The Secret Sauce (A Story of Apples, Robots, and a Grateful Heart) is a heartwarming children’s picture book written by Fay A. Klingler with illustrations by Sakharam Umrikar. The story centers on Rena Whittaker, an eleven-year-old girl who steps up to help her neighbor, Ethan,...

We’re Survivors by Mona Risk opens with a gut punch. Angely Carlisle stands at the altar in her wedding dress, bouquet in hand, but the groom never comes. He sends his brother, Dr. Chris Tanner, instead. It is a beginning that tastes bitter before the...

In Dogfish and the Goodbye Wave, Rita Reed entices children with a setting in the sun-soaked shores of Maui. Dogfish swims off enthusiastically to see cousin Milo in Maui, and discovers a magical summer filled with dancing, giggles, and the delightful company of Hula, Milo’s...

Essie Redcup’s Extremely Secret Diary! by S K Sheridan follows a spirited young girl as she navigates a dangerous world while seeking answers about her past and her place in it. Set in Deal City, a place marked by inequality and hardship, the story unfolds...

The Inhabited Arc by Joe Trabocco is a collection of three short stories, all standalones and each enveloped in the singular consciousness of its narrator. In Epiphany, Lydia is in a coastal house where daily life by the shore slowly awakens an inner awareness, leading...

Nick is a very curious young man and wants to know why many things happen the way they do. Why can't animals talk, or why are fire trucks red? Sometimes he even has dreams with the word "why." Some of his questions are reasonable, like...

Becoming Neutral examines what happens when a person stops absorbing every emotional reaction and starts protecting their sense of self. Easier said than done, but author Aimee Eppleston gets us there. She talks about neutrality as a deliberate practice linked to awareness, boundaries, and emotional...

The Fish Who Changed the Game by Barbara Pinke is a charming and uplifting children’s story set in a vividly imagined underwater world. It follows Seassy, a young seahorse who wants to participate in the Great Ocean Games. She even dreams of winning. She should...

In Mona Risk’s Her Cozy House, after Chicago resident surgeon Niles Wolf rents a basement apartment from widowed grandmother Carmen Eden, he becomes closely connected to Carmen’s granddaughter Jessica, a seventeen-year-old student planning a medical career while grieving her father’s death. Years later, Jessica completes...

Vicky Oliver’s Firebrands takes place in 1908 Manhattan, where suffragist Helena James begins investigating Derrick Dupré, the wealthy fiancé of her younger sister Summer, after overhearing him discuss bomb construction shortly following an explosion in Union Square Park. Helena discovers that Derrick operates a labor...

Catherine Mathis’s Leonor is set in 14th-century Portugal, where Leonor Teles de Meneses lives far from power under the control of her husband, Lord Pombeiro, after marriage takes away the freedom she once enjoyed in her mother’s household. Everything changes when she enters the court...

Author Dania Voss brings romance readers a treat with the fourth book in the Delcinia Diaries, Longing and Lipstick. Faith Wilson, the youngest of the three Wilson sisters, first met Axel Berg, the bodyguard of Crimson Shadows' frontman Sebastian Scott, at the New York Fall...

Walking with Care: Stories and Tools for Community Health Workers by Idalsy Cruz offers a thoughtful exploration of community-based care, compassion, and supporting individuals and communities through life’s most vulnerable moments. The book follows a reflective path, guiding readers through experiences that center on empathy,...

In Your Message Will Get Through by Andrew Ceroni, Steve Pfeifer wants to take his family to visit Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole. The kids really look forward to the adventures awaiting them. One Saturday afternoon, five days after Thanksgiving, the family embarks on...

James Snyder’s The Brothers Shaughnessy is set in 1880s New Orleans. Detective brothers Dawson and Michael Shaughnessy are pulled into a series of crimes that begin when Melissa Singleton disappears after Sunday Mass, and her severed hand is delivered to her husband’s law office. As...

Bloodlines and Betrayals by Lorraine Carey is a mafia romance set in Youngstown, Ohio, in the 1970s. It follows Elena Donato and Tony Marinetti, a young couple who instantly fall in love with each other. However, bad luck follows them because Elena’s mother's family, the...

The Thriving Family Business by Tildet Varon weaves personal experience with practical strategies. The book begins with the image of the family table as a central space where business decisions and personal relationships intersect, establishing that success is measured not only in profits but also...

The House That Remembers You by Kristen A. Peters harkens back to stories featuring haunted houses that are much more than mere plot settings, such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. These classic books...

Leah fears she has ruined her career after a meltdown on her positive affirmation podcast, the only thing helping her cope since her husband’s death nine months ago. In Eat the Cake by Annie Cathryn, Leah takes a ninety-day leave to regroup, starting with cleaning...

In Tom Strelich’s Mustard Seed, after President John F. Kennedy is assassinated, selected American families are secretly transported into Mustard Seed, a vast underground city beneath the hills outside Bakersfield that is built to preserve civilization during an expected nuclear war. Gill Hill grows up...