No Monsters Here by Vard Freer is an adorable children’s book. A little boy asks his father if there are monsters everywhere they go. His father reassures him that there are no monsters each time he asks. Halfway through, the story switches to the perspective...

Do You Serve Food Here? On Serving, Stupidity, and Life by Rich Oettinger is a collection of quotes from real people. His mother worked for most of her life as a waitress or owned a restaurant and she met an eclectic cast of people, some...

I'm Still Here: A Memoir by Martina Reaves is an engrossing memoir with strong themes, well-written and inspiring. The memoir starts with Martina meeting her streetcar driver, an Episcopal priest, who eventually becomes a significant person in her life. But she comes out and meets...

Using free and narrative verse, Vivian Zems’ chapbook, Time Passes Differently Here is a collection of 2020 musings: of lockdown days, grief, sorrow, nostalgic memories, what is life and time. The first line of the first poem caught me and wrapped me in its hypnotic...

When I Am No Longer Here by Kate Wynston is a first-person account of a woman’s life-long struggle with depression and bipolar disorder. Kate spent much of her life traveling and searching for answers to her emotional pain and has documented her experience with journals...

Memories Live Here by Marc Sheinbaum is a fast-paced thriller that follows three brothers, Josh, Louie, and Donny Brodsky, in the wake of their mother's death. Josh is on the rise as his new career in California's Silicon Valley at Sway, a cutting edge technology...

No Birds Sing Here by Daniel V. Meier Jr. is the story of a road trip taken by Beckman and a lady he meets by the name of Malany. Both are running from a life they no longer want to lead, and both are frustrated...

Judith Jones Togher shares her deep love for her daughter in I Am Here: Postcards from My Daughter in Spirit. It is a highly emotional story. It made me cry. I Am Here starts with Judith Togher’s daughter, Suzanne, living in her physical body. Due...

Life is a journey, full of ups and downs and lots of hard work along the way. But there’s lots to see and do, lots to dream about, and lots of goals to achieve. Dr. Seuss had an idea with his story, Oh, the Places...

From There to Here: War, Peace, Pandemic - A Memoir by Romy Wyllie is an insightful, touching journey from the author's childhood in World War II England to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Like most people, Wyllie sought to fill her time during quarantine, and the...

Real-life paranormal events are always fascinating, and author June Raleigh shares some of the things she has seen, including UFOs and ghosts. She has had premonitions, but June realizes most people are not in tune with the beyond, and so she has authored The Beyond...

Many people seek answers to fundamental questions about life. Does the afterlife exist? And how can we find out if our opinions about it are correct? These questions are fascinating but difficult to answer, and anyone who tries to do it deserves our undivided attention....

People's diverse experiences in different situations make life such a beautiful journey. In Zennfinnity Was Here, Jeff Pearson narrates eleven stories that depict our diverse world and the varying struggles and emotions accompanying them, including loss, pain, frustration, joy, fondness, and more. The second story,...

Megan Gordon tells me in one of the poignant short stories in her anthology, You Can't Get There From Here, that I am “the cure and the sickness, the cause and the remedy.” Of course, she didn’t aim that at me directly, but story after...

Journeys From There to Here: Stories of Immigrant Trials, Triumphs, and Contributions, penned by Susan J. Cohen, is full of heartbreaking and heartwarming real-life scenarios. As a lawyer in Boston, she has worked tirelessly for decades to assist immigrants to this country. She demonstrates how...

Life is full of possibilities and what-ifs. You can be anything you want to be if only you believe in yourself. You can be an astronaut or a chef, a writer or a judge, or even a scientist. You might be different in how you...

Everything Here Belongs To You by Saborna Roychowdhury is a coming-of-age story of a girl forced to grow up too fast and pay the price later in life. Parul was just 6 years old when her father Ahmed left her with the Sens family in...

Better Off Here is a collection of dystopian short stories by Melissa R. Mendelson. The book begins with the story "In Jellyfish, We Trust," where a young student must pay a hefty price to stay alive. A person fights to live out their numbered days...

The workbook Leave Your Sh*t Here: Write, Release and Destroy by authors Liz Reed and Jackie Wallace uses catharsis therapy as a way of detoxifying the oftentimes destructive negative emotions and thoughts that we experience in our daily lives. The topics are based on years...

How long can a man isolate himself socially and psychologically from the outside world before he begins to lose his mind? Icarus Never Flew 'Round Here by Matt Edwards delves into this very question. Dale Samuel is a rancher who has lived a very lonely...