Keeping Secrets by McGee Mathews is an intriguing novel of historical fiction set during the Civil War era. The story has Elizabeth Hepscott escaping the traditional role expected of her--wife and mother--when she enlists in the war as a young man (EJ) alongside her brother,...

It's very early morning and Adam is on the beach doing what he's been doing for years, surfing and spending time alone with the Lord. Well, until...is that smoke? And it looks like it's coming from the mission. He hurries home as fast as possible,...

Where Is My Happy Ending? A Journey of No Regrets by Karen Harmon is the poignant and heartbreaking story of living in a family plagued by mental illness and how she leaves home at the age of seventeen and goes to Vancouver to embrace a...

Eloquence That Feeds the Soul should be the subtitle for A Sword Song for Blood Roses, a poignant offering of poems by Joan Wiley. While relatively short insofar as books go, A Sword Song for Blood Roses definitely packs a huge emotional punch. It’s divided...

Sasha Savvy Starts It Up is an educational novel for middle-schoolers and preteens written by Sasha Ariel Alston. Sasha’s excitement over starting the new school year as a sixth-grader became even more intense when her mom announced there was going to be a hackathon at...

Santa is real. Carol knows that. She’s one of several girls living in Lady Dorothy’s Group Home. And, like any other group home full of girls, there is a mix of nice girls and mean girls. Carol is a nice girl, with a touch of...

We all have our fears. There are times when we’re too frightened to try. But, with courage, we may try and then we feel good afterward, realizing that the greater fear is really the fear of not trying at all. Ramone is a baby ruby-throated...

In Outsiders and Apparitions: Possessed Poems and Art for Family Picnics, we are introduced to an otherworldly and frenetic collection of poems written by Milan Sergent, the author of the Candlewicke 13 series. In this book, the author covers subjects like death, marginalization, and...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream might be one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, with countless stage, film, and tv adaptations performed over the years. It is a brave task to readapt a story many people recognize, but Paul Leonard Murray has successfully pulled it off. While...

The action-driven play Pericles, the Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare, as rendered in rhyming couplets of modern English by Paul Leonard Murray, director of the Belgrade English Language Theater, with input from his students, is just as exciting as the original, but it is...

After tackling A Midsummer Night’s Dream so successfully, Paul Leonard Murray turns his attention to Shakespeare’s tragedies, namely Macbeth. Most readers will already know the plot of ‘the Scottish play’; Macbeth and his ambitious wife scheme to murder King Duncan while he sleeps and be...

Ascension: Kelahya Unbound by V. and D. Povall is a grand science fiction novel of bloodlust and power. The main character Kelahya is a Minder, which means she has the ability to impact the minds and thoughts of almost all species that exist in the...

Mementos by Theodore Jerome Cohen is an exposition of creativity. Mr. Cohen has penned an anthology of short stories inspired by photography. Included in this collection are imaginative tales of family, friendship, baseball, adventure, and nostalgia. Some of these tales are slightly taller than the...

Executive Malice (A Tale of Corporate Deceit) by R. L. Hann takes place in 1994, more than twenty years before the “Me Too” movement. This means women in the workplace were treated less than appropriately, especially when confronted with men in higher positions on the...

Song of Ron by Ronald Steven Kaplan is a collection of poems, or songs as the poet puts it, that give glimpses of the poet's views on love lost, love celebrated, love sought, humor, and humanity. Since many of the poems are lyrics, they have...

It's 1888 in Prairie Ridge, Colorado. Jesse, a tenacious young man disguised as an outlaw, infiltrates a gang of robbers led by a man named Billy Bart. Jesse is searching for the killers of his younger brother Jacob and is determined to bring them to...

Love Behind Enemy Lines by Jeanette Anderson is a tale of forbidden romance between Palestinian Jannah al-Jarbouni and Israeli Efron Oved. From the moment their eyes met, both Efron and Jannah had felt an irresistible attraction toward each other. Their union, albeit risky, was full...

Finding George Washington by Bill Zarchy is a time travel tale. It’s 1778 and the weather is freezing. New snow falls constantly, making life difficult for the soldiers at the Valley Forge encampment. General George Washington leaves the encampment and suffers a fall, knocking himself...

What a wonderful twist! I wasn’t expecting the gift that Jacob chose to give in the children’s picture book A Gift for Santa. I love the way Santa thanks him every Christmas for the gift. What would you give Santa for Christmas? I love the...

Harrison Waits by Missy Hagen is a 30-page long children’s illustrated story about a very young boy named Harrison. He looks to be about three or four years of age, and this is a very busy day for him. He is obviously anxious about something...