“The Mistress had always envisaged the kennels as a club for like-minded dogs who would frolic during the day and sleep soundly at night with minimum supervision.” Hmm! Really? And what about the incessant barking? You can’t expect to fill a kennel with dogs and...

Imagine knowing where the gold is located, only you have to cross a desert, starved and dehydrated, to find the abandoned town and the abandoned mine. It’s difficult not to get excited at the prospect of instant wealth. And then there’s a young boy who...

Gloria Zachgo's historical novel Never Waste Tears is the story of five young people who settle on the Kansas prairies after the Civil War. The five characters, Nathan, Rebecca, Carl, Hannah, and Sarah, are the narrators. The title Never Waste Tears comes from the story...

No Way Back Today by Eric Shoars is a tale of a midlife crisis. Eric is fast heading for 50 and he still has things he needs to do, things he should have done years before. Not willing to give up on his dreams a...

I so enjoyed Don Trowden’s Normal Family, the first book in this trilogy, that I didn’t think twice before grabbing No One Ran to the Altar. The 10-year-old narrator of that first book, Henry, had me laughing and crying throughout the entire story. I was...

Every once in a while a book comes along that is so different from what you expected your reaction shocks you. That’s what happened to me when I finished Normal Family by Don Trowden: I burst into tears! Why on earth did that happen? It...

Never Sold Out by Doug Marsh with Carlo Brigola begins with a typical story of a young man in a band in the eighties and a spare ticket to a Van Halen concert. Fast forward to the nineties and Carlo, the owner of a CD...

Navigational by Stuart Luijerink tells the story of Winston who arrives at a seaside community and sets out to restore a dilapidated church. While he receives support from some of the locals, there are some who want nothing to do with him. But does he...

Although I didn’t read the first book in the Miller Hoffman series by Zelmer Wilson, this second entry, Next Best Thing, reads so well and it is absorbing. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the book is character-driven, and the internal conflict is superbly explored....

Deanna Lynn Sletten’s Night Music is a story of hearts divided. Joseph Russo is a soldier in Vietnam. He becomes pen pals with a girl named Charlotte. Char writes to Joe about Grand Falls, her small hometown in Illinois. Joe clings to those letters, they...