Jodie Renner has done fiction writers a huge favor by compiling her blogs into Fire Up Your Fiction: An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Stories. She covers subjects that can get a story moving and not only draw the reader in, but hold their attention...

Maggie has lost her father, but is he really gone? That is the question in The Weeping Willow Sings by Billie Grable. With a history of mental illness and a rough experience in the Gulf War, John is never quite the same and his daughter,...

Settling an old score held Matthew Wilcox in a haunting grip that prevented him from love or finding peace in Deadman’s Lament. Linell Jeppsen unravels the story of a boy who lost his parents and his home at an early age and then found a...

Dennis definitely seems as if he’s in over his head when he begins working in a business unit called BLM. It’s a job he’s highly unprepared for, but luckily he has the support of someone who knows what he’s doing and can help immensely. Together...

Alinka Rutkowska and Konrad Checinski have done it again in Maya & Filippo Separate in Skagway. Maya and Filippo travel all over the world with their mom, dad, and their cat named Otello on a ship called the Fun Princess. They see many wonderful sights...

Invisible by Bruce A. Bracken is about the non-existent life of Campbell Hayden. The protagonist in the story is a person who leads a very ordinary life and who is unnoticed and unseen by the world in general. But a series of events changes the...

Authors Carol McCloud and Caryn Butzke do a beautiful job of weaving a story of how an individual can be happy using the letters A to Z as bucket fillers. They carefully explain at the beginning of the book that people fill others’ buckets every...

Rochelle and Nathan Moore, a successful couple, have hit a brick wall in their marriage. The passion is barely there as work obligations take over. Nathan’s goal as a husband and father is to make sure his family has financial security and the only way...

In a great introduction to a new cozy mystery series, author Christa Nardi’s Murder at Cold Creek College takes us into the world of Cold Creek College, a place where nothing is quite as it seems on the surface. We’re also introduced to protagonist Dr....

Little Kicker is not a very happy donkey because he has to get his donkey shots, and he is scared. Tony the Pony chimes in and starts telling Little Kicker all about shots. That did not help very much, because Little Kicker did not want...

Oftentimes, children, and even adults, feel left out and different from their peers. A Rare Gem by Deanna Kahler shows that even princesses feel this way. Nine-year-old Princess Towonga has lovely golden hair and pretty blue eyes, and she has lots of friends. However, she...

Though it is likely that you have never heard of an engineering diver, it has been around since World War II and is an integral part of the engineering profession, primarily in coastal areas, but in any area where building structures and bodies of water...

Most of us have heard of “Mad Cow Disease” but few of us are familiar with Creutzfeldt- Jacob Disease, or CJD. In Kingston’s Project by Carrie Beckort, readers will learn of the devastating effects of CJD on victims and their families. The “mad cow” form...

The First: Alternate Collection Destruction Cover by Kipjo Ewers starts out with a bang. Convicted murderer Dr. Sophia Dennison continues to proclaim her innocence. The state of Texas executes her but she didn’t stay dead; with a sudden gasp she came back to life. What...

Captain Alexandria de Sade was once the captain of Naviwerks chrono-ship #25. After learning the truth about how the company was treating their customers, she turned down a promotion, left the man she loved and disappeared with her ship. Her new plan was to sabotage...

Surrounded By Madness: A Memoir of Mental Illness and Family Secrets by Rachel Pruchno Ph.D. is a heart-breaking memoir of a woman who loses both her mother and daughter to mental illness. It is an honest account of a woman's desperation and powerlessness in handling...

I just completed one of the most engaging reads of recent months: Long Live the Suicide King by Aaron Michael Ritchey. It opens with 17-year-old JD, who is troubled by an event that transpired just days prior while with his friends and under the influence...

I was quite impressed with Steven Weaver’s The Vault: A Journey of Discovery as I found it an unexpectedly well-written story with distinctive characters, realistic dialogue and a fairly solid plot. While the book is targeted to a younger audience and contains a lot of...

In this third book of the Destiny trilogy, Destiny's Dance by Rosemary Gard, we see the main character Katya leaving Europe to escape the gypsies who are after her and her fiancé Ivan. Ivan is blamed for the accidental death of a gypsy, which forces...

Many adopted children dream of exotic beginnings, but for the main character of Torii (To Rule the Universe - Book 1) by Amanda Marie, this turns into an unbelievable reality. Until graduating from high school, Tara has led the life of a privileged teen with...