“Is it giving up when it is inevitable…?” captures the frame of mind of the young protagonist, Samuel Saber, as the reader meets him in South Coast Son by Claire Merchant, and there couldn’t be a better premise and hook for a story that will...

Scorn of Secrets by B. Truly is a mesmerizing coming-of-age story with strong themes and elaborately developed characters. When Madison Guillory’s father dies leaving a huge gambling debt behind, her mother doesn’t wait long to start dating again. After just a few months, she introduces...

Sundays at Simone’s by Thomas Bauer is a first-person novel that reads almost like a memoir. Our narrator and protagonist is Michael McDowell, well versed in all things music, especially classical, the Los Angeles environs, film and theater, and food (especially Italian). He is also...

In Shadows in Our Bones by Tamara Merrill, Georgia O’Brien is a thirty-four-year-old professor who is very outspoken when it comes to issues of racial prejudice. When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, she begins a journey that will trace her lineage that she had...

Starvation by Molly Fennig is a YA novel that addresses realistic issues and presents elaborately developed and compelling characters. Sixteen-year-old Wes McCoy has never been the favorite of the family. His brother, Jason, who is the apple of everyone’s eye, dies in a car accident...

Southern Xposure by Sam Knupp is an unusual, comic, and sad love story of two disabled people who met for the first time on the day they both lost their jobs. Poppy Virginia Diamond's bright future as a runner with a full track scholarship to...

Stepping Into the Fire: A Journal about Growing-up in Appalachian Ohio by Steven P. Keller is an incisive book that explores the author’s memoirs and experiences of Ohio. The story features some of the favorite people in the life of the narrator and presents their...

Setting in Roots is the first part of a series by Dymphna. Trixie easily gets annoyed, bored, worried, and within her heart is the ache for adventure, for freedom. She lives with Mr. Jim, who brought her to Wicker Soul in Colorado. He is a...

Slender Notions by Nicholas Antonopoulos is a unique, emotionally intense narrative. The protagonist is Leo, an indifferent and bored twenty-three-year-old man stuck in a small town in Massachusetts. He is a victim of opioid addiction, which brings his life to a standstill. His addiction numbs...

Sun Kissed by Diaris Marie Jones is a powerful, exquisitely written historical novel of two families in post-Civil War New Orleans. Great literature reveals the unrevealed, and Ms. Jones’ astounding account opens our eyes to the unique race culture in its rising disrepair. The rules...