The Character Route Tree is a self-help memoir with author Marc R Schneider’s account of growing up in a household shaped by his mother Kiki’s anger, his father’s silence, and the fear rituals Schneider used to feel safe. His memoir traces the effect of that...

J.S. Warner’s Measured Steps introduces us to Claire Morrison, a profiler whose own troubled past gives her an unsettling advantage when investigating violent crime. After Claire’s mother’s mysterious disappearance, Claire struggled to overcome addiction. Claire is called to investigate a victim whose body is surrounded...

If you have ever tried explaining how macroeconomics affects global warming to an eight-year-old, you know how quickly their eyes glaze over. In A Kid’s Guide to Economic Activism for the Climate, author Kimberly Haidinger takes on that challenge by dropping readers straight into a...

Heidi Richards Mooney covers all the stages of publishing in her book The Expectant Author. Mooney developed a trimester-by-trimester publishing framework containing three key phases: conception and early growth, development, and delivery. But just because publishing has clear phases doesn't mean the journey is easy....

All That Was Left Unsaid by Danielle Dragona is a compelling, heart-rending, and deeply emotional portrayal of love, betrayal, family dynamics, and secrets left untold. Katrina Johnson, at seventy years old, is at a crossroads. Her beloved husband Sam has just died of cancer. She...

Craig Brown’s Dignity follows an unnamed boy in Petone, New Zealand, who first approaches Malcolm Beaumont, the council binman everyone calls Bogie, after classmates dare him to steal the man’s Coke. What begins as a childish test turns into an unlikely attachment, formed on a...

In The Secret Life of Sonia Davey by N.S. Scholl, Michelle Brock is an accountant who has always put her family’s needs before her own and believed that was her role in life. When her husband announces he is leaving and wants a divorce, her...

The Night of Samhain: A Halloween Fairy Scary Story is part of The Everkind Tales by Gael J. B. Orr. It’s Samhain night, and there’s a full moon. Emlyn the tawny owl sits in the hickory tree. The fairy sisters Willa and Violet are tucked...

Edmond Thornfield’s Atalanta of the Wild follows Atalanta, an Arkadian huntress raised in the mountain wilds, after the father who abandoned her returns seeking forgiveness. Lord Iásios invites her into the royal house of Tegea, where she meets siblings she once believed she would never...

Dear Sam is the first book in The Jilted Ex Series by Beth Carter. Dr. Sam Jennings is a kind-hearted veterinarian who receives the shock of his life when his fiancée, Gabby, unexpectedly leaves him a couple of months before their planned wedding. While his...

FBI profiler Tom Milner has an uncanny knack for identifying criminals. His success depends not only on his deductive powers but also on a rare psychic ability. All this traces back to a traumatic childhood experience during his family’s stay at Betonville. Here, during a...

Bernard Doucette’s The Seasonal Killer opens with retired Brett Dubois agreeing to tell journalist Monroe Jackson what happened in New Valley during the summer of 1981. At twelve, Brett spent his days roaming the suburban woods with four close friends who called themselves the Subpar...

Salvatore A Trancucci III’s Sonny and Teresa begins in postwar Leavenworth, Kansas, where Sebastian “Sonny” Grasso has returned from Army service in Japan to play for the minor league Leavenworth Braves. Teresa is an Iowa-born student nurse at St. Mary’s when a baseball game introduces...

In Samantha Kolber’s What She Stole, adult Eloise Goldstein discovers during bodywork that childhood experiences may still be stored in her body. That takes her back to seventeen, when she is caught stealing a gold sequined purse from Macy’s during prom shopping with best friend...

Tara Lynn Masih’s The Silent Women is set during World War II, when sixteen-year-old Song Holloway lives with her widowed mother in Andover, Massachusetts, after the Dust Bowl drove them east from Oklahoma. As local farming moves toward civilian wartime labor, Song takes a job...

Toward the Light: A Year in Paris by Deborah Svec-Carstens is a thoughtful, honest, and refreshingly positive memoir of one woman’s journey to Paris as an American au pair during the early 1990s. The author had just graduated from college and was working alongside her...

Love in a Hurry by Mari Jane Law introduces Miranda Morton, a thirty-nine-year-old single mother desperate to give her son, Oscar, a sibling. She conceived through a turkey baster with her gay friend Luke. She has never been kissed, and her romantic prospects are slim...

In Forward Only, David Watson recounts growing up in Texas with his grandparents, Grandma and Pawpaw, whose home gave him his first sense of belonging. Losing Pawpaw at twelve changes that home, and adolescence is marked by a habit of leaving whenever he cannot see...

I picked up Come to the Garden by Jennifer Wilder Morgan out of curiosity, in the same way that I picked up For One More Day by Mitch Albom, but my curiosity in both instances has proven to be my best guide. Come to the...

Pleasing Mr. Pepys by Deborah Swift is a compelling novel featuring a historical personage with powerful political undertones. Inspired by the famous Samuel Pepy’s diary, this novel explores some of the key players in the historical events that took place in Pepys’ time. Deb Willet...