November 14, 2023
Marc Arginteanu’s horror novel Azazel’s Public House offers readers a twisted, macabre ride.
Set in the 1980s, the story is told through the eyes of a rotating cast of characters, including: high-handed neurosurgeon Tommy, who has a secret he’s keeping from his wife Mary; 15-year-old Carl; and 15-year-old Gina, whose mother is in a coma. […]
November 14, 2023
The Crafter is an exciting middle-grade novel. The first in a series, it follows protagonist Kenny as he moves with his mom and their cat Whiskers to small-town Kansas.
While Kenny tries to adapt to a new place and find friends, he discovers that the video game console already installed in the apartment where he […]
October 17, 2023
A young autistic girl overcomes her fear of getting up on stage to sing in the children’s picture book Bold & Brave.
Lily is supposed to sing a solo in her school’s choir show. But she’s autistic, and the sights, sounds, and sensations of the world sometimes overwhelm her. Wearing her red polka dot shirt […]
October 17, 2023
Kirk Ward Robinson’s novel recounts the story of a young girl who becomes a victim of the child welfare system.
It seems the child is doomed from the start after her mother gives her the name of “Blaspheme,” then abandons the 4-year-old, leaving her with her grandmother Estelle, who dubs her Bee. Bee knows almost […]
October 17, 2023
Launching Into the Unknown is Leoma Gilley’s memoir of her years training and working for Wycliffe, the well-known Bible translators, first in the U.S., then in various places in Africa.
During her African training beginning in 1982, Gilley studied Arabic, learned kerosene appliance maintenance, lived in villages without running water or electricity, and spent a […]
September 19, 2023
Sharon B. Carlos presents Summer’s Sidewalk Messages, a tender, inspiring children’s picture book.
Summer is a young schoolgirl who loves seeing her friends. When Covid-19 hits, her routine is altered: Soccer games and art classes are canceled; school is conducted online, and she’s cut off from hugging her grandmother. Neighbors wear masks, which Summer feels […]
September 12, 2023
In Joe Lyon’s horror novel, what begins as a mundane missing persons’ story quickly becomes a tale combining ancient mythology, murder, mayhem and a 2,000-year-old dog.
Two young boys ignore the No Trespassing sign and fish in a pond on the property of Ohio’s richest man: Colman Moyer, or, as the boys have nicknamed him, […]
September 11, 2023
Linda LeBlanc’s lively murder mystery, A Fair Knight Slain, is set in a Renaissance fair, those traveling showcases of medieval culture.
Gunnar the Undefeated, one of the knights who perform daily, is found dead, sliced up with what’s later determined to be the kind of dagger sold at the fair’s gift shops. Sara Lansing, the […]
August 22, 2023
In the dystopian world David H. Maring creates in Darkness to Light, the United States has been replaced by the Nation of Paradise, and civil rights are completely abolished.
After a nuclear war, the old world has disintegrated, and this new world controls all its inhabitants. Women are now called “wo.” Men, or sperm donors, […]
August 22, 2023
Subjugation, the third novel in Erik A. Otto’s Detonation series, is a sprawling, immersive, dystopian science-fiction epic.
In this volume, Otto returns to a conflict that was first introduced in book one, Detonation. Once again, the U.S. mainland is described as a post-apocalyptic hinterland, populated by disparate factions, some of which—the Essentialists and the Spokes—are […]