After the death of her parents, twenty-eight-year-old Emily Darling finds herself working as a servant in her family home, thanks to her mean brother. While collecting the mail one morning, a letter arrives, and while she quickly surmises it isn't for her or her brother,...

Susan Elmore’s novel, Nameless Indignities: Unraveling the Mystery of One of Illinois's Most Infamous Crimes, is a non-fiction, true crime story that happened in the late 1800s. Emma Bond, a young schoolteacher is viciously gang-raped and left for dead in her school. She miraculously survives...

Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River is a non-fiction travel book written by Gayle Harper. Harper is a travel writer and photographer who's had a lifelong love of the Mississippi River. While she always had the inkling of a thought about...

High Andes by Rolf Margenau is an action and adventure thriller. Wylie Cypher is a successful partner at Biddle & Ofstrosky, a major New York law firm, with a number of international clients, but his life is getting stale. His relations with his wife are...

A standard epitome for a detective novel is intelligent detective work, clues, truth and justice. Throw in a supernatural twist with a first person point-of-view for its narration, reading Dying to Know: A Gumshoe Ghost Mystery by TJ O'Connor is absolutely satisfying and got me...

Federico was a good artist but he was more troubled than he was talented. He had been hired and fired from several jobs over the years due to his unreliability. As he settled in at his latest job, his ghosts followed him and soon he...

Patriot: A Brooke Kinley Adventure is an action and adventure thriller written by A.S. Bond. Brooke's been given a tip by her friend, Scott Jensen, a deputy director at the Department of Defense, that a recent Taliban attack in the Middle East was conducted using...

The Beltway Beast opens with a depressing summary of the American political system that is subject to corporate lobbyists and focus by Congressmen to get reelected rather than serve the interests of the people and the country. It is an interesting approach as it reinforces...

When I first picked up Mission to Earth, I didn’t know what to expect. It seemed unlike any other book I had read. And after reading it, I can say with certainty that it is indeed unlike any other book that I have read. Fil...

Johnnie Come Lately by Kathleen M. Rodgers unveils the world of Johnnie Kitchen. Johnnie comes from a family that is good at keeping secrets. Her mom has been missing for years, and she doesn't know why? Maybe the statue at Soldier’s Park knows the answer....

The Final Salute is a military fiction by Kathleen Rodgers. Colonel Tuck Westerfield, a fighter pilot at Beauregard Air Force base who flew in the Gulf war, mourns the death of his friend and colleague. His unhappiness rises after catching his Commanding Officer cheating with...

Facing Up is a young adult coming of age story written by Carolyn Gilpin. Carly is one of thousands of young adults attending university, but she feels isolated and oh, so different from everyone else. One side of her face is scarred from a disastrous...

Whether brick and mortar or online, one of the tools that a business owner needs to acquire business success and a steady revenue stream is a branded online presence. “You must utilize every minute you can to getting the most out of your efforts,” says...

The Aakowa Parables Vol. I - Life Studies: For A Happy Heart by Sid Aakowa is a really interesting concept of mixing wonderful story telling with self-help questionnaires and tips. This book is really quite unique in my experience, and combines elements of both fiction...

Sigh. That was my reaction when I finished David C. Edmonds’ new work, Lily of Peru. You know, the type of sigh you emit after you’ve finished a book that has left you with a deeply satisfying feeling of having read a really, really great...

In Give Me Chocolate by Annie Hansen, author Kelly Clark’s life is in pieces. She leaves California and returns to her hometown of Geneva, Illinois. Here she hopes to rebuild her life after a bad divorce from an abusive, homicidal husband. With limited income, she...

Augustine Sam's Flashes of Emotion: A Collections of Poems is romantic poetry that looks into a vast array of subjects: love, pain, death and other life matters that evoke our sentiments. Having read his previous work, Take Back the Memory, a contemporary women’s fiction, I...

Cinders by V.M. Sawh is a short story included in the series Good Tales for Bad Dreams. Rella works in a house of ill-repute for the villainous “Stepmother.” All of the girls there were rescued off the street and are held in the house, subjected...

The Independent by Rick McGee is a political fiction novel about a retired coach who is tired of the corruption of politics. When Coach Bob hears another story about the lies and deceit of those in political power, he decides to do something about it....

Smart Talk by Lisa B. Marshall begins by taking the hell out of hello – how to introduce yourself or make a first impression. Lisa discuses many points here including the oft forgotten but very important dictum, the introduction should be relevant. The magic of...