appears futile and other times all-important will welcome how Terratron: A New Frontier poses new opportunities and questions on many different levels.

Replete with action, reflection, and moral and ethical conundrums, Terratron: A New Frontier is highly recommended for thinking sci-fi readers who enjoy fast-paced plots. The saga rests firmly on the realistic convictions and choices of characters that interact over accomplishments that lend the illusion of invulnerability to participants who begin to question their missions and purpose.

Terratron: A New Frontier, Volume 2

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A Thread of Waking Light
Jason Knightman 
Current Words Publishing
978-1-957224-63-3
$19.99 paperback; $5.99 digital (Kindle); Audio TBD
www.amazon.com

A Thread of Waking Light is an epic fantasy that opens with a prologue in the year 883, where Soréla is sick after viewing the cremation of her friend Faldana, who was only a few years younger. Both have endured years of captivity and abuse, and death seems the only escape from their pain.

Years ago, wizard Mirinar’s magical traps ensnared them, ending their dreams and replacing them with a living nightmare. She has had ample opportunity to better understand her captor:

Over the nearly one and a half decades of imprisonment and abuse, she had come to know many things about Mirinar. He trucked with demons. He once demonstrated to her and a few other captives what they would face if they tried to escape; a demon devoured an unlucky, living prisoner who had tried doing so. He was careful to the last detail in all things. And his dominant goal, his one driving force for his perverted practices with his collection of concubines, was an heir.

Soréla is still spunky enough to determine not to remain a helpless victim, even given the force of Mirinar’s magic and control. It’s this will to survive that not only promises freedom, but a vastly revised life as Soréla succeeds in an impossible bid for control – and wins.

These events are just the opener to a vivid story that then moves to year 917, when a mother leaves her daughter to carry out a holy mission, then assigns her daughter a task with her last dying breath.

Women casting spells, assuming positions of power as forces of change in their world, and the journeys and trials which result are recurring themes in the story as a cast of strong female characters represent different forces in this world.

From Nirra (a daughter assigned to carry out her mother’s task) to High Priestess Kirianne; Merelaine (originally Lady Merelaine Corson, the Baroness of Hargrave), who gave up her rank to join the order; and Yzandria, who questions her contributions and sacrifices (“Is it wrong for me to wish for just a moment that I’d raised a self-serving bastard? But no, I would do the same were I he.”), the women are powerful characters who find ways of being forceful and effective as the world changes around them.

Demons, sacrifices, difficult journeys, and magical dangers permeate a plot packed not just with fast-paced action and adventure, but thought-provoking self-inspections.

These elements contribute to a world-changing scenario in which the men and women of these times face visions, magic, difficult choices involving loyalty and sacrifice, and tests of faith.

Libraries and readers seeking epic quest adventures wrapped in the guise of fantasy world-building, but delivered with the added bonus of spiritual and psychological inspection will relish how A Thread of Waking Light creates compelling figures who share the limelight of achievement and adversity.

Filled with unexpected twists and fast action, A Thread of Waking Light holds the ability to thoroughly engross while building a complex world that challenges its characters to step up and assume new roles in their lives, inviting readers to a ringside seat to experience the immersive action and results for themselves.

A Thread of Waking Light

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The War in Heaven
Mano Sotelo
MindStir Media
978-1963844788 
$16.99 Paperback/$5.99 eBook
Website: www.sotelostudio.com
Ordering: https://www.sotelostudio.com/thewarinheaven

The War in Heaven is a story that embraces fantasy, magical realism, mythology, and psychology, and is highly recommended for a wide audience interested in any or all of these themes.

Its graphic novel format illustrates, in black and white, a study in faith, hope, and social foundations. It opens with a history of creation and moves into a tale of challenging the devil, family relationships between Archangel Michael and the fallen Lucifer, shifting reality, and a journey undertaken by angels who confront their own failures in an effort to find the way home.

While traditional Christians may take offense at some of these angels’ interactions, readers of thought-provoking fantasy that injects ethical and spiritual conundrums into its story of confrontations and new realizations will welcome how The War in Heaven evolves a journey rich in irony and new beginnings.

Mano Sotelo’s illustrations are nicely done, the dialogue-driven story proves compelling as the angels interact and confront themselves as well as one another, and the story moves between the incarnations and origins of war to inner landscapes of transformation as it carries readers into a milieu in which angels reassess their very being and purpose.

The story also enters into philosophical realms, which will especially delight readers who appreciate contemplative action in their graphic novel fantasies:

I’ve been so wrapped up in this illusion: chasing things, seeking stimuli, searching for diversions. I’ve lost my purpose. So long, I’ve been in this state of wanting, state of lack. So many thoughts, completely consumed in my thinking. Associating, evaluating, never being with the reality in front of me.

Librarians seeking graphic novel fantasy stories will thus find The War in Heaven a cut above most, with its marriage of philosophical and psychological reflection to action-packed confrontations both physical and spiritual.

Filled with thought-provoking moments, The War in Heaven is more than entertainment reading, offering insights and reflections as suitable for book club and spiritual group debate and discussion as it is for individual enlightenment.

The War in Heaven

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Literature

The Sigh and Flutter
Julie Ann Baker Brin
Anamcara Press LLC
978-1-960462-72-5 $19.99 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
https://anamcara-press.com

Poetry enthusiasts are in for a real treat with the succinct, atmospheric musings of The Sigh and Flutter; for these works represent a cautious optimism about the human condition and reflect on circumstances of being, wonder, and discovery with the studied hand of a wordsmith artist.

These processes are captured in vibrant works such as the early-appearing “We Are,” which reflects that humans are:

light waves, slowed down/fossils, sped up/somewhere between/the stars/and the skeletons

From the nature of time and dreaming to the poignant, candid self-assessment of “Brown Horse Red Car Blue Night” (You just had to remind me, didn’t you I thought I could remind myself/– a jar of broken glass/the windshields, windows, headlights,/the mirrors – driving home/the fragility of life/maybe I could throw it all away), each poem captures a sense of place and life meaning that moves from bigger-picture philosophical inspection to individual experience with the sashay of a literary dancer.

Replete within these notes of life inspection is the courage to analyze, reflect, and ultimately celebrate the moment. From connections to water and sunsets to the specter of broken relationships and missed connections, Julie Ann Baker Brin captures the rise and fall of life in poetic nuggets of wisdom that simmer, sometimes sharply and sometimes gently, with passion and wonder.

The Sigh and Flutter holds the capacity to remind its readers why they read poetry. Within its life experiences and broader inspections of life, the universe, and everything lay reflections which are moving, engaging, and wonderfully bright.

And, as in the poem “Body Shop,” every human being’s life contains the drive to identify, connect, and ultimately fix what is broken, against all odds:

The broken gasket, such a delicate/part. Hours spent on the side/of the road: we can fix this, we will.

Libraries and readers seeking free verse that represents the best of literary prowess, philosophical reflection, and the intersection of science, nature, and human affairs will find in

The Sigh and Flutter the very essence and heartbeat of meaning via poignant moments that are powerfully captivating reads.

The Sigh and Flutter

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Biography & Autobiography


Inner Ember
Mark Sangster
GFB
978-1-964721-74-3 
$17.95 Paperback/$7.99 eBook
Website: https://www.inneremberbook.com/ 
Ordering: https://a.co/d/60DFLxK

Inner Ember: Five Days Alone in Death Valley in Search of My Authentic Self is a contemporary wilderness quest where author Mark Sangster recounts a journey of self-realization which turns into a battle for survival when he is injured.

Alone in Death Valley, Sangster contemplates not just his mortality, but his life and sometimes-harrowing childhood experiences. These assume the form of visions which remind him of battles that hurt all family members, and the choices which kept he and his brother apart in adulthood:

My skewed sense of object permanence placed my brother back in the beaker when I was away. I did not consciously think he stopped existing when I was gone, but I assumed his life was somehow less fulfilling. I did not consider that we were flowing like the two rivers of my poem, sometimes close and sometimes far apart.

As Sangster confronts his past decisions and present-day actions, the possibility of rescue versus death, and the implications of undertaking a modern vision quest, many issues and insights are revealed which move from personal to social and political realms:

While this has been criticized as appropriating Indigenous tradition, many people who go on quests seeking spiritual medicine for a disorder or injury, myself included, intend only to honor this ceremony. I wasn’t partaking in a vision quest for profit, at least not in economic terms. I hoped to learn and grow personally. I expected to heal my wounds. It was medicine to me. It was therapy in a language that resonated with my soul.

Ultimately, Inner Ember is about stoking that fire of healing, possibility, and hard truths. These lead to genuine change and a confrontation with emotional “sins” that have guided, however subconsciously, harmful choices of the past.

As other travelers on similar wilderness journeys swap stories about their discoveries, readers gain a sense of how a desert sojourn can pave the way to many new opportunities and choices.

Libraries and readers seeking a story of life inspection, healing, and discovery will welcome how Inner Ember candidly and astutely peels back the layers of personality and experience to delve into the heart of family relationships, self-identity, and change.

Vivid in its inspections of past, present, and future, Inner Ember ultimately offers hope, a wilderness encounter, and a series of revelations that send the author and his readers in new directions. Few memoirs hold such powerful examples of transformative healing in all of its facets, making Inner Ember a standout.

Inner Ember

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Journal of the Plague Years V. 1: End Notes
John Rember
Grand Mogul Books
979-8-9995968-2-6 
$16.99 print/$9.99 ebook
Website: johnrember.com
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FXNCM3GB?storeType=ebooks

Journal of the Plague Years: End Notes takes place between March of 2020 and March of 2021, and is the first book in a three-volume series of John Rember’s journal entries, written during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Many took pen in hand when shutdown left them isolated and looking for a project to undertake, so the proliferation of Covid journals and stories is widespread - and too often unremarkable.

Journal of the Plague Years: End Notes is notable not for its familiar notes about isolation and hunkering down in the face of death, but for the circumstances that surrounded Rember and his wife. They quarantined in Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley, went hiking, and, in winter, backcountry skiing, cooked gourmet dinners for two, and occupied their time via the internet and reading.

As much as they had the necessities for survival, each other, and intellectual stimulation, it was also a time of fear, uncertainty about the future, and facing possible death from invisible sources beyond their refuge.

As millions died around the world, the Rembers observed from a safe distance that human life was being altered. They knew that once they left their refuge, the world would never be the same again.

Reflections are emotional, spiritual, and philosophical:

I had realized I could never live long enough to read all the books left in my library, even the ones I needed to read for self-improvement. I am aware of the implications of that statement. My capacity for self-improvement falls short of my need for self-improvement. I’ll die a work in progress and be condemned to a few thousand less happy incarnations, a cautionary example to all good Buddhists.

The process by which Rember assesses this strange new world, considers his impact on it, and injects a literary, reflective voice into the self-assessment process creates an intellectual bastion of contemplation that stands out from many other Covid stories of those years:

Blind transformation is what phase changes do—they’re a little like black holes, where if you get close to them time gets all wonky and the past doesn’t make it intact to the future. It still doesn’t feel warm in the darkest 26 days of the year. It still doesn’t dispel the feeling that sometime in the next few years, you might look at the world we’re in now as a fat Russian novel, full of nasty doomed people who had no idea what was about to hit them.

Politics and social examination enter into his thinking via internet and television, observed and analyzed in a thought-provoking manner that captures a feel of the times and their shifting sands of altercation and contemplation:

...even when Joe Biden called on Americans to live in a world ruled by Fate, one where our highest human defense against a brutal universe was to lend a hand to someone in need, I didn’t cry. I just hoped that this time, our president wasn’t a psychopath.

More so than most writings about the Covid years, Rember captures the hopes, dreams, fears, and possibilities that stem from prolonged isolation and self-examination.

These facets will attract libraries interested in memoirs, Covid experiences, and broader subjects such as the impact of isolation on the heart and soul and the possibilities of surviving an impossibly devastating pandemic, only to navigate a much-changed self as well as the outside world.

Filled with contemplative moments that will lend nicely to book club discussions, Journal of the Plague Years: End Notes is a powerful chronicle of the experience and effects of isolation and what happens to individuals who move away from social interaction to seek meaning and hope from their own solitary worlds.

Journal of the Plague Years V. 1: End Notes

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A Series of Opinionated Animals
Michelle Lerner
Bancroft Press
978-1-61088-707-6   $27.95
www.bancroftpress.com

A Series of Opinionated Animals is hilarious, thought-provoking, unique memoir. It follows animal lawyer Michelle Lerner’s more bizarre cases, probing the psyches and conundrums of creatures whose odd habits influenced her profession and her life.

Readers who love animals (and, perhaps secondarily, the law) will relish learning about both through vignettes that romp through the animal world.

From bedding in an eight-foot-tall loft to keep the dogs from joining her to canines with squirrel obsessions and building a temporary shelter space for FeLV+ cats in a detached garage, Lerner’s interactions with a variety of animals and oddities translates to a rollicking, fun journey through animal and human worlds. Her story embraces not just animal law, but the process of rescuing creatures in different ways.

The descriptions are fun and revealing:

When Buddy finally recovered from his infection, though, he became a different cat. And he was bent on revenge. He took over the cat house, er, garage, with a level of dominance that surprised everyone, including me, but no one more than Simon. Though smaller than Simon, he easily called Simon’s bluff, whacking him on the head and backing him into corners, proving that attitude is everything. Simon was crestfallen. “Payback’s a bitch,” Terry responded when I described the situation.

A special audience for this book would include not just animal lovers, but those skeptical about the fact and nature of animal personalities. From legal advocacy for animals to caring for terminal animals and care decisions that run up against the conventional management techniques of animal rescue and sanctuary groups, many issues arise in the course of Lerner’s animal encounters. These offer especially thought-provoking discussion topics for book clubs and would-be vets alike.

Libraries that choose A Series of Opinionated Animals will find it can be highly recommended for a wide range of animal enthusiasts, from those interested in animal law and rescue methodology to general-interest readers seeking fun, thought-provoking stories about animal psyches, management dilemmas, and just plain entertaining stories.

A Series of Opinionated Animals

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Mystery & Thrillers

Dawn Before Darkness
Liz Lazarus
Mitchell Cove Publishing LLC
978-0-9909374-7-0   $14.95
www.dawnbeforedarkness.com

What happens when your stalker can’t touch you? Your family becomes a target. Dawn Before Darkness is the hard-hitting thriller story of a vet tech facing an enemy who is truly ruthless in his threats, which hold no boundaries or any consideration for the elderly.

Dawn has gotten herself into a bad situation. When she tries to break up with her lover, life moves from bad to worse when he refuses to accept her declaration that their relationship is over. The chills he’s been giving her all along turn into a relentless retribution as the relationship she entered into too quickly portends that she may not have jumped out of it as quickly as she needed.

How can he convince her otherwise? If love won’t work, maybe threats will.

Liz Lazarus may tweak more sensitive readers with scenarios that hit too close to home, but readers will appreciate the superb tension development, revelations, and conundrum Dawn faces as she tries to extricate herself from a series of increasingly perilous encounters.

Lazarus does more than broach the subject of a relationship gone awry. She mirrors Dawn’s discovery of new attitudes in the animals she cares for and their human guardians, who may neglect their pets due to their own sociopathic approaches to life.

Veterinary experiences with animals and humans round out personal dilemmas with important insights and circumstances that readers will find especially thought-provoking as Dawn’s decision to end things translates to choices about how best to survive her mandate not to be overwhelmed and made powerless by abusive people on any level, personal or professional.

While this decision is delivered early on in the story (“She’d reached the limit of what she could tolerate, and bending the rules was the only way to keep her sanity.”), its consequences and enactment form the heart of a gripping, dark story of terror and maneuvers to outsmart those who would control Dawn.

As she begins taking time off from her career to deal with many blows to her personal life, Dawn struggles with family conflict, elder abuse and needs, accusations about her moral and ethical foundations, legal snafus, and people who more than bend the rules to treat unsuspecting elderly folk unnecessarily.

Dawn Before Darkness thus moves beyond one stalker’s impact to address all kinds of challenges to Dawn’s intelligence and ethics, making for a powerful thriller augmented by bigger-picture thinking.

Libraries and readers seeking thrillers which incorporate many themes, from elder abuse and stalking to animal rights and owner attitudes, will appreciate how finely Dawn Before Darkness winds through all these themes as it follows Dawn through not one, but a series of life- and attitude-changing dilemmas.

Replete with action, discovery, challenge, and tests of one woman’s strengths and convictions about animals, people, and love, Dawn Before Darkness is an immersive thriller that creates opportunities for many powerful book club and women’s reading group discussions as it navigates the fine lines between destruction and transformation.

Dawn Before Darkness

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Dying to Remember
Cristina LePorte, MD
Bancroft Press
978-1-61088-618-5
www.bancroftpress.com

If the name of P.I. Kirk Miner sounds familiar to medical thriller readers, it’s because Dr. Cristina LeLorte’s “Miner and Melville” series has already gained a wide audience of fans. Dying to Remember is a prequel that considers how Kirk married his medical expertise to his P.I. savvy.

The novel opens with a scene in which Kirk sits in the Brooklyn Medical Center’s cafeteria speaking with a doctor who is hiring him to investigate his younger girlfriend’s affairs. At stake is Dr. Ingalls’ research, which involves reconnecting the central nervous system. If successful, his findings will revolutionize neurology. The last thing Dr. Ingalls needs is a spy or malevolent force interrupting or compromising his study.

Why would anyone oppose such a promising venture? Because:

“The opposition fears it could pave the way for advanced cloning and brain transplants,” the doctor explained. “In theory, you could clone yourself and transfer your brain to a younger body, potentially extending life significantly.”

As events quickly progress from a physician investigating his girlfriend to a mandate to prevent his murder, Kirk finds himself appreciating the opportunity to get a break from his job in security to build his P.I. business.

Accidents, secrets, and Catch-22 situations immerse Kirk in a series of events that challenge his ability to fully understand the depth and range of the special interests confronting Dr. Ingalls. The purposes and mandate of the EcoCollective opposed to his research evolves many threads of possibility. These will delight readers interested in stories where the outcome and perp are not clear.

The good doctor’s depression grows as, on the cusp of a career-changing discovery, he comes to realize that his crowning achievement is about to be “snatched away” by “professional morons” who have their own agenda.

Readers will not only be attracted to the mystery and P.I. investigations, but to the evolving medical and ethical conundrums that Kirk faces as he tries to assure the safety of Dr. Ingalls.

The plot is realistic, involves many medical system and community insights that Dr. LePorte is well equipped to portray from her own background, and the story is fast-paced as social, legal, technological, and psychological influences come to light.

All these factors make Dying to Remember a top-notch, action-packed medical thriller that librarians, readers, and book clubs will find vivid, memorable, and absolutely absorbing.

Dying to Remember

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The Kill Code Collective
Julie Holmes, Rob Jung, et.al.
The Midwest Mystery Works
978-1-7366108-7-9 $16.99 Paperback/$7.99 eBook
https://preview.mailerlite.io/preview/551600/sites/103514183816971723/zOjPFr

To create The Kill Code Collective, five authors took a character from one of their individual books and built a scenario around them for this story’s plot, which opens with Minneapolis aircraft mechanic Sierra Bauer. The collective collaborative roots of this medical thriller run deeper than most thrillers or conjoined efforts, resulting in a unique story that is as exceptional for its strong characters as for the situations they confront.

In this introductory case, Sierra greets an arriving plane, only to find herself fighting to save the life of her friend Alice Holmgren, who collapses upon deplaning.

The medical emergency expands to involve detective work, international plots revolving around offshore assets, characters such as Henri Hawke (renowned for solving sticky financial problems) and Stephen Harstburg (who is being extorted), and Matt Lanier, who joins Sierra in probing beyond heart matters to dive into dangerous patterns of sudden death and special interests that appear to be involved in targeting victims in an unusual manner.

Each well-developed character contributes new strengths, perspectives, and abilities to the medical thriller to create an eerie, frighteningly realistic series of events. Each interacts on a bigger playing field of who is pulling the strings and how a collective of powerful characters can prove a formidable force to confront a dangerous conspiracy.

The investigators bring not just their individual personalities, but disparate strengths to the table as they tackle what is really going on between seeming unconnected medical crises.

Librarians and readers seeking a medical thriller mystery that rests on the shoulders of not just one, but many powerful characters, will welcome how The Kill Code Collective dovetails events, personalities, and conundrums to create a vivid probe into a defect which becomes a murder investigation.

Packed with satisfying twists and collective strengths that prove especially engaging as the problem-solvers introduce different strengths towards a greater effort, The Kill Code Collective is a thoroughly absorbing, completely unpredictable story. It benefits from many contributors who spin a fine yarn to build an unforgettable story.

The Kill Code Collective

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The Monarch Alliance
Jessica James
Independently Published
9781941020555
$26.99 Hardcover/$19.99 Paperback/$6.99 eBook
https://jessicajamesbooks.com/books/the-monarch-alliance/

The Monarch Alliance is a historical mystery based in a New York legendary castle-like hotel called Mohonk Mountain House. Here is where peace conferences made history in the past - and where journalist Danika Vaughn struggles to decipher historical letters before a modern-day pact is signed that consigns the world to corruption and repression.

The blend of historical, political, and psychological tension s is exquisitely conducted as the Mohonk area’s outer beauty and inner secrets come to life under Danika’s probe.

Delicate and inviting tension is developed from the novel’s opening lines:

Before she could respond, arms enveloped her from behind, pulling her into an embrace that was as powerful as it was unexpected. There was strength in the way he held her—an unspoken promise of safety—steady, comforting, and threaded with secrets. Yet there was something else there, too. Risk. Ruin. A truth too heavy to carry.

When the historical papers that could provide links between past events and present-day corruption are destroyed in a fire, Dani and Cole (who helps with security, but accompanies her in an increasingly dangerous investigation) suspect foul play. The hunt for a key pact assumes central importance to a variety of players in the dangerous political game that unfolds at the conference.

It’s not just a mystery - it’s a race for control. Dani finds herself barely in the lead as she struggles to remain a step ahead of those who would repress the truth - which makes her a dangerous threat.

Jessica James outlines the progression of events with a finely tuned eye to building tension in even the most innocuous of descriptions:

The guests were laughing and posing for photos in front of a floral arch with the flags from the different nations represented at the peace conference. Nothing about it looked wrong. Which only made it worse... Everything seemed perfect. Yet everything was undeniably wrong.

Dramatic encounters with people involved with funding networks, shell companies, and underlying special interests build threads of possibility that will keep readers guessing as the labyrinth of discovery winds through Mohonk Mountain House and everyone involved in its future.

James crafts a suspenseful and delicate walk between mystery, history, and thriller tension that gives her story an intriguing blend of possibilities.

Librarians and readers seeking a novel packed with unexpected twists, political and psychological connections, and possibilities that emerge to challenge each character’s profession and perception of good and evil forces will find excitement in droves, here. The Monarch Alliance works its magic on a seemingly peaceful environment to bring underlying motivations and danger to the surface.

Packed with surprising connections and impacts, The Monarch Alliance enhances its tension with a study in dangerous attraction, making for a powerful story filled with many satisfying twists:

“I didn’t plan on any of this,” she said, her voice quiet, uncertain why the words came out at all. Maybe because they were the only truth she could grab hold of in that moment.

The Monarch Alliance

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Seven Graves to Marrakech
Michael Mandaville
Creative Explorer Publishing
978-1-963347-18-0 $9.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Graves-Marrakech-Michael-Mandaville-ebook/dp/B0FXNLZJYL

Seven Graves to Marrakech is a thriller that embeds within its story a father/son dilemma which arises when former operative John Blaine brings his son Jeremy to Marrakech for a vacation, only to become embroiled in an assassination attempt and the subsequent political turmoil that rocks and threatens their lives.

Blaine is hiding many facts about his prior involvements and identity, and these emerge under the most dangerous of conditions to impact not only his decisions, but their lives. Underlying these revelations is a shaken relationship with his son, who receives an eye-opening education in intrigue, danger, and the true actions of his father.

Michael Mandaville creates encounters and dialogue between the two which cement the shifting nature of their relationship:

“Dad, what’s our plan?” asked Jeremy.

“Don’t worry. I got it figured out.” He tucked off his helmet and set it on the bike.

“I want to know,” stammered Jeremy.

“Don’t--”

“Dammit… Talk to me…” yelled Jeremy.

Blaine took in his son, softened by his distress and anxiety.

“You’re right,” said Blaine. “I’m sorry.” He put his hand on his son’s neck and touched foreheads with him, consoling him.

Jeremy’s demand for answers only places him deeper in danger as Blaine navigates uncertainty and new revelations that buffet them both, trying to enlighten and protect his son at the same time. Blaine’s old spying skills and tricks of the trade must be tapped and updated in order for them both to survive, but his confrontations with betrayal, hidden codes, conspiracies, and high-stakes operations thwarts even his seasoned abilities as the story moves deeper into the growing, thriving city of Marrakech and the cultural and political forces which operate under the veneer of its modernity.

Mandaville injects historical references into his story that further expand its appeal to more than thriller readers alone, providing rationales and insights that will attract those interested in Middle Eastern backdrops and communities.

The result blends the nonstop action and twists of a thriller novel with the intriguing cultural insights of a historical fiction piece, the psychology of family relationships as Jeremy and his father dance around hidden truths and new possibilities, and the growth of a son who discovers not just his father’s real skills, but his own ability to survive and navigate unfamiliar territory.

Librarians interested in thrillers that hold the ability to reach beyond genre readers into expanded circles will appreciate how Seven Graves to Marrakech builds its exquisite tension, interpersonal relationships, twists and turns of intention and possibility, and its ultimate surprises.

Replete with satisfyingly thought-provoking international intrigue and father/son confrontations, Seven Graves to Marrakech is a tale that proves thoroughly compelling.

Seven Graves to Marrakech

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Silent Oath
J.P. Brutus
Atmosphere Press
9798891329263
$29.99 Hardcover/$17.99 Paperback/$8.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com

Silent Oath is a medical thriller replete with notes of reality as an esteemed surgeon, Dr. Sarah Adams, is accused of negligence, facing the relentless investigative process of a medical machine that is poised to roll over all her past achievements.

The weight of her moral, ethical, and professional strengths is crushing as Sarah faces unprecedented processes determined to wreck havoc on her life:

In a matter of weeks, that oath—and the life she’d built around it—would come under fire in ways she could never have imagined.

As the story unfolds, Montreal’s medical system flaws and the forces at work beneath its surface engulf everything that medical care should support. Medical and ethical conundrums come to light in realistic and engrossing ways that move beyond personal experience to tackle broader medical issues.

J.P. Brutus is a physician well familiar with the medical system, and this reflects in the authenticity and depth of his descriptions of hospital systems and politics.

As Sarah probes the underlying motivations and special interests influencing draconian measures against physicians, more questions arise about the propriety of pursuing what seems like a dubious justice against all odds:

“All these doctors… suspended for trying to help their families, their patients. Pierre-Émile, destroyed for falling behind on paperwork because he was too busy saving lives. And now me.” She looked up at Lucas, her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes. “What happens to the patients when their doctors are gone? The College claims to protect the public, but how is taking good doctors away from their patients helping anyone?”

Because of these detailed and in-depth questions, Silent Oath is more than a medical thriller that excels in intrigue. It’s a social and medical world examination that is thought-provoking, engaging, and dramatic all in one. As the exposé unfolds, a host of characters wind up fighting for not just their careers and medical system revisions, but for their beliefs and lives.

The radical ambition that fuels system revisions and unexpected consequences proves every bit as engrossing as the intrigue that builds between characters, their options and decisions, and the forces that rule and overrule their medical judgment.

Librarians and readers seeking medical thrillers that sizzle with realistic inquiry, action, and unexpected twists will especially appreciate the engaging characters and situations that occupy Montreal’s medical system in this story.

Filled with moments of discovery and hard truths, Silent Oath tests the boundaries of commitment, expectations, and ambition in ways thriller readers won’t anticipate. These elements make for a powerful, highly recommended addition to literature on medical world processes, reviewing the quandaries physicians face in performing their jobs efficiently, easily, and without fear of retribution.

Silent Oath

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Unorganised Crime
Jamie C. Richter
Plan C Publishing
978-1-7641049-0-6   $11.99
Website: www.jamierichter.com 
Ordering:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G45N2762

Unorganised Crime is set in Australia and revolves around a clever woman who taps the owners of a pub to pick up a Korean man from the airport. Seems like a simple request – but when he vanishes, crime and trouble haunt them.

From the novel’s opening lines, Jamie C. Richter builds a tense interest in these developments by employing succinct language and vivid descriptions. Jack and Hung, the main characters, are attractive suspects in the kidnapping. They actually don’t have a clue about what’s going on, but do hold a vested interest in proving their innocence and affecting the outcome of events.

These goals evolve within a compelling blend of Korean gangsters, detectives, hit men, and murder attempts which plague their efforts, thoroughly immersing them in a situation they are ill-equipped to tackle.

Between testosterone-fuelled antics, Magdalena’s increasing immersion in the duo’s dilemmas, and debts and enforcement methods that accompany murder threats, Unorganised Crime moves through the Australian landscape with deft twists of plot, memorable and realistic characters, and special interests whose methods and interests collide with bigger-picture crime-busting efforts.

Richter brings Australia’s culture and backdrop to life with a blend of lingo and atmospheric description that will delight readers interested in mysteries that simmer with confrontations, a sense of place, and the unexpected.

Rich in a cultural setting that is built as deftly as the murder circumstances, Unorganised Crime will appeal to a wide audience of libraries, readers, and book clubs interested in vivid stories of murder, international clashes, and intrigue.

Unorganised Crime

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Until It's Over
Dorothy Van Soest
Apprentice House Press 
978-1-62720-678-5 
$30.75 HB/$20.49 PB
Author Website: www.dorothyvansoest.com
Publisher Website: https://bookshop.org/shop/apprenticehouse

Until It's Over adds to Dorothy Van Soest’s Sylvia Jensen mysteries with an unexpected investigation into a decades-old political cold case involving a popular Senate candidate.

While mystery audiences will be attracted to Sylvia and her journalist friend, J.B. Harrell, for its intrigue, social dilemmas arise along with their probe to give the novel a full-bodied feel of complexity as Native American and historical issues clash.

Tackling injustice and righting wrongs, no matter how long ago they occurred, are propositions that have no deadline or expiration date. J.B.’s probe includes virtually everyone around him as he tackles questions and odd events, which translate to a weighty list of approaches to solving not one, but many puzzles:

J. B. sat back down at the table with his notepad and pen. What kind of relationship did Jordane and Sylvia have? Why won’t anyone talk about Will? Is it about shame? Is it related to the guilt Sylvia carried all her life? Whew! This town was full of secrets and lies. And in order to get to the truth, he would have to untangle a hairball of human bias, fear, anger, and pain.

Sylvia, though she can be frail, is also a force to be reckoned with, especially since J.B. has decided to table his intended exposé about Jordane. As events threaten to fracture J.B.’s relationship with Sylvia and their investigative partnership, further issues arise which prove not only that the past isn’t far behind, but that cold cases can turn into frighteningly hot issues for modern times.

Van Soest creates a moving mystery that will reach a wide audience, from mystery enthusiasts and readers of Sylvia’s past experiences to newcomers who will find the blend of personal interaction, political struggle, and investigative processes create the perfect storm of unexpected controversies with satisfying twists of plot.

Librarians seeking mysteries that can reach beyond genre readers will find that Until It's Over not only holds attraction to audiences of thriller, political intrigue, and social issues, but embeds events with questions about justice and choice that will make perfect fodder for book club discussions.

Replete with issues of aging and health, investments and special interests whose concerns could move beyond business and politics to embrace murder, and connections between sexual abuse, uranium mining, and indigenous people’s rights, Until It's Over is a study in force and discovery that cultivates riveting moments.

Until It's Over

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Novels

Attuning
John Popielaski
Broken Tribe Press
9781965412237   $15.00
https://www.brokentribepress.com/books

Attuning is a novel about a devastating construction project set to destroy wetlands and natural areas for 220 miles through the heart of rural Maine. It explores the struggles of eco-warriors, non-profit coordinator Chris Atwater, and spiritual healer and hiker Cosme Esperanza, all of whom seek to stop it. More than a story of good intentions and effective resistance, Attuning tackles broader issues of spirituality, methods of preservation or destruction, and the underlying psyches and motivations of humans on all sides.

A wide cast of characters is introduced, with reflective passages about their convictions and attitudes giving readers food for thought:

Chris wonders if he is commanding her to purify her body, or to get involved in revolutionary action, or to do them both without regard for drawing lines and relegating major life decisions to compartments.

As grassroots activists, development proponents, and plots to either build or defeat the East-West Corridor emerge, readers learn from how both sides react to the impact of the project, which emerges in various ways and on different levels.

John Popielaski builds his story around opposing forces, then introduces another spiritual facet into the mix which gives the story more depth and religious inspections into the matter of caretaking the Earth.

This approach illustrates that the seeming black and white stance of each side should actually include a moderating “gray area” of thought that ideally will be part of any consideration of nature and human impacts.

As chapters unfold messages of purpose, intention, action, and consequence, the battle evolves in more than one way as a group hike involves both interconnected and individual effort.

Popielaski builds a story that ultimately is about control, letting go, and connecting with God differently.

Librarians and readers interested in an ecological journey that dovetails neatly with spiritual concerns will find Attuning heartwarming, inspirational, and thought-provoking.

Its ability to accent the healing process for a better understanding of environment, self, and the cosmos makes for a thoroughly engrossing tale of confrontation, realization, and renewal that considers the possible benefits of upheaval.

Attuning

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Before They’re Gone
EA McCarthy 
Independently Published
979-8-218-93065-3 
$16.99 Paperback/$9.99eBook
https://a.co/d/82FxagG

Before They’re Gone is a novel centered on the children of Ukraine and their beleaguered lives under years of war. It’s an important story that should prompt much discussion in historical and book club circles about human rights issues that impact the fate of children in general and, especially, in the Ukraine/Russia war.

The story opens with a stark reflection on the fates of children captured by Russia:

Children being brainwashed—told that Ukraine no longer exists and that their parents and everyone they love is dead. Children given Russian passports with new names and identities. Children forced to spend hours making supplies for the Russian military, working until their fingers were rubbed raw and bleeding. Children as young as ten being trained in artillery so they would be capable soldiers when they turned of age. That something this heinous could happen in 2022 seemed unthinkable, but as the weeks turned to months, the rumors became incontrovertible facts.

The viewpoint shifts between captured child Sasha, his mother, and others who navigate the broken, stark world of a country under siege. These changing perspectives allow for wide-ranging, contrasting experiences to build a hard-hitting novel that proves atmospheric, realistic, and nearly impossible to put down.

The brutal conditions these children face after they are captured by Russians comes to life in vivid passages of sorrow that captures these contrasts and confusion from a child’s viewpoint:

“Not many children, especially children in your circumstances are given the opportunity to come to such a prestigious camp such as this!”

What circumstances is she talking about? I look around and no one looks like they’re any more happy to be here than I am. I would much rather be with Mamma, Nastya and Aleksandar, even when we were getting bombed and had hardly any food.

As the story unfolds, readers gain a sense of the civil rights issues and children’s struggles in a manner that few accounts of Ukraine struggles have presented in the past. The fact that these are couched in the overlay of fiction adds more drama and insight into the experiences, personalizing events that often don’t make the daily news.

Before They’re Gone is not light reading. It’s a stark, realistic portrait of Russian atrocities, war, and children caught in the middle of adult concerns who serve as pawns in a deadly game of politics and social restructuring.

Ideally, Before They’re Gone will not only be acquired by libraries, but highly recommended to a variety of book clubs and history discussion groups. These can range from groups concerned about children’s rights and advocacy under war conditions to those specifically involved in Ukraine issues and experiences.

Packed with vivid, eye-opening detail, Before They’re Gone reveals facets of children’s experiences of war that few adults may have considered before, making the story a “must” for any who would better understand the underlying costs and struggles between Russia and Ukraine and war in general.

Before They’re Gone

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The Biscuit Tin
Loriana Paterson
Atmosphere Press
979-8891329669
$29.99 Hardcover/$17.99 Paperback/$8.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com

The Biscuit Tin is about a woman facing domestic abuse, isolation, and motherhood. It paints a revealing portrait of Englishwoman Marie Delaney, who finds herself in Paris living not a dream, but a nightmare.

Life shifts again and her living nightmare turns into new possibilities when her husband dies and she moves away from the big city into French town in the Loire Valley. She takes refuge in a rundown house and finds solace in a man who harbors his own wounds from the past.

The biscuit tin holds all that is good in life, with many promises of change, but the challenge lies in setting aside past experience and trauma to embrace new patterns of possibility.

From its opening lines, The Biscuit Tin is rich with allegory as the biscuit tin is introduced:

Well, it was the same every Christmas at Nettlebed Farm. We’d sit in front of the fire after too much booze and food and talk about the biggest load of rubbish imaginable. This year it was the biscuit tin. Mum had given it to Francois and I as a wedding gift the previous June. It had photos of some of the royal palaces around it.

Biscuits become a recurring theme as Marie entertains a new beau and new possibilities. Loriana Paterson steeps her atmospheric novel in the cultural flavors of France and England, but adds universal themes of women’s’ experiences and choices to create bigger-picture thinking about Marie’s journey:

Francois Deschamps was no lover. He was abusive, forceful and belittled me at every possible chance he had. Well, for all that he was, there were times when he did have a microdot of passion. With Laroche I might as well have held out my hand for payment. I felt degraded and used and, more than anything, ashamed. Who was this man? What made me do such a meaningless, passionless act with a man who I knew absolutely nothing about? Was he now going to go home to his wife and family and act as if nothing had happened? Of course, he was.

Marie’s experiences and thoughts will resonate with any woman who has been abused, built a new life, but still confronts the impulse to treat new relationships much like the old ones that introduced trauma.

Poignant moments of realization and longing permeate the story, adding extra dimensions of contemplation and new choices into Marie’s recovery and attempt to build a different life:

The scenario is this. Strip the bed, open the window and spray all over, preferably with a disinfectant-type liquid. Then shower. Get rid of the smell. I didn’t do any of that. I closed the door behind me and proceeded to prepare my supper. It was as if these actions would somehow hide what had occurred. Was it wrong of me to try, for once in my life, to be part of the human race?

Libraries and reader will find The Biscuit Tin refreshingly reflective, ultimately uplifting, but perhaps challenging to sensitive readers newly emerging from their own repressive or abusive backgrounds. However, the process by which Marie embarks on new ventures and relationships will prove delightfully inspiring as she forges ahead against all odds - and in a country that challenges her with its unfamiliarity and, concurrently, poses new possibilities.

All these elements make The Biscuit Tin a top pick for those seeking literary fiction, women’s novels, and stories that shine with new possibilities and growth. Book clubs, especially those interested in novels about new beginnings and relationship quandaries, will welcome The Biscuit Tin’s ability to follow Marie, Suzanne Auroux, young child Caroline, and others through the patterns, influences upon, and choices of their lives.

The Biscuit Tin

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Chare
Penn Anderson
Independently Published
97989887493-2-5 
$10.00 Paperback/$5.00 eBook
Website: www.PennAnderson.com
Ordering: https://books2read.com/chare

Chare is a novella that packs a big read into a succinct format. This lends to its attraction to audiences that appreciate quick but thoroughly thought-provoking reads as it follows the life of one who is “one of one hundred identical siblings. A “pack animal" through and through.”

This sets the stage for the quick realization that Chare is no ordinary character, but something truly unique in the world of strange sentient reactors to life. Her original perspective offers twists in all kinds of situations, from the night a basketball coach throws a chair across the court in protest of a referee’s perhaps-unfair call to how Chare finds herself alone for the first time, at the tender age of fourteen.

A host of characters come to light during this process, including father Ron and his preteen daughter Gwen. Penn Anderson describes how their relationship has suffered from a blend of divorce and his self-centered reaction (which he also deems ‘bad luck’) when a situation then separates them for half of her adult life.

Anderson’s contrasts between very different observers builds a foundation of the unexpected, keeping readers on their toes as the story evolves. Chare inadvertently earns a front-seat observational status as these events unfold, which proves refreshingly delightful as confrontations and family conflicts clash with grifters, other families, and evolving intrigue.

Anderson’s attention to lively descriptions adds more fun and amazing mental visuals to the story:

Scotty wasn't really wearing a dress, he was wearing a kilt, his signature garment. At six foot three, he felt his legs were owed to the world. He placed Chare, in her Virgin Mary knitwear, just behind the driver's seat in his Sprinter van so he could see her in his rearview mirror.

Libraries seeking a novella that embraces elements of family dynamics, psychological change, a unique observer’s participation in life, and many unexpected twists will find it delightfully easy to recommend Chare to a wide audience—especially readers looking for easy access, thoroughly engrossing surprises, and situations that are anything but predictable. In the book world of staid characters and formula plots, Chare is a breath of fresh air.

Chare

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The Choice Within
Stephanie Woodman
Vortex Press, LLC
9798989940646 $18.99 Paperback/$8.99 eBook
https://woodmanbooks.com/

The Choice Within is a novel set against the backdrop of World War II, and contrasts two very different lives changed by a war which rages in Asia and America. Stephanie Woodman builds her characters from disparate cultures and foundations with an eye to intersecting their experiences, beliefs, and assumptions.

This creates an interesting contrast between volunteer domestic military nurse Lieutenant Jeannette Crawford, who moves beyond American soil to tend to soldiers on a hospital ship in the Pacific, and Japanese Reserve Flight Trainee Akira Tanaka, conscripted to participate in a battle for the greater good of his country.

Each character comes to realize that their ideals don’t match up to the horrors of war and military service, where realities often clash with perceptions of right and wrong and what destiny will embrace.

Unlike most stories of battle and revelation, Woodman takes the time to embed a sense of place and culture into the experiences and observations of characters that operate on each side of the war:

Though Akira enjoyed flying through and around the clouds, the expanse of endless blue brought a surge of endless energy and endless possibilities. The moment he leveled out, a stunning beauty lay before him, as if Kukunochi, the god of trees, had taken a color palette and painted the Earth; golden Ginkgo trees, mixed between glorious, dark-red maples, grew up the hills. The missing detail in the beauty and tranquility of the scene was a haunting melody, created by his great-grandfather plucking the strings of his koto.

These descriptions create moments of relief and realistic settings whereby each character’s concerns and influences emerge in revised ways in response to the war duties and events that buffet their lives.

Much more than being another novel about World War II battles (though these scenarios, of course, are included), this is a story of shifting hearts and minds as the world comes apart around each person, forcing them into revised realizations about the paths of their lives.

Another notable feature to this story that sets it apart from typical World War II scenarios lies in the interplay between ordinary life (family relationships, games, friendships) and the extraordinary circumstances that war introduces to everyone.

These features, cemented in well-developed characters whose lives and interests clash over a war that keeps them guessing and growing, make for a powerful novel that needs to find its home in any library strong in fictional World War II experiences.

Driven with a special blend of colorful characters and growth opportunities gleaned from war’s introduction of revised goals and perceptions, The Choice Within is about adaptation and change. It introduces many thought-provoking contrasts between lives and perceptions during these times, making the story hard to put down, easy to recommend to libraries, book clubs, and readers, and easy to discuss.

The Choice Within

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Everything’s Under Control
Roger Mills
Bancroft Press
978-1-61088-702-1
www.bancroftpress.com

Everything’s Under Control opens with first-person narrator father Dr. Luke Mallory facing an unexpected meeting with his adult children, who have an agenda for his future:

“You really shouldn’t be living alone at your age. It’s not easy to reach you.”

The kids have cooked up a plan to have Dad move in to Brookfields, where his first wife resides, so that their care and aging will all take place neatly under one roof. There’s only one problem. Dad has an active life between work and a place he likes to live, and he has no intention of moving – even though their idea makes sense.

This father is very savvy about his adult children. He suspects that under their proposition and apparent altruism lays a different motivation:

Who are these people? I used to know them. But now? They live with other people, in other places. They go to work, come home, laugh or cry about things I don’t know about.

And they want something from me. Fair enough, I want something from them. They came to make a deal. The problem is, they haven’t told me what’s in it for them. That’s what comes next.

But even stubborn determination cannot stave off the ravages of aging, and soon this independent father finds himself joining his friends in hoping for “a few better days” from life, accepting new moves that portend transformation and new challenges.

His move, intended to help his children Megan and Colby with Sam and an unsettled estate, turns out to have unexpected consequences, forcing him to face his need to fix everything and everyone around him:

“Listen, Luke, be serious. Are you ever going to realize you can’t fix the world all by yourself? You want to scrub in and pick up your scalpel, or gallop in with your six-gun blazing. You think you should fix everything. You can’t. You stitched those ideas together out of an unhappy childhood and old western movies.”

As Dr. Mallory wields the axe of change and aging with the intention of repairing, saving, and piecing together new relationships and a new life, readers become absorbed in the cast of characters which support and change him.

As a drive-by shooting and other events challenge his new position and efforts, readers become absorbed in the milieu of an effective, strong, elderly man taking control of what few things remain worthwhile in his life.

Readers will especially appreciate the insights on how proactive and savvy Dr. Mallory can be in the face of a series of events that involve law enforcement, lies, shootings, and confrontations.

Librarians seeking stories that first build a foundation of aging and change, and then injects intrigue and unexpected confrontations into the mix will find Everything’s Under Control a lively, immersive, involving story of one elderly man’s venture into unexpected territory in more ways than one.

Replete with family relationships, challenges, and fights, Everything’s Under Control is a thought-provoking romp through aging and being effective in one’s later years, and is a thoroughly absorbing story.

Everything’s Under Control

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The Flowers of Trauma
Ron Morin
Independently Published
979-8274088947 $18.00 Paperback/$5.99 eBook
www.ronmorinauthor.com

In his profound and intricately woven novel, The Flowers of Trauma, Ron Morin presents an exploration of grief that is as harrowing as it is hopeful. By juxtaposing six interconnected lives touched by vastly different forms of loss—from Holocaust survival to the AIDS crisis to prison violence—Morin constructs a powerful testament to the universal architecture of sorrow.

At the heart of this tapestry is Sarah, a woman whose lifelong dream of teaching shatters when she is confronted with the raw, self-doubting traumas of her students. Her collapse is a pivotal moment illustrating the book’s core thesis: that healing stems not from the avoidance of pain, but from its direct confrontation. As Sarah’s carefully constructed foundation of “shoulds” washes away, what emerges is something more authentic—a lesson in “the humility of not knowing, the grace of asking for help.”

Morin’s strength lies in his character-driven approach. Each narrative thread follows an individual as they identify, reconsider, and ultimately come to terms with a revised meaning for their life. The novel shifts the focus from mere survival to the harder, work of thriving again. Through literary allusion and spiritual reflection, Morin suggests that love and forgiveness are active processes of rewriting our own histories.

One of the novel’s most striking passages encapsulates this transformative spirit: “Your sister made her horrifying experience beautiful through the enchantment of her personality... She was a poem to tragedy!” Here, as throughout the book, there is the assertion that even the deepest wounds can be woven into something new and meaningful.

Packed with poignant moments of discovery, The Flowers of Trauma is a challenging but essential read. Sensitive readers will find themselves moved to tears and deep consideration, potentially reawakening them to their own journeys. It is a book especially needed in difficult times, laying bare the vulnerabilities of the human heart while steadfastly affirming its resilience.

Librarians and booksellers would do well to highly recommend this novel not only to those navigating grief, but to anyone seeking to understand the arduous, transformative path from loss to renewal. Ron Morin has crafted a work of significant insight, reminding us that even in the aftermath of the storm, growth remains possible.

The Flowers of Trauma

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Girls in a World at War
Peggy Munro Scholberg & Nancy Ewing Munro (in memoriam)
Kirk House Publishers
978-1-959681-68-7
$31.86 Hardcover/$19.95 Paperback/$.99 eBook
www.kirkhousepublishers.com

Girls in a World at War follows the experiences of ordinary American girl Kathy Collen, who in 1944 enlists in the army during World War II. The novel features the firsthand account of fictional Kathy and four other young women who served in the 223rd General Hospital, but is based on dietician Nancy Ewing Munro’s writings about her experiences.

The five girls portrayed land in France, where they operate out of a converted horse barn situated near the 82nd Airborne quarters near the Battle of the Bulge. Their patients included survivors released from the Dachau concentration camp as well as soldiers and all manner of people drawn into the war in various ways.

Nancy’s daughter Peggy Munro Scholberg took her mother’s original 660-page manuscript and edited it for publication, making the story vividly accessible to a wider audience than its original, lengthier version would have attracted.

The story opens with the rumblings of future conflict as Hitler’s inability to acknowledge a Black athlete at the Olympics fails to attract the attention of either sixteen-year-old Kathy or her uncle:

Neither Kathy nor Uncle Fred were able to notice that Adolf Hitler did not acknowledge the Black man’s victory. They were also unaware that the Olympic salute was being transformed to instead become a Nazi salute ... Kathy would forever remember that day. The time when the world was not at war—the time when the Olympic salute celebrated excellence.

It then continues with service experiences in the States after Kathy’s enlistment, from basic training to social and military encounters. Readers learn about protocol, training, and a woman’s place in the army through Kathy’s eyes.

Girls in a World at War is heavy in dialogue and interpersonal interactions. This lends a particularly realistic, compelling flavor to the military and political encounters that emerge as Kathy moves through and past the war, absorbing its impact.

From drills and volleys of noise from guns to social mores, changing values, and Kathy’s growth as she encounters romance and new possibilities for her future, Girls in a World at War is packed with insights about girls of the times and how they experienced and were changed by war:

“When in this society it was all right to take a truckload of furniture you wanted, you took it without a twinge from your conscience. If you’d been brought up in another society, with no restrictions on sex, you’d feel free to sleep with Charles. Sex drives are dominant. Don’t reject them. Rejected, they cause neuroses. Fulfill yourself. Fulfill Charles. Live! Fear rigidity and sterility, not sex.”

“I’ll be fulfilled when I have six babies,” Kathy said...

Librarians and readers seeking a vivid story of the World War II experience from the point of view of a young woman who faces changes because of her choices in the shifting world around her will find Girls in a World at War a powerful survey.

Book clubs and readers seeking wider-ranging debate and discussion material about young women facing new concepts and choices for their lives will find much to delight and consider in Girls in a World at War, whose realistic portraits of the times is more vivid than most World War II fiction.

Girls in a World at War

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Hotel Bahnhof
Jimmy Cela
Vanguard Press
978-1-83794-586-3 $12.99
Amazon ordering: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Bahnhof-Jimmy-Cela/dp/1837945861
Abe Books ordering: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?ds=20&kn=hotel%20bahnhof%20jimmy%20cela

Immigration issues are usually treated like a political football – but not in Hotel Bahnhof, where they assume the guise of a psychological and intellectual examination. The setting is the Hotel Bahnhof, which becomes the focal point of a rolling feeling of suffering, uncertainty, and the shared fears of immigrant residents who face forces of deportation and prejudice despite their dissimilar national origins.

The hotel, used entirely for refugees, exists with a cloak of identity and challenge which Jimmy Cela captures in an astute introduction. The hotel “...maintains the potential to evoke more aristocratic and decorative times when a name like, say, Grand, lurks behind its main run-down entrance while what-if scenarios and “What happened?” questions hang on its façade like blazons on a tired and aged veteran’s chest.”

Through this initial description, readers will be prepared for a literary and intellectual journey that goes beyond most overt surveys of the refugee condition to probe the psyche and survival tactics of a host of characters influenced by both their culture and their move to a foreign land:

The brain of the Albanian was trained in the conception of fantasy, of parallel reality. He was a fiction writer without writing a line, always in process, without books and performance, but all in his passive-aggressive attitude and behavior toward the world.

Hotel Bahnhof offers a journey in social, psychological, and intellectual reflection that represents a discourse about contrasts between different refugee experiences and perceptions. Readers with backgrounds in literary fiction, refugee issues, and psychological analysis will be particularly attracted to the novel for its astute and thought-provoking probes into individual identities and human nature.

From the “uglifying process” of regimes to the wellsprings of the rise of dictators, oppression, and repression that lead a countryman to flee his roots to seek asylum in a strange new land, Cela crafts the kinds of contrasts and insights that lend to book club or classroom discussion about all kinds of refugee circumstances and psyches.

Under his pen, the Hotel Bahnhof stands for Everyman in an unusual manner - where a strange, uncertain holding place for a host of refugees becomes, in an uncommon sense, home to some. These patterns, viewed through narrator JC’s eyes, create hard-hitting observations and emotional reactions to vastly changed status and place which are simply unavailable, either in other novels or many a nonfiction exposé of the refugee experience.

Paradise may indeed be lost for many of these characters, but how they navigate their vastly revised circumstances to tackle the challenges of nostalgia and isolation makes for a powerful blend of personalities whose lives dovetail in unexpected ways.

Libraries and readers seeking a fictional story that rests on the shoulders of real experience will find Hotel Bahnhof powerful, intellectually and philosophically satisfying, and ultimately packed with thought-provoking reflections. It will lend equally well to vigorous book club and classroom discussions about not just refugees, but the nature of successful literary portraits of the human condition.

Hotel Bahnhof

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Judgment Tree
Gary E. Parker
Bancroft Press
978-1-61088-697-0
www.bancroftpress.com

Judgment Tree is a Civil War story based on true events that will appeal to readers who enjoy realistic places, characters, and outcomes nicely developed within the dramatic flair of fiction.

From involvements in war that prove different for the rich versus the poor to issues of integrity, Confederate Colonel Axel Strong’s mandate and shifting realizations, and deserters who hang from the Judgment Tree, the novel evolves on a landscape of war and ethical considerations that will keep readers not just fully engaged, but thinking.

Judicial proceedings, Confederate law, the difference between executions and justice, and the search for a missing general keep the story filled with satisfying twists. Real Civil War history and a host of characters on all sides are featured whose decisions, quandaries, and choices intersect in unexpected ways.

Gary E. Parker’s masterful connection between fiction and history creates a plot driven by perception, beliefs, and challenges to convention. This will especially attract book clubs interested in historical fiction set in Civil War times which sizzle with action and surprises.

Replete with battles, choices to desert or fight, African-American participation in war, and abolitionist movements, Judgment Tree will be thoroughly enjoyed by Civil War fans who will find its twists and character transformations immersive.

Librarians seeking to expand their Civil War novel holdings would do well to add Judgment Tree to the mix. Its dual consideration of racial issues and riots and Union activities and efforts makes it a winner.

Judgment Tree

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The Loudest Place on Earth
Ken Ziegler
GFB
978-1-967510-41-2 $18.95 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
Website: https://www.kenziegler.org/
Ordering: https://a.co/d/07laDmyN

The Loudest Place on Earth is a humorous fantasy novel whose satire paints a very different picture of the fairy world. Fairies in New York City opted for underground living quarters to escape the ongoing human noise from its greatest urban milieu.

Self-obsessed comfort-seeker Ludwig stumbles upon this hidden fairy society beneath Times Square, where he meets a powerful fairy who is determined to dominate the upper world. She needs a go-between to do so - and who better than Ludwig? It seems that he can be bought just with the promise of becoming rich. A ruby-defecting piglet seems just the lure to entice him to help her.

Unfortunately, given Ludwig’s proclivity for laziness, the piglet’s riches only tie into his ennui, and so Ludwig eschews his new mission to bask in his newfound wealth.

What’s a fairy leader to do? More importantly, what will Ludwig do? Plenty, as mayhem, spending sprees, and hilarious encounters with a wide cast of characters, fairy and undeniably human, result in observations and musings that are wry in tone and hilarious in result:

Those who had known him before his first visit to Broken Throat doubted his half-true story about falling down scaffolding. Being partly true should have made the lie more convincing, but a counternarrative emerged speculating that he was in trouble with whoever made him so rich. Lulu never said a word except to say she didn’t believe the rumors. What good would it do? The checks were on time, and who would believe her own story about polka-dotted lightning and an enchantment placed on a ruby-shitting pig?

Few writers can build a fairy fantasy that embarks on a hilarious romp between different worlds. Ludwig enters into a life that is packed with new realizations and encounters with the unexpected, leading his readers into the depths of New York’s apartment buildings to encounter very different investment strategies that toe the line between insanity and practicality.

As defiance, vengeance, and special interests evolve, the story of the fairies of Broken Throat and Ludwig’s shifting purposes are an entertaining venture into enchantment, gifts that represent contempt, and the fate of fairy leader An Exalted Northwind.

Libraries seeking humorous fantasy stories rich in diverse characters, uncommon encounters, and romps through worlds that embrace rats and fortune will find The Loudest Place on Earth an outstanding contemporary fantasy that turns the urban fantasy genre upside down with its comical clashes.

Replete with the unexpected, The Loudest Place on Earth is a standout.

The Loudest Place on Earth

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Miriam in the Shadows
John Winn Miller
Bancroft Press
978-1-61088-712-0
Website: www.johnwinnmiller.com
Ordering: www.bancroftpress.com

Miriam in the Shadows combines a World War II setting with a tale of subterfuge, Nazi resistance fighters, and the forces that coalesce to drive a young mother to accept dangerous undercover work that leads her to be tortured by Nazis.

Miriam Maduro may be the only person able to thwart a secret Nazi program to develop radioactive V-2 rockets capable of wiping out London. As a mother, she’s motivated by the urge to protect her son - but her reasons for becoming a British spy are deeper than family ties, with love and vengeance also providing reasons for becoming an active combatant in the war.

Her lover Jake is also involved in dangerous anti-Nazi operations, with a decoy mission involving a deadly series of encounters he may not survive.

At the center of the battle is Miriam’s love for Jake and her son, with questions about whether this love can survive undercover operations that probe the heart of danger.

John Winn Miller bases his fictional characters on real events and people. This lends his novel an atmosphere that is unusually immediate and vivid as he places real-world historical figures into fictional situations.

A second strength to this work lies in how it marries the action and draw of fictional action-packed drama with nonfiction’s attention to detail. The latter is represented in appendices and bibliographic source materials which range from memoirs, history books, biographies, government files, archives, and blogs by historical societies to academic papers, museum and foundation websites, films, and documentaries.

A sense of immediacy and action is evident from the novel’s opening descriptions:

With only seconds to go before slamming into the unforgiving ground, she tugged and twisted the two risers connecting the harness to her parachute’s rigging lines, struggling to fix the Roman Candle, the dreaded part of a parachute canopy that had failed to open properly above her.

Also worthy of mention is how well-developed the characters are and how absorbing their moral and ethical considerations as events challenge not just their ability to survive, but their feelings about that survival:

“I’m so ashamed.” Miriam buried her head in her hands and wept, shaking uncontrollably.

Rogers wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hair. “Ashamed? Of what?”

“I don’t understand why I am still alive. Why was I spared when so many others, more deserving than me, were not?”

“But you did everything you could.”

“I should have done more to save them.”

The result is thoroughly absorbing, realistic, and packed with insights about World War II that readers will find engaging and thought-provoking.

This is why Miriam in the Shadows is highly recommended for libraries and readers seeking authentic, gripping World War II and Jewish survivor experiences. The story’s ability to delve into the mechanics of motivation, survival, love, and ethical responses to adversity will also make it a draw for book clubs.

Miriam in the Shadows

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The Model
A.J. Orson
Independently Published
979-8267478618 
$13.99 Paperback/$4.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Model-J-Orson/dp/B0FV97JZX8

The Model is a novel of success and failure that opens with Chance Lestrange’s sale of his business for over a million dollars – a success by anyone’s book. However, this financial feather in the hat of achievement doesn’t make Chance happy as his endeavors proceed to fail one by one, from his marriage and sexual performance to his friends and a failed attempt at being a writer.

In fact, he’s only won at one thing – business. So, by returning to work, undertaking a new business venture in Australia, Chance hopes to achieve the pinnacle of success that marked his first endeavor. However, this job, too, seems doomed to failure as he faces financial forces beyond his control.

Thirty-eight-year-old Chance’s journey into a “rip-roaring adventure” leads him into unexpected paths and encounters with strangers as he sojourns far from the familiar and tries to leave his mark on the world – and his wife Karen.

A.J. Orson intersects intriguing characters, dialogues, and a sense of discovery into Chance’s choices. This creates thought-provoking moments of eroticism, realization, and interactions that also embed a wry tone of humor into stark, dark revelations.

This approach cultivates a sense of surprise tempered by Chance’s self-analysis of his reactions to challenges - which often involve drawing back into ennui and non-stressful situations:

The speed of the collapse left me temporarily stunned and incapable of doing anything unless it was both passive and pleasurable. Enjoying Karen’s cooking. Playing with the kids. Watching movies. Basically anything that didn’t involve me engaging with the severity of our situation.

The blend of psychological and sexual realizations that permeate the plot provide many moments of discovery that readers will find both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Libraries that add The Model to their collections will find it easy to recommend to patrons who are seeking ironic humor, life observations, and stark forays into life choices and how messy they can become. Filled with the musings of an essentially flawed personality unafraid to self-assess and find reasons to go on living, The Model is a portrait of a gritty, raw analysis of self, relationships, and choices that will keep readers immersed to the end.

Unsettling, at times? Yes. Filled with gritty moments of discovery? That’s what makes The Model a standout.

The Model

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Mud Men
J.A. Nunn
GFB
978-1-967510-23-8   $7.99 eBook
www.girlfridayproductions.com

Mud Men is a novel set in the Jim Crow South of 1942. It follows Mervyn Gower, a young California army draftee who is determined to build a reputation as a superior fighter. Unfortunately, youth and idealism leads him into a drunken brawl, after which his “punishment” is to take the unwanted, unappealing job of leading a squad of Black recruits.

The convergence of Black and white worlds on Southern training fields during World War II translates to an encounter that will change not only Mervyn’s life, but those he is tasked with leading to victory.

J.A. Nunn exposes and personalizes the heart of prejudice in the military, painting a powerful portrait of motivation and individuals from vastly different backgrounds who must learn to work together for the war effort:

Raised in a home so British he thought it ought to be knighted, Gower had hoped service in the Army could remake him as red, white, and blue as any Yankee Doodle Dogface. He was already at long odds to fire a single shot in defense of his adoptive nation. Recent events—admittedly including his own screw-ups—forced him further down the tote board.

From rumors of “lawless coloreds” and renegade tank battalions to harsh confrontations between military men over the integration and training of Blacks even when they may prove superior fighters, Nunn captures the circumstances of military men who arrive on the battlefield with their own prejudices firmly in place:

“I don’t know what you’re up to, Gower,” Mennur at last started in, “but we can’t have your squad of trained baboons outperforming their white contre parties. Mai non. That would look bad for us.”

Dialogue embraces colloquial slang, injecting notes of realistic encounters between these disparate groups. Nunn outlines different circumstances of prejudice and acceptance via an overwhelmingly attractive set of characters whose interactions and backgrounds both clash and result in new understandings between many of the groups.

The backdrop of military training experience is captured nicely, bringing the entire milieu to life:

The second half of the day went about the same as the first—waiting around, fighting off boredom and mosquitoes instead of pretending to fight off Nazis or Japs. Again, they heard occasional catcalls, every third one or so laced with a racial slur—unnecessary reminders that some of the white soldiers surrounding them resented their presence at field maneuvers, if not their existence on the face of the Earth.

The result is a compelling, realistic, extraordinary story of a young man coming of age in different ways, of an army adjusting to the prejudices and backgrounds of its disparate members, and of different forms of adaptation and quasi-acceptance.

Based on research and real-life stories, this sequel to The Stuff What Actually Is both furthers the original tale of racial conflict and growth and works nicely as a standalone read.

Libraries and readers seeking stories about the 1940s South in general and the experiences of Blacks in the army during those times in particular will find Mud Men evocative, realistic, and thoroughly thought-provoking. Its assignment and use in all kinds of classes, from students of World War II history to those studying the Jim Crow South, will make Mud Men even more valuable by tapping into its opportunity to provoke important debates and discussions.

Mud Men

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Operation Texas
Anita Lampel
DartFrog Books
978-1965253748
$19.99 Hardcover/$15.99 Paperback/$5.99 eBook
www.DartFrogBooks.com

Operation Texas is a novel set in 1938 that tells of Rosalind, whose skills in German and Slavic languages are perfect for the job of undertaking a hazardous trip to Poland to smooth her Congressman’s friend’s journey.

On the trip to Poland Rosalind encounters German spies returning from New York with secret documents, a British undercover agent, and those who are trapped in Poland and seeking a way out.

She expected support in her duties from the Embassy, which seems the logical force to assist her in tackling evolving dilemmas outside her job description - but instead she finds herself operating on her own as everything shifts around her.

Rosalind’s original mandate to observe and assist turns into a mission to not just survive, but confront social and political issues engulfing not just Poland, but the world.

Thriller components of tension, fast-paced action, and international intrigue compliment the novel’s historical foundations and its strong female protagonist. Anita Lampel builds a tale replete with thought-provoking moments of discovery, revealing pre-World War II insights about the clandestine effort to secure US visas for Polish Jews before the Nazi invasion.

As Rosalind finds her assignment shifting in radical ways, she steps up to an invitation to not only gain further information, but participate a developing romance:

“Why don’t we pretend I’ve taken a shine to you and vice versa? Happens between crew and tourist-class passengers all the time. Then I can seek you outside and even slip in here. I also need to emphasize that you are just to observe carefully and report to me. Same at the embassy—observe, report. You’re not—under any circumstances—to play Nancy Drew, girl detective, sneaking around everywhere and following your own hunches.”

Operation Texas marries a historical novel with a thriller overtone via the rich insights of a proactive female who finds her special skills put to the test in a dangerous, unfamiliar environment.

Librarians and readers seeking a different kind of action story that has its roots in World War II events, its attraction in a female protagonist who is well equipped to handle the foreign demands of a changing world, and a mission that turns into something dangerously challenging will find Operation Texas enlightening and captivating. It’s highly recommendable to readers who enjoy superior characterization and compelling World War II stories.

Operation Texas

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A Proof of Love
Merida Johns
Coffee Cup Press
978-1-7332790-8-6 $16.99
Website:  https://www.MeridaJohnsAuthor.com
Ordering:  https://www.amazon.com/Merida-L.-Johns/e/B001IU2KBS

A Proof of Love combines fiction with a memoir overlay as narrator Katie Blake reviews her life in a small American town and the principles and influences that came with personalities and people she wants to immortalize in writing:

Today I’m making this my one day to tell a story about grief and love and about the beloved people in my life so that they will never be forgotten.

Though her beloved Gram is “dead and gone forever” as Katie’s story opens, the currents of her life and its effect on family and community open like a delicate flower of realization. These are based on the principles in her grandmother’s sayings, which live on in Katie’s heart.

The novel’s foundations are The Principles List. This directs Katie’s values and life in a discourse about all kinds of life approaches that will prove especially thought-provoking discussion material for book clubs and reading groups:

“Does THE Principles List state it’s okay to hate people?” she repeated.

“It doesn’t have a rule about that.”

“Doesn’t it say to be kind to animals, bugs, and people?”

“It says to be kind to them, not that you can’t hate them.”

“Can you hate someone and be kind to them?”

From characters like Rose, who transition from “old selves to new ones,” to important connections between ideals and real-world experiences, A Proof of Love builds important connections between encounters and attitudes which are exceptional in their insights and impact:

Unfortunately, I had not connected the concept of adaptability with THE Principles List. If I had, life would have been easier. And if I had known the foundation of Mrs. Wagg’s bias against hippies and a mysterious music festival was that these had brought her brother to no good, my empathy for her would have grown too.

The result is a novel which is compelling, thought-provoking, and filled with engaging questions about life principles and their enactment in all kinds of situations within and outside of family and community.

Katie’s insights as she applies The Principles List to her own encounters and growth are particularly delightful and revealing:

I was too young to understand the full measure of grim crossroads where decisions are rarely either black or white. More often, they are a combination of grays.

Merida Johns’s outstanding novel A Proof of Love should be on the radars of librarians and readers interested in especially evocative surveys of how small-town values and family experiences entwine for bigger-picture thinking about selfishness, generosity, and life crossroads.

A Proof of Love

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She Reincarnate
Sam Siciliano
Isola Curiosa Books
979-8993821719 
$17.95 Paperback/$8.99 eBook
Website: www.samsiciliano.net
Ordering: www.amazon.com

She Reincarnate is a bow to H. Rider Haggard’s classic work She, and will especially enthrall readers familiar with the classic tale of Ayesha, the mysterious white queen of a Central African Tribe.

Here, Sam Siciliano has taken She to a different milieu and level by adding a Sherlock Holmes investigative layer to the Victorian legend. The story opens with young Herbert Potter coming to see Holmes and his cousin/narrator Henry Vernier at Baker Street.  Potter is concerned that his fiancée Jane has broken off their engagement and is behaving strangely.  For one thing, she wants to be called Ayesha.

It’s not long before a thread of wry, ironic humor emerges from the dilemma - one of the trademarks that makes this Holmes read a satisfyingly refreshing, different approach to the usual classic Sherlock piece:

"Their fate is rather sobering. They thought they were being preserved for another life which awaited them, and instead, to be pulverized! Still others ended up on display in various museums, or worse yet, were unwrapped after dinner parties. They should not have been disturbed. It does seem blasphemous." He shrugged. "Who knows? Were they not meant to be left intact so that when the final trumpets sound, they too could rise from their tombs along with the rest of the dead?"

Other passages reflect the difference between Holmes’ acceptance of unusual things, such as large talking “nevermore” ravens as pets in homes, and Henry’s more staid approach to life, which is also outlined with humor and wry wit:

I said nothing but only stared warily at the bird. While I was perfectly content to have birds nearby in the bushes or up in trees, singing to their heart's content, or digging about and foraging for worms, the idea of having them indoors had always repelled me. A canary in a cage is bad enough, but to allow a bird—and a large one at that!—to fly about loose...

As the intrigue grows, the story delves into Egyptian artifacts, mummy preservation techniques, bloody ancient ceremonies, undercover operations, and mystical unions.

Other characters present points of view which alternate during the story as events play out and Dr. Michelle Doudet-Vernier also becomes involved. These perspectives are solidified in chapter headings to smooth the transition between personalities, adding fine alternate windows into Holmes’ investigations and the interactions of those whose lives swirl around him.

The women of Victorian times prove as strong as the male characters in She Reincarnate, flushing out the action and making the story especially appealing to female readers attracted to proactive women whose insights are every bit as important as the men in the story.

Issues of bodies, souls, reincarnation, and destiny elevate the intrigue in satisfyingly unexpected ways, making this Holmes world full-bodied and rich in its atmosphere and progression. The resolution of theft, murder, and ancient influence proves satisfyingly unexpected - but it’s the strong characters and their ethics and interactions which drive the mystery in an exceptional manner.

This is why librarians and readers who enjoy Sherlock Holmes or H. Rider Haggard will want to consider this marriage of the two minds in a modern incarnation of ancient struggle. The story embraces with an exquisite attention to detail, with twists and turns readers won’t see coming, while staying true to the Holmes mythos, attraction, and propensity for fielding ancient supernatural forces and influences.

She Reincarnate

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Spring Melt
Lori Duffy Foster
Speaking Volumes LLC
9798890223654
$17.95 paperback; $7.99 ebook
Website: https://loriduffyfoster.com/
Ordering: https://a.co/d/hRtyOwp

Spring Melt is a historical suspense novel that brings the world of the 1920s Adirondacks to life. It opens with a conundrum: protagonist Ella Devine makes George Alberts nervous. She’s a key witness that he needs for a murder trial, as apparently three men have killed for her, but she is reluctant to speak. He desperately needs her testimony. The emotion elicited by her story might be Alberts' only hoping for setting these men free.

For nineteen years, the death of Henry Roth was assumed to be an accident and Ella could bury the trauma he caused her as a child. But all that explodes to the surface when someone comes forward with information that leads to the arrest of three men, friends of Ella's father, on charges of murder. As the long-buried truths of Ella's past are revealed, so are the crimes and the lies of the rich and the greedy. We learn that the murder victim, the son of wealthy loggers, might not be a victim but a rapist of the worst kind.

As events move within and outside of the courtroom, Lori Duffy Foster weaves a delicate dance between truth, crime, and victims that keeps readers involved and guessing about motivations, outcomes, and long-kept secrets.

Does guilt make a man a killer? Can a jury be convinced about what really happened all those years ago, and who should be blamed for the outcomes that changed many lives?

Foster’s courtroom drama does more than focus on perps and victims. It reveals moral and ethical conundrums that illustrate how many events aren’t black and white, but teeter in gray areas that disguise motivations, emotions, and intentions alike.

Most of the action takes place in the courtroom, which will delight those who like justice system procedurals, but the culture and times of the Adirondacks region permeates the story with satisfying atmosphere to lend events historical and cultural insights which are equally revealing and absorbing.

As Jim Maddox and other characters swirl into events to add their own perspectives, which are presented in chapters clearly identified with changing points of view, readers will especially appreciate the full-bodied reflections of characters who find their belief systems and values challenged:

Jim was certain Hooper believed publicity was his motive for the murder indictment. He had to admit; this case made his blood boil. It had all the elements he had ever dreamed of in a case. It had a victim from a wealthy, respectable family. It had defendants that people cared about, defendants with children and grandchildren whose neighbors and friends were shocked to learn of the allegations. It had a few wrenches.

Librarians and readers will appreciate how the shocking series of revelations unfolds; the compelling nature of how all characters are fully developed with contrasting motivations and feelings about crime, justice, and survival; and how the mystery deepens and develops thanks to probes both within and outside the courtroom.

Book clubs dedicated to courtroom dramas that arrive with a sense of place, history, and purpose will especially appreciate how Spring Melt flavors its suspense with elements of psychological and social revelation in a manner that will encourage avid discussions on many levels.

Spring Melt

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The Temple at Sunset
Karin Ciholas
Atmosphere Press
979-8891328853
$33.99 Hardcover/$19.99 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com

The Temple at Sunset is a historical novel that focuses on a time when the Christian faith was spreading and both Christians and Jews were colliding with the power of Rome.

The story opens with Simon tending to the wounds of a fellow Jew who has been viciously stabbed, “another victim of violent hatred that exploded in waves in Alexandria, the city that was called the jewel of the Roman Empire, the queen of cities.”

Simon’s family is divided, their futures are uncertain, and the waves of political and religious beliefs that are overtaking their lives threaten further division and danger to everyone as Rome remakes its society and the Jews struggle for religious and social freedom.

Karin Ciholas injects magic and revolutionary zest into her story, capturing its characters and the tides and trends of change with vivid imagery and confrontations to bring these times to life:

Petrus’s last words were drowned out by a rhythmic chant that started near the Augustan forum and rose to a frenetic pitch as arms stretched to the sky. “Simon Magus, fly to heaven! Simon Magus, fly to heaven! Simon Magus, fly to heaven!” Alexander gaped up at Simon Magus in horror. All around them, the people had shifted their faith to the magus. On top of the roof, the magician’s assistant blew the shofar again in cadence with the chant, and the magus flapped his giant wings and stepped off the platform.

From issues of the power of love and risk-taking to individuals driven to enact social and political changes whatever their costs, The Temple at Sunset builds vivid scenarios and dialogues that many contemporary readers will find reflective of modern thinking:

“Justice? What justice do you propose with such violence?”

“The poor will have bread. The rich will be punished. The powerful priests and tax collectors will no longer rule and extort taxes from the poor. We will kill them all.”

“Who is going to rule the new kingdom you want to establish?”

“Simon. That is Simon bar Giora.”

“When you have completed your revolt, what will be the result?”

“Justice for all.”

Packed with insights on all sides that range from the personal lives shaken by ideological forces within their own homes to people on the streets (Jews and Romans alike), The Temple at Sunset is especially notable for its powerful character interactions, political shifts, and spiritual reflections as this third book, the last book in The Cyrenian Trilogy, unfolds.

Libraries seeing popularity with the prior Cyrenian Trilogy titles will want to make acquisition of The Temple at Sunset a priority, though it is possible to enter into this story with no prior familiarity with its predecessors.

Readers interested in Christian historical fiction that personalizes events, characters, and conflicts of the times will find The Temple at Sunset also lends nicely to Christian reading group discussions.

Packed with scenarios of ordinary people stepping up to support their beliefs in extraordinary times, The Temple at Sunset will find a welcome home in any Christian historical fiction collection.

The Temple at Sunset

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Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
Rick Donahoe
Atmosphere Press
979-8891329782
$26.99 Hardcover/$14.99 Paperback/$7.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com

It’s easy to see why Where the Deer and the Antelope Play won the 9th Annual Jack Kerouac Literary Competition. Its story of a dying man who leaves his abode in the East to sojourn into the Pacific Northwest to die on his own terms translates to a compelling study in choice and transformation which proves unexpectedly thought-provoking and uplifting, given its end-of-life focus.

What springs to life are the timber wars of this region and the musings of Stewart, who has made an ancient tree the wellspring of his new life until it, too, dies:

Gone, too, was the ancient tree he’d called his own. Roots reaching like giant tentacles over the rocky ground, the burned-out cleft in its trunk gave him a place to do what boys do, a place to hide. He liked to sit with his back against the trunk until he became the tree itself, feel his feet deep in the earth, his arms high against the sky. Trees were the wind’s way of telling tales, he knew, of waves breaking across the bows of tall ships, the blows of a great blue whale.

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play’s special blend of Western atmosphere, Pacific Northwest timber issues, ecological survey, and end-of-life treatise represents a literary, philosophical journey into foreign realms. Stewart delves into the nuances of his own life and its impact on the world. He chooses a final path that promises more unexpected journeys as he encounters romance with young woman Annie and becomes steeped in a nature connection that he’d never before felt from his traditional life choices.

From small towns and new experiences riding horses to characters that personalize forces bent on logging the wilderness, Rick Donahoe gives equal time to exploring the attitudes and motivations of all sides:

“Ancient forests my ass,” Mack bellowed, “with their endangered owls, woodpeckers, pine martens, murrelets, and every other goddamned thing. I’ll tell you what’s endangered . . . you and me, this mill and every job that goes with it.” Pens and pencils jumped when he pounded his desk. “Our way of life, that’s what’s endangered.”

Vivid passages reflect the dialogues and commitments of not just Stewart, but a cast of characters whose lives intersect in the Pacific Northwest arena over choices of nature preservation versus expanded lifestyles and careers:

“Not you, Mack. All of us. From the man in the Oval Office down to the guy adding a deck onto his home. We all thought the forests would go on forever, that they’d never end.” He looked down on the ravaged landscape. “But now our backs are to the wall, to the Pacific Ocean. The last frontier you were part of, Mack, it’s gone.”

“Well, I’m not gone,” Mack muttered. “Anyway, not yet!”

As Stewart finds new reasons for living in a different way, readers become immersed in Oregon’s environment and the worlds which collide over the state’s management and natural resources.

Librarians looking for literary novels steeped in Pacific Northwest atmosphere and issues would do well to add Where the Deer and the Antelope Play to their collections.

Replete with literary representations of social, political, and psychological growth which marry well with a focus on natural surroundings and characters who perceive their worlds differently, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play is evocative, thought-provoking, and ultimately uplifting in its messages about survival and thriving. The forces which clash over convictions about how this world should be managed and used make for a story that will also appeal to book clubs and discussion groups interested in intersections of man and nature.

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

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Yasuke: Dead Man Walking
Braxton A. Cosby
Cosby Media Productions. Inc.
979-8-88526-274-3 $4.99 eBook
www.cosbymediaproductions.com

Historical fiction readers interested in novels of 16th century Japan and the story of the world’s first African samurai will relish how vividly Yasuke: Dead Man Walking captures the milieu of these times. This is done through engrossing, atmospheric “you are here” descriptions embedded into the story from its opening lines:

The smoke from burning incense mingled with the heavy scent of sake and sweat, creating a haze that seemed to swallow the flickering candlelight whole. In the depths of the Floating Willow, one of Kyoto's most notorious pleasure quarters, the sound of shamisen strings being plucked lazily drifted through the paper-thin walls, accompanied by the soft giggles of courtesans and the drunken laughter of their patrons.

Braxton A. Cosby injects readers into 1500s Japan with a powerful blend of fine characterization and colorful description that requires no prior familiarity with the times or its history in order to prove absolutely compelling.

Majok becomes a slave and is abused until he falls under the ownership and tutelage of Oda Nobunaga, the most powerful warlord in 16th-century Japan. There, he becomes Yasuke, fiercest of warriors, gaining the respect of emperors and the hatred of those who are prejudiced against Africans, slaves, and anyone who would challenge Japanese rule.

How he achieves this near-impossible feat is revealed in a story which offers realistic insights into the experiences and fates of those who become slaves in foreign countries:

Majok's patience finally wore thin. He had been excluded from a conversation about what was clearly his own fate, surrounded by armed men whose intentions were unclear, and kept in ignorance by linguistic barriers that grew more frustrating by the moment.

From secret sword training sessions with Nobutada to cross-cultural interactions that prove beneficial to warriors on both sides, Cosby crafts scenarios of achievement and overcoming different barriers as Majok transforms his life in response to impossible circumstances:

Majok's African martial arts blended surprisingly well with Japanese sword work, each teaching the other, each learning.

Majok’s adaptation to his new circumstances is not without trials and grief, even as he builds his new persona and reputation:

As he walked away from the scene, the full magnitude of the loss began to settle over him. Every moment when he seemed to find peace, when acceptance and freedom appeared within reach, something terrible happened to shatter that hope. The pattern was becoming clear, and with that clarity came a burning rage that threatened to consume him.

From handling deadly ninja attackers to confronting the forces that would keep him oppressed, Majok faces struggles in which monks’ refuges become ground zero for clashes, participating in battles and confronting betrayers as he steps into his Yasuke legendary persona against the playing field of temples and killing grounds.

Historical fiction readers with a special interest in early Japan receive thought-provoking moments of revelation and discovery as Majok navigates this world, librarians will appreciate the opportunity to recommend a novel that moves well beyond the usual early Japanese scenario, and leisure readers will appreciate how little prior knowledge of Japanese history is needed in order to become thoroughly engaged with the characters and conflicts in Yasuke: Dead Man Walking.

The novel’s well-developed scenarios and historically realistic portraits makes Yasuke: Dead Man Walking a top recommendation for any reader or library collection interested in authentic, immersive stories about adaptation, struggle, and achievement.

Yasuke: Dead Man Walking

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Reviewer's Choice


And Your Byrd Can Sing
Jim Roberts
Silent Clamor Press
9798993393506 
$19.99 Paperback, $9.99 eBook
amazon.com/dp/B0FVTSBV7G

I’ve killed three men, but I’m not a murderer. Really, I’m not.

So opens a story with lines so compellingly confessional that it’s nearly impossible not to continue, joining other outstanding literary opening lines that hold invitations which can’t be turned down.

And Your Byrd Can Sing explores and expands its introduction as the first-person narrator muses on God’s judgment, law, and whether or not he’s truly a killer.

Jim Roberts evolves Texan Billy Wayne Bastrop’s saga with a close eye to inspecting a young man’s Southern roots, cultural influences, and the choices and consequences of his behaviors. These lead him to grapple with matters of life, death, and moral behavior as he confronts loss and strives to overcome poor decisions.

The steady infusion of Southern atmosphere throughout Billy’s experiences creates delightfully unexpected insights into his life’s influences:

It was a Hindu, not a Christian, who gave me a new arm. This happened despite the best efforts of my aunt, Sunshine Bastrop. I called her Sunny. She fought hard for my new arm to be a miracle from Jesus.

Billy has one arm, but needs two for the things he wishes to accomplish in life. Soon the cost of his desire comes to light as his struggles move from girls and adjusting to a prosthetic arm to walking a fine line between paranoia and logic as he faces the aftermath of Wonderful’s death, certain that his implication in Wonderful’s demise is inevitable.

Roberts injects metaphor and description into his story to embed it with powerful imagery. This adds to Billy’s compelling experiences:

Soon we were both on my bed. Across the river in Kentucky, bright snaky tongues of lightning licked out from a black-plum sky, distant but moving toward the river. The storm bathed us in staccato bursts of light...

This marriage of place, Southern culture, and brutal truths about faith, circumstance, and character flaws creates a literary and social examination that will prove impossible for readers to predict or put down.

Librarians seeking exceptionally literary discourses about small town Southern experience, coming of age, and entering into adult conundrums and issues of choice and responsibility will find And Your Byrd Can Sing worthy of top recommendation.

It should not only be placed at the top of reading lists, but highly recommended to book clubs seeking vivid discussion material about the southern experience and growing into one’s choices and limitations.

And Your Byrd Can Sing

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Human Again in the AI Age
J.D. Macpherson
Cairnstone Press
978-1-0698621-3-6
$17.99 USD (paperback), $8.99 (Kindle), $22.95 (hardback)
Website: https://readhumanagain.com
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/HUMAN-AGAIN-Age-J-D-Macpherson/dp/1069862134

Human Again in the AI Age is about utilizing AI technology in the best possible manner, which will especially appeal to AI users and former skeptics about the experience. This audience receives a reasoned assessment of not only AI’s promises and pitfalls, but lessons on how best to employ it to maximize positive, human-enhancing results.

Take mindfulness, for example. Readers may not readily associate the fine art of cultivating mindful techniques with the successful use of AI technology, but J.D. Macpherson
draws these connections via a series of examinations that pinpoints exactly where AI and human perception deviate:

AI can effortlessly describe how a roller coaster works—the height, speed, gravity, and engineering—but it’s never heard the ker-clack, kerclack, ker-clack climbing that first hill, or felt the breathless drop that follows. AI is data without experience. Knowledge without thrill.

Mindful approaches to AI evolve from this knowledge of human strengths:

Edge in an AI-driven world isn’t winning at data, speed, or admin. That game is already lost. Emotional intelligence and sensory awareness, precisely the things AI struggles to imitate, are becoming increasingly valuable. It’s about being present in the moment, experiencing the sensory input and spending time focusing on how it makes you feel. There’s another word for this: mindfulness.

Each chapter reviews another segment of the AI/human interaction puzzle that pieces together not only revised concepts about AI, but changed attitudes and objectives about using AI.

The connections Macpherson makes in his book are not just eye-opening, but essential for human adaptation to new technologies in general and AI in particular:

Just like scribes fearing the press, today’s professors, writers, lawyers, knowledge workers, feel threatened. They feel threatened because knowledge itself no longer holds privileged power. Recognize AI as inevitable historical disruption, not a unique threat. With this you can move proactively instead of defensively.

Human Again in the AI Age is an important survey that should be in any library interested in technology, adaptation, and what it means to be and stay human in a rapidly changing, mechanized world.

Replete with discussions about human and AI nature and the possibilities that emerge from their intersection, Human Again in the AI Age is very highly recommended reading not just for classrooms studying the psychology of technological advancement, but for individual readers and book clubs interested in a different approach to understanding and making the most of AI’s potential while remaining grounded as a human being.

Human Again in the AI Age

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Letters: Our American Story
Ann Brubaker Greenleaf Wirtz
Resource Publications
979-8-3852-5518-4
$37.00 Hardcover/$22.00 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.wipfandstock.com

Letters: Our American Story is a narrative about America’s history that injects a personal touch into what is too often a collection of dates and events alone. How best to absorb the basics of American identity and perseverance than through correspondence and the passion of those who lived through tumultuous times and events?

Key connections are made between famous individuals and ordinary citizens, extraordinary and regular lives, and American regional cultural values and the broader milieu of American psyches, embracing genealogical lineages and individual efforts alike.

Spiritual threads and devotion to faith also connect the dots between such experiences as women’s suffrage, family heritage, and Ann Brubaker Greenleaf Wirtz’s modern life. This places historical precedent in a category unparalleled in other histories or memoirs, creating connections to influential individuals who fostered faith and understanding by example.

Reflections on personal milestones big and small mark this journey through American experience:

We look ahead in life, never imagining we can’t experience our expectations. Lois D. Spano sadly died from cancer ten months shy of her seventy-ninth birthday. She was thirty-eight when she wrote her message. I’m thankful for her impact and for the role model she presented not only as a teacher but as a wonderful human being. Gentle humor, positivity, and encouragement are unforgettable attributes and are impossible not to pass on. Her touch on my life was carried forward, and it’s gratifying to know I had a small impact on Winston’s life when he was in fourth grade.

Because of its wide-ranging notes, Letters: Our American Story happily defies pat categorization. At once a memoir, a history, a survey of faith and influence, and a collection of letters that draw together seemingly disparate topics and individuals, the story that unfolds holds the power to attract an uncommon audience of memoir readers, history enthusiasts, and those who appreciate literary insights.

This journey, rooted from a World War II letter from her father, Kenneth L. Brubaker Sr., is well worth undertaking as the author draws together facets of her past and how different forces and individuals joined via circumstance and serendipity to contribute to the fabric and melting pot of America.

How do we impact the world around us? How does history carry forward the notes we add into American experience? How are heroes, some applauded and others virtually unknown except to their immediate circles, created?

Librarians looking for standouts for book clubs and patrons alike will find Letters: Our American Story easy to highly recommend to a wide audience of general readers and scholars with interests ranging from memoirs and American culture to genealogy, letter-writing, and spiritual reflection.

All these elements coalesce in a powerful tribute to the American psyche and its interconnected culture, making for a survey that is hard to put down and thoroughly thought-provoking reading, powered by letters that form a foundation of hard-hitting written reflections:

The choices she made in handling her grief encourage us to choose a positive path forward. Her words demonstrate that life does go on, though at times hard and overwhelming; that other people’s grief can give us perspective on our own struggles; and that expressing our compassion never goes unnoticed.

Letters: Our American Story

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Miracle Grow of the Mind
Carol LaHines
Regal House Publishing
9781646037704 $19.95
https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/miracle-grow-of-the-mind/

The birth of a baby is supposed to be a joyous occasion, but when Amy and Michael’s son Griffin is born prematurely, a host of medical issues thrust the new parents into a medical nightmare filled with difficult choices, new realizations, and a version of parenthood they’d never imagined.

Miracle Grow of the Mind charts all these experiences as it focuses on Griffin’s developmental delays, constant evaluations, and a host of therapeutic options that keep Griffin in the maelstrom of sometimes-conflicting choices and perspectives. Meanwhile, life goes on.

Michael’s mother has a form of dementia that leads her to insist Michael is the adult version of a baby that died in infancy, Griffin’s babysitter becomes embroiled in an affair with a psychoanalyst who is immersed with his special needs child, and Griffin’s condition forces everyone around him to get on board the train of idealistic, hopeful thinking and alternative living.

Readers who think this novel’s focus will spotlight the adults’ situations will be especially pleased to note that Carol LaHines takes the time to juxtapose these with Griffin’s navigation of an often-confusing world:

Michael tried to pry Griffin’s hand from the toy. Griffin’s grasp was exceptionally strong; his muscles rigid, spastic. The world awash in sensations he could not process, information he could not parse, words the meaning of which eluded him.

From the challenges of appearing in public and navigating meltdowns to the ultimate impact of too many choices and too much speculation about raising a special needs kid, LaHines creates a vivid story that any parent involved in medical conundrums with their children will readily recognize:

She didn’t want to think about hyperbaric treatment options, about specially-constructed furniture available from the Conductive Therapy Institute, about vestibular righting systems and orthotics designed to prevent ankle eversion. She didn’t want to think about the insidious effects of Phenobarbital (nervous system depression, small teeth, hirsuteness, hirsuteness!). She didn’t want to think about the benefits of brushing a hyposensitive child with horsehairs and sandpaper and other textures to awaken their deadened receptors, to contemplate a future beyond get him to Sensations, pack his gluten-free lunch, hope to avoid meltdown.

Life will throw you curveballs – and the ultimate message of Miracle Grow of the Mind is that how these are perceived, navigated, and hopefully turn out for the greater good is what living is all about. And what happens if there turns out to be an expensive miracle that insurers refuse to acknowledge or pay for?

Thought-provoking questions about special needs kids, the medical system, parenting, and hope are raised that will immerse all readers – whether parents coping with special needs children or parentless readers.

Librarians and readers seeking novels that promote better understanding, hope, and new realizations about parents and families will find Miracle Grow of the Mind thought-provoking and worthy not just of individual pursuit, but book club discussion. Groups from general parenting to psychology circles addressing the needs of the special needs community will discover Miracle Grow of the Mind enlightening, realistic, and hard to put down.

Miracle Grow of the Mind

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Nasparnival™
Freeman Smith
Atmosphere Press
979-8891329621
$41.99 Hardcover/$27.99 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com

Nasparnival™ is a satirical portrait of modern America as experienced by Colt Cortez, a former Hollywood child star turned would-be U.S. senator. Much like in today’s political world, Colt and his crew navigate a challenging milieu of school shootings, book banning, identity theft, and journalists gone wild.

The setting is a right-wing “Freedom town” shaped like the Omega symbol, where a carnival/NASCAR race serves as the selected backdrop for Colt to announce his bid for senator.

It’s hard to imagine that the “epicenter of democracy” would take place at the race track, but in this wry examination, the NASPARNIVAL™ event unfolds in a revolutionary and appealing manner that melds entitlement with a Saturday night tradition.

Trademarks on advertising slogans, event titles, and sayings permeate the story, emphasizing the irony of capitalizing on language and intention, as Colt romps through politics and life. He draws on his Hollywood background to dramatize actions and solicits real-world figures for his spectacle – including real police officers

The dialogue, plot, and characters read like a movie, with the lively commentary and observational style that marks screenplays and film’s dramatization techniques:

“I’ll be there, let me know. That sounds good. I’m getting pressured by the county commissioners, as you know. They don’t quite cotton to the freedom town thing. They want it to be the way it’s always been and want us to keep an eye on things, you know what I mean by that.”

“Yeah, we’re aware of those losers. We got them under control.”

“Well, they control me too, Colt. I gotta keep them happy too.”

“I feel you. It’s in my skin,” Colt says, using his line, ‘It’s in my skin’ to show a political empathy.

Freeman Smith wields these literary devices in a manner that is rich, fast-paced, and both whimsical and serious as modern events and culture are tapped for profitable ventures both political and personal. Readers are given many opportunities to appreciate this world as conundrums and group rules emerge to redefine the boundaries of ambition and life purpose.

This creates both a literary explosion of delightful complexity and analysis, and a novel that will feel familiar in its backdrop and society and evocative in its portraits of opposing forces and motivations:

“We all hate Colt and his buddies and The Omega, got it?” Wendell says. “I was just going to do my time here, be a dick, and walk away, but y’all got to me,” he says and they all laugh. “I am an actor, you’re an actor,” he says, pointing to the new guy, “so maybe we make up our own show or something.”

The result is a delightful story that will keep readers alternately laughing and thinking as Colt and his gang face a shifting world and society.

Librarians seeking examples of satirical political and social commentary will want to place Nasparnival™ at the top of their literary acquisition and recommendation lists. Replete with action, confrontations, ironies, and too-real worldviews, Nasparnival™ is a study in intention and reality that will thoroughly absorb book clubs, as well. They will find much material for debate and discussion as Colt’s efforts evolve (or devolve).

Nasparnival™

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The Rubicon Leader
Vahab Hasiri
Consilium Dynamics Advisors Ltd.
978-1-0697336-0-3
$24.99 Hardcover / $16.99 Paperback / $7.99 Kindle eBook
Website: www.consiliumdynamics.com
Ordering: https://a.co/d/084uRyXb

Why don’t we have better leaders around us in our communities, societies, organizations, sports, and politics? Are these really the best we have? Why doesn’t anyone want to take responsibility to lead? And why does nobody teach us how to be leaders?

The Rubicon Leader: Master Your Inner Revolution and Create a Legacy That Multiplies is a top recommendation for self-help business and leadership students seeking insights on what it means to create not just an effective impact, but a lasting one. It tackles the process of deconstruction and reconstruction that purportedly makes for good leaders, but in reality can result in wasted time, energy, and frustration if not properly understood and applied.

Unlike most self-help guides about being more effective, the focus here is on identifying potentially destructive patterns of self-criticism and change that do little in the long run. And the long run is what The Rubicon Leader is all about.

Vahab Hasiri blends a memoir of experience into this inviting journey, reviewing the lessons that ultimately led to new beginnings:

...the essential skills of transformation, influence, and human connection that underpin true leadership.

Hasiri’s approach is deeper in psychological self-inspection than most, demanding of its readers their own attention to deconstruction and identification as they navigate past efforts and new possibilities.

Examples and reflections invite not only discourses about change, impact, responsibility, and transformation, but applied results that can be spread into business, leadership, and personal life pursuits with new clarity:

How can that kind of influence be measured, the kind that composes trust rather than commanding obedience? Look for the quiet indicators. You’ll hear your words repeated in rooms you’ve never entered, and find people defending your position before you’ve spoken. See resistance dissolve, not because you argued harder, but because you aligned deeper.

From the elements involved in becoming a “master communicator” to the step-by-step work of reframing concepts, perceptions, and applications, Hasiri cultivates a special blend of personal experience and insight with bigger-picture questions about applied transformation.

All these features set The Rubicon Leader apart from those self-help guides that would lecture, devolve into personal memoir alone, or keep emotional content (and thus, connections) at arm’s length.

One of the very best features in this approach lies not just in musings and applications, but in the call to make visionary leadership choices that demand from potential leaders participation, vulnerability, and strength.

The admonitions that stem from this process are reinforced by historical precedent, personal experience, and examples of leadership objectives:

Competence must be the baseline; influence evaporates the moment execution fails. Small commitments matter more than grand promises—every missed follow-up or vague response erodes credibility. Transparency is non-negotiable; when people understand your incentives and see they align with theirs, suspicion dissolves into confidence. Serve without keeping score. Own mistakes quickly and completely.

Librarians overseeing business and leadership collections will want to consider The Rubicon Leader a ‘must have’ acquisition, and will also want to highly recommend it to business and leadership book clubs seeking actionable, specific routes to making better decisions and leading not just by example, but by inspirational outlook.

The Rubicon Leader

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The Silent Breakup
Dr. Arica Law
Balboa Press/Hay House
979-8-7652-0416-0 $37.99 Hardcover/$19.99 Paperback
www.balboapress.com.au

The Silent Breakup: The Untold Story of Disconnection-And the Small Steps Back Toward Healing surveys a state of distancing and discontent that turns soul mates into roommates and lovers into distant friends. It identifies the qualities of a “silent breakup” and how this translates to an emotional estrangement that may or may not be fixable.

It’s “the quiet ending no one talks about” (as one chapter states) that involves the early process of a relationship that is heading for the rails. Acknowledging the symptoms of this state of mind and tackling its origins before the train leaves the tracks is what The Silent Breakup is all about. It gives readers an opportunity to not just identify breakup’s insidious qualities, but directly address its wellsprings before it’s too late.

Reflective questions and practical tools accompany Dr. Arica Law’s insights about the process. This turns The Silent Breakup into an effective self-help manual, as well, for those who would do more than identify early signs of trouble.

The book tackles these big subjects in smaller, digestible sections. The first part identifies signs of disconnection; the second tackles patterns of response; and the third offers ideas for reconnection and healing.

Each segment joins with the others to create a bigger picture of opportunity and hope. This will especially attract couples interested in engagement, dialogue, and preserving the love they share.

A notable strength of this approach is how Dr. Law refers back to the foundations of ideas to draw these efforts together later in the book:

Earlier in Part One, we looked at emotional bids—those everyday moments when one partner seeks connection. Here’s the twist: If a bid isn’t in your love language, you might not even realize it’s a bid. Or, you might see it, turn toward it, but respond in your own language instead of theirs. They reach for comfort, and you offer a solution. They want words, and you give them touch—just like we saw with Jay and Lena.

The result is a lesson in hope, change, psychological savvy, and partnership development that ideally will be kept as a companion volume for tackling life beyond romance alone. Many of these concepts can apply to overall relationship-building efforts.

Librarians and readers seeking to expand their reading lists of psychological self-help and couples counseling books will find The Silent Breakup a winner. The book clubs and psychology groups that choose it for discussion, as well as readers who want to apply its principles to life changes, will find The Silent Breakup holds many examples, much food for thought, and solutions that break the habit of distancing from problems.

The Silent Breakup

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Venice of America and the Art of Transformation
Jodi and Cecil Companaro
Over and Above Creative
9780997107760 $150.00
https://www.jodicampanaro.com/venice-of-america

Venice of America and The Art of Transformation is an art book by siblings who capture the vibrant tensions, urban delights and challenges, and layered culture of their hometown of Venice, California. The two artists use photographs embellished with mixed media collage to capture the various voices and presences of Venice through richly textured, visually immersive compositions.

Students of art and urban landscapes will be particularly interested in how Venice of America applies and marries not just photography and collage, but graffiti and edgy overlays to capture different aspects of Venice’s social milieu with sophistication and depth.

Buildings represented by artistic snapshots range from small markets and empty structures to dynamic pairings of advertising that reflect flavors of changing times, transforming everyday storefronts into compelling architectural studies.

Rarely are people portrayed (though there are a few appearances), leaving the structures and written word to carry the emotional weight and create striking contrasts, as in the photo of a building whose awning advertises two businesses: The Sidewalk Café and Bar and Small World Books.

In taking human activity and portraits out of the majority of photographic renderings, Jodi and Cecil Companaro successfully reflect the cultural tapestry and messages of Venice, often leaving to the viewer’s eye and sentiments any underlying translation of meaning and insights, resulting in images that feel contemplative, cinematic, and open to interpretation.

Libraries and readers with a special interest in urban portraits of local flavor, or in Southern California in particular, will find Venice of America’s ability to contrast shifting images of place, an approach that offers an extraordinary representation of urban transformation and discovery — both an artistic achievement and a cultural document.

Venice of America ideally will appear not only in art collections or libraries interested in Southern California’s small-town culture, but also among collectors and circles with an interest in urban art, landscapes of change, and shifting kaleidoscopes of movement that leave behind the physical relics of humanity as testimony to what used to be. This makes it especially suited for galleries, institutions, and beautifully curated coffee tables.  

Venice of America and the Art of Transformation

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Young Adult/Children


The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle
Steven Burgauer
Battleground Press
979-8233913440 $12.99
Ordering (ebook):
https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Broken-Gargoyle-Steven-Burgauer-ebook/dp/B0GDVWMTGC/
Ordering (paperback):
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mystery-of-the-broken-gargoyle-steven-burgauer/1149081244?ean=9798233913440

Young adults who enjoy historical fiction and mystery will welcome how The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle combines the alluring elements of a world under siege during World War I with the efforts of two young boys to earn their Boy Scout badges in astronomy when they stumble upon a German plot to assassinate a scientist working for the British military.

The story unfolds in the north of England, far from the bombings of London, and excels in depicting how the impact of World War I reached beyond urban borders to affect young people living in what seems like a safe environment. Nothing’s safe in wartimes.

Young Alfie and Oliver envision themselves as Sherlock Holmes and Watson as they pursue an investigation that at first feels almost like a fun game, then turns into far more serious matters as lives – including their own – are at stake.

Points of view shift between child and adult experiences during the war as POW camps, plots that embrace both special interests and bigger-picture history, and dangerous encounters affect not just the two boys, but the world around them.

By juxtaposing these interests and age groups, Steven Burgauer creates satisfying intrigue and contrasts that will educate all ages about the war’s impact and the participation of individuals who at times have only their own best interests in mind:

As Rudyard Carruthers started across the field to the main road that would take him back to camp, he swallowed hard. Rudyard had just lied to a dangerous man. There was no drone dossier to pass onto Stefan Kreutz. Rudyard had made the whole thing up hoping to come away from the meeting with a cash down payment on the phantom dossier. Rudyard had rolled the dice and lost.

Readers who enjoy history delivered with high-octane action, satisfying twists, and historical backdrops many young adults won’t already have will find The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle personalizes the war as seen through the eyes of individuals who take on challenges far beyond their normal live progression.

Candid portraits of battles and slaughter, prejudice and struggle, and individuals who face their desire to return home to loved ones even as they confront more than military engagements creates a wide-ranging story that moves between the boys’ focus and findings to very adult concerns under all kinds of conditions:

One man offered his opinion. “If I may be permitted to say — having relations with another man’s wife is dangerous business. Husbands get angry. Husbands tend to kill their wives’ lovers.”

Ernst spoke up. “Having relations with a married woman is not something a man would want to brag about. Why would the commandant tell Pietar, of all people? Pietar is a prisoner of war, like the rest of us.”

“For some men, danger and the risk of getting caught makes it all worthwhile,” der Lehrer said.

These considerations place The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle more than a cut above the usual story for young adults, adding important elements of social, political, and moral reflection that adults will find handy for guiding discussions about World War I’s changing nature and impact on many different levels.

Burgauer’s integration of mystery and social reflection is exceptional and offers a deep dive into personalities, choices, and influences of the times that leads young readers into more than a mystery alone.

The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle’s study in courage and what makes for brave and ethical action makes it a top recommendation for young adults interested initially in mysteries, then in historical accounts that brings the time to life.

The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle

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Pumpkin’s Pennies
Mark Hallink
Springwell Publishing
9798992240580
$20.99 Hardcover/$13.99 Paperback/$2.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Pumpkins-Pennies-Learning-Lifetime-Financial/dp/B0DX7HBCRD

Pumpkin’s Pennies: Smart Spending and Saving for Kids and Families is not a dry survey of finances for kids, but the vivid story of Springwell Farms, where spirited mare Pumpkin has a knack for discovering life lessons and imparting them to the world around her.

Young horse enthusiasts will relish how Pumpkin learns about trading coins for goods, embarking on a journey that involves understanding earning, saving, spending, and – most important of all – sharing the wealth.

Pumpkin’s experiences teach her important lessons about money that kids will absorb readily under the guise of an adventure story that is delivered in easily-digestible chapters. The book is packed with especially bright, appealing color illustrations of horses in all kinds of settings.

The lessons Pumpkin receives and reflects into her world are ones that read-aloud parents can also use to illustrate important insights about not just financial and life goals, but values:

Pumpkin felt a surge of happiness, not just from her near success in saving for the blanket, but from the realization that her journey was about more than just money. It was about setting goals, making wise choices, and teaching others to do the same.

Pumpkin cultivates bigger dreams which can be easily shared with young audiences. This makes Pumpkin’s Pennies a far more valuable series of experiences and lessons than might be originally envisioned from the practical-sounding book subtitle.

Librarians and read-aloud adults who value superior, engaging color illustrations, a reflective tone that marries adventure and discovery with bigger-picture thinking, and a story that uses a thoughtful horse to delve into the nuts and bolts of enlightened financial savvy will find Pumpkin’s Pennies not only a thoughtful, fun choice for kids, but a tale the entire family can enjoy and discuss.

Pumpkin’s Pennies

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The Secret Buttons
Ellen Shapiro
Visual Language Books LLC
9781891328336
$29.95 Hardcover/$10.95 Paperback/$8.95 eBook
http://www.visualanguage.net

The Secret Buttons will appeal to ages 13-18 with its story of Anni Blum and her little sister Rosie, who depart alone from Nazi-occupied Austria, disguised and headed for England and safety. When they get there, however, freedom proves elusive, for their German language usage brands them as Nazi spies even as blackouts and bombings pummel their new life.

Narrated in the first person, the story assumes a realistic tone of immediacy strengthened by the fact that the plot is inspired by author Ellen Shapiro’s mother’s memories.

The story is also a standout because it addresses the prejudice and hostility immigrants during those times faced from fearful folk in the free world – a topic that often gets sidelined in the focus on Nazi atrocities.

As the children face encounters with suspicious train conductors, relatives who show them how to be workers, and others, they are challenged by their lack of English as well as new customs and perceptions in their foreign home:

The meaning of ‘Domestic Worker Visa’ is starting to sink in. My head is filled with questions I don’t have the English words to ask. I make a mental note to look up ‘blackout curtains.’

The result is a powerful story of two children who escape the Nazis, only to find prejudice and challenge in their new home. It will provoke many discussions among young readers about prejudice, different customs, and some the impacts of Nazi rule that normally don’t receive much focus for this age group. In addition, the plot adds further journeys towards safety that the children face as they are forced to adapt, yet again, to a foreign culture:

“There will be more bombings. I gave your mother my word I would keep you safe. It will be safe in New York. They say the Germans will try to send submarines across the Atlantic, and I pray they won’t succeed. Their planes will never make it all the way there to drop a bomb. So this is the right time for you to leave.”

Librarians looking to add thought-provoking books about immigrants and those who fled Nazi oppression will find The Secret Buttons a winner. Its ability to tackle bigger-picture issues and personalize them for a young audience makes for a story that is compelling, thought-provoking, and worthy of library acquisition and top recommendation to young readers who receive yet another angle about Nazi impact and immigration experience.

The Secret Buttons

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Tommy Tofu’s Christmas Wish
Joanne Rose
Independently Published
979-8872646211 
$12.95 Paperback/$4.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Tommy-Tofus-Christmas-Wish-Joanne/dp/B0CQTXNKV7

Tommy Tofu’s Christmas Wish presents a holiday theme supported by a Meat Free Monday ideal. Readers interested in the intersection of food choices, ethics, and Christmas spirit will appreciate the picture book story’s message and engaging, colorful holiday drawings by Tuly Akter.

A warm-hearted boy lives in the small village of Plantopia. His discovery that some people feel lonely and cold at Christmas prompts him to come up with the concept of 'Operation Vegan Christmas Feast!'

How can food choice mitigate isolation? The focus is not just on food decisions (which his positive parents support), but on “making this holiday extra special for everyone.”

Descriptions of vegan foods, from mashed potatoes “as fluffy as clouds” to roasted garlic Brussels sprouts, kick off the season with mouth-watering descriptions. Adults who read the book to the very young will especially appreciate its appealing descriptions of healthy food:

Their kitchen turned into a colorful canvas, with rainbow salads bursting with crisp greens, juicy tomatoes, and creamy avocado slices. Steaming bowls of hearty soups filled with colorful vegetables and aromatic herbs simmered on the stove.

Combine the magical of holiday decorating and the giving spirit of Christmas with a young boy’s determination to spread delightful vegan food joy, and it’s evident that this very different holiday picture book will reach a wider audience than the usual Christmas story.

Elementary-level librarians and adults seeking holiday spirit picture books to read to kids will welcome the sentiments, happiness, and healthy food focus of Tommy Tofu’s Christmas Wish, which can be enjoyed year-round as a fine example of the gift of kindness.

Tommy Tofu’s Christmas Wish

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When I See the Sun, You See the Moon
Jennie Marie Naffie
Atmosphere Press
979-8891329577
$29.99 Hardcover/$17.99 Paperback/$8.99 eBook
www.atmospherepress.com

When I See the Sun, You See the Moon gives picture book readers and read-aloud adults the thought-provoking story of a granddaughter and grandmother who live “an ocean apart.” The distance between MimiChi, who lives in Japan, and her Nona, who lives in the United States, seems vast.

But as the story unfolds, filled with simple, colorful illustrations by Mary Wahr, connections between the two, cemented by love, evolve to emphasize that distance does not diminish love. The daily rituals each performs with the other in mind help reinforce to young listeners and readers the fact that love can grow despite distance:

MimiChi blows kisses outside and asks the wind to carry them to Nona. Nona sings their favorite songs and sends them back on the wind to MimiChi.

The result is a lovely dialogue about remote love which can pave the way for effective conversations between adult and child about the ways love can be preserved even though miles physically separate loved ones and families.

Elementary-level libraries will find When I See the Sun, You See the Moon easy to recommend to parents seeking picture book stories about absent family members or the impact of a long-distance relationship.

When I See the Sun, You See the Moon

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