May 2025 Review Issue

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

Fantasy & Sci Fi

Escape
Joe Canzano
Happy Joe Control
9798985913231 $3.99 ebook, $9.99 paperback
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQJVSLHH

Escape is the second book in Joe Canzano’s Rune and Flash series, crafting a vivid dystopian sci-fi saga that builds on events in the first book, Inside the Prison Dream. The story starts where Dream Prison ended, making it especially recommended for prior fans, who will find the continuation a smooth venture into new experiences and opportunities for Rune and Markla, who are still on the run.

While a bigger cause embraces them, Rune and Markla’s companionship adds an extra dimension of strength to their efforts, drawing readers into scenarios that test both their resolve and their connections to one another.

Joe Canzano forges a series of action-packed adventures that reviews serious choices, new opportunities, and situations that test Markla’s resolve to keep Rune alive at all costs. Neither wants to hurt anybody—but their special mandates may make it necessary to do so. Rescue attempts, mandates to stay strong and defy powerful forces against all odds, and unexpected encounters lead each character to step up to make extraordinary and often uncomfortable choices.

The thread of humor that runs through the plot is both unexpected and delightful in its subtle forms of comic relief:

Having a sense of humor was not a prerequisite for being a goon.

From nightmare scripts for “dreambanks” to possible romance under adverse conditions that evolves in unexpected ways, Canzano keeps the characters realistic, their dilemmas surprising, and their actions believable.

The juxtaposition between brilliant plans and dilemmas that involve literally sleeping with the enemy makes for a fine contrast in purpose and plot. This injects expanded moral and ethical concerns into a fast-paced story of confrontation and evolution.

From powerful bonds tested by extraordinary events to those charged with guiding dreams in novel ways, Escape represents a study in contrasts. Its examples and employing power in responsible ways in different kinds of battles while facing threats “worse than death” gives sci-fi readers a real treat.

Prior fans of Rune and Flash will want to consider Escape a “must have” for its ability to build upon and continue a particularly vivid series of clashes, realizations, and discoveries.

Escape

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The Esquadron
Charlie Freelander
Independently Published
978-9526560700 e-book 7.99$, paperback 17.99$
Website: https://charliefreelander.com/index.html
Ordering: https://books2read.com/b/49qa0J

The Esquadron is the second book in the ‘Legacy of Wrath’ series, a blend of mythology and redemption saga that will simply delight those who seek more than fast-packed action alone from their fantasy reading.

Depth and discovery mark a vivid story that picks up from where the first book left off, injecting swashbuckling adventure into the continuing dilemmas of the children of a fallen immortal, Velimir and Peri, whose clashes once rocked and threatened the world.

Now friends, the two continue to bristle against one another and those who love them, searching for redemption even as their father rises to power with a new world-changing threat.

Valkyries and hostage situations merge with the fluid nature and influence of the Otherworld to create new, unique dilemmas. Velimir and Peri’s actions as powerful celestial beings change the course of the future for everyone and everything.

More than clashing swords, this battle of words and perceptions evolves an intriguing struggle that encourages readers to reflect on the philosophical and ethical quandaries that buffet both celestial and non-celestial beings ... even when the enemy turns out to be their mirrors:

The apparitions glared at Peri, advancing steadily. “I fought tooth and nail for everything I ever had! Anything good in my life was taken from me!” snarled the Peri-apparition from behind the visor. “How I despise you and your blind luck, the way you were protected and pampered without a care in the world. I would have given much for what you had and took for granted.”

This nail-biting story will delight prior series fans—especially those versed in Norse mythology, who will recognize the depth and allusions Charlie Freelander further unfolds in The Esquadron.

As rich in its confrontations as it is in building revelations and strong characters from different worlds, The Esquadron compliments the first book, The Makings of a Monster, while adding insights that sizzle with high drama and unexpected twists.

Prior fans will realize that new patterns are evolving within this series, introducing fresh undercurrents of high-octane action and drama that immerses them in the looting of tombs, adventure, and plots that involve new destinations and possibilities.

Fantasy readers are in for a treat!

The Esquadron

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Hoplite Ridge
Sean Patrick Sayers
BookBaby
979-8-35098-647-1 $24.99 Paperback/$3.99eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Hoplite-Ridge-Sean-Patrick-Sayers/dp/B0DVFW3T6S?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1

Science fiction enthusiasts who look for post-apocalyptic books that mix mythology with survivalist efforts and empire-building efforts will welcome Hoplite Ridge’s ability to weave seemingly disparate elements into an exciting quest for not just survival, but control, meaning, and power.

These elements forge new territory as the story considers the special challenges presented to brothers Mars and Ares Augustus. They’re sibling warriors whose alliances, choices, and confrontations change both their relationship and their vision of creating a new world.

Sean Patrick Sayers produces a fast-paced novel that takes the time to explore diffuse situations that embrace cutting-edge technology and mythological figures in surprisingly novel situations.

Of special note is how observers as well as participants in humanity’s crisis contribute reflections, objectives, and influences that are unusual in apocalyptic sci-fi depictions:

In its existence, the Vulture had come to understand the choices men make in the face of death. More often than not, they surrender to the forces that inflict pain and harm, accepting it as fate and attributing their destruction to the will of the Gods. A sense of helplessness and indignation lingers, as if some universal law should have prevented their demise. The Vulture no longer needed to wait. The messenger comprehended the significance of this moment, and the faint curiosity that lingered transformed into a resolute certainty that the next age of man would commence with Mars. With a noisy squawk, the Vulture leaped from the branch, soaring into the distance.

Titus, Neptune, and a host of other figures add to the relentless struggles the siblings experience as the world shifts around them, challenging their ideals of what is to come and their roles in making things happen.

From the joys of hope to the crushing sense of defeat that can emerge on the cusp of seeming success, Sayers tailors his story to readers who appreciate its crisp characterization, intersections of purpose and perspective, and empire-building challenges. These themes come as much from the heart as from political events and confrontations.

All these elements contribute to a riveting story that may shift on mercurial foundations, but proves very satisfying in its foray into the unexpected.

Libraries and sci-fi readers seeking something different from the usual survivalist approach of apocalyptic sci-fi will find Hoplite Ridge a thought-provoking alternative to predictable characters and scenarios. It injects many levels of action and surprise into its saga of political and military unrest, transformative influences, and how lasting legacies are built and documented.

The story of Hoplite Ridge thus becomes, for future generations, a vivid account of “...the foundations of our myths, religion, and culture.” It will delight sci-fi book club discussion groups, offering much food for thought as those who survive disaster move forward into growth.

Hoplite Ridge

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Immortality Bytes
Daniel Lawrence Abrams
Solstice Publishing
9798327070943 $22.00 Paperback/$4.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/IMMORTALITY-BYTES-Daniel-Lawrence-Abrams/dp/B0DBQNX75L

Immortality Bytes: Digital Minds Don’t Get Hungry is sci-fi cyberpunk on quantum overdrive. It exposes the life of AI programmer and social media influencer Stu Reigns in a futuristic world where fame, money, sexuality, and digital worlds intersect in unique ways.

Startling visions of this vastly revised future give readers much food for thought from the story’s opening lines:

In the years soon known as 20NF, businesses encroached on the sky. Delivery drone traffic was so frequent that, at a distance, they looked like bafflingly efficient murmurations of starlings. Product-transportation robots trudged out of “Pie in the Sky” Italian restaurants and loaded mega stacks of 20 pizzas into FDDs (“Food Delivery Drones”) the size of refrigerators.

The satirical, wry consideration of “improvements” that have transformed humanity itself don’t stop with technological transportation, but probe the mindsets of humans who, surprisingly, are still manipulated by oligarchs, motivated by money and fraudsters to make choices that ultimately stab them in the back.

Colorful explorations of philosophical, social, political, and psychological reflection pepper the story, accenting its surprises and twists with ideas that will weave nicely into book club discussions, such as this warden’s warning:

There was a bright line between citizen and criminal, but he knew how simple it is to trip into trouble. He had seen too many “normal” people convicted for a mistake (e.g., DWI Manslaughter, possession pre-NF drug crime amnesty, good old-fashioned bar fights, and the like) and become vicious, sadistic animals inside. He couldn’t believe anyone could stay good for long. The most corrupt are the most cynical.

Sci-fi fans of techno-thrillers that combine edgy observations with situations that illustrate the all-too-human conundrums will find Immortality Bytes wonderfully cutting, satirical, and surprising.

Between AI threats (but not in the way you’d expect) and corporate interests, the story embraces many futuristic scenarios that somehow manage to reflect the trends and nuances of modern social and technological development.

The dialogues that emerge between these myriad interests and their objectives are well-done, engrossing, and excitingly unpredictable. A key antagonist notes:

“With the UBI-Compromise, everyone’s getting a free ride with no responsibility, no purpose. They’re just gonna wander around getting fat and high and adding nothing to the country. You can tell me property crime and robbery keep dropping, and I question those numbers. But even if they’re right, human beings gotta do something productive. What happens if they want to revolt? Tons of bitter moochers get greedy and want more from us producers. What are you gonna do then? Let yourself be a victim? No. I don’t think we’re gonna allow that, are we? Nope.”

Libraries will find Immortality Bytes both highly recommendable and on par with some of William Gibson’s best work, while sci-fi readers seeking a special flavor of cyberpunk that works best with an interest in action-packed social confrontations will welcome Immortality Bytes’s unique vision.

Readers who enjoy thought-provoking evolutionary trends that challenge characters just trying to make a living or get rich will welcome Daniel Lawrence Abrams’s vivid saga of discovery, transformation, and the fruits of genetic engineering’s promises and perils.

Immortality Bytes’s multifaceted journey makes for a rollicking ride through AI, chaos, and humanity’s ongoing search for perfection that is highly recommended.

Immortality Bytes

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The Light of Wounds
Diane Hatz
Whole Healthy Group LLC
979-8-9862823-9-8
$14.99 paperback/$3.99 ebook/$21.97 Hardcover (Hardcover only available on Amazon)
Website: https://dianehatz.com/
Ordering: www.amazon.com

The Light of Wounds, Volume 3 of The Mind Monsters Series, returns Alex to prior fans and new readers with another life-and-death struggle. It features the signature mix of science fiction satire and struggle that marked her previous adventures.

The story opens with what seems like a death sentence—Alex is drowning in the Sedona River, filled with the drug-and-booze mix created by her boss and her own alcoholic inclinations. She has only moments to decide: should she live, or should she finally give up and die?

In her forties, Alex is sick of repeating the patterns of abuse, personal negligence, and loneliness that have marked her repetitive failures throughout her life. On the plus side, she’d finally end these struggles by choosing death. On the negative ... she’d be dead before she’s even fully lived, her failures having overcome her search for meaning.

Of course, Alex decides to live ... otherwise, The Light of Wounds would stop before it gets going. The surprise lies in that, by making this choice, Alex is propelled into another adventure of spirit, destiny, choice, and struggle that brings readers further into the conflicted world she navigates.

From her new encounters with Sharlene, head of the Spiritual Enterprise Network (a group that works to send disconnected spirit guides back to their dimension and stop JT Wilson from bringing them to Earth) to former secret military operative Hank, who once risked his life to save her (and apparently has done so again), prior readers of Alex’s adventures will enjoy many satisfying moments. Alex again faces invisible monsters who present her with heady responsibilities and new missions:

“You must find your path and walk it alone. You must face yourself and decide which way to go.” Raphael’s hollow eyes bore into Alex. “Remember, there are those who do not want you to succeed. They want your life force for themselves. Destruction and evil come in many forms, and the fate of the world is in your hands.”

Alex continues to evolve as she and her companions face new and old conflicts that force Alex to acknowledge:

...once again that her biggest battle was with herself.

Alex is not alone, though. Hank moves away from his charge of blowing things up to make sure she and her spirit friends, who infiltrate dangerous quarters, receive his support and expertise.

Wry humor permeates this scenario and influences her choices, introducing delightful moments of comic observation to the action and confrontation. These stem from many dilemmas that come from saving people and confronting JT’s special form of evil:

“Crystal keeps finding more spirits and sending them our way,” the security head muttered. “At the rate she’s going, every employee here will be from another dimension.”

Libraries seeing popularity with Alex’s previous ‘Mind Monsters’ adventures will find this addition as nicely laced with tension and excitement as her prior encounters.

Readers attracted to stories about characters that make difficult choices and journey into uncharted territory (which includes facing global kingpins, monsters, and spiritual forces that test the protagonist’s power and resolve) will relish the combination of fast-paced action and character depth in The Light of Wounds.

Filled with thought-provoking insights about heroism, choice, spiritual direction, and revelations about underlying psychological motivations and assumptions, The Light of Wounds incorporates a force every bit as compelling as in Alex’s previous encounters:

She realized on some level she did still want him to hurt her. She wanted to be punished. That’s your abuse talking, not you, Alex reminded herself. You are a warrior.

The Light of Wounds

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The Tempests of Time
Lloyd Jeffries
Buckminster Publishing
979-8-9906209-1-9
$20.99 Hardcover/$13.99 Paperback/$2.99 eBook
Website: http://www.lloydjeffries.com
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZ15ZL91

 If you dare this twisted path, a word of advice: Venture at your own risk. The chasms are deep. The waters, foul and endless. The abyss, too cosmic.

The Tempests of Time is Book IV in the ‘Ages of Malice’ series, continuing the story of a vivid time-ripping experience which returns Rhyme Carter, Emery Merrick, and other characters into another (literal) confrontation with Hell.

Emery Merrick’s reflective words open the story with a warning about the future, drawing in readers with a dark portent of challenge and discovery. He cautions that scorching truths about the nature of God, Heaven, and Hell are about to be loosed from new fires of realization and confrontation. His warning sets the stage for another vivid creation that both explains past events (from Embers of Shadow) and expands their impact and legacy to unexpected new heights.

Rhyme continues to fight for her life as Emery faces ongoing challenges to his soul. These place him in the impossible position of staying true to his love by sacrificing it, or attempting to build a whole new paradigm of life, death, and life meaning.

Lloyd Jeffries employs a stark, vivid, contemplative series of atmospheric descriptions to create such memorable scenarios that readers will find the book nearly impossible to put down as it traverses the very pits of Hell:

I stand, puzzled, fully immune to the energy that fills them. Is it rage? Hatred? Misery? Some uncompleted task? Perhaps some task performed in life has placed them here where the walls bleed and the ground burns? Whatever it is, these billions, caught in human form, barefooted, on tipped toes, speared by endless need, cursed with rage. Their mouths stretch wide as spit throws mucous webs behind varied gaping guises. Injustice. The word seizes and I know it’s truth. These have been harmed. These have been corrupted.

As horrible visions of truth buffet Emery’s world and perceptions, he comes to realize just how impossible it will be to keep to the fine line that separates love from its ultimate impact on a broader moral, ethical, and spiritual level.

Jeffries creates another story that is on fire. As it considers expectations, free will, good intentions gone awry, and the value of personal salvation over bigger-picture thinking, The Tempests of Time proves even more confounding, brilliant, and astounding (if this were possible) than its predecessors in the series.

This is why The Tempests of Time is a top pick for libraries interested in the cream of the crop of Christian sci-fi and religious fantasy. The story’s ability to spark all manner of group discussions about belief, impact, choices, and beacons of hope makes for an astonishingly vibrant read that is hard to put down and easy to talk about.

The Tempests of Time

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Literature

The Real Fake Book
David Keay
BookBaby
979-8-35098-746-1 $20.00 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-real-fake-book?srsltid=AfmBOoplrXdpYEq6FielOVdMmnRIzi6Qp4A4A-ZJ7Tk0nrsTf3gNGuHN

It’s important to realize, first off, that The Real Fake Book is a work of satirical reflection that captures irony at its best. Readers who embark on David Keay’s journey with any degree of serious inclination will want to reconsider their anticipation, because comedy comes to life in form of characters whose names and personalities are anything but staid.

These personalities bring biting wit to modernist perspectives on culture and life, beginning with their personas—struggling writers Stosh Haddock and Hospice Power, wrestler Hercules Berserk, ventriloquist George Davis, G.O.A.T cult leader Snod Syriack, talk show host Morty London, outer space visitors Virginia Regent and Demon Boy, and many more.

Each character introduces zany, wry observations and a tongue-in-cheek sense of alienation to the story. This example illustrates that verbosity (albeit not unwelcome, here) is one feature of Keay’s wide-ranging road trip through literary and social observations:

“...the work is now disguised, Sire, as a so-called novel, tentatively untitled Fake Book, author as yet identified, found on premises, buried under a bib, concealed within trick-bottomed drawer of antique crib, hidden behind Early Bird Ticket Booth by excavation crew, as evidenced in documentation of proposed park’s progress prior to demolition, confiscated and located by Barker and Mastiff, returned, just in time, to me in my offices, entered in the Book of Chaotic Cases, explored, ignored, and brought forth presently. I am sure it is an almost unbelievably unpublished masterwork of untrained imaginings, Sire! So post-moderate of mode as to appear nearly more than merely more than modern!”

Literary readers familiar with the nuances and subtlety of satire will appreciate this mirroring of fake books with real life and the questionable evolution of both as various characters dip into the murky waters of discovery and critical acclaim.

Humor evolves on many levels as uncommon, thought-provoking situations evolve:

Sister Karloff is summoned to podium to read the Preamble:

“G.O.A.T. is self-defeating and not afflicted, allied or relied upon by any other sectarian group or denomination. And is not to be confused with The White Knights of Satin, The Silk Linen of Satan, The Secret Swords of Silverdome, The Pontiac League of Mighty Lions, The Brotherhood of Make-Believe or The Masonic Super-Sonnets ... It is our purpose as members of the Guild Order of Associated Templates to emulate our ancestors in reaping the resources of this time honoured tool. To take its example in re-structuring our lives and our society ... And in the pursuit of happiness, i.e. a successful recovery of enterprise, the foundations of a worldly weal be accrued in disproportionate rates for an exaggerated balance in our favour.”

“Sank you, Sister Karloff. I now call on Bruzzer Flook McFeely, vott come all zah vay from Grand Master Scanlon’s Seosophy Chapter in Blaunox, verever zatt is, vere he vork in disguise for zah Community Civic and Diocese Foundation. Vottever ziss is.”

“I first started drinking when I was about...”

“Vott you sink ziss is? Ziss zah meeting of zah G.O.A.T.s, you dummy!”

These examples illustrate dialogues, encounters, and characters which may prove intellectually challenging to readers seeking a simpler representation of wit. But they will absolutely delight literary students of satirical fiction and dialogue, who will relish David Keay’s blend of convoluted observation and hard-hitting analysis.

For these reasons, The Real Fake Book is especially highly recommended to students of satirical literature, who will learn much about the formation of and insights possible in an uncommon approach to satirical form as they digest a rollicking ride that is like none other.

Libraries that chose The Real Fake Book for their literature collections are in for a treat: its unique countenance will challenge, appeal, and ultimately educate far beyond a leisure-reading audience alone.

The Real Fake Book

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Thief of Laughter: Poems
Jim Frazee
Independently Published
ASIN: B0F3KNLJ3P $5.00 eBook/$12.00 Paperback
Website/ www.jim-frazee.com
Ordering: https://a.co/d/0VC3mFy

Thief of Laughter: Poems is not a casual survey of life, but a potentially devastating, thought-provoking mesh of memoir and free verse poetry that moves from harsh childhood memories to adult confrontations with cruelty and struggle.

Where’s the light in all this? It lies in the survival, examination, and upward momentum of growth which moves readers through the initial poems about Jim Frazee’s raging father:

Later in the backyard I spied from the patio

as he crouched by a eucalyptus tree bearing my initials, alone with a two-man saw.

My wish to desist, greeted with laughter, sent me back inside “where I belonged.”

Again his curses and sweaty strokes pushed into the trunk the grin of the blade,

fighting himself as much as my invisible partner in crime whose ear I seemed

to have, yet he couldn’t stop him or the saw, slashing toward a deeper permanence.

From relationship-building to dissolution and alienation, the journey brings readers on a wild ride through life and love with insights that are raw, hard-hitting, and reflective:


You can’t avoid the debris of someone who’s left for good as it permeates

the house long after she’s gone, pervasive as floating dust and even menace,

a bully that hounds you room-to-room, and finally outside where you stop

in wonder over how you landed there. The house dares you back inside

but you jump in the car and head-off without destination, and for reasons

unknown, the other drivers appear snug and happy in lives foreign to dissolution.

The power of these perspectives comes as much from the juxtaposition of nature, personalities, and a permeating humor that intersects with angst as in their free verse power. These qualities will draw a wide audience, perhaps triggering a few sensitive readers with its combined force of realization and anguish.

Yes, there is hope within conflict, pain, and recovery. This emerges like seeds within the kernels of life changes and confrontations. Each seed grows a new set of opportunities and transformations that poetry enthusiasts will appreciate. Devastation and harshness thus evolve into something more uplifting, where the dreaded circumstances of youth come to embrace the dreams which existed alongside anguish.

The result is a hard-hitting, intense, vivid blend of laughter and tears that encourages poetry readers to involve themselves in the descriptions’ psychological allure and revelations.

Packed with lessons on adaptation, kindness, and survival tactics, the reflective poems in Thief of Laughter delicately trace the origins of discovery and survival with a powerful allure that libraries and readers will find devastatingly attractive.

Thief of Laughter: Poems

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Biography & Autobiography

Eucatastrophe
Josh Bottomly
Telos Books
979-8304166126
$20.99 Hardcover/$15.99 Paperback/$5.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Eucatastrophe-Josh-Bottomly/dp/B0DR5XJLZK?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1

Eucatastrophe blends a memoir with a self-help guide that injects philosophical reflection into its bigger-picture thinking. The subject becomes not just one of personal catastrophe, but the undercurrents of paradoxes, heroism, adversity, and recovery that buffet Josh Bottomly and reflect his penchant for storytelling and performance.

On the face of it, Eucatastrophe is a trauma story of middle-age which reveals the experience of mental illness struggles on many different levels. Underlying this thread of self-inspection and discovery is the power of confessional works that are raw, revealing rips off the scab of life.

While these writings represent Bottomly’s personal perspective and truths, they also create the an origin story that embraces the most basic life-or-death considerations:

All I wanted to do was join Robert Frost in the dark snow-covered woods of oblivion. But I couldn’t. I had many miles yet to go. I had loved ones who depended on me. Deathsleep was not an option. So I opened my eyes and tried to form words. They didn't come at first, but then something in the subterranean depths roiled through the dark dirt soils and geysered up out of me: “I just don’t know what to do!” Next thing I know, I sounded like a wounded, dying wolf.

As Bottomly’s story emerges from the depths of despair and the uncertainties of building enough “social capital” to survive, readers will appreciate its contrasts between the author’s family, experiences, and outsider involvement.

Different scenarios emerge which build robust, thought-provoking reflections that capture fantasy, vulnerability, and how accumulated trauma bursts forth into life at unexpected moments:

For years, the trauma had accumulated inside my body like arsenic. Even though I pretended the trauma wasn’t there, my body didn’t give a flying fuck what I believed or pretended not to believe.

At this point, it’s important to mention that readers unaccustomed to raw reading, or who struggle with their own mental health issues, may find Bottomly’s work not just enlightening, but triggering.

This is no easy journey. There are no passages that offer a smooth salve of ease without accompanying ones that probe and reveal the sources and impact of “trauma demons.”

These facets make Eucatastrophe both fascinating and fearfully powerful ... and highly recommended for readers seeking the gritty post-survival reflections of one who has entered the gauntlet of life experience and self-destruction and emerged on the other side not unscathed, but newly wise.

Libraries seeking a memoir that embraces the extent of self-image analysis in the course of a mental health journey will find Eucatastrophe a lesson in perspective. It deserves recommendation to not just book clubs, but mental health reading groups and patrons interested in memoirs that take the extra step into self- and philosophical reflection.

Gritty, determined, and hard-hitting, Eucatastrophe is both hard to put down and determinedly pointed in its life journey.

Eucatastrophe

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I Can, I Will & I Did
Samina Bari with Micheline Auger
Black River Publishing
979-8-9919040-1-8
www.saminabari.com

I Can, I Will & I Did: Lessons on Life, Love, and Leadership is a memoir steeped in a successful businesswoman’s achievements and growth, and will especially delight aspiring businesswomen interested in learning about how the intersection of women’s perspectives and experiences influence and impact business acuity.

Samina grew up in a strict Muslim household in America who faced many obstacles to success. From evolving in a cultural background where women are not viewed as potential achievers to navigating through her husband’s death and many challenges to changing her life and focus, Samina provides a touching, informational review that is hard-hitting, raw, and compelling.

The forces both personal and cultural that shaped her life and growth are reviewed candidly, in a manner that all kinds of readers will readily understand:

I couldn’t wait to get away from the small-minded bullying of our across-the-street neighbors, the unrelenting harassment of my mother, and the subservient and oppressive culture that became my experience of Islam. But first I needed to learn how to drive.

As she undergoes therapy to help her deal with her mother, builds a professional career in New York that is far from her roots and upbringing, and navigates hard questions about what she really wants from life, readers will find her reflections poignant and thought-provoking—and perfect for book club and reading group discussion:

Could I have it all? Did I want it all? What did I actually want? I had everything I had dreamt of and worked so hard for, both professionally and personally. But the pace was too much. Something would suffer, and I didn’t want anything to. In the back of my mind, I knew I needed to take control and start mapping a new life plan.

On the cusp of finally figuring out the majority of her questions, her world collapses. Once again, Samina is forced to navigate unfamiliar territory relying on little but her own moxie to survive, rebuild, and adopt new responses to make the most out of what life hands her.

Libraries seeking memories of strong women who overcame obstacles stemming from cultural expectation and family direction to step into empowerment will want to recommend I Can, I Will & I Did to a wide audience, from women’s groups and book clubs to patrons who like compelling personal memoirs and businesswomen who appreciate stories of success.

Its vivid portrait of business environments, family ties, and common obstacles women face as they grow into their selves and objectives makes for a powerfully thought-provoking narrative that is very highly recommended for a wide circle of readers.

I Can, I Will & I Did

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Rosalba Torres Leal: The Santa of Roses
Dokali (Duke) Megharief
ASIN: ‎B0DXQV6W9T $9.99 eBook
Atmosphere Press
www.atmospherepress.com

Rosalba Torres Leal: The Santa of Roses reviews the life of a Columbian woman who moved to the U.S. to teach Spanish, met and married a man from Africa, and produced beautiful paintings of her Columbian home.

Her struggles with Alzheimer’s, a foreign culture, and art will appeal to a wide audience of readers, whether they’re seeking books about Latina artists, immigrant experiences, or women facing advancing years and physical and mental challenges.

The first note is that Dokali (Duke) Megharief accompanies Leal’s paintings with equally vivid discussions of the human spirit under siege, examining the creative force that produces extraordinary works against all odds.

This different approach to biography and art is represented throughout, from the opening pages of the book, which contrast art by Leal with insights from Megharief’s evocative review of her life. Thus, an opening color image of a cottage receives embellishment that places it in historic context:

In a secluded corner of the world, where the mountains kissed the sky and the whispering pines held secrets of centuries, there stood a cottage unlike any other. Its lavender-gray walls seemed to blend seamlessly with the mist that clung to the peaks, as if nature herself had painted it into existence.

Biographies of artists in their eighties are few and far between. It’s especially notable to have a synthesis of life story paired with artistic impressions that back text with images and insights that could only have come from personal acquaintance.

Megharief cultivates a “you are here” approach to uncover hidden details in Leal’s world, inviting discussion and knowledge that offers a rich dip into how art is created and how it impacts its audience:

...like a veil lifting, Lily understood. The Midnight Rose was more than pigment and canvas; it was a conduit, a bridge between realms. Its fragrance carried echoes of forgotten gods, their love stories inscribed upon its petals.

This intersects two kinds of art under one cover, providing readers with a creation far richer than either an art book or an artist’s biography alone.

The journey through Leal’s family connections, lasting legacy, and impact is a particularly rich representation of different threads to an artistic life well lived and everlasting:

She knew that she had found what she was searching for—a connection to something greater than herself. And as she looked at Rose, she saw not just an artist, but a guardian of memories, a keeper of whispers.

These disparate elements make Rosalba Torres Leal: The Santa of Roses especially highly recommended reading and acquisition for all kinds of libraries and readers; from those interested in artist biographies and perspectives to others seeking a visual and written work of art in and of itself that will appeal widely and which stands out as unique.

Rosalba Torres Leal: The Santa of Roses

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Mystery & Thrillers

Article 9: A Gripping Western Political Thriller
Daniel Holub
Dos Palomas Press
979-8-9929630-0-7  $15.95
Website: www.danielholub.com
Ordering: www.amazon.com

A few political history readers may infer that the title of this thriller, Article 9: A Gripping Western Political Thriller, refers to the ninth article of the U.S.-Mexican Extradition Treaty. They are unlikely, however, to anticipate how this article takes an unexpected role in the international affairs and national interests that play out in this story, which opens with a raid conducted during Thanksgiving dinner in San Diego.

Ryan McDill and his family face masked, armed gunmen who kidnap the CEO, frighten his family and friends, and indicate they are part of a terrorist organization which, the next day, receives top headline attention in American news media.

From this highly tense, dramatic opening evolves a story replete with action and confrontations. These range from sniper threats to the identity of terrorists who are likely “...in league with the Army, the cartels, and probably others.”

The last thing Brooks Davis expected from his ordinary American life with his wife Molly was to confront ISIS on American soil, be kidnapped to Mexico, and escape his captors only to find his head in a mountain lion’s jaws in the middle of the night.

Daniel Holub cultivates a special blend of history, a thriller’s nonstop action, political revelations, and situations that demand extraordinary reactions from characters who face the surprising intensity of confrontation with realistic, compelling efforts of their own.

Holub also excels at exploring relationship-changing paradigms which spark unusual conversations between Molly and Brooks as their lives change:

“Repeatedly facing one’s imminent death, then killing people to prevent it, causes you to re-evaluate your whole life. You are forced to look at everything you have ever done…the good…the bad…but mostly the bad. It is the ultimate come-to-Jesus meeting. It is a gut-wrenching, all-humbling experience when you face a lifetime of sins and failures all at once.”

These moments dovetail nicely with the political ramifications of the evolving “Davis affair.” Of special note is how the Article 9 treaty holds dangerous consequences for Davis and his family and threatens the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.

Readers will appreciate how Holub expands the action from individual to bigger-picture thinking as this fast-paced, tense thriller evolves.

Libraries seeking a visionary work of confrontation and transformation will find Article 9 just the ticket for readers seeking powerful characterization, vivid stories that embrace realistic political and international conundrums, and thought-provoking moments of revelation.

Ultimately, Article 9 will encourage vivid book club discussions and individual reflection that ties neatly into both historical precedent and contemporary world affairs:

What most Americans had forgotten in the decades since Carter was what the real goal of the terrorists was.

It’s unusual to find a page-turner that incorporates equally powerful elements of psychological, social, and political discovery, but here you have it—all tied together by heart-stopping action that makes Article 9 a standout.

Article 9: A Gripping Western Political Thriller

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The Conductor
Eva Shaw
Torchflame Books
978-1-61153-613-3 $19.99 Paperback/$6.99 eBook
www.torchflamebooks.com/authors/eva-shaw

Historical mystery readers seeking stories rooted in social change and racial strife will find The Conductor a gripping story, especially since it’s centered on a woman whose mission holds a dangerous connection to her family.

When Beatrix Patterson’s friend is arrested during a fight that breaks out amidst a railroad strike, events swirl quickly to involve her, from the murder of the railroad owner to the blackmail of another friend.

The Union Pacific Railroad’s ongoing social unrest is hiding a dangerous killer, so Beatrix needs to go undercover to confront the deeper wellsprings of unrest. These center on the actions and influences of a racial supremacist group that is using the railroad’s worker rights issues for their own purposes.

What Beatrix also confronts are evolving threats to her own family, identity, and purpose. The web of intrigue and danger spreads even wider than she’d imagined, dredging up emotional quandaries that impact everyone she loves.

Eva Shaw includes Beatrix’s husband’s involvement and observations as part of the plot, adding depth and rich complexity to her family life:

His wife had put herself in terrorizing situations before, but whatever this haircut had to do with their future, he did not like it.

Unlike many mysteries in which women seem to operate far from family ties, home life takes center stage from the story’s opening moments, which describe Beatrix’s interactions with her husband and child.

Beatrix’s astute observations of the underlying causes of strife and political decisions add further details, expanding the mystery’s boundaries into racial influences and motivations for social and legal choices:

“This is about the fighting at the rail station. Sam was attacked by a gang. When he tried to defend himself, he was arrested for causing it. It was as if a few cops were waiting just out of sight. It’s all not true. Sam would never cause trouble. Then some judge, who I think might be on the take, is conspiring to get Sam out of town because of his position and influence with people of color in the union.”

Equally intriguing are descriptions of how Beatrix absorbs and confronts racism in everyday life as she interviews a range of people who might hold insights into events:

“Mrs. Welsh often meets the pool maintenance fellow on the street with a cup of coffee for him. I am scandalized. One should never mingle with the help. Don’t you agree, Miss Patterson?”

Beatrix wanted to laugh out loud and thought, A snob and a racist, but she covered her mouth with a pretend cough.

In order to arrive at the truth, Beatrix must become a conductor on the train, as well as an investigator of its operators. What she uncovers proves shocking.

Between the social observations of racism and women’s roles, the psychological allure of how Beatrix maintains her family life and connections while investigating her latest case, and the deep dive into union and railroad politics that influence the direction of her investigation, The Conductor operates on a compelling level, indeed.

No prior familiarity with railroads, union activities, or 1940s California life is required in order for readers to become thoroughly immersed in these times and situations.

Libraries will find The Conductor an absorbing mystery that’s highly recommendable to patrons who also enjoy historical facts, while readers will find its special blend of history, mystery, and uplifting notes to be the perfect panacea for angst over any modern social disturbances:

“Superman can and will take down the Ku Klux Klan. And to quote him: ‘I believe in truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.’”

The Conductor

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Dangerous Visions, An Eden Beach Crime Novel
Liz Hartley
Rainy Valley Press
9780997438796 $4.99 eBook; $19.99 Paperback
Website:https://www.lizhartleyauthor.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=49&action=edit
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Visions-Beach-Crime-Novel-ebook/dp/B08PCCXH8P

Dangerous Visions, An Eden Beach Crime Novel will appeal to readers of women’s crime fiction with its powerful protagonist, psychic Stacie Cappella, at the helm of an uncommon, mysterious investigation.

Many mysteries focus on problem-solvers who harbor extraordinary, powerful visions which give them an investigative edge; but what makes Dangerous Visions a genre standout is its ability to capture and cultivate the impact of such abilities on overall life.

Stacie is introduced and comes across initially as a woman traumatized by her own talents, who desires nothing more than a normal life free of magical influences. Normalcy seems to elude her as much as love, as the story opens, but neither will remain in the wings for very long—especially when her decision to include some paranormal materials in her bookstore opens the door to accusations and even more unexplained encounters. Suddenly, Stacie is fighting on different levels that involve her psyche, abilities, and career.

Liz Hartley builds a crime story fueled by underlying psychology, motivations, and influences on the part of not just perp and a single investigator, but an entire community. These revelations form a story that probes the minds and abilities of healers, considers the impact of seers and possible telepaths, and presents issues of validation and discovery that weave the practical-minded Iraq veteran-turned-detective Ben Robard’s probe with Stacie’s uncommon approaches.

Of special note is how Ben’s personal interest in Stacie is piqued by her own careful disguise of how she seems to know extraordinary things about him:

“You looked tired, I guess,” she said finally. “Pinched around the eyes. Like maybe you didn’t sleep well. It seemed like you’d lost some level of…joy…from your life. Like a stream that was once buoyant, but is now filled with debris.” She paused. “That day up in the Heritage Park? I surprised you on the trail. You put up a wall around yourself when you knew I was there. Not angry, so much as…” Another hesitation. “As private. Protective.”

Nothing that would have told me that someone had gone through hell, thought Ben. He was astonished at her perceptiveness.

“You’re in the wrong business,” he told her. “You should be a cop.”

Hartley is a master at juxtaposing relationship-building with increasing new realizations about a killer whose actions immerse and embrace the lives of both her characters.

Crime novel readers seeking the perfect interplay of emotional reaction and motivation with a crime scene that evolves ever more challenging ideas will find Dangerous Visions thoroughly captivating and packed with unexpected twists and turns.

Libraries seeking crime novels that stand out for their deep attention to emotional connections and impacts of love, problem-solving, and being able to see forbidden things will find Dangerous Visions easy to highly recommend. It will attract audiences who enjoy paranormal influences, but want them to extend beyond the usual mystery’s formulaic approach to problem-solving.

Dangerous Visions, An Eden Beach Crime Novel

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Missing!
Roberta Samuels
Red Penguin Books
978-1637776292 $12.99 paperback/$19.99 hardcover
Website: https://www.robertasamuels.com
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/Missing-Roberta-Samuels/dp/1637776292?_encoding=UTF8&sr

Missing! A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Medieval Village will delight fiction readers interested in French art, mysteries surrounding missing masterpieces, and historical works that embrace the world of postwar France’s artists and collectors.

The last thing new French homeowners, American couple Barbara and Sam, expected from their move to a small village was to become involved in a missing church artwork.

The story opens in 1944, where artist Sonia Delaunay faces a Nazi shakedown at a bar where her Jewish identity could lead to her arrest. Barely escaping them, Sonia runs into her ex-husband, learns of a commune where some of her friends have gained refuge from the Nazis, and is encouraged to join them in a safe place which is an exception to most of what life has become under Nazi rule.

Fast forward to the future, where Barbara Waldheim identifies with artist Sonia, even though their circumstances are different and separated by place and time. As Barbara explains to her readers in an introduction:

At the present time in 2014, I was dealing with the consequences of a hasty decision to buy an old house in a small French medieval village. Little did I suspect that Sonia

Delaunay, an artist I admired, would have a close connection with my little town. Nor that I, one small action leading to another, would get involved in a Sonia Delaunay mystery story.

This sets the stage for a thoroughly engrossing immersion into French history, art, and intrigue which embraces Barbara and her readers in an enlightening journey.

Roberta Samuels is especially adept at injecting French language and culture into dialogues that emerge from Barbara’s encounters:

“Merci pour l’invitation. May I bring Sam? He’s my copain,” I said, using the French word used to describe my boyfriend, partner, lover, significant other, all in one.

“Certainement. Come over to chez maman, right next

door.” Laure pointed out the house. “That’s where we’re living for now until this one is habitable.”

“D’accord. What time?”

“Eh bien, around six thirty,” Laure specified with a Gallic

shrug, as if it went without saying.

“Impeccable, See you this evening, then. We’ll bring a

bottle of rosé.”

The relationships, politics, and intersection of cultural and artistic explorations that emerge from these situations are thoroughly embedded in French affairs, yet require no prior familiarity with France in order to prove accessible and gripping.

The mystery moves through different levels of intrigue, revelation, and discovery, contrasting sizzling moments of understanding with thought-provoking reflections of the difficulty involved in probing personalities and purposes of the past.

Samuels takes the time to cement these connections with insights that create a sense of wonder about France’s unique cultural and artistic backdrop:

Melanie loved Montpezat. Sam and I had worried the little laid-back town would be too slow for her, but she fit right in, enjoying the café and bistros, our mini tours to local vineyards, old chateaus, nearby towns, and of course, St Martin’s and the tapestries. She adored the medieval canons’ houses behind the church that holidaymakers had turned into charming second homes. She speculated like me that the obvious place for a Delaunay window would have to be where the former stained glass had been replaced by the grisaille treatment.

The result is more than an art mystery or an exploration of French living, but a blend of history, intrigue, and discovery that reaches out to immerse readers in past and present-day French wonders.

Libraries seeking an art world mystery firmly rooted in European culture and revelations will welcome Missing! A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Medieval Village’s deep, well-developed sense of place, time, and connection.

With its psychological attractions well attuned to France’s culture, Missing! A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Medieval Village will delight any Francophile or art and history lover, no matter where in the world they may reside.

Missing!

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Omniviolence
Jones Worthington
Vesuvian Books
978-1-64548-065-5 $17.95 Paper/$7.99 eBook
www.vesuvianbooks.com

Omniviolence tells of cryptokiller teen Jackson Cross, who uses computers and drones to murder from the of refuge his mother’s basement ... until his actions gain attention and place him on a “slaylist” himself, forcing him to go on the lam and leave his comfortable killing digs.

Enter Joseph "Bones" Carboni, a Mafia hitman whose latest assignment, to murder teenager Jackson, pushes his moral and ethical boundaries a bit too far. The picture is bigger than crime, murder, and revenge, however, for Jones Worthington’s tale embraces broader crime connections, violence, cryptocurrency, and technology to create a sweeping story of governmental and personal collapse.

The timing of this book could not be better, with the world teetering on the cusp of good and bad new trends and technological influence. The injection of moral quandaries which connect and divide disparate individuals and their special interests will provoke much food for thought in readers who like their thriller action tempered by insights into discovery, world trends, and social growth.

Because it’s set in the near future, sci-fi fans will also relish Omniviolence’s close connections between present and futuristic values and turns of events.

The dialogues that power character encounters also serve to explain the different nuances of this environment and players of all ages:

Bones shrugged. “Miss the good ol’ days when a man knew what was what. Before all this madness.”

Jackson stopped dead. “Good ol’ days? The hell are you talking about?”

Bones faced the kid, his features all creased up. “When you knew who the good guys and bad guys were, and you picked a side. Back then, there were rules. We all knew them. Everybody had a code. Now—well, look at us.” He waved his arm at the rundown street littered with broken drone pieces, overflowing garbage, and kudzu-ridden brickwork. “Hell, kid, even money ain’t money anymore. Invisible coins run the world.”

Jackson barked a harsh laugh. “Money was always invisible, man. A number on an account. Controlled by crusty old pricks who ran countries and banks. You think a kid like me, folks like my mom, were allowed a piece of that? No—because you had to have money to make money. And some douchebag with a clipboard dictated whether my mom’s job meant enough to put food on the table...”

Libraries seeking sci-fi and techno-thriller books for their collections that take the extra step into creating worlds that are both believable and thoroughly mind-boggling will appreciate how action and insight entwine to make Omniviolence a widely appealing read.

Filled with insights and reflections that are uncommon and delightfully cemented in human nature, Omniviolence draws disparate connections between individuals who find surprising novel associations rising from old habits, new technology, the restructuring of the political world—and murder.

Omniviolence

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Piña Colada Calamity
Tanya Westlake
Impractical Press
979-8-9856425-6-8 $14.99 Paperback/$2.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Colada-Calamity-Kalliope-Brooks-Mysteries/dp/B0CLH4BTX3

Piña Colada Calamity is the second book in the Kalliope Brooks series. It documents a relaxing getaway gone awry when Kalliope and Tess’s cruise vacation turns into a murderous nightmare.

The death of a fellow passenger not only rests upon a literally captive audience to solve, but taps the investigative prowess of two women who find themselves unexpectedly struggling to solve the crime despite a seemingly limited set of possible perps.

From the start, Tanya Westlake builds an intriguing scenario in which Tess Russo wins a radio station show’s music trivia contest and brings partner and friend Kallie along for what turns out to be a wild ride.

Barely recovered from their last investigation (which also struck too close to home, with a murder at the bar Kallie worked at), the two at first are confident that their prior sleuthing will easily reveal the truth ... and the perp.

This case, however, is of an entirely different ilk as they find themselves researching blog posts, conducting a murder investigation in an entirely novel way, and delving into affairs that are really none of their business. (Or, are they?)

Dilemmas over who’s really in charge emerge as they find evidence that points in an unexpected direction, then must decide whom to involve (and trust) in the course of their investigation:

“We really should go tell that agent everything we know,” Kallie sighed. “Even if we don’t have the actual key anymore, we can tell him what we saw and heard. He’ll understand that it’s a possible clue. And even if it turns out to be nothing, we did our duty – and it’s officially his case now, anyway.”

Once again, Tanya Westlake builds a community setting that demonstrates it takes a village to solve a crime, placing these two women in the crosshairs of danger.

Especially intriguing are the disparate forms of risk assessment which affect their judgments and conclusions, the intersection of investigation and psychoanalysis, and how close they come to being suspects themselves when their past crime-busting comes to light.

The mystery’s resolution is not a ‘given,’ by any means, which makes its outcome and progression even more inviting—especially for mystery enthusiasts who like their relationship- and community-building aspects to take center stage alongside the mystery component.

Libraries seeking involving mysteries that stand nicely on their own while contributing to prior adventures will find Piña Colada Calamity builds a cozy community and interactions that create dilemmas for all its characters.

Highly recommended for prior fans and newcomers alike, Piña Colada Calamity features a delicious cruise into uncharted waters that is simply delightful reading.

Piña Colada Calamity

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Switched at Death
Valerie Taylor
Aspetuck Publishing
979-8-9865995-4-0 $17.95
https://valerietaylorauthor.com

Switched at Death is the second Venus Bixby mystery following her first appearance in the vivid A Whale of a Murder, and will appeal to both newcomers to and prior fans of Venus.

The story opens in 2010 as the small town of Chatham Crossing receives the shocking news of their beloved mayor’s death in a fire. The stage that was initially set for the town’s annual tree-lighting ceremony has now become a scene of loss ... but Venus doesn’t think it was an accident. Her nose for trouble leads her to uncover the real cause of Simon Duffy’s demise, which is anything but unintentional.

This deduction is despite the fact that Venus isn’t a P.I. or professional detective, but the small town’s shop owner of Oldies and Goodies. As her long-time business partner is the deceased’s wife, Venus holds a very personal stake in better understanding the big loss.

Valerie Taylor crafts a vivid story that fills in any blanks of prior character-building and small town events for new readers—yet does so in a manner that will engage prior fans without burdening them with a recap of already-familiar setting and characters.

This weaving of past and present creates an alluring mystery for all readers, setting the stage for a murder probe that immersed in small-town atmosphere. The descriptions of this milieu are vivid embraces of the town’s seasonal allure:

Travel logs and blogs always described Chatham Crossing as a delightful historic whaling village with unique shopping, lobster rolls to die for, and a must-visit whaling museum. If you’re traveling to Cape Cod this summer, a stop in charming Chatham Crossing is well worth the side trip.

What the writers failed to recognize, or mention, was that the winter holiday season was just as delightful, if not more so than summer, when the heat and humidity combined with the tourist crowds made the unique shopping, lobster rolls, and museum often exhausting and challenging for some. Needless to say, I’d never criticize their praise of Chatham Crossing. After all, the most unique shopping experience in town was Oldies & Goodies, my retro music store and cookie bakery...

The fact that Venus is a serial entrepreneur with out-of-the-box ideas (such as a kitty daycare and adoption service) lends further depth and interest to her alter ego as an investigator. Events lead the mayor’s wife into uncharted political waters and Venus into unbelievable circumstances she never saw coming, supporting Venus’s ultimate convictions that something is awry:

“But my intuition is screaming that something wretched happened Saturday night. In my heart and my brain,” I touched my temple, “I believe Simon Duffy did not die of a natural everyday heart attack.”

But are they valid?

Libraries seeking cozy mysteries that capture small-town charm, explore engrossing dilemmas, and weave in the politics and personalities of a host of characters will find Switched at Death thoroughly immersive.

Packed with twists and turns and seasoned with first-person revelations that bring readers into Venus’s thought processes, analytical prowess, and values, Switched at Death is the very definition of a page-turner.

It excels in not just investigative development, but in creating a mystery designed to bring readers into the world of Chatham Crossing, there to enjoy the evolution of winter and wonder that’s steeped in holiday tradition and new beginnings.

Switched at Death

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The Vatican Deal
Michael Balter
Mission Point Press
978-1-965278-44-4         
$17.99 (softcover) $29.99 (hardcover) $9.99 (ebook)
Website: https://mbalter.com/    Ordering:  https://www.amazon.com/Vatican-Deal-Thriller-Schott-Bishop-ebook/dp/B0DWXY7W2N

The Vatican Deal, a sequel to Michael Balter’s Chasing Money, is highly recommended for fans of the original. Steeped in Marty and Bo’s ongoing confrontations and discoveries, this gripping follow-up proves just as riveting as the initial account of their startup investment operation.

The first-person insight opens with a bang that newcomers will find thought-provoking, humorous, and intriguing, all in one:

Bo loves to talk about money. How to make it, how to lose it, and most importantly, how to spend it.

Marty and Bo are in Europe to buy an Italian foundry—but that’s not all they’re investing in. Trouble emerges early in the story as they confront the reality that their interests lie in the crossfire of a dangerous battle between the Vatican and the Mafia.

Natalya has been kidnapped and presumably is being tortured, the two face mob threats themselves, and the plot moves quickly between past and present experience, immersing readers in Italian culture and conflicts.

Michael Balter’s ability to seamlessly carry readers into a milieu that fills in the blanks of background while presenting a fast-paced series of unexpected encounters translates to a rich, thoroughly engrossing thriller.

Readers who require their action cemented by personal observation and who appreciate wry humor that peppers adventure will especially relish The Vatican Deal’s foray into political and religious special interests as Bo and Marty face major challenges to their investigative prowess and business acuity.

From associations with cardinals who appreciate art to truths that even close associates hide from one another, the story is rich in detail and often whimsical in its revelations of the truth:

“Really, Natalya! We were scheduled to meet Bertolini and Caloia yesterday, and you couldn’t bring yourself to say, ‘Oh—we once shared a lobster in Paris, along with a few other billionaires. We chewed the fat and had a lovely time.’”

“We didn’t have lobster. We had Kobe beef. I didn’t chew the fat—I don’t like it, so I cut it to the side. Some people had fish. I remember Cardinal Bertolini had sea bass.”

“Fuck me!” I exhaled in exasperation.

“I cannot do that right now. You will have to wait.”

Libraries that have seen popularity with the prior Chasing Money will want to add The Vatican Deal to their collections, but those without such prior familiarity will still find the latest book to be a thoroughly compelling standalone read.

Packed with cat-and-mouse games that reveal more than one level of truth and discovery, The Vatican Deal is everything readers could want in a thriller: emotionally compelling, astute in its logic, and delightfully unexpected in its business and investigative connections ... as well as hard to predict or put down.

The Vatican Deal

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A Voice in the Mind
Bruce M. Perrin
Mind Sleuth Publications
978-1-955114-11-0 $3.99 eBook
www.brucemperrin.com

A Voice in the Mind is the eighth book in Bruce M. Perrin’s ‘Mind Sleuth’ series, and takes place in a little over a month’s time.

Isabella Perez-Hutton is involved in developing software that will help users integrate more smoothly with AI technology. Her role as an intermediary between computer and human is in direct opposition to her husband Randy’s experience of losing his job to high-tech, his management position dissolved by automation.

Isabella isn’t just involved in high tech, however. Suicide and murder enter the workplace to challenge her with tragedy as her husband, Randy, struggles with voices in his head that mandate revenge and torment his waking hours with nightmares.

Isabella’s new friend, Nicole Vele, suspects something is going on between Randy and the advanced tech Isabella works with. As she gets to know Isabella, Nicole finds herself in an increasingly dangerous position as her investigations and insights lead to terrible conclusions.

Bruce M. Perrin crafts a thriller that is psychologically astute and filled with depth. Its characters represent logical and sometimes unexpected connections not only between disparate personalities, but shifting reactions to the presence of AI in daily lives. Its intrigue uses these changing relationships to drive a thought-provoking series of events whose outcomes are anything but predictable.

This gives thriller readers an important attraction to a story that embraces different perspectives and possibilities, social and business issues, and personal insights that connect the dots between violent reactions and the impact of AI’s transformative promises and accompanying threat:

“You know, of all the things I thought we had to be concerned about with artificial intelligence—the vast amounts of misinformation it could create, the unemployed it might leave in its wake, the deep fake scams it could produce—creating a serial killer wasn’t among them … at least, until now.”

A Voice in the Mind is a vivid addition to the expanding ‘Mind Sleuth’ series that provides yet another dilemma in which mental health issues and adversity spark both an investigation and a crisis.

Libraries interested in thrillers that feature more psychological depth than most will appreciate the special focus and insights of these developments, while readers that find relationship and high-tech issues of special interest will relish the unexpected twists and turns Randy’s story takes.

Packed with action, a “string of unfortunate occurrences,” and an evolving plot that poses death as a solution to problems, the contrast between Nicole’s pragmatic investigative psyche and Isabella’s preoccupation with career that puts both women’s lives in jeopardy makes for a supercharged story of discovery and psychological tension. A Voice in the Mind represents not just another solid ‘Mind Sleuth’ foray into murder, but a delicate dance between intention, perception, and illusion.

A Voice in the Mind

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Novels

All That Shimmers
Kady Ambrose
Anqa Press
978-1-966089-00-1 $16.95 Paperback/$3.99 eBook
Publisher: Publisher Book Page
Ordering: Amazon Buy Page

Historical romance and fantasy readers seeking a multifaceted read set against the backdrop of World War I (which is also being pummeled by the Spanish Flu pandemic) will relish the interwoven history, love, and magic that give All That Shimmers an unusual ability to attract disparate audiences.

What begins as nanny Vanessa Perkins’s pursuit of romance with two very different men turns into a foray into magic and mystical influences. She encounters a fairy, confronts disparities between her dream of a warm, welcoming home versus the reality of marrying into a privileged world, and finds that the consequences of her actions hold a potentially devastating impact on the world and those she loves.

Kady Ambrose creates a sense of magic from the start as Ezra revisits the nymphs he’d encountered in the past and pays the price for fulfilling his deepest desires. Fast forward fifty years later to 1918, where Vanessa’s runaway imagination gives her grief while opening the door to new opportunities.

Her meeting with Avery Nolan, who rescues her from an impending emotional meltdown, seems to portend new connections, but Avery proves surprisingly reluctant to pursue her. Turns out that this is because he feels his future is unclear despite his parents’ mandate for him to attend medical school.

The job he is offered is quite different, creating both angst in his family and the notion that the Enchanted Wood nymphs will, at least, appreciate this change of plans.

Ambrose draws together a satisfying blend of magic, social change, and psychological insight. The depth of Vanessa’s perceptions, as well as the culture which swirls around her, bring the early 1900s to life so vividly that even history-reluctant readers will readily be immersed in its milieu.

Vanessa’s discovery of what makes for a “fine and decent person” contributes an underlying sense of growth to the story. This will draw readers into its extra touches of unexpected developments and psychological magic.

Libraries seeking stories with strong female protagonists, realistic settings, and an unusual blend of magic, mayhem, and discovery will welcome All That Shimmers into their collections. It’s an exceptionally poignant examination of one twenty-something woman’s shifting options for the rest of her life against an equally challenging social and political atmosphere which attacks her beliefs and life trajectory.

Immersive and thought-provoking, All That Shimmers is highly recommended.

All That Shimmers

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The Child
Marcel Marquié
BookBaby
979-8-35098-976-2 $2.99 (eBook); $13.99 (paperback)
https://www.amazon.com/Parisian-Detective-Tales-Trilogy-Child/dp/B0DVFVP8FQ

The second book in the Parisian Detective Tales trilogy, The Child, provides another step in a thoroughly compelling series that opened at the end of World War II, following the saga of a missing child into new territory.

The stage set in the first book, where sisters Sandrine and Claudine focused on clearing their father’s name after he was falsely accused of collaborating with the enemy and murdered, continues in the same 1947 setting.

The focus narrows to a search for Sandrine’s lost baby. Private eye Toni Bonnet’s efforts to locate the foster family who adopted him results in unexpected sojourns. These send Toni on a European journey in search of what turns out to be more than another missing child casualty of World War II.

History blends powerfully with mystery and personal objective as the search reveals new threads of discovery that revolve around the Spanish Civil War’s events and lasting impact. With an abducted child assuming center stage in this adventure, readers are introduced to personal and political calamities that attract on different levels.

Marcel Marquié deftly captures the dialogues, atmosphere, and intentions of all kinds of cultures and people as the journey unfolds:

It was aperitif time, and the place was full of loud-speaking customers who communicated in Catalan.

“You think someone speaks French?” Toni asked.

“I’m sure most of them do. They simply prefer to speak Catalan.”

The owner, who was busy pouring Ricard in glasses, pointed to the elderly white-haired man engaged in a heated discussion with three other customers.

“It sounds like they’re about to murder each other,” Toni said.

“No, dear Parisian, they’re just having a friendly conversation. That’s the way locals talk. There’s nothing to worry about, but we should politely wait until they’re done.”

His attention to detail builds flavor and realism into a story that probes many possibilities, from adoption routines and how children go (and stay) missing to a P.I.’s navigation of unfamiliar cultures, routines, and history which limits and challenges some of his investigative prowess.

Equally notable is the close attention to details contrasting the histories and eras of different communities and worlds as the story moves from familiar Paris to the Pyrenees, where half a million Spanish Republicans sought refuge after Franco's victory in 1939.

As much a work of historical examination as detective intrigue, The Child represents an evolutionary growth process as events move away from the lives portrayed in Two Sisters to build upon its background, presenting different characters and special interests whose personal worlds intersect with political struggle.

Libraries interested in the Spanish Civil War, who have seen interest in Two Sisters, will thoroughly appreciate the unexpected avenues of discovery and recovery which emerge in The Child.

It’s a story that sparkles with new revelations, old patterns challenged to change against shifting political backdrops, and the ongoing relationships of sisters buffeted by the rise and fall of wars all around them. Its powerful intersection of history and personal experience make The Child a broad recommendation for book clubs and a wide circle of historical fiction enthusiasts.

The Child

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Children of Solitude
Michael G. Williams
Gold Dust Publishing
979-8-9929748-1-2
Website: https://www.michaelgwilliamsbooks.com
Ordering:  https://www.golddustpublishing.com

What can a son do when his mother dies and his return to the family home reveals that it is haunted? Children of Solitude follows the horror and dilemma faced by Reginald Voth when dead mother Dorothea returns to haunt him as much in death as her demands did when she was alive. And that’s only the start of his woes.

Her death comes as no surprise. Reginald has been visited by her in an unwelcome event, during which:

Reginald felt the certainty of Dorothea’s death from deep within, like a thing he’d already known and forgotten.

This is not a surprise, either, as Reginald’s family is filled with stories of such returns. What is a shock, however, are events which ensue to tap the Voth family legend in new, challenging ways that impact his life.

Michael G. Williams’s ghost story is not your typical haunted house account. He drapes his ghost in the trappings of contemporary horror that emerges from the start as Reginald shares his bed with a man he may not even seriously like and contemplates the impact of family legacy and drama on his lifestyle.

Maybe Reginald’s usual boundaries could be stretched.

More than sexual or relationship innuendo is posed, here, as Reginald finds his limits tested, his family ties questioned, and considers his choices for entering into dark new realms of realization about death, his mother’s life, and a farewell which may not be so final after all. Reginald is forced, by these events, to embrace new realizations about his family and connections:

What had been in Reginald’s heart was a lot more complex, a lot longer: No thanks, preacher, my life is more than a waiting room outside the court where Heaven and Hell collide.

These, in turn, create a series of encounters during which he joins a host of other investigators to discover exactly what is happening in his mother’s house and how he’s a part of it. Emotional explorations keep the revelations vivid, personal, and transformative:

Whatever was happening in his mother’s house, to his mother’s house, it terrified him and enticed him in equal measure.

The horror that emerges from trees, lights, and childhood memories presents readers with many surprising twists and outcomes that will delight those anticipating the traditional paths a ghost story usually takes. There’s something different in the atmosphere here, and it emerges from characters who move through the house in unexpected ways:

Reginald tried to sound casual, like finding his mother’s preacher silently studying a portrait of himself in childhood in his mother’s haunted house was the most normal possible thing.

These surprises are why Children of Solitude will simply delight ghost story and horror readers seeking something different. Its atmospheric power, psychological challenges, and game-changing twists create stories of unexpected connection and revelation that add reflections on life’s meaning into the horror mix.

Evocative, compelling, and as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, Children of Solitude is highly recommended for libraries, reading groups, and anyone fascinated by horror, ghosts, and issues of home and safety.

Children of Solitude

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Eyes of Iris
Joshua A.H. Harris
Atmosphere Press
979-8-89132-585-2
$16.99 pb, $9.99 e-book, $25.99 hc
www.atmospherepress.com

When twenty-year-old Iris participates in an Ayahuasca ceremony, the last thing she expected was a time-travel journey to the future; much less the doubt and challenges of returning to present time vastly changed.

In Eyes of Iris, this change proves a pivot point in her life in which subsequent visits with psychiatrist Dr. Kairos document an extraordinary series of encounters whose detailed descriptions defy the usual diagnosis of delusion.

Can someone travel to 2300, observe that time’s vast changes, and return home unchanged, themselves? Apparently not, because Iris’s visions provoke a journey that tests not only ideas about the future, but how present-day actions could alter it.

Joshua A.H. Harris’s attention to exquisite psychological, social, and constructive plot details defies the usual time-travel tale in which a desire to return home permeates the traveler’s experience. Here, the traveler is home ... albeit not in the way that was imagined.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed ... but what if such knowledge implies or demands new choices that will twist the nature of destiny itself?

As Iris recounts her extraordinary experiences to her psychiatrist, both are changed by events that range from violent gaming choices to revised choices, allowing the characters’ worlds to blossom in unexpected ways:

I was trying not to get too pissed off—it was just a game after all—but then I remembered what I’d learned from Martha Stewart in the Grand Corridor: I had to engage fully with the fiction, let it take me over, become my reality. So instead of stifling my anger, I let it blossom.

Fans of time-travel literature well know the usually-predictable ways in which an encounter with the future plays out. Not here. Harris casts characters, decisions, and outcomes based on this future knowledge in a different light that combines reflective moments with interactive action that keeps readers on their toes.

As past and future coalesce in the exhausted mind of Dr. Ernest Kairos, reality itself dissolves into a series of options that not only introduce new possibilities, but convince him that time travel may not be limited to singular experience, but can be embraced by anyone. Even him.

The plot, which comes to rest on his own cause-and-effect by listening to Iris in the first place, comes to life with many possibilities readers won’t see coming:

The story would be told, transcribed, read and reread, translated, animated, dramatized; its influence would grow, slowly at first, but eventually it would catch flame and spread like wildfire. Her story would change the—

Libraries will find Eyes of Iris especially notable for its reflective journey. It can be highly recommended to book club reading groups interested in debates about past and present life intersections, and how knowledge of the future could transform the present.

Packed with the unexpected, Eyes of Iris is as thought-provoking as it is engagingly fresh.

Eyes of Iris

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The Folklorist
Eileen O'Finlan
BWL Publishing Inc.
978-0228627951 $18.99 paperback; $4.99 Kindle
Website:  https://www.eileenofinlan.com/
Ordering:  https://books2read.com/The-Folklorist

The Folklorist juxtaposes the worlds of two very different folklorists in Vermont. One lives in 1830s Birch Falls and devises a terrible cure for the consumption that has claimed all of Jerusha Kendall’s siblings. The other resides in 1973 Middlebury, Vermont. Here, modern folklorist Charlotte Lajoie has just accepted the role of museum director, only to find the job fraught with surprising tensions and challenges.

Charlotte’s unexpected gift from her grandmother, a diary written by her ancestor Jerusha Kendall, reveals a terrible secret. Events stemming from her discovery challenge both her professional and personal morals and values as the truth about the wellsprings of New England’s historic Vampire Panic impacts modern times.

Eileen O'Finlan’s connections between and contrasts of two very different folklorists creates a powerful thriller steeped in a sense of New England’s vampires, ghosts, and historic discoveries.

O’Finlan’s ability to bring past and present to life through vivid fictional characters created against the real historic backdrop of the New England Vampire Panic brings each setting to life. This invites readers to learn about these times via two very different perspectives.

The story opens with a vivid experience of modern-day professional challenge:

“Guess how he greeted me. ‘How’s our little folklorist this morning?’” Charlotte jammed her key into the lock of her apartment door.

Heidi followed her into the apartment. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Good morning.’ What else could I say? He had the president of the museum with him.”

Chapters that move between characters and times are clearly labeled to make transitions smooth and easy, while the drama and concerns of each of these folklorist women, who inherit traditions and assumptions that test their lives, is exceptionally involving.

Charlotte’s research on the Kendall family reveals far more than she expected, growing impacts and realizations that reach from past to present to affect not just her perception of the town’s history, but folklorists as a whole.

Charlotte’s ongoing and evolving struggles with President Shepard, Brad, and her role in the museum pits creative force against political decorum as she tries to maintain authority and control over her job to reinforce the idea that her contributions are recognizable and valuable, despite the misogynistic attitudes that denigrate her efforts:

“I’m sure Charlotte won’t mind putting in some extra hours, if need be,” said President Shepherd giving Charlotte a pointed look.

“Of course, I won’t mind,” she said.

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with her love life,” said Brad with a little laugh. Charlotte felt her cheeks burn.

Women will especially appreciate the threads of historical precedent and attitudes that trickle from past to present, further impacting the characters as they each work, from different eras, against surprisingly similar repressive forces. The story’s powerful ties between past and present womens’ struggles will provoke many an avid book club discussion.

Libraries seeking a historical novel replete with supernatural and social force will welcome The Folklorist into their collections. Its special contrasts between two strong women who deal with sabotage in different ways creates a thoroughly compelling story enriched by the possibility of vampires who suck the life from individuals and communities in more ways than one.

Vivid, thought-provoking, and peppered with delightfully unexpected moments of revelation and growth, The Folklorist is a story that lingers in the mind long after the last circumstance in which Charlotte is forced to realize that the repression she faced has ultimately made her stronger.

Women need to hear this message ... and what better way to do so than through a captivating journey.

The Folklorist

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French Lessons
Roberta Samuels
Red Penguin Books
978-1-63777-556-1
$19.99 Hardcover/$12.99 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
Website: www.robertasamuels.com
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/French-Lessons-Roberta-Samuels/dp/1637775563?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1

French Lessons: One Woman’s Tale of Sex, Wine, and House Renovation in la Belle France is a novel exploring love and transformation. American divorcee Barbara moves to France, purchases a dilapidated old house, and sets out on a personal and physical journey to rebuild her life and environment.

Barbara’s story unfolds in the style of a first-person memoir. She explains her rationale for moving to France and starting anew, but underlying her overt motivations for changing her world are psychological influences that come to light as the story unfolds.

Roberta Samuels mixes these lessons into a sense of adventure, whether the discoveries are psychological or the result of illicit explorations. Powered by the narrator’s astute self-analysis and innovations, the French lessons become vignettes of growth examples that pepper action with intriguing conclusions:

I felt guilty at my misbehavior and exultant at the same time. I had allowed myself this illicit adventure and emerged unscathed with only a bit of injured vanity.

Also notable are the cultural, linguistic, and social observations Barbara makes as she contrasts French and American worlds. This inserts insights that operate on varying levels of understanding, introducing new concepts to American audiences:

I loved how the French sprinkled big words like dérisoire into their conversation with ease. ‘Derisory’, for example. Impeccable was a typical way to say ‘good,’ to show approval of a plan, for example. My French cleaning lady talked in four syllable words which had long fallen into disuse for most Americans. Take the word desuetude. It means ‘out of use.’ The same word is out of usage in the U.S., but common coinage in French people’s vocabulary except ‘desuétude’ has an accent in French. Otherwise, it is exactly the same.

These educational flavors meld well with the emotional components that unfurl as Barbara makes new friends, comes to understand France’s citizens and how expats and foreigners view the nation differently, and grows in many unexpected directions.

Charming pen and ink illustrations by the author enhance the story and bring it to life, while contrasts of French food, perceptions, and life are nicely inserted into the overall sense of adventure and discovery that permeate this novel, giving it a special atmosphere of attraction via unexpected contrasts:

French law stated that “Foie gras belonged to the protected cultural and gastronomic heritage of France.” Foie gras production had become controversial in some places, like California, due to concerns that force feeding violated animal rights.

Libraries that choose French Lessons with women’s groups and audiences in mind will find all kinds of readers attracted to it, from Francophiles to those seeking a warm beach read. It percolates flavors of culinary, psychological, and social discovery into its tale of a woman whose French sojourn grows into a love story that evolves on many (unexpectedly deeper) levels.

French Lessons is a tribute to a nation as much as the enchanting story of a woman whose walk out of her world brings her into a new life replete with unexpected friendships, confrontations, and meaning. Its uplifting story of change is a breath of fresh air for readers attracted to stories of enchantment, reinvention, and growth.

French Lessons

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Gilded Spirits
Amrit Kallar
Brown Books Publishing
9781612547350 $17.99 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
Website: https://www.amritkallar.com/
Ordering: www.brownbooks.com

Gilded Spirits is a novel about Emily and Meera, two very different women who each find their home in California, and whose choices and challenges end up resonating through time to change each of their lives in different ways that emerge strangely similar, when viewed from under the dark shadows of issues that keep emerging from the fabric of American society time and again.

Meet Emily Jones in the first chapter, who has escaped Savannah, Georgia to move to California during the Gold Rush with her love, Jonah James, a Black man. Her move West, propelled by the zeitgeist of Manifest Destiny, has in it all the experiences of an enthralling Western movie. Love, loss, honor, and betrayal—Emily witnesses it all.  

Her mirror in modern times is Meera, who has emigrated to the U.S. and the San Francisco Bay Area at the turn of the last century. Meera is in search of many similar things as Emily, but ordinarily time would keep them separate. Not when a supernatural Matchmaker joins their lives, fostering an influence upon each which leads them to make some extraordinary associations and decisions that will change their worlds.

The match results in many social and political challenges, including Meera’s confrontation with an organization of exploitative technology companies, "WC Terras,” sees her shackled by a chokehold of workplace repression and ruthless power politics. Meera is in search of many similar things as Emily, and ordinarily time would keep them separate. In the world of Gilded Spirits, however, their lives and times become intertwined in surreal ways, leading them to make some extraordinary associations which aspire to change the trajectories of the worlds they’ve each known, forever.

Amrit Kallar’s hard-hitting novel embraces romance, risk-taking, and contrasts in historical events and perspectives that nicely juxtapose opportunities with angst:

I often wondered how different my life would have turned out if he was alive, if I would have settled somewhere further south, in Utah or Arizona, Colorado or Texas. As man and wife, would the world have seen us any differently, with all our accumulated riches over the years? Or would the scars from the shackles of slavery continue to have banished us from finding happiness?

Each woman faces her life’s possibilities in different ways, and each represents new thinking, solutions, and approaches to life.

The result is a powerful story of action, reaction, and unexpected connections that librarians will find easy to recommend to fans of historical fiction, California novels, women’s experiences and insights, mental illness viewpoints and treatments, and contrasts in place, time, and perspective between the Gold Rush ea and current California technological business.

Immigrants, allies of mental health, women’s and workers’ rights and causes, and California residents alike will appreciate how Gilded Spirits joins together seemingly disparate worlds and experiences, proving that historical precedent does, indeed, have a place in determining choices in modern times:

“We and so many more like us are all blackbirds, caged one by one, at the hands of WC Terra. We lived in fear of our wings being clipped, our dreams being shattered, our will and intellect being devoured.”

The result is a lively, compelling story that also deserves the spotlight in book clubs and reader groups for its ability to profile and immerse readers in all kinds of issues, prompting lively discussions and debates. Gilded Spirits turns an overlooked urban legend into a golden yarn that spins a timeless tale that’s gratifying ‘till the last untangled knot. Highly recommended!

Gilded Spirits

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Haunting Joy
A.L. Hawke
Phantom Heart, LLC
978-1-953919-80-9
Ebook $5.99/Paperback $13.99/Hardback: $21.99/Audiobook: $19.99
Website: www.alhawke.com
Ordering:   https://buy.bookfunnel.com/8lmle6n245

Haunting Joy combines a ghost story with a romantic saga in a manner that turns the typical haunted house story on end, adding a spark of joy and discovery into its supernatural mix. This will prove unexpected to readers used to ghost stories equating haunting with horror.

The mansion under consideration for purchase, after its abandonment was built in the 1990s, so is not your usual derelict wreck of history, but modern construction that would seem the last place to house a spirit.

During his initial inspection, Alec feels something different about the house:

A cold gust blew across his cheek from the still-open door, but something felt a little strange about it. For some reason, when he turned, he almost expected to see someone standing by the door watching them.

This initial sense expands in unexpected ways as he becomes involved in an immaculate home whose mystery unfolds to take over his life.

Alec’s increasing involvement with the alluring, vibrant Joy and his slow realization of what this new house introduces to his life makes for an engrossing ghost story whose romance comes with many underlying features and mysteries.

Readers choosing Haunting Joy for its promise of love won’t be disappointed at Alec’s progression, while those attracted to its supernatural promise receive classic haunting events in droves. Alec confronts a ghost who can not only love, but cry, as she reveals monsters in her past and present.

Of special note is how A.L. Hawke presents the ghost’s point of view, introducing intriguing dilemmas that come not from the usual perspective of human-encountering-ghost, but a ghost encountering a human:

“You have an anger problem! You’re shouting at me like a complete dick! It’s just like when you threw the kitchen door in my face. For the record, I asked you for consent a million times. I made love to you because I’m falling in love with you. That’s all. I don’t think I ever really loved a man when I was alive. Being a ghost allows me to… to watch you and I’ve watched you for months. You’re in my house. What else am I supposed to do? I’m not spying on you, you’re in my house…”

Libraries seeking supernatural romance stories that excel in taking the trappings of both genres and entwining them in new ways will appreciate the compelling events that unfold between Alec, Joy, and an odd situation which places even a ghost in danger.

Filled with the unexpected, Haunting Joy is a vivid romantic ghost story that satisfies the reader’s yen for love and discovery while including all the satisfying supernatural trappings of a good ghost tale’s ultimate attraction.

Haunting Joy

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The Journey
Melissa G. Wilson
Networlding Publishing
978-1-959993-33-9 $.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Travel-Romance-Romances-ebook/dp/B0F282333X/

Romance fans are in for a treat as they follow Claire into new possibilities in The Journey. Here, a experience-shy reluctantly goes on a cross-country road trip with an author and discovers the America that still lives along Route 66 as well as her own heart, which is still capable of embracing new things.

Melissa G. Wilson creates a quick portrait of Claire’s approach to life from the start:

Claire Marin’s fingers trembled as she watched the locksmith install the third deadbolt on her front door. The rhythmic sound of metal against metal echoed through her small, cozy condo — her fortress against the world outside. She wrapped her cardigan tighter around her body as if it could shield her from the anxiety that threatened to overwhelm her.

Well-meaning advice from others identifies these fears, but doesn’t address them until Claire makes her own move to break out of her familiar world. This is not to say that as soon as she hits the road, Claire opens up. Readers who harbor their own reluctance to engage with the world will readily recognize the emotional baggage Claire packs along with her clothes:

As the initial excitement of exploring the new space wore off, Claire felt her anxiety begin to creep back in. The room was beautiful, yes, but it was also unfamiliar. The silence seemed too loud, the space too open.

A host of encounters bring with them both challenges to Claire’s status quo and opportunities to change how she reacts to life. In few other stories do authors address the real impact of travel so compellingly as in The Journey, even though fictional road trips of discovery aren’t uncommon.

From techniques Claire develops to settle her nerves to how her responses move from guarded at best to being more open-minded about embracing life, Wilson crafts the kind of journey that many a reader will want to embrace themselves.

The journey brings with it the quintessential question of how a newly-revised mindset can’t go home again:

“When we started this trip, I never imagined it would end like this.”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “End like what?”

“With me actually sad to see it finish,” Claire admitted. “With me considering... more.”

Jonathan stopped walking, turning to face her. “And what does ‘more’ look like to you, Claire?”

Claire took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. But I know I’m not ready to go back to my old life. The thought of returning to my condo, to my solitary existence... it doesn’t feel right anymore.”

What evolves then is as much a part of the journey as its outcome, making the story a terrific draw for libraries and readers seeking fictional tales of evolution, discovery, and the impetus for change.

Powerful in its character portraits, compelling in its travelogue, and deep in its consideration of emotional overlays to life experience, The Journey is highly recommended for readers who perhaps approach life with their own embedded reluctance, who will perhaps discover through Claire their own pathways forward into a wider world.

The Journey

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MotherLove
Hope Andersen
Pipevine Press/Warren Publishing
978-1-966343-10-3
$29.95 Hardcover/$18.95 Paperback
www.warrenpublishing.net

MotherLove is the story of how a missing sister drives sibling Rebecca away from a series of disasters into a new purpose. This changes her life, enabling her to leave a toxic relationship. Clues lead her to St. Croix where Rebecca discovers her sister lying in a coma, unable to clear her name of a serious crime.

A prologue set in 2022 opens the story with a vivid scene of partying, sex trafficking, and murder from a yacht in the waters off St. Croix. This draws in readers with a promise of crime and mystery. The atmosphere heightens as the story moves to Rebecca Winslow’s very different (but no less filled with danger and angst) world in New Jersey.

Rebecca well knows her situation with her husband is untenable, but:

...his cruelty, the “fuck you” attitude he has adopted, comes as a surprise. She knows he blames her—for Juliet’s death, for the months of abstinence, for her inability to bounce back from grief and despair. He is also to blame, for not allowing her the time to grieve before he sought out other women for comfort.

She needs more than air. She needs a new life.

Hope Andersen creates a story that proves as emotionally compelling as it might be challenging for readers grappling with their own family ties and dysfunctional non-support systems. Rebecca’s internal monologues are vivid acknowledgements of her choices and their consequences. This adds to the mystery with personal revelations that are hard-hitting and thought-provoking:

She imagines the disappointment her mother will express. The vitriol Royce will spew because he has been torn from his routine for several days. The disdain he feels toward her because she seems unable to solve any major problems on her own. She does not feel up to handling their criticism or outrage; she is dealing with her own demons. The guilt she feels over not telling her parents sooner. The anger that roils in her over her submissiveness to Royce. There is so much about herself that she would like to change, but she does not know how or even where to begin.

The mechanics of how Rebecca’s involvement in her sister’s life provokes her to make necessary changes in her own relationships is a particularly notable adjunct to the mysteries that force her to step out of her comfort zone.

Andersen has, in effect, created a mystery and psychological probe that is astute, compelling, satisfyingly unpredictable, and filled with discussion points that women’s groups and book clubs will love.

Libraries selecting stories about evolving family relationships and growth will find MotherLove an excellent collection addition that sizzles with novel ideas and offers insights into conflict, conflict avoidance, and transformation.

Filled with realistic characters whose motivations for ennui or change are clearly explained and deeply explored, MotherLove is an intense, absorbing saga that’s hard to put down, filled with new possibilities as impossible truths emerge.

MotherLove

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Pearly Gates
Bonnie Solomon
Bonsol Press
979-8-9926133-1-5
Paperback: $17.99/Hardcover: $26.99/E-book: $3.99
Website: bonniesolomon.com
Ordering: www.amazon.com

To bling or not to bling? Normally, it wouldn’t be a question. Pearly Gates likes to shine. But tonight isn’t about Pearly. She’s not the one who’s been awarded Employee of the Year. It’s Thunder’s moment, and he should get the spotlight – even if he’s not the spotlight-seeking type. That’s always been Pearly’s thing, long before her last life as a drag queen. But she wants to look good for him. She wants to look like she deserves him. Maybe that’s why she’s standing in front of the mirror with a furrowed brow, manifesting her seventeenth look – a sequined chessboard gown with a heart-shaped Elizabethan collar. The white lace of the ruffles matches her white glitter eyeliner, and her fuchsia updo is fashioned into a queen’s chess piece. Too much?

Pearly Gates mixes a queer, quirky fantasy with humor and a spicy observational style that ultimately defies any attempt at pat categorization ... but that doesn’t mean that its potential audience is limited. Actually, it’s wide open.

Bonnie Solomon takes a ribald romp through the afterlife as she sends character Pearly Gates on a mission that sends her into the queer community to assist, as she can, via a new position at Thunderbolt Books & Coffee.

Pearly Gates represents good intentions too easily gone awry as she falls for the café owner, must evade afterlife detectives on her tail, and finds herself in an unlikely position of support, providing pro tips on gay sex to her protégé Hannah. She relishes the up-and-coming success of others in the queer community:

“Pride swells in Pearly’s chest. She sees herself in Danielle—these early days of drag, the thrill of success, of liberation. It felt so good to express her truest self.”

Through Pearly’s observations, readers are allowed entry into this milieu and can observe, through various characters’ eyes and experiences, its nuances, emotions, visions and disappointments.

Solomon writes with great attention to creating not just a lively dive into disparate lives and interests, but a series of personal journeys. These reflect the burlesque world, the queer community, and many of the ironies that arise from ambition, self-perception, and love.

Libraries seeking additions to their queer collections will welcome this powerhouse of a novel that receives its impact from a seemingly wise, albeit somewhat flawed character from the afterlife who finds that her greatest challenges lie not in her new mandate, but from her old life.

Readers anticipating any kind of staid treatment of this atmosphere and these characters will relish how vivid, lively, and important each becomes as events play out. This approach draws them into an evolutionary process that pairs confrontation and possibilities of rebirth with new perspectives on world orders and interactions.

Packed with hot scenes and exciting personalities, Pearly Gates is a standout.

Pearly Gates

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Rainbow Café
Dan Chabot
Independently Published
9798312550955 $15.95 Paperback/$2.99 eBook
Website: https://danchabot.ag-sites.net/
Ordering: https://www.amazon.com/author/danchabot

Who gets fired from a grave digging job? 73-year-old widower Ezra (“who held doctorate degrees in history and anthropology and had taught at one of America’s premier universities”) faces unemployment despite his intellectual prowess and attempts to rejoin the world after his beloved wife dies.

He’s just one of Rainbow Café proprietor Therese’s oddball customers, whose big heart and loneliness have overcome his sense of decorum and formality:

Therese knew from other parishioners that some mourners, already beset with grief, became even more distressed to hear the sobs coming from somewhere behind them.

It was Ezra, a gentle, tender soul, caught up in the emotion of the moment and the grim surroundings, overcome with sorrow for families struggling to cope with their loss and the concept of eternal rest. That most of them were total strangers did not seem to concern him.

Chabot’s injection of wry humor from the start weaves a complex story about a café milieu which reaches out to juxtapose the lives of disparate characters. These range from Café regular Juval Platt (a balding, friendly bank manager) to Molly and Mike, early regulars whose friendship with Therese began during her waitressing days.

A diverse group of individuals isn’t the only thing that drives this warm story. Equally compelling is a situation that involves them all in a theft, resurrection, broken contracts, and family ties.

Chabot masterfully entwines the basic elements of small-town interactions and personalities with the bigger picture of a dilemma that challenges them all, flavoring unexpected events with equally delightful ironic introspections. These involve dreams of immense treasure and the reality of plots that somehow seem to come home to rest in the Rainbow Café.

What do river pirates, grave robbing, hidden gold, and eccentric participants in unusual and funny problem-solving have in common? The Rainbow Café.

Libraries seeking a novel steeped in diverse, rich personalities and whimsical escapades will relish The Rainbow Café’s ability to build and contrast memorable, fun personalities with the bigger picture of a dilemma that involves an entire small town and the Café’s patrons.

Filled with the unexpected, but delightfully well rooted in a range of special interests and personal concerns, The Rainbow Café sports a big heart and winning conundrums. It will delight fiction readers seeking a story steeped in a smorgasbord of history, romance, intrigue, and cozy small town encounters.

Rainbow Café

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Shattered Peace
Julie McDonald Zander
St. Helens Press
978-1-963467-04-8  $18.95
https://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Peace-Julie-McDonald-Zander/dp/1963467043

Shattered Peace: A Century of Silence is a novel based on true events that took place in Centralia, Washington, when clashes emerged between the American Legion and the Industrial Workers of the World (“Wobblies”). The novel’s focus is on how conflicting viewpoints and opinions can erupt into violence, which should hold particular interest for modern readers.

From a bloody massacre in the streets that resulted in a lynching and the murder of four war heroes during an Armistice Day parade in 1919 to a dramatic introduction of the I.W.W. members arrested for defending their union hall from a raid by veterans during the parade, Julie McDonald Zander brings these times to life. She personalizes their meaning to modern times through the 2019 discoveries made by Colleen Holmes, who unexpectedly inherits her family’s home from her grandmother.

Her own military service and connections to the past lead her in unexpected directions as she tackles the unexpected results of her grandmother’s generous gift. Letters from the past not only introduce her to the circumstances that buffeted Centralia, but bring its issues to vivid life in modern times.

The story swings its timeline from present to past as Michael emerges in 1918 France to add his battleground trials to the mix as his girl at home, Bridget, writes of battles on the home front.

Life truly was too short to waste.

This reflection permeates a story in which a broad cast of characters find themselves fighting unexpected battles on different sides of social and political issues.

Zander intersects history, letters, and experiences to create a rich connection and threads of thought between past and present worlds. This grows an outstanding interplay of special interests, experiences, and clashes that pair circumstances of love, loss, and growth of the past with present-day lives and concerns.

The result will attract more than audiences interested in a singular town’s history, but those who wonder about peoples’ lives, how they made difficult choices and alliances, and how they navigated “tilting worlds” when everything changed.

Shattered Peace: A Century of Silence brings the Wobbly era to life with many dramatic passages and characters that juxtapose political and personal experience. This special flavor allows even non-history readers access to lives impacted by past social change.

Colleen’s veteran status lends her a special perspective on why this history feels so personal to her:

As a veteran, Colleen held a soft spot in her heart for those soldiers who, as the statue says, “were wearing the uniform of the country they loyally and faithfully served.” Why were they shot dead in their hometown after returning safely from the war?

Libraries interested in hard-hitting stories of veteran and social clashes that reach from the past to impact present-day lives will find Shattered Peace a winner. Its attention to bringing to life nuances between past and present events, startling readers with haunting passages about justice, hate, sedition and redemption, gives it a special attraction that will serve book clubs and reading groups especially well.

Vibrant in its interpersonal depictions and individual interpretations of events an their impact, Shattered Peace is a compelling, winning story about a tragedy that unfolded on Centralia’s streets that ultimately forges new paths toward peace and understanding in ways readers won’t see coming.

Shattered Peace

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Silver Echoes
Rebecca Rosenberg
Lion Heart Publishing
978-1-7329699-6-4 $3.99 eBook
https://rebecca-rosenberg.com

Silver Echoes is a ‘Gold Digger’ novel based on a true story. Rebecca Rosenberg juxtaposes characters and places between 1920s Chicago (where Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor becomes embroiled in gangster activity) and 1932 Colorado (where Silver’s mother is trying to protect the family silver mine from predatory interests and takeovers while searching for her missing daughter).

These two lives and worlds clash in a vivid, powerful tale of survival and adversity that leads mother and daughter to search for solutions to impossible, dangerous situations.

Rosenberg captures a sense of immediacy through her employment of the first person which presents Silver’s ambitions and perceptions in a vivid dance with danger:

Each rung sent a jolt of pain through my feet as I climbed. Below, Lake Rhoda shimmered, reflecting a dizzying upside-down world. Lordy, what have I gotten myself into? But then I picture it: the crowds roaring, the flashbulbs popping. My name in every headline. This crazy stunt will make me the talk of the town, the next big thing.

The fluctuating price of silver and the passage of time from 1916 influence the characters in different ways as Rosenberg builds a series of encounters between family, forces, and shifting political milieus. Her attention to injecting an atmosphere of the times into her work results in attracting rapt reader attention to the backdrops which affect mother and daughter:

Baby Doe was lost in the story of her own life, Carl Erickson’s words weaving a tapestry of memory and emotion that enveloped her completely. Fancy ballrooms, chandeliers sparkling like a prospector’s dream. President Arthur, laughing fit to bust. Actors, singers, highfalutin’ folks they’d hobnobbed with. Mark Twain, spinning his tales, Walt Whitman, reciting poetry. Even Sarah Bernhardt, dramatic as all get-out. Met artists too, Tiffany, Remington … their masterpieces hanging in our Denver palace.

Silver Dollar’s legacy may introduce thugs and danger into mother Baby Doe’s life, but that’s only one aspect of her daughter’s choices that she uncovers as she pursues Silver’s life and its connections to and reflections upon her own legacy.

Mining interests, shifting social milieus, and passion permeate a story filled with unforgettable moments:

Our lips met in a last desperate kiss, filled with longing and uncertainty. Our hearts pressed together, the photograph clutched between us, a frail promise in a world on the brink of war. As we pulled apart, the reality of his departure broke my heart into a thousand pieces.

A unique and powerful aspect is how Silver Dollar’s alter ego, Echo La Vode, wreaks havoc on her life, threatening her love for Carl, her show business career, and even her very life.

Libraries and readers interested in historical biographies that sizzle with “you are here” atmosphere, confrontations, psychological inspections, and love will delight in how Rosenberg expands upon the story introduced in her previous novel, Gold Digger: Baby Doe Tabor.

Newcomers need have no prior familiarity with the characters and setting of the first book in order to enter into Silver Dollar’s world, but will find (as will prior enthusiasts) that the two books together capture an extraordinary set of characters whose lives, psyches, and concerns entwine with the times. This creates an action-packed, thoroughly engrossing story that proves hard to put down.

Book clubs and libraries will find Silver Echoes a memorable, well-written, winning story that deserves top recommendation for its outstanding attention to psychological and social detail and its strong foundations in nonstop action and surprising discoveries.

Silver Echoes

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Sunday People
Jo Ann Kiser
Atmosphere Press
979-8-89132-577-7 
$14.99 paperback, $7.99 e-book, $23.99 hardcover 
www.atmospherepress.com

Sunday People is a novel about living and dying. It opens from the first-person viewpoint of Orson Caskill, store owner, philosopher, and family patriarch, whose memories and intentions drives a story of family choices and consequences.

From its opening lines, Sunday People embraces a special form of reflective reasoning, allowing its readers to enter Orson’s life to understand his intentions in reviewing it for future generations:

I am dying. I look at my family, as I’m doing right now in church, and I want them to know the truth about me, whatever that means. So here in church, where I’ve had no intention of listening to the preachers whoop and holler, I think I’ll work at thinking how I’ll tell my son who I am. And after I tell Jeff, then I’ll tell Sarah Beth that I’ve told him so she’ll know my first thought is for the family that we made together, the most important part of the truth.

As family ties and experiences are explored, Jo Ann Kiser melds the progression of faith, church, and family through generations as different perspectives and lives deliver their own impactful one-two punches of realization and choice.

Thus, Sunday People becomes more than just one patriarch’s reflections of the end of life, but blossoms into a captivating series of images, lives, and generations that each embrace their roots while moving into disparate futures.

One special note is how each of these characters differently reviews the physical atmosphere of their origins and experiences. Consider Orson’s wife Sara Beth’s reflection:

How many Sundays have I gone up this road? When I

began, it was a dirt road and I was a baby in my mother’s arms beside Daddy, who held the reins as our two plow horses pulled the unpainted wagon. When Orson and I were courting, they laid gravel on the road, and he came by for me in that old beat-up Model T. When Charlene was ten, they blacktopped the road and I sat beside Orson in our old blue DeSoto.

Then contrast this with husband Orson’s reflections about his early ties to land and community:

...it was a rough life. Pappy made a little money cutting timber—lord, how I hate it now, those big old trees are gone, gone—but mostly we lived on what we raised and what we found in the woods. At Christmastime we usually had a little sugar in the house for baking, and some of the time we had flour for biscuits, but mostly we ate cornbread from corn we took to our cousin who ran the mill over on Ransome Creek. It was a big old thing, and us boys would swim in the mill pond. I went over that way last year. Part of it’s still standing, but its pond is low and full of scum.

These and other evocative passages build a sense of not just characters, but the times and challenges they navigated. Readers will appreciate the thoroughly compelling “you are here” focus that brings to life the events shaking Osier County, Kentucky as well as the family’s legacy.

Readers interested in the experience of Kentucky’s coal-mining towns and heritage will especially appreciate how Kiser builds her story around history as well as disparate personalities. She juxtaposes the experiences of seven characters who each add depth and resounding attraction to the novel.

Libraries seeking stories rooted in family, a sense of place, Kentucky heritage, and shifting realities as the decades evolve will find Sunday People a compelling, attractive read. It can be highly recommended to patrons who like interconnected tales of reunions, revelations, and how connections and a sense of belonging are honed.

Sunday People’s passages about Kentucky’s evolving culture create a hard-hitting, reflective work that should not be missed.

Sunday People

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Violet is Blue
Anne Shaw Heinrich
Speaking Volumes
979-8-89022-315-9 $17.95
https://www.anneshawheinrich

Violet is Blue adds to the ‘Women of Paradise County’ series with a continuation of themes that involves some of the characters from the prior God Bless the Child. It returns the focus to the small Midwest town of Poulson, where contrasts between different socioeconomic layers are stark and revealing.

The characters in this story are trying to make sense of their milieu, ambitions, and growth processes. The topic of how Violet becomes blue intersects with a broad spectrum of characters, each living their lives in predictable yet sometimes surprising ways.

Anne Shaw Heinrich juxtaposes their different mindsets and perceptions using clearly labeled chapter headings. These help readers understand and clarify the shifting perspectives about living in Poulson.

The story opens with the observation of Poulson native Margaret Burns, who reflects on the town’s potential:

If you are a stranger and you’re lucky, this town will chew you up and spit you out. If you aren’t lucky, you’ll get stuck in its teeth or swallowed whole.

As the saga moves through disparate lives and circumstances in which some fit in and others stand out, readers are treated to an evolutionary growth process. “Bad girl” Violet Sellers, sporting a controversial tattoo called “Mr. Bones,” moves from childhood to adult ambitions harboring intentions that go awry, cultivating approaches to life that ultimately prove challenging.

The vividness of these first-person descriptions marks a story that builds exciting characters from the start:

My parents were processing uncomfortable thoughts about their girl. I had the power to annoy them. My newfound ability to confound them was difficult to leave in a box. I lifted its lid again and again, often taking it for joy rides that left me breathless and scared but feeling satisfied and powerful.

Their resigned sighs and the way they hissed back and forth at each other after I’d lock them out of my room confirmed that I held in my hands a new set of moves that baffled them in ways they never imagined. I smuggled this rude awakening right into the privacy of my room with its pink walls so I could hatch a plan to make them perk up and take notice.

Larry Downs and his sister Clarice, Violet’s less-than-acceptable (to her family) friend Jules Marks, and others explore romance, connection, rebellion, and issues of privilege and poverty. Readers are injected into the relationships and sentiments of a small town that harbors “sweet secrets and great big questions.”

The scope of these lives as they unfold, connect, and clash creates a moving plot filled with diverse characters, each seeking to make a place in and impact their worlds.

Under Heinrich’s hand, the town’s undercurrents and contrasts immerse readers in a rich, heartening story of healing that unfolds in novel ways, big and small.

Libraries interested in fiction centered around Midwestern lives and culture will welcome Violet’s journey and those of her peers as she navigates new territory.

Readers attracted to small-town tales of adolescence, coming of age, and contrasts between various approaches to life will find Violet is Blue compelling. It’s a vision of what it takes to grow, recover from trauma, and move into relationships that initially seem to be worlds apart, but are actually powerfully connected.

The exquisite dance between situations of power and empowerment, privilege and need, and secrets that change everything creates a compelling tale that both expands the first book while standing nicely on its own.

Readers, whether newcomers to Anne Shaw Heinrich
or prior fans, are in for a small-town treat.

Violet is Blue

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When People Leave
Leslie A. Rasmussen
Van Royen Press
979-8-9889712-7-6 $16.99 Paperback/$6.99 eBook
Website: https://www.lesliearasmussen.com
Ordering:
https://www.amazon.com/When-People-Leave-story-finding-ebook/dp/B0DW751V7B?ref_=ast_author_mpb

When People Leave is a novel about suicide, grief, and three sisters whose shared loss of their mother reverberates into a quest to tackle unanswered questions about her life and death. What better place to address these mysteries than the family house? And, what better place to harbor ghosts that threaten the survivors with clues and insights about their mother’s well-hidden secrets?

Readers who anticipate that When People Leave will be a mystery will appreciate its deep probe into family dynamics and many enthralling, immersive descriptions:

“Mom hated New York,” Morgan said more passionately than she intended.

“But that’s where she grew up,” Ginny said.

Morgan, Charlie, and Abby stared at Ginny as if she had two heads and had turned into a dragon.

“Mom grew up in Los Angeles,” Abby said.

“No, she didn’t. Your mom was born in New York. After she graduated high school, she went to Brooklyn College,” Ginny said.

“That can’t be right. She told us she’d only been to New York once and hated it,” Charlie said.

“I didn’t get the feeling she had a great childhood there, but Brooklyn is also where she met your father,” Ginny said. “Carla didn’t move to Los Angeles until she filed for divorce from your dad.”

As they explore the extent of a reinvented life gone wry and the deep deception which has become family fact and legend, the three sisters come to realize that nearly everything they believed about their mother’s history is wrong. Deadly wrong.

Leslie A. Rasmussen crafts a thoroughly engrossing story steeped in the efforts of survivors Morgan, Charlotte, and Abby to get to the bottom of the truth, even if it rocks their worlds in the process.

She tiptoes through family dynamics, laces realizations with humor to make the most of comic relief, and entwines love and life into these efforts, creating a thoroughly engrossing, realistic novel filled with thought-provoking truths.

Libraries seeking fiction that offers an immersive experience between sisters who each harbor their own unique approaches to life, problem-solving, and family relationships will relish When People Leave’s ability to juxtapose many threads of discovery with intrigue.

Its riveting revelations, captivating characters, lives touched by tragedy, redemption, and novel realizations makes for a novel that is a page-turner—hard to put down and filled with food for thought that can also power book club and women’s reading group discussions.

When People Leave

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Yankeeland
Lacy Fewer
Koehler Books
979-8-88824-605-4 $7.99 eBook
www.koehlerbooks.com

Yankeeland’s special blend of historical fiction and womens’ lives bring with it the opportunity to appreciate the contrasts between immigrant experience and lives in “the old country.” In this case, said country is 1900s Ireland, where two women make different choices—Brigid to emigrate to America with her husband Ben; cousin Molly to remain in Ireland.

Unlike many a story about immigrant experience and struggles, Brigid finds herself caught up in a medical system that holds special issues and challenges towards women whose goals are extraordinary. In this case, Brigid tries to get pregnant and finds her efforts lead to questions about her mental stability that threaten the patriarchy and her freedom of choice.

The story opens not in the past, but in 1993, where the narrator is handed a mystery that comes with a choice and a warning:

I’ll never know why fate handpicked me that beautiful midweek East Coast morning. Sitting on the floor, two large black sacks sat by my side. I was told I could do as I wished with them, as they had brought nothing but sadness to the previous finder. The bags, you see, held their story.

This draws readers into a story of discovery that pairs a passion for history with a series of personal revelations that embrace “generations of pain” through letters that move into the 1900s and two women whose connections are not lessened by distance, but strengthened by their family ties.

America is called “Yankeeland” in their terminology, also indicating that events which unfold may not be as idealistic and ordinary as the women initially perceive.

As letters back and forth between family members explore the different directions their lives take, readers receive a warm survey that comes not just from Brigid and Molly, but from brother James and others who hone their own appreciations for America’s different promises and shifting opportunities:

San Francisco was exploding, people arriving from everywhere, monied and penniless all there together. James loved this about the city. He loved how there were so many different people it did not allow for the small-minded class system of the old country. The people in the city he now called home were filled with a sense of excitement and encouragement, a wanting for each other to do well, a kindness at the core, genuine and warm-hearted, not with one eye on the pearly gates. They called it the American Way—they were proud of it, celebrated it, cherished it, goddamn, they lived it. It wasn’t for everyone, but it was for James and for those he surrounded himself with.

Brigid’s passion for creating a family of her own feels increasingly impossible, but also is buffeted by a growing connection with a woman who is an alternative healer and a clairvoyant, and the frustration of being thwarted in her biggest dream.

Her association with Mrs. Taylor despite her husband’s rejection of this woman’s oddities creates further paths of conflict even as it introduces her to new ideas independent of her husband’s thinking:

Brigid was not discouraged from wanting to be in Mrs. Taylor’s company. In fact, she pitied the woman’s misfortune—she’d been widowed at a young age, lost her son shortly after his birth, and now tried so bravely to make a life for herself. Brigid admired her great fearlessness and passion to progress her life, not unlike Brigid herself, who had vowed all those years growing up in Moling to follow her own dream. Why, she and Mrs. Taylor were kindred spirits.

This is but one of the ways in which Brigid evolves in her new life, but Molly, too, holds new associations and keeps secrets from Brigid, if only because:

Molly told herself it was just as well, as what could Brigid do about it anyway with the great ocean between them?

Births, deaths, and secrets evolve over the course of letter-writing and life’s evolution to create satisfying contrasts between the hopes, dreams, and observations of these two women.

Readers who enjoy historical fiction about womens’ lives and particularly writings which contrast the concerns of old and new countries in immigrant experience will appreciate the backdrops and challenges that Lacy Fewer traverses in her vivid story.

Libraries seeking fiction that excels in vivid descriptions, strong juxtapositions of interpersonal relationships and choices, and the evolution of Brigid Kelly’s world as she moves from a small Irish village to the sweeping promises (and illusions) of America will find Yankeeland easy to recommend to a wide audience, from women’s fiction readers to patrons who look for powerful tales of immigrant experience and connections that remain equally compelling in “the old country.”

Filled with delightful moments of growth, new discoveries, and connections that evolve over time and distance, Yankeeland is a thoroughly involving story that explores secrets, family ties, growth, and life and death in a manner that makes the story hard to put down.

Yankeeland

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Reviewer's Choice

The Author’s AI Toolkit
Hank Quense
Strange Worlds Publishing
979-8-9891163-5-5 $24.99 Paperback/$4.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Authors-AI-Toolkit-Concept-Publication-ebook/dp/B0DV4M13BH

The Author’s AI Toolkit from Concept to Publication brings modern writers into the 21st century with a basic how-to guide on employing AI to improve writing. Even the subject is bound to attract critical attention, given the discussions over AI’s pros and cons, especially as applied to human creative efforts.

From his book’s opening lines, Hank Quense addresses the value in viewing AI as not a takeover prospect, but yet another tool in an author’s toolkit of creative support systems.

This approach allows readers to reconsider their attitudes and perceptions of AI, encouraging understanding without the ‘technospeak’ that too often muddies the waters of AI’s usage.

Examples of AI applications pair AI query methods with program responses to give writers a sense of what they can expect from an AI partnership in the way of better writing results. In fact, Quense’s latest book is powered by his usage of Perplexity.AI as he documents the question-and-response dialogues and results writers can expect to see from their own efforts.

Yes, it’s a learning curve for writers unused to modifying language to ask the kinds of questions that generate the most satisfying improvements and responses. Akin to the interview process, the difference lies in how and what questions an author creates to make the most of an AI session.

Chapters outline the development and possibilities of this special language and relationship, giving writers a better sense of exactly what is possible (and what is not) if they include AI in their efforts.

Keyword queries reinforce results via examples throughout the book, so there’s no need to address a writer’s fear that they won’t be technologically advanced enough to use or consider AI.

Another plus is that Quense addresses many possible concerns, from safety and copyright to privacy and how AI’s ‘informal’ discussion setting can actually provoke lively discourses rather than staid artificial responses.

From issues of ethical transparency to employing AI to generate ideas and restructure a book idea, chapters cover all kinds of ways in which AI technology can work with an author to produce a superior result. From initial writing (which is up to the author) to rewriting, plot development, outlining a book’s structure, or fine-tuning its characters and concept, AI can be a winning partner. Its results are, here, reinforced by real-world examples.

No writer’s library should be without this book. Quite simply, it’s surprisingly accessible, unexpectedly lively, and packed with detail any author in any genre can readily apply to their own creative efforts:

Query:
How can a writer utilize AI to support their writing projects? Use an informal writing style.

Response:
Let’s talk about something that might just blow your creative socks off: using AI to supercharge your writing. Now, before you roll your eyes and think, “Great, robots are coming for my job,” hear me out. AI isn’t here to replace your brilliant brain—it’s here to be your sidekick, like Robin to your Batman or coffee to your late-night writing sessions.

The Author’s AI Toolkit

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Be Seen Now! Inspiring Insights Into Being a Fearless Speaker
Lee Glickstein
Precocity Press
979-8990946064 $24.95 Paperback/$9.50eBook
 https://www.amazon.com/Be-Seen-Now-Inspiring-Insights/dp/B0DNXRFRDS/

Be Seen Now! Inspiring Insights Into Being a Fearless Speaker explores Lee Glickstein’s concept of Relational Presence. It is directed to wanna-be public speakers whose stage fright prevents them from effectively speaking.

Many books have discussed this subject, and a few others have even provided introductory tools for coping and change, but what differentiates Glickstein’s approach is how he helps you tap into the natural, unfettered flow of speech and inspiration. He blends the latest brain research with mindful practices, guiding readers to break down walls of separation and engage audiences with authenticity. It’s a reflective, empowering journey into how true communication arises from words, presence, connection, and shared humanity.   

Rather than just coping with fear, this book offers a contemplative path to connection, truth-sharing, and speaking with presence and ease.

Glickstein includes such non-egocentric topics as “What it Means to See Your Listeners So They Feel Seen” and “Break Down the Walls of Separation by Seeing Others.” These and similar chapters approach speaking as a form of communication engagement that relies on subconscious and conscious interactions between speakers and listeners for maximum benefit.

Mindful practice is incorporated into his advice, from cultivating stillness to engaging audience attention before a single word is even spoken.

Such concepts as “radical authenticity” and “mindful belonging” may prove challenging to linear thinkers used to psychoanalytic approaches, but give Be Seen Now! an added value of depth and contemplative connection that results in invigorating, enlightening keys to not just speaking more effectively, but more naturally and fearlessly.

Glickstein delivers these insights in vivid language that is easy to absorb:

What makes a speaker accessible and irresistible to an audience is a willingness to share in raw form some aspect of what it took to get here. Listeners recognize truth when it is shared, and they can find the place within themselves that resonates with the speaker’s truth.

At the conclusion of Be Seen Now!, listeners and speakers alike will gain a greater knowledge not just about self and barriers to public speaking, but also about the process by which audience and speaker unite and grow from their oral interaction.

Be Seen Now! is a powerful, reflective advice guide, especially highly recommendable to book clubs, while patrons and readers will want to move slowly through its thought-provoking passages of enlightenment. This approach goes far beyond the usual focus on speaker fear to provide the added value of focusing on how connections are built.

Be Seen Now! Inspiring Insights Into Being a Fearless Speaker

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Beneath the Shadow of Time
Vera Bell
Timebound Publishing
9798989612468 $4.99
Website:  https://www.verabellauthor.com
Ordering:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DFRRVYGT

Beneath the Shadow of Time, the third book in the ‘Always and Forever’ romantic time-travel series, brings prior fans more fire and history, laced with romance and suspense, as medieval and modern Ireland and modern-day Miami come to life.

Siena and Ryan return in a conclusion to the trilogy that reinforces Ryan’s destiny and the likelihood that the couple will be forced apart by predestined roles and tragic past life events.

The vivid opening of this saga, in 1566 Ireland, draws from the start:

Ten thousand pounds of gold for my beloved’s head—a spec in all of Ireland’s soil. Ten thousand pounds of gold for my children’s father—a drop in the Irish Sea. Ten thousand pounds of gold—a fortune most men would never see in all their miserable lives.

Treachery, destiny, and fantasy emerge from chapters that juxtapose life in these times with modern-day Miami, Florida, where Ryan faces new challenges to building his life with Siena. These stem from new and old forces as he becomes a hostage to his ambitions and the echoes of a distant past. Siena discovers the past isn’t buried, and its dangers are far from over.

What do Ryan and Siena’s lives have to do with that of Neave and Aedan, whose Irish roots and struggles portend connections that may have to dig into modern times to come full-circle? Plenty. The plot unfolds against the backdrop of very different times, but brings together lives merged by chance, destiny, and conjoined struggles.

While destiny impacts their choices and struggles, historical precedent connects the dots between romance, fate, and purpose in a novel way. This challenges readers to persevere as the tale unwinds complex new pathways, ideas, and discoveries.

The reward for staying the course is more than apparent in twists and turns that juxtapose past and present events in unexpected ways. This will delight those who thought they knew where the story was heading, from the previous books, only to discover that, in fact, Ryan and Siena’s future is just beginning.

Vera Bell laces together past and present events, but also attends to exploring both Ryan and Siena’s individual journeys as events challenge them both. The attention to psychological reflection, hopes, ideals, and realities rewards readers with far more depth than they might anticipate from the usual historical romantic suspense story:

Montana shimmered at the edge of Ryan’s consciousness, green and beautiful in the summer, like the faraway place in the distant past. How right she’d been. He should have listened. He gave a bitter scoff—one way or another, this was his last case. Why was he even involved in it? What for? They should have stayed. He should have joined Dad at the ranch. It would have made the old man happy. Or opened a CrossFit gym in the nearby town. Or both. So much space to live, breathe, and have as many kids as they wanted. Three or four. He always wanted a big family of his own. Boys and girls who’d look like him and her, with whom he’d spend all his free time. Instead of sitting in this dump, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Waiting to die.

Chapter headings clearly delineate the shifting sands of time so that no reader is confused about the intersection of past and present-day events or place. The story sizzles with atmospheric and psychological depth that immerses readers in issues of honor and loss from Ulster, Ireland to Florida’s treacherous shores:

I turned to face the killers surrounding me. They were large, battle-hardened Scots, but I didn’t fear them. I feared nothing now and never would again.

Fear and courage stopped.

Vice and virtue stopped.

Want and fortune stopped.

Everything but me stopped. For my terrible lot was to live while he had perished.

The emptiness inside me flooded with every shadow that ever was. The shadows merged, then exploded into a thick, hideous gloom.

The result is a powerful saga that represents both unexpected twists and logical conclusions to the trilogy as a whole.

Libraries seeing popularity with the other books in the series will want to add Beneath the Shadow of Time to their acquisition list for its many surprises and thoroughly compelling conclusion.

Readers who love time travel mysteries steeped in senses of place, purpose, destiny, and romance will relish the entire series—but especially the unexpected conclusion to Ryan and Siena’s lives together in Beneath the Shadow of Time.

Beneath the Shadow of Time

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Blood Moon Productions
Darwin Porter & Danforth Prince
Blood Moon Productions
9781936003945 $49.99
www.bloodmoonproductions.com

Anyone interested in Hollywood history, gossip, drama, and major players will likely well know of the prolific publisher Blood Moon Productions, whose works have profiled celebrities, ribald atmospheres, and legendary encounters on and off the silver screen.

What they won’t know is how Blood Moon began, evolved, and became a powerful entity fueled by the “Neitzsches of Naughtiness,” Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince. This is why Blood Moon Productions: Its Origins, Its Oeuvre, Its Sources, and Its Legacy is simply outstanding—a “must have” acquisition for any library collection seeing popularity with any of their publications.

It’s already a fact that Porter and Prince have profiled and preserved the legends of modern times, from Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley to Humphrey Bogart and Carrie Fisher. A dip into Blood Moon Productions examines the wellsprings of not only the dynamic duo’s Hollywood interests and connections, but exactly how they can churn out so much weighty and compelling writing in a short span of years.

How weighty and prolific? Think two or three yearly, at about five to seven hundred pages long, packed with rich stories and photos about major public personalities.

Their revised focus here is not to say that gossip has been set aside for practical review of personal lives and a publishing house’s development. Indeed, as with all their books, gossip, juicy stories, and high drama permeates this synthesis of the many Hollywood lives and encounters Danforth and Darwin have experienced over decades of work.

The writing is as impeccable as its headliners (think ‘chapter titles’ on steroids), as in the book’s second part about Darwin Porter: “The most famous person you’ve never heard of, he’s what would have happened if Walter Winchell had fathered a child with Hedda Hopper.”

Who would not be inspired to read all about him, fueled by the heady analysis of Darwin Porter, who reviews Danforth’s vivid life and choices.

And, the color. Most photo-filled Hollywood books rely relatively little on color imagery; but no expense has been spared here ... and it shows.

Quite simply, any Hollywood-centric library collection would be hard pressed to find anything even remotely like Blood Moon Productions in Hollywood literature.

Steeped in the culture from whence it was born, Blood Moon Productions is risqué, ribald, rollicking, and powerfully personal, and is highly recommended for a broad audience of fans of gossip, Hollywood personalities, and the individual ambition and connections which have driven and motivated Porter and Prince to stand out from the crowd of Hollywood wanna-be writers.

Bravo! More, please.

Blood Moon Productions

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The Color of Dreams
Michael Zajaczkowski
Starlite Books
979-8-9917691-1-2
$28.95 Hardcover/$15.95 Paperback/$28.95 Hardcover/$17.95 Audiobook
https://michaelzbooks.com/ 

The Color of Dreams is the magical story of a little angel who arrives just in time to help a man on the verge of losing his family and everything he loves. It takes the form of a journal which the angel has requested he create to document their relationship and its impact on his life.

From its opening lines, The Color of Dreams is presented in atmospheric, poetic descriptions that are highly evocative:

I’ll always remember the shining angel, the promise of her lessons, the colors in my garden, and the light that burns inside of me. I’ll remember each and every failure, all the chances I had to turn things around, and all the times I chased after the wrong things. And after all the chasing, I’ll remember most what I ended up finding: something I’d always had, but that I overlooked, just as you may be overlooking it right now. My dad always said, “You don’t know what you got until you lose it.” That was certainly true for me.

The narrator is a dreamer with no head for business, making many of his efforts problematic as he sinks into a “money hole” that seems to hold no clear solution. Luckily he has his angel to advise him, and she creates an alternative path of healing to help him:

“Are you in faith or fear right now, Ben?”

I was instantly ashamed, but I couldn’t control my disappointment. “It’s all over.”

“What’s over?” she asked with a steady gaze, her wings opening and closing hypnotically.

I plopped down on the couch and let out a deep sigh. “All of it. Mitch won’t loan me the money. He thinks it’s a bad idea and won’t work, so now it’s over. It’s just all over.”

The angel zoomed into my consciousness, raised her little hands, and scattered the choking darkness. Murky colors retreated to the edges of the bubble that now surrounded us, and the angel’s glow warmed it to a sapphire blue. She sat beside me, and I calmed, basking in the blue and watching the dark disappointment retreat above us.

As Ben becomes involved in a new development community and begins to open himself up to new possibilities with the angel’s assistance, a variety of characters enter his life to interact with him on different levels.

Michael Zajaczkowski’s story embraces magical realism, faith, hope, and psychological growth. It’s a gently inspirational tale that will attract a wide range of readers—especially those interested in miracles, revised options, and the power of fear and faith.

Libraries that choose The Color of Dreams for its lovely descriptions, logical and compelling accounts of growth, and uplifting sense of hope will find it easy to recommend to readers looking for inspirational tales of transformation that emerge from following one’s dream.

The Color of Dreams

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Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
Juijun Xu, MD, PhD and Lynn R. Webster, MD, Editors
Oxford University Press
978–0–19–764069–2 $59.95 Paperback/$56.95 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Complex-Regional-Pain-Syndrome-Medicine-ebook/dp/B0DQJQ79VV

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome joins others in Oxford University Press’s What Do I Do Now Pain Medicine series, addressing a perplexing, debilitating condition that can follow all kinds of trauma and treatments.

Eleven selected clinical cases are profiled for this book, representing a diverse set of circumstances and presentations of CRPS. This allows for explorations of vastly different syndrome origins, treatment options, prevention considerations, and the presence and challenges of CRPS in patients ranging from children through adults.

While this guide is directed to healthcare professionals, it is also accessible to lay readers interested in the broad spectrum of research and treatment options surrounding CRPS.

Contributors of articles to this volume are physicians and PhD researchers. Each offers a range of insights, from psychological and physical influences on who develops CRPS to genetics, medicines, and injuries that pose risk factors for its development and progression.

Medical students, in particular, will find the technical references and “Key Points to Remember” summaries at the end of each article offer important, easy informational quality that lends to both skimming and deeper opportunities for bibliographic pursuit.

Each profiled case has been chosen for its unique challenges, providing healthcare professionals with a range of considerations and tools when diagnosing and managing CRPS in their own patients.

Designed as a pocket guide but holding vast opportunities for further study and research, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome is a highly recommended addition to any medical library catering to healthcare professions, classrooms that include CRPS in their discussions and lay readers who would gain a better sense of the condition and its various incarnations.

The organization and clear presentation of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome makes it a highly recommended acquisition for all kinds of library collections. It’s important (if not essential) reading for healthcare students and professionals who would learn more about this challenging condition and its management.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

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Creation’s Testimony
Jeffrey Weitzel
Independently Published
$16.99 Paperback/$24.99 Hardcover/$4.99 eBook (free on author website)
Website: https://gospel.design
Ordering:
https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=qbqa1FYNFOdNwQRh2Fg3Hud7Oja7HLleXr94UEoqQbs

Creation’s Testimony: His Invisible Attributes Clearly Seen, Understood by the Things that Are Made examines God’s creations with an eye to considering how God’s purpose and wonder is embedded in the fabric of His creations.

Elements of life that appear incomprehensible or invisible are supported by evidence that comes not from human analysis and statements, but by the presence and operations of nature in human lives. This ranges from the sun, moon, and stars to answers embedded in creation and life that thinkers will reflect upon with the help of Jeffrey Weitzel’s survey.

This is not to say that listening to nature in a deeper manner can replace Biblical stories, examples, or insights; but rather that such an approach can add depth and discovery to what has already been written as a well-known narration of human affairs and history.

Readers of Creation’s Testimony should not expect a treatise designed to change the world or link Christian thinking to world affairs. Its lesson in encouraging deeper inspections of personal, historical, and spiritual intentions is more of a guidepost that lends direction into the process of better understanding creation itself:

...if you observe a natural, created thing, it will only do what it was designed by the Creator to do. All created things are consistent in that way, so that we can make observations and learn a thing or two about how they work.

In many ways, this approach results in seeing more clearly. Weitzel considers modern obstacles to this clarity, proposes a course of inspection that circumvents patterns of human affairs that obscure divinity, and creates food for thought perfect for spiritual reading circles or book club discussions:

...we see the beginning of a pattern of man wanting to hide nature and hide from nature—both our own nature, and the nature of creation. Immediately Adam and Eve tried to hide their natural bodies, as guilt had pricked something inside of them that made them ashamed of who they were.

Lest readers think this discourse will focus on Scripture and history alone, it should be mentioned that personal experience weaves through the bigger-picture thinking to create powerful connections. These draw important links between daily experience and bigger-picture thinking:

And somehow, I have been able to function at a remarkably high level for all of this, although it did take time for my brain to make the adjustment. We are truly fearfully and wonderfully made, and God has installed back-up plans in our bodies to compensate when other things go wrong, much like the plan He put in place when sin entered the world.

Weitzel creates a mesh of insights that often pinpoint why modern Christian thinkers may struggle to recognize and acknowledge God’s hand in the most basic of life processes:

It should not be a difficult thing to do, to look at the sky and know where in the day, week, month, and year we are. Yet it is. There are some basic things that have been lost to us since the time of creation. Some has been lost in much the same way that common sense is no longer common, some lost in cultural constructs that have changed over millennia, but there is more as well—difficulties that no common sense or research can account for.

The result is a heady collection of insights that deserves to be part of any serious Christian thinker’s collection and libraries catering to them.

Best used as a focal point for group discussion beyond individual contemplation alone, Creation’s Testimony serves as a vivid connection between Scripture and created things in the world. It reviews how the messages of this creation can be distilled into basic, essential insights into life’s meaning. This focus will absorb and delight Christian audiences interested in harvesting many new insights about God’s intentions and incarnations.

Creation’s Testimony

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Late To Your Own Funeral
Rachel Donnelly
Ripples Media
979-8-9925127-0-0
$22.00 Paperback/$35.00 Hardcover/$9.99 eBook
https://ripples.media/books/late-to-your-own-funeral/ 

Late To Your Own Funeral: How To Leave a Legacy and Not a Logjam pairs an intriguing title and especially eye-catching cover art with a dash of wry observational humor that lightens the subject of funeral planning and death. This much-needed touch draws readers into a serious subject with many practical insights about organizing and leaving behind an estate. The book should be on the bookshelves of any library or individual interested in the process (which, ideally, should be everyone).

Chapters reflect this unique brand of humor and practical advice starting with the first chapter, ‘The Business Of Death: The Flaming Dumpster Fire We Leave in Our Wake,’ and continuing with discussions such as ‘Ignorance Isn't Bliss: What You Don’t Know Won’t Kill You, Because You’ll Already Be Dead’ and ‘The Stuffademic: Nobody Wants Your Hummel Figurine Collection.’

Humor aside, there’s a wealth of practical advice here, from funerals to inheritances, which is couched in not just accessible language (as some competing books are) but in words which are inviting and thought-provoking while adding unexpected wit to a serious topic.

Much information comes from Rachel Donnelly’s own experiences, which led to her mission to help others navigate this particularly trying time:

Death, as inevitable and universal as it is, comes with a bag of uncertainties and unspoken rules. Aside from it being completely sad and heartbreaking, nobody ever seems to know what the eff to do. This isn’t just a book; it’s a survival guide written from my perspective as an after loss professional and someone who’s been in the trenches of death’s bureaucracy.

From DIY estate planning pitfalls and planning for minor childrens’ care in the event of the sudden death of both parents to managing family dynamics, choosing a probate attorney, and selecting an executor, added insights in this book that rarely appear elsewhere make for an invaluable reference that stands heads and shoulders above the rest.

In the case of an executor choice, for example:

...regardless of the reasons or circumstances that lead you to include conditional terms in your Will, it is imperative to ensure that your executor is fully aware of the terms they will be enforcing. They must be prepared for the job and any potential friction that may arise. Communication is always key, and being clear is being kind, especially when it comes to defining an executor’s responsibilities.

Why should the living be so concerned about being especially careful in their estate planning? Donnelly nails it with her answer:

Consider this your ultimate parting gift: a meticulously organized exit strategy.

Libraries will not only want to include Late To Your Own Funeral in their collections, but will want to very highly recommend it to book club discussion groups and any group considering death, finances, or estate planning. If there is no such group, it’s time to create one, using Late To Your Own Funeral as its foundation.

Packed with eye-opening and honest assessments couched in humor paired with insights gleaned from real-world experience, there is no better estate or funeral planning guide than Late To Your Own Funeral precisely because it pinpoints common obstacles to final clean-up and the elements that lead to messy situations for survivors.

This makes Late To Your Own Funeral worth its weight in gold.

Late To Your Own Funeral

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Look Up: Global Stories of Resilience
Heidi Siefkas
Hide N Seek Media
978-0-9971963-7-5 $19.95
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997196378?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520

Look Up: Global Stories of Resilience opens with a personal story of adversity: when a tree limb left Heidi Siefkas with a broken neck and major injury, life as she knew it changed. Luckily for her readers, her life’s transformation led her to only heal and recover. It was not without additional heartache and detours, but resulted in her revised perspective and her encouraging book about others who have not just survived, but thrived, as a result.

Her personal life experience was the spark for this collection of stories of others who have also emerged from challenging or nearly impossible situations to adopt new courses in life. It sets the stage for a warm, compassionate, revealing series of insights that, in turn, embrace her readers with the promise of new possibilities and realizations.

It’s a message that will resonate today, now more than ever:

When life knocks us down, it’s our choice to stay down or to rise, stronger and wiser from the experience.

Where other memoirs and self-help guides document the transformational process, Siefkas both compliments and differs in her efforts to profile days when everything changed and how each person summoned the courage and survival traits to uncover lessons in resilience which are revealed here.

The “spirit of Look Up” is advanced through these lives and advice garnered from all kinds of people who summoned resources both within and outside of themselves, such as Pamela and her family, who lost everything in the Maui fires:

Her advice for others is simple yet profound: “Find your community, ask for help, and look for the silver lining, because even in the worst situations, there’s always something to be grateful for, so look up.”

Mantras, revelations, and the circumstances which support the Look Up mandate are all explored in different ways:

“I really relate to Look Up. It’s not being depressed about what you’re going through. Looking up to me means taking on a new perspective, looking up and around, not down—and one doesn’t have to do it all on their own.”

Ideally, Look Up: Global Stories of Resilience will be given to any new trauma survivor. Trauma survivors will learn many new survival techniques and tricks which are invaluable.

Libraries interested in books that connect positivity with survival traits and recovery processes by exploring diverse sets of traumas and individuals who leaned into the Look Up ideal will want to add Look Up: Global Stories of Resilience to their collections, highly recommending it as a healing and self-help journey that also will benefit from book club and survivor group discussions.

Packed with examples of the Look Up concept in action, there are few better courses for recovery and growth than this book, which leads by example and focuses on the unexpected opportunities that can arise from adversity.

Its highly recommended notes of positivity, adaptation, and transformation are just what the world needs in times of trial, whether struggles are personal, community-wide, or engulf the world.

Look Up: Global Stories of Resilience

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Medicare Mama’s Guide to Medicare and Social Security Retirement
Sylvia A. Gordon, JD
Independently Published
979-8-9922140-0-0 $9.99
https://www.amazon.com/Medicare-Mamas-Social-Security-Retirement-ebook/dp/B0F1KX9FRH

Sylvia A. Gordon has created a guide that probes underlying legal processes surrounding Medicare to enlighten readers about choices, legal interpretations, and misconceptions of applying for and using these benefits.

Take penalties for late Medicare applications, for one example. Gordon outlines the possibility of employer plan participation mitigating Medicare’s penalties, advising that “creditable coverage”

...is a term that’s often used incorrectly in the insurance industry, as well as by HR departments — but fortunately, it doesn’t cause any issues if we all agree to keep using it incorrectly.

She goes on to emphasize what the definition of 20 employees in a company means:

“Twenty doesn’t mean the number of employees on the health plan, but total employees working at the company.”

Another common misconception is the Medicare Part D prescription payment plan. Gordon points out that:

This program doesn’t save you money. It just allows you to pay for your drugs in equal monthly payments instead of a large upfront payment.

The legal clarifications of terminology, benefits, coverage, application snafus and processes, and more assures that readers on the cusp of considering retirement benefits gain the most information for consideration before they apply for anything.

Another benefit to this manual lies in graphic illustrations which simplify the process of retirement. An example lies in the fine chart for those born in 1960 and up which proves at-a-glance information on when one will achieve full social security benefits and beyond.

While this information may indeed change over the years to come, the book’s ongoing value lies in its strong focus on advice likely to carry over into any future incarnation of social security or Medicare (as long as they still exist). Tips such as to “never mail things to SSA unless you have no other option” may seem like no-brainers to some, but will save a huge audience a lot of headaches over “lost” documents that can include original or certified materials.

A QR code with the book allows readers access to updates if the book is purchased in 2026 (a revised edition will appear in 2027).

Packed with clear instructions, outlines of pitfalls and best practices, and most of all, legal clarification of often-puzzling terminology and processes, this book is quite simply a treasure trove of stories and insights delivered in plain and simple language, without the confusing jargon that assumes too much knowledge.

Ideally, Medicare Mama’s Guide to Medicare and Social Security Retirement would be given, along with a silver watch or retirement honor, to any up-and-coming retiree. But we don’t live in ideal circumstances, so it’s more likely libraries will want to obtain this for their collections and point out its relevance to anyone seeking enlightenment about government retirement benefits.

Medicare Mama’s Guide to Medicare and Social Security Retirement

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Misery Plaza
J.J. Alo
SNE Horror LLC
979-8992352306 $19.99 Paperback/$2.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Misery-Plaza-J-Alo/dp/B0DX6NG54W

Misery Plaza is the second book in the New England Southern Horror Anthology Series. It follows the flight of murderer Joseph Griffin (nee William Potter) into a new life in the small village of Missouri Plaza, home to many others who have something to hide.

Turns out Missouri Plaza is no refuge, but holds secrets of its own—which are literally buried in Potter’s backyard. His ability to fall into trouble wherever he goes reaches new heights here, where he confronts a special form of horror out west that challenges even his own ability to run on the dark side of the law and morality.

From the start, J.J. Alo creates a riveting story, opening with a small plane’s crash where a struggle for cockpit control concludes in disaster. The prologue sets the stage with intrigue and contrasts sharply and intriguingly with the first-person narration of Chapter 1, in which the speaker informs readers:

My father was a good man. A decent man, despite what you may have heard about him through folklore or read about him in your history books... I’m certainly not going to stand here and begin to justify any of the things he did or those I happened to be privy to. Some of which stay with me to this very day. Things I couldn’t explain at that time. Things beyond what you good folk would rightfully call rational comprehension. Now, I truly don’t mean to harp on such things, but I would be completely remiss not to mention the impression he left on my brother and me. Especially me.

Between these two events lies a delightful synthesis of intrigue and horror which emerges in different ways to affect the progression and outcome of a smoldering story which grows its horror.

The family’s flight to Missouri Plaza and the events which unfold from there come from different perspectives that reveal impacts, surprises, and revelations in novel manners. Readers absorb the flowing, shifting events from these perspectives, relishing how each piece of the puzzle dovetails to create a new compelling perception.

A wide cast of characters emerges from these encounters, with Alo taking the time and care to cement each character into their world with realistic, atmospheric intrigue. This builds a gripping tale in which social, political, and psychological threads of individual purpose contribute to the evolution of the unexpected.

Libraries seeking stories firmly rooted in thoroughly engrossing characters, special interests, and dangerous decisions and encounters will find Misery Plaza easy to recommend to horror readers who like their choices firmly rooted in a sense of place and purpose.

Those who come to appreciate its notes of Western environment, menace that stems from men and monsters alike, and its ability to weave a complex yarn will delight in Misery Plaza’s unique story of treasure, adversity, bounty hunters, cowards and criminals.

Packed with twists and historical references readers won’t see coming, its sharp contrasts between place and people creates a page-turner of horror and revelation that is impossible to predict and easy to love.

Misery Plaza

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There Will Be Change
Aubrey Feldon
Independently Published
ISBN: TBA Price: TBA
therewillbechange.com

There Will Be Change is a reflection on climate change and the end of what is ... but, unlike typical stories of looming post-apocalyptic change, Aubrey Feldon adds a more ethereal, philosophical tone to his observations. He follows how seemingly random events coalesce into world-changing inevitabilities as humanity rises, falls, and someday leaves for the stars.

It’s hard to neatly peg the audience for There Will Be Change. Those who seek sci-fi dystopian stories would be fairly far off the mark because the writing is as much about the passage of time and the impact of choice as it is about the near certainty of a future world without humans.

The author himself bills it a ‘novel,’ but at only 500 or so words, it doesn’t feature the development and complexity associated with book-length productions. It’s the lyrical, literary associations which provide the more complex association with a longer work while maintaining the succinct air of a work for modern times, where every word counts.

Perhaps it is an essay – but, if so, it’s one that holds the uncommon ability to synthesize the extent of life on earth into five succinct pages of outcomes, inevitability, and nature.

Suffice it to say that the very short ‘flash fiction’ that is There Will Be Change will be highly appreciated as a starting point for discussion and reflection in literary circles and among readers who look for big ideas packaged and delivered in small parcels where every word must reflect an expanded world.

One example of such literary roots and function lies in the descriptor line “... strides to eternity and stretches into a distant past.”

Aubrey Feldon notes that, “’Strides to’ a distant past implies there is an actual, finite location, while ‘stretches into’ a distant past implies no fixed location and evokes a sense of the infinite and unknowable.

Yes, There Will Be Change features a world with an end. But within its seeming diminutive survey of a brief period in time, it’s also a world in which rebirth simmers under the finality of death.

Classrooms, literary groups, and readers interested in a brief history of life on earth, whether natural or human-focused, will find that Aubrey Feldon writes with a strong hand and a big heart:

Earth is blind to the birth and death of life, and its cycles start and end by returning to their beginnings. Ice turns to steam; then steam turns to ice.

There Will Be Change

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A Walk Among Heroes
Gary B. Zelinski
Blue Hexagon Publishing
978-1963954104 $19.95 Paperback
http://www.bluehexagonpublishing.com

A Walk Among Heroes: Searching for America’s Better Angels is a military history of the people and patriots who came to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. It explores the contributions, lives, and achievements of some of the nation’s most diverse (and too often unsung) heroes, from military leaders to NASA crewmembers.

Each of these profiles features a revised examination of heroic action and countenance that encourages readers to think beyond individual action to the events that forced them to make lasting marks on their worlds.

Photographer Gary B. Zelinski considers his initial perception of Arlington’s history in light of his own participation in the military. He’d initially planned a picture book of gravesite images, but as his work unfolded, he embraced the bigger picture of these lives and how they came to rest at Arlington.

His book embraces this history with chapters and photographs powered by the many memorials and gravesites scattered over the cemetery’s 639 acres. It must have been a real challenge to synthesize and condense the best into this volume, but Zelinski’s hard-hitting document preserves facts and ultimately thanks each and every hero for their service.

A Walk Among Heroes will reach a wide audience, from those interested in photographic history pursuits to readers of military history, cemetery history, and heroic actions that changed the past and influenced the future.

Libraries seeking a visual and written slice of life about Arlington’s many heroes will relish these lively insights into struggles, battles, and ultimate meaning that make Arlington of continuing relevance and importance today.

Compelling life stories and visual emphasis weave perfectly into a hard-hitting memoir that fills in many gaps about the nature, purposes, and actions of heroes in American society and history.

A Walk Among Heroes concludes with an invitation for future generations to consider Arlington a resting place of not dead, but living history:

If you live near our nation’s capital or plan to visit, I encourage you to tour Arlington National Cemetery. Spend some time walking to distant gravesites and get to know the heroes buried there. Learn their life stories by traveling to their hometowns. Learn how they lived and whom they loved. Find your own better America. If you do, you will see the very best of our nation, where every stone tells a story.

A Walk Among Heroes

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Widows Among Us
Karen S. Justice, MBA, Karen R. Smith-Racicot, CLC, Rebecca LaChance, PhD, 
Three Widows, LLC
979-8-99134-78-0-8 (softcover),
Softcover - $24.99/Ebook  - $9.99/Large Print - $26.49
Website: www.threewidows.com
Ordering:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DS6JP4DH

During one of our conversations, Rebecca declared, “I think we need to tell women, ‘Mamas, teach your daughters to be widows!’” She was right. Women should spend time soon after marriage preparing for the unpalatable concept of being alone and widowed.

Widows Among Us: Stories and Insights was created for widows and those who would support them, gathering insights about many special circumstances and challenges of widowhood that have not been profiled in these ways before.

One example is a thought-provoking section that admonishes women that “every wife should be prepared to be a widow.” This translates to legal savvy and preparation, creating medical and financial directives, considering in advance how finances will change after widowhood, and gathering passwords and financial info to ease any financial or business concerns upon a partner’s death.

From caretaking and healthcare dilemmas to handling anticipatory grief and, finally, being alone, all kinds of financial and personal challenges intrinsic to widowhood are reviewed. This encourages readers to be forewarned and forearmed with the knowledge they need to prepare for and survive a new status of widowhood.

Practical details on adaptation and transition are cemented by the experiences of widows which are peppered throughout to reinforce practical advice with personal experience.
Of special note is the observation of why this book is as essential to a marriage as wedding planning:

While preparing this book, we spoke to dozens of other widows to collect their advice, insights, and what they wished they had known. Many of them shared that their own mothers had been widows for twenty-five to forty years but had never spoken about their experience. We discovered that a lot of these women were unprepared for the crisis that hits when you lose a spouse. Even those who had thought they had planned well were surprised by some of the challenges they encountered.

Lest widows wish they’d had this book earlier in their married lives, Widows Among Us is highly recommended for anyone contemplating marriage. It raises questions and provides answers that couples need to know in order to anticipate the unthinkable with important knowledge at their fingertips.

Libraries will find Widows Among Us a top reference, women’s groups and married couples’ circles will want to both read and discuss it, and individuals who choose this book will reflect on powerful insights which provides the knowledge needed to be prepared for loss in a very different way than most widow’s books.

Simply outstanding!

Widows Among Us

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You Go, Girl!
Elaine Insinnia
Atmosphere Press
979-8-89132-592-0 $13.99 pb, $3.99 e-book, $25.99 hc
www.atmospherepress.com

You Go, Girl! Game On for a Grandmother and Her Granddaughter is a fictional story of 1950s life that is based on real experiences. Perhaps this is why the novel comes to life so vividly in its opening pages, as a grandmother wonders how she can foster a closer relationship with her granddaughter:

Seven whole days together.

I peek into the guest bedroom where my twelve-year-old granddaughter is busy on her phone, her thumbs flying over her cell phone keyboard. She stops typing, tosses her phone aside, lies back on the bed, sighs. Bored already. A young girl’s worst nightmare, stuck at her grandmother’s for a week. How to compete with a cell phone?

When twelve-year-old Suzie agrees to read her grandmother’s diary about life long ago, the effort prompts shared dialogue between them about events of the past, the culture of modern times, and how connections or alienation can stem from different approaches to and ideals of family and relationship-building.

Elaine Insinnia both incorporates and rests her story on the growth of women, in particular, over the years. She contrasts female choices, experiences, and perspectives in a manner that embeds the story with uplifting life and plenty of reflective moments.

Of special note is how the grandmother and granddaughter’s shifting perspectives entwine as past events are reviewed through the prism of modern times:

I run out, hop on my bike. Even Dion can’t stop me from feeling crummy. I keep thinking of Isabella who’s all alone in a place for bad girls. Talk about lonely teenagers. No way can I go home now....

Suzie finds Dion singing “Lonely Teenager” on her phone. “I can’t believe the bad stuff about Isabella that the guardian told your dad. I want to smack that guardian right in the face.” Suzie crosses her arms hard. “I know she took the records without permission, but . . .”

“To be truthful, I had a hard time typing up this part... So.This next part? Basically, my adult interpretation of the events.”

Suzie shakes her head.

“And I can’t say I don’t agree with you about smacking that guardian. So, your prediction. Do you think I saved Isabella?”

I bet my allowance that you at least try to save her. Am I right?”

I nod.

“But I’m making another bet, and I’m not saying this to be mean. That you never saw her again. Am I right?”

I shrug. “Gram! C’mon!” “Maybe.”

By employing dialogues and connections between past and present events and personalities, Insinnia crafts an experience that encourages individuals from different generations to better understand the past that has influenced their lives.

Libraries seeking a story that will appeal to all ages, rooted in a sense of place and adventure that embraces the concerns of two very different females who share not just family heritage, but concerns over their place in life, will find You Go, Girl! a powerful novel of awakening, enlightenment, and understanding.

With its satisfying, clear juxtaposition of past and present-day concerns, You Go, Girl! represents a winning contrast in human nature and women’s strengths that can readily serve as a compelling attraction for all kinds of readers, from readers of women’s issues to those interested in haunting stories of intergenerational engagement and better understanding.

You Go, Girl!

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Young Adult/Children

Allison, You Are Beautiful
Erika Archer
Trilogy Christian Publishers
979-8-8887389-97-4 $18.99 paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.amazon.com

Allison, You Are Beautiful is an engaging picture book lesson in courage, self-image, and facing down bullies. It comes from the first-person experience of seven-year-old Allison, who is happy at her elementary school—until a boy from another class publicly teases her about her freckles.

When all the kids join in, Allison is shattered. Her wise mother has a few words to say about the situation when Allison returns home in tears:

“Many times people say and do mean things to us because it is a reflection of how they really feel about themselves.”

But Allison has a deeper question about why God has given her these ugly spots in the first place, forcing her to stand out.

Christian families, libraries, and young readers receive important introductory lessons about not just appearance and facing bullies, but learning about God’s plans in creating seeming imperfection in the world.

Allison’s mother’s ability to explain all this and support her daughter’s innate sense of beauty shines a light of positivity on the story that helps parents and young listeners absorb vital lessons about not just their appearance, but their life purpose and intrinsic value as one of God’s children.

Delayna Robbins captures Allison’s vibrant personality and world with realistic illustrations that draw young readers into her world.

Erika Archer’s ability to inject all these facets into an appealing story of how a girl and her mother handle not just adversity, but challenging spiritual concepts about God’s intentions makes for a picture book that all kinds of Christian readers and collections will relish.

Allison, You Are Beautiful

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The City Wolves And The Mauritius Kestrel
Simon Weber
OGMA Publishing
978-3-907712-01-6 $8.95 eBook
Website: simonweber.org
Ordering:  https://a.co/d/djD8hgA

The City Wolves And The Mauritius Kestrel is a ‘Scout Detectives Mystery’ that Simon Weber originally wrote to get his three children interested in scouting. Luckily for young readers, the encounters of Hawk and his Switzerland gang, The City Wolves, has been published to reach beyond the family circle and into the lives of anyone interested in a vivid scouting adventure story.

Swiss traditions and culture intersect with these stories in an educational, compelling manner. This approach involves a wide audience in the disappearance of a Mauritius kestrel from the local Natural History Museum just before its big exhibition—an event that poses all kinds of possible perps and scenarios to the kids who investigate.

Despite being young, the gang has all kinds of resources at its fingertips. These include solid relationships with adults, their own friendships, familiarity with the pranks and possibilities of competing gangs, and their inherent problem-solving savvy.

These elements blend in a story that proves more than a mystery alone as the kids develop new relationships, consider disparate options and choices, and forge new paths of growth and discovery during the course of tackling some very adult issues.

The clues surrounding the fate of the Mauritius Kestrel give the kids plenty of opportunities to tap their scouting skills and interpersonal connections. Readers will relish the adventure, mishaps, and clues that lead to even more complications than the gang had anticipated when they undertook their mission.

Simon Weber’s attention to moment-by-moment details creates a riveting, lively story steeped in questions and answers, childhood empowerment connections, Swiss culture and atmosphere, and scouting’s allure and education.

Libraries will appreciate how the singular focus on a bird’s disappearance evolves into bigger-picture issues, from gang interactions to stolen watches and motivations for thievery. Kids will find the action swift, the dialogue realistic and involving, and the story satisfying unpredictable.

Packed with unforgettable encounters and moments of discovery, The City Wolves And The Mauritius Kestrel is highly recommended for any middle-grade reader attracted to stories of mystery and adventure ala The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown.

The City Wolves And The Mauritius Kestrel

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Elf Dust
Nancy E. Merrill
Pear Tree Publishing
978-1-62502-063-5 $10.95
www.ElfDustBook.com

Picture book readers interested in elves will relish the bright, magical drawings of Collen Sgori and the inviting writing of Nancy E. Merrill in Elf Dust.

It’s the Christmas season, and the North Pole is experiencing its busiest time of year. A rollicking rhyme captures this holiday bustle as the story surveys Santa’s workshop and the challenge of assuring that naughty and nice children are appropriately noted.

This is where the elves come in, checking up on children and observing them as they play so that toys can be appropriately provided.

How can a child know that invisible elves have been checking up? Because the elves can’t help but leave “sprinkles of twinkle” (elf dust) behind.

Embedded in the picture book journey for read-aloud adults is an invitation to look for the hidden “elf slippers” throughout the tale. It also promotes the magic of creating glitter art (if adults decide to follow through on the craft opportunities within the story).

For a different take on Christmas, Elf Dust offers a magical journey that is appealing, easy to understand, and fun to explore. Read-aloud parents and classroom teachers seeking a Christmas celebration will find its whimsical elves thoroughly inviting:

They will leave a small trace, something only elves sprinkle. Like candy on ice cream, it’s a part of their twinkle.

Elf Dust

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From Ash and Darkness
J. L. Sullivan
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
978-1509260454 $20.99 Paperback/$5.99 eBook
Website:  http://www.jlsullivan.net
Ordering:  https://www.amazon.com/Ash-Darkness-J-L-Sullivan/dp/1509260455

From Ash and Darkness is a young adult fantasy that takes place after Bax banishes the evil djinn from the world and his life. However, his work is not yet done. Djinn Ifrit returns to present him with new dilemmas and challenges, forcing Bax away from a quiet life and, once again, into a realm of clashing interests where he and his friends are forced to confront evil.

J. L. Sullivan’s story probes the ultimate responsibility faced by those who would monkey with magic. It opens with a bang that includes a wry sense of humor for maximum impact:

I hated that dank, musty cellar, but if I wanted the nightmares to stop and finally lay Ifrit to rest, we had to return one last time. The fact we were about to break into a forgotten basement to bury an ancient djinn on Halloween night was just super awesome timing.

Young adults will especially appreciate the contemporary lingo and peer interactions which Bax and his friends employ as they enter into a revised mission fraught with new dangers:

“You’re stalling.” Ashley nudged me with the back of her hand.

“Well, it wasn’t a party last time we were there. You know, being trapped in a djinn vortex and all.”

Aunt Jo, powerful friend Ashley (“...without her help, I’d have been the first sophomore to singlehandedly destroy the earth with ancient djinn magic”), the entry of Parker Lewis from Reed Investments (who harbors his own agenda), and a host of other characters introduce their own special interests and strengths, expanding Bax’s abilities and either complimenting or confounding him in unexpected ways.

J.L. Sullivan shapes the forces buffeting these lives in different ways. Bax may assume center stage as the main character, but doesn’t completely dominate the story as disparate characters interact, grow, and reveal new truths that change their perspectives and life courses.

Another plus is that the psychological dynamics between the major players aren’t always either smooth or in sync:

“It’s obvious Jason and Ashley aren’t crazy about me, and I get it.” She spoke to her off-white coffee cup. “I’ve barely uttered a sentence to them in the past year and a half of high school. Now I’m barging into your djinn fighter club.”

Stop saying djinn fighter.

Libraries seeking vivid YA dark fantasy standouts that will appeal to both prior fans of From Brick and Darkness and newcomers will find From Ash and Darkness a powerful read. As Bax grows from a character who initially looked for something exciting to happen in his life to find himself in trouble over his head, confronting manipulating, murdering djinn involvements, readers of all ages will eagerly follow his foray into self-realization and bigger-picture thinking.

Replete with struggles, realizations, and growth, From Ash and Darkness’s vivid story of magic and mayhem neatly concludes another adventure while leaving the door more than ajar for more.

From Ash and Darkness

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Sydney, Bean and the Missing Gloves
Janice E. Collins
Atmosphere Press
979-8-89132-508-1 $22.99 hardcover
www.atmospherepress.com

Sydney, Bean and the Missing Gloves provides picture book readers with the story of Labrador Retriever Sydney, who is loyal and friendly, but feels she may not be living up to her breed’s reputation of bravery ... especially when she becomes afraid upon being left at home alone.

Sydney’s attempts to confront her fear land her in trouble as she and her friends try to solve a missing gloves dilemma, only to find themselves in danger.

A tiny squirrel, a baby red bird, and a cat enter the bigger picture of not just mystery, but interactive encounters. Junkyard forays, entrapment, and other adventures provide well-detailed action and moments of psychological revelation that read-aloud parents will find more detailed than most stories, yet perfect for exciting adventure reading and deeper-level discussions.

It comes with an intriguing message ... don’t listen to the cat:

“Oh, that Sydney, what a kidder. I come from an exquisite lineage of orange striped cats, known for our cunning and cleverness. Now, if I was like my cousin, the black cat, I can see you being concerned about crossing my path, but you should have no worries about me,” purrs the cat.

Artsouki’s colorful, large-size illustrations provide attraction to a story in which bravery become only part of a welcoming bigger picture that kids and read-aloud adults will thoroughly enjoy.

Elementary-level libraries will want to choose Sydney, Bean and the Missing Gloves for its thought-provoking allure as friendships evolve and new possibilities emerge from shared interests and experiences.

Sydney, Bean and the Missing Gloves

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