September 26, 2022
In this memoir, the author recounts his teen years in the 1960s in Claremont, Calif., beginning with his family’s move there until the day before he’s drafted into the U.S. Army.
Jim Morgan has just finished his freshman year in high school when his father’s promotion to sales manager of a beer distributorship prompts their […]
September 26, 2022
John Rosskopf’s mystery novel introduces Sacramento private investigator Jake Powers.
As the story begins, a wealthy woman arrives in Powers’ office, explaining that her daughter, Epiphany, was found drowned in the Sacramento River six months earlier. She claims Epiphany was murdered, despite police reports to the contrary. Informed that money is no object, Jake takes […]
September 5, 2022
In Cicek Bricault’s middle-grade novel, a twelve-year-old girl desperate to become popular hides her unique ability, fearful of seeming like a freak.
KyRose dreams of joining her school’s in-crowd, which means making friends with Georgia, the “popular and ruthless” soccer captain. One day in gym class, KyRose makes a good play, and Georgia pushes her […]
September 5, 2022
Coming from most people, the statement “The story of my family is in many respects the story of America” would sound more than a little presumptuous. However, it isn’t far from the truth for Scott MacDonald, as he proves in this genealogical survey.
Initially knowing little, MacDonald began seriously researching his family tree over a […]
August 29, 2022
In Artist: Awakening the Spirit Within, acting coach Jocelyn Jones offers a blend of memoir, spiritual teaching, exercises, and journal prompts to teach readers how to manifest the life of their dreams.
Jones is the daughter of a critically acclaimed actor from the golden age of film and TV, Henry Jones. Having acted and modelled […]
August 29, 2022
Gothic Revival, by Michael Mullin, is a thriller centered on four old friends who are invited to a secluded villa on a lake by the fifth friend, Eric Asher.
The friends haven’t seen each other in 20 years, and Eric ostensibly wants to rekindle their friendship from grad school, where they all studied creative writing. […]
August 1, 2022
In Muir’s Gambit, Michael Frost Beckner, screenwriter of the movie Spy Game (2002), returns to the murky world of Cold War espionage and the characters he introduced in the Tony Scott film starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.
The story starts in the ‘90s with the assassination of a CIA legend who, with his dying […]
August 1, 2022
Munashe Kaseke’s stirring debut story collection probes, to sometimes painful effect, the experience of being an African woman and immigrant in the U.S.
Like the author, Kaseke’s narrators are born in Zimbabwe, and the stories all address to some degree that country and its problems, as when Makanaka (“Return to the Land of Giant Suns”) […]
July 25, 2022
In this engaging book, Paul McDonald offers advice for living a happier, more fulfilling life.
A former NFL quarterback with a “million-dollar smile,” McDonald had seemingly made the transition from sports to a successful career in business. Yet there was a period of time when he floundered, drinking too much and working at a job […]
July 19, 2022
Educator and personal development mentor Gregory V. Diehl, author of three other nonfiction books, including The Heroic and Exceptional Minority and Travel as Transformation, delivers an earnest paean to the superiority of capitalism through the lens of his years living in a Kalavan village in the Gegharkunik province of formerly communist Armenia.
Diehl moved to […]