Floating in the Neversink by Andrea Simon is an extraordinary novel. In the summer of 1955, nine-year-old Amanda Gerber has to say goodbye to her best friend, Francine. She travels from Brooklyn to deep within the Catskill Mountains, where Grandma Sarah lives. Although she is...

Shani has a new friend. It’s a honeybee. She calls him Paul. Later, she learns that this honeybee is a she and not a he, so she changes the name to Paula. Shani loves to watch her honeybee fly around the flowers outside her window....

The preface to The Book of Agnes by Michael Pedretti reminds us that we are all descended from the same gene pool and may be related to every other living person on the planet. This book divided into Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. Air is...

Trez, Frez and Inez, written and illustrated by Deb Neeley-Garcia with the help of her grandkids, is a fabulous book for preschool kids and looks to be one of a series, this one titled The Workshop. Author Neeley-Garcia calls it “a story of fun, friendship...

Paula The Busy Bee: Shani and Friends by Shani T. Night is an excellent way to teach children about the importance of honeybees. The main character is Paula, a young worker bee. The author outlines Paula's jobs as she grows up; her first job is...

What would you be able to do if you were an octopus? With eight legs, would you be able to do more things at once and get all those nasty chores out of the way faster? Shani T. Night’s picture book story, If I Were...

The Atheist and the Afterlife is the story of Ray Catania's life and the first volume of a series that promises to be very interesting and inspiring. The Atheist and the Afterlife tells the experiences of a former atheist who realized that the afterlife exists....

The Heart of a Lion and the Body of a Cat by Shani T. Night is an illustrated children's book that tells a great story. The protagonist is a young lion who would do many things but cannot because he is sick. However, he is...

Blood and Brume by Maki Morris is a YA paranormal tale. Ellie Porter is only 16 but when she s assaulted by her alcoholic mom's boyfriend, she's done. Taking off with no intention of ever going back home, she is persuaded by Sam, her best...

Chris Lengle introduces The Male Nurse Survival Guide as “a real, no-b[…]-s[…] survival guide” (elisions my own) to the world of nursing. As he notes, “[t]his is the raw, real, and uncensored guide to surviving as a male nurse” in the United States. As such,...

In The Discontent of Mary Wenger, Paper Dolls Book 1, by Robert Tucker, the author has taken a subject and an era that is very difficult to analyze and has written about it with compassion, understanding, humor, and unending love shown in different ways. The...

The Battle for Sicily's Soul: The Rise of the Mafia and the Fight to Free Sicily from its Evil Tyranny by Claudine Cassar is a must-read historical nonfiction book. It focuses on the Sicilian Mafia and gives a deeper understanding of the origin of the...

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, adapted and illustrated by Lauren Martin, shares a magnificent retelling of a true event that occurred many years ago at Christmas. In 1897 a young girl named Virginia was having doubts about the existence of Santa Claus. Her...

Life is unpredictable and full of surprises. Anything can happen at any time. Emerging From the Dark by Terence Ang shares his story and that of other stroke survivors. Their stories acknowledge that the journey is not easy, but it's possible, and they have overcome...

Some stories can only be understood if you see the images of the people who lived them. This is the case of the 65th Infantry Regiment, whose story is told in The Borinqueneers by Noemí Figueroa Soulet. Through the hundreds of illustrations of this magnificent...

Better Lucky Than Good (From Outlaw Biker to Airline Pilot, And Beyond) by Dale E Arenson is a memoir about the author’s unconventional path to becoming a commercial pilot. Dale narrates his life as an outlaw biker and the events that led him to change...

Hangmen: Riding with an Outlaw Motorcycle Club in the Old Days is a raw and gritty memoir that takes readers into motorcycle gangs in the 60s and 70s. Dale E. Arenson was a high school dropout from a broken family. His two options were enlisting...

Jeff Pennant's Field Guide to Raising Happy Parents by Kelli McKinney is charming, fun, and witty. It has lots of heart and personality. The main character is Jeff, who tells how he can't relate to his parents. They tell him one thing and then something...

Set around WWII, Paper Dolls: Book 2 in the Paper Dolls series by Robert Tucker follows the life of Gwen Vanderveer, a woman born into wealth who flounders while trying to establish a place in her family. When Gwen is just ten and her older...

The Voting Dead Project by Bill Smith is an entertaining fusion of dystopia, crime fiction, action thriller, and political satire. Caden and Ben had been best friends since school. In January 2019, Ben wrote to Caden that he was going dark to design user-testing protocols...