The Girl Immigrant by Patricia Ruiz Steele is a wonderful biography of the author's family, specifically Manuela, the author's grandmother. Manuela's family comes from Spain, and they were promised a new life, education for their children, homes and jobs, if they immigrated to Hawaii to...

Secrets of Sand Mountain is a coming of age novel written by Philip Elrod. Campbell Crossing is a tiny town nestled in the Appalachian Mountain Range on Sand Mountain in Alabama. Mostly it’s a farming community, and in 1944, at the time this story begins,...

What I believe to be the second novel in the Mary Fisher Pentalogy, One Little Word by T.A. Peters is a fascinating tale set in nineteenth century Florida. Mary, an exceedingly tall woman with large hands and feet, assumes the role as husband to the...

The Sins of Soldiers by S.J. Hardman Lea is a captivating story of love and loss during the First World War in 1916. Anson Scott is an American reporter embedded undercover in a British infantry regiment on the Western Front. He watches and writes his...

Ivory Shepard, known as The Razor, narrates her own story in P.S. Bartlett’s Demons & Pearls (The Razor’s Adventures Book 1). It opens when the pirate ship, Demon Sea, attacks a merchant vessel. Not satisfied with taking her cargo, Captain Barclay commands that her crew...

Kurinji Flowers by Clare Flynn follows the unfortunate life of a middle class Englishwoman, Ginny Dunbar. Immediately after her father's death, young Ginny is sexually exploited by Rupert, a painter and family friend. Due to the older man's vindictive and callous actions, Ginny's reputation and...

Plaint for Provence: 1152 Les Baux by Jean Gill is the third book in The Troubadours Quartet series. Although I have not read the previous novels in the series, I had no problem understanding what was happening. This is definitely not a standalone, but if...

The Giggling Boy by Ra Lynn LoneWalker chronicles one of the most horrific times in US history. Native American children were ripped from the bosoms of their families to be “educated” in mission schools. What awaited them was not standard education, but the experience of...

I’m Yours is a short story by Carolyn Menke. Beautiful Audrey McCall dreams of becoming the next star on Broadway and will do anything it takes to make it big in the glitziness of the Roaring Twenties, but her overly generous boyfriend, Edward Stark, wants...

Loggerhead: A Mary Fisher Novel by T.A. Peters is the story of a Scottish woman named Mary. When the novel begins, she is in Europe and the second World War is about to begin. She is imprisoned and alone and that is what encourages her...