Ashes at Grumble Bluff by Karen Bessey Pease is exciting reading for all ages, but particularly for the adolescent through young adult crowd. The novel keeps readers continually turning the pages to see what happens next to the main characters, Katherine Anne Kirby and Greta...

I want to go to Awesome Land like Caden did in Caden and Awesome World by Naomi Melton. In just 24 pages, Caden meets a three-headed dragon, a gopher wearing glasses, a rickety wooden bridge over crocodiles swimming in water and much, much more. Too...

Victor, James and Cole have finally each managed to find the one soul that their own soul calls to, and it’s created a beautiful existence they’ve waited far too long to enjoy. But things are never peaceful for long when you’re a Sentinel, and when...

In Kevin Killiany’s sci-fi novel, Down to Dirt, Mom and Dad have decreed that daughter Mara, born in space, must spend her vacation with relatives on Dirt (that would be the future planet Earth). Mara, her cousin Beth, and best friend Jael tell the story...

Stress, sexual and mental abuse, depression, and mental illness are all factors that can lead to not only suicidal thoughts but suicidal actions. Suicide rates are high amongst young adults primarily within the gay, military, and college communities. Suicides are close to author Mark Waters's...

Rattlesnake Hill: A Berkshire Hilltown Mystery is a sleuth mystery novel written by Leslie Wheeler. Kathryn and her Aunt Kit had been planning on going on a family history research trip to New Nottingham, Massachusetts together. It would be a chance for them to bond...

I thoroughly enjoyed Courage by Lauren H Salisbury. It’s a science fiction re-imagining of the story of Moses from the Bible. Instead of Israelites suffering as slaves at the hands of the Egyptians, Courage gives us the human race enslaved by a more powerful alien...

Definitely NOT Monica by Joanna Butler is an amusing yet somewhat lifelike tale. Jenny Sullivan has always felt different from everyone else. She has learned to live with so much – germaphobia, OCD, even having a fear of publicly shouting “titties”! She lives alone, unable...

“Inside my head, I see his broken parts. Inside my head, I feel his pain.” Those words hooked me immediately. Healer by Susan Miura shares the story of a young girl named Shilo coming to terms with the gift of healing. She’s different. Why? Is...

Dar Bryant's 360: A Full Circle starts with the author’s first day of eighth grade, a period that turns out to be nine months of teasing, harassment, taunting, bullying, and torment that makes him hate school. This memoir tells his story of how he becomes...

Unaltered: Cortii 4.5 by J C Steel is a short science fiction suspense novella about Irin and a group of bodyguards called the Cortii. Irin is summoned by his very important father, but Irin wisely hires the Cortii, and specifically Khyria, to protect him en...

Emma and Sonnet, two look-alike girls, are suddenly transported into each other’s lives due to identical, ongoing, local mystical storms when each teenage girl enters the same closet space a century apart. Culture and identity shocks initially wreak havoc for them, but as they each...

Anand went down the stairs, dragging his backpack. He wiped his eyes and let out a groggy yawn as he made his way to the kitchen for his breakfast. He was grumpy as he climbed onto the chair for breakfast and his mother reminded him...

Kydee by Dawn Doig, with color illustrations by Savannah Horton, is a picture book about a kitten found shivering on a busy street in freezing winter weather. Kydee is only eight weeks old. She’s lost, scared, shivering in the cold, and wondering if her mother...

Melanie had a big nose. Melanie headed off to school and all the time as she walked she dreamed of having a button nose, just like Maria, Meemo, and Zeego. Everyone in Melanie's family had big noses, but she had the biggest of them all....

Told from the perspective of Chris Brennan, a modern-day equivalent to Adam, he meets Camilla, his Eve. As they fall in love and begin their life journey together, events take a drastic turn when they enter a futuristic world filled with war and destruction. Checkpoint...

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in an article, 'Hair is something we see, but we don't understand what's behind it, kind of like race. It's the same way that something seems obvious, but it is really complicated and complex'. The relationship that young girls have...

Big Shoe Bears and Friends: Counting with Adjectives by Dawn Doig is a fun and interactive learning book that teaches children how to count along with adjectives that are used to describe the Big Shoe Bears and their friends doing various activities. The book is...

My Shorts: Brief Scenes from My Early Life; A Collection of Personal Essays by Brian Kagan gave me a feeling of nostalgia as I listened to the author’s life story and the lessons he learned as he grew up. This collection takes readers back into...

At times heartbreaking and gritty, Bullets and Bandages: Bond of Brothers by Robert J. Saniscalchi follows the story of nineteen-year-old Pat who joins the military and flies to Vietnam as a US Army Field Medic in 1968. But the experience of war is crueler and...