The 19th century or, as some would refer to it, the ‘asylum era’, was a time when insane asylums were expanded. In one of those asylums, a woman named Anne Stanbury is confined. She committed a crime but was determined to be certified insane and...

The scriptures tell us that “the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much” and Jeremy G. Woods places an emphasis on the word “effective” as he examines the scriptures in The Missing Ingredient in Our Prayer Life. Jeremy develops the theme further with three...

What does it take to get you to listen? What sort of tragedy might occur because you failed to listen? These questions are explored in the simple story of The Path to Reconciliation: A Christmas Story by Rita Pam Tarachi. When Anna’s daughter comes...

The Spark by John Kenny is set in the aftermath of a fire which claimed the life of one firefighter and left another, Donny, in critical condition. Slightly over a year later, Donny returns to work, doing the same thing as before, putting out fires...

In The Fairies of Turtle Creek, Jill K. Sayre has cleverly painted Claire Collins as a little girl on the threshold of something new. She is in the hiatus between girl and womanhood, in that last summer before high school and at her most impressionable....

When a story begins with the main character eating the ashes of her recently deceased daughter, you know you’re in for a wild ride. When Melody Sawyer’s recently deceased daughter shows up as a ghost on the day of her funeral to make sure her...

Plunged into dark despair by madness that she cannot escape, Phoebe is already living in hell. Mav Skye takes us on a deep and dark journey into a world of madness and mental illness that borders on the terrifying in The Undistilled Sky. As Phoebe...

The Gentleman is a horror novel written by Natasha Powell. It's set in the South in the early 1980s. James Greene is on the run from The Gentleman, a demon whose presence is known by the scent of rotting lilac, and who's had James do...

Carol is not your average woman. In fact, she’s not a true woman at all, she’s a clone. But that’s only one of her problems at this point. The other problem is that people seem to be after her for no reason she can think...

Some time has passed since Carol not only learned who she really is and everything about herself, but also who her true friends and enemies are. People are not who they seem in this futuristic world and it’s up to Carol, Gen, Mionne, Vanguard and...

The Quest for Freedom by J.L. Rothdiener is the poignant story of life in a POW camp in Vietnam. Six American soldiers, captured during the Vietnam war, are still being held as POW's 40 years on. The reason is that General Yo saw his...

If you like reading page turners that keep you guessing, you’ll enjoy The Mangled Spoon by Joan Mauch. From the moment you read about the starving, dishevelled, and disoriented Miss Joan who is found scavenging for food in a dumpster in Chapter One, you will...

The protagonist of Deborah L. Norris’ novel The House Guest: Pathway to Persuasion is Maggie Davis, a middle-aged widow who lives together with her daughter Jenna in a Victorian mansion that belonged to her grandfather, while also offering it as a bed and breakfast accommodation....

The Goldsboro Curve is a legal thriller written by William Campbell. Buck lives in the hill country of Southern Ohio. It’s where he grew up and was a young teen in 1955. In the summer, the kids would be doing their chores in the early...

The Adventures of Tamarita Rachel by Andrea Gardiner revolves around two sisters, Tamarita Rachel and Emily, and their parents. The story is set in Ecuador and, apart from the exciting adventures where Tamarita Rachel goes visiting Indians, discovering iguana eggs and many other things, the...

Even if you don’t like opera, you’ll like The Tenor by Peter Danish, and if you do love opera, you’ll love it even more. And the book makes opera so appealing that, perhaps, it will make new opera lovers out of some of its readers....

The Shadow of Loss is a young adult coming of age story written by Josefina Gutierrez. Evelyn Gonzalez had a nervous breakdown when she was in her junior year of high school, and her sister had her committed to an institution. Now she's being released,...

In Daryl Hajek’s Blood Blossom, Vivian Hutchins’ hope to reunite and restore her relationship with her younger sister, Christine, is ruined. Christine wants nothing but revenge – the dark feeling has not subsided, even after 22 years. She is hell-bent on going after their mysterious...

The Cranky Guru: Adventures in Metaphysics is a self-help book by Paul Bennett. The author bases much of the material he presents on his own 30-year journey of self-discovery. He begins with an example of his beliefs in action, when he has his passport renewed...

The Red Ribbon by Rachel B. Ledge tells the story of a tragic turn of events in 1770s England. Julia Ridler finds herself tormented nightly by the murder of her best friend, Annie, by her almost betrothed, Roland de Claire. In her grief and madness,...