The sea is awash with blood. The Merwin Queen is dead and the Houses of Mervidia are in a frenzy over who should claim the Fangs. Tradition holds that the next ruler should be of divine lineage, a member of a dwindling line of seers....

In What's the Matter?, Renee Heiss and Gary A. Stewart bring to life something that is usually pretty boring: temperatures, the particles of matter, and other basic science tools. Ning, Ellie, and Priti are particles that are bent on saving their good friend Ice from...

In Behind the Teacher’s Desk by Chris Williams, readers follow Claire Hebert, a high school instructor, through the second term of a high school year. While Claire’s hours are filled with student requests, class preparation, instruction, hall duty, extracurricular activities, and more, she longs to...

Will and Diana Kincaid seem like your typical suburban couple. He is an accountant while she is a cop. Both of them fit in within their neighborhood, have made the acquaintance of their neighbors and even begun to develop friendships with others. But they have...

Confidence in Conflict for Everyday Life is a compact read from author Kathy Mangold. Most of us are, at times, confused by the reactions we get in social situations. What we intended to say or suggest is not necessarily taken in a positive light and...

To Hold The Sun is an inspirational self-help novel written by Chas Watkins. The narrator is an investigative journalist who has been going through hard times professionally. His carefully laid plans of becoming a prominent journalist have not come to pass, and he'd been wondering...

Beyond Blue by Austin Comacho is a clever mystery which just might turn into a series. Funded by an anonymous donor known only to the director of Beyond Blue Investigations, the organization seeks to help New York City police officers in trouble. Some have been...

Shades of Virtue by Jack Whitsel continues the Dragon Rising series started by Shadows of Kings. It is now two years later and forces of good and evil continue to battle for territories and the minds of humans. In the Hugue territory, a contest is...

Bleeding Gull: Look, Feel, Fly by Raed Anis Al-Jishi is a collection of poems exploring universal themes such as life, death and love as well as more contemporary ones like cancer and autism. The poems are short, fitting on one page, but the imagery and...

Losing St. Christopher: Book 2 in the Cherokee Series by David-Michael Harding is the second in a trilogy featuring the story of Chancellor Vann. As the book begins in the 1820s, Vann, son of a shaman, is the epitome of an acculturated Cherokee Indian, wise...

In Taming the Telomeres by Richard Shapiro, we meet Andrew Michaels, an attorney. A Hemispheres airplane crashes, killing his brother and sister-in-law; only his niece Amanda survives. Amanda has a mild brain injury leaving her with amnesia; she must wear a halo until her bones...

Primeval Origins: Paths of Anguish by Brett Vonsik is, I fervently hope, volume 1 of at least a trilogy. Vonsik begins Primeval Origins on a Bolivian archaeological dig, where the fossilized skeleton of the largest known example of a prehistoric carnivore on Earth has been...

If you like science fiction novels that could someday be reality, you just might like The Genius Dilemma by Dustin Grinnell. Dr. Alan Pierce is a top neuroscientist who teaches at Stanford. His mother is dying from late stage Alzheimer's disease. He desperately wants to...

Watch out Duluth, here come the sisters in It's Not My Favorite by Rue. Gwenn Hutchinson has her own business. She organizes people and their stuff and rarely has time to organize herself and all her messes. Her sister, Rachel, is known as the best...

Twisted, by Lola Smirnova, is a nightmare journey into the life of Julia, a young woman from Ukraine who, struggling for a future, follows her sister's path into the sex trade. In the post-Soviet break-up world, there is little to offer in the way of...

High-powered action, mythical monsters and a strong paternal bond make up the central themes for Gideon’s Spear by Darby Karchut. Protagonist Finn MacCullen is the thirteen-year-old apprentice to Gideon Lir, an ancient knight. Finn is struggling to hide his monster-slaying training from the humans around...

Have you ever wished you could go back in time? Maybe see what life was like before you were born? Well, in J.H. Walker’s Rewrite Redemption, A.J. gets to do just that. However, this ability is not as glamorous as you might think. She has...

The Ox-Boy of Ur by Rose Shaw is a brilliantly researched and developed book for young adults. Set in the year of 2000 BCE, we find a thirteen-year-old boy who has just been sold to a slave trader to pay his father's debts. The young...

Rescue Me, Maybe by Jackie Bouchard addresses love and loss as well as how to move on. Cancer claims Jane’s husband Ryan and her dog Barnum within the first chapter. Jane is sorry her husband died, but she is devastated over the loss of her...

The war in Europe during WWII is well known for Nazi SS soldiers, Hitler, American soldiers, different battles, and of course the Holocaust. Most people don't think of individual lives, thoughts, or relationships during such a chaotic time. The tendency to hate one’s enemy or...