Dorothy Parker once famously said she hates writing but loves having written. That tortuous whiplash is captured in Rima Jbara’s uniquely devised—albeit uneven—novella, Tangled Words.

Jbara presents a ying and yang through the musings of twins Rain and Eternity, both writers who grow up in a dysfunctional home with an abusive, unsupportive father and passive […]

Luanna Meyer’s engaging novel Bella’s Legacy, exploring four generations of a family, focuses on women struggling to find their place in the world despite limitations of social convention, familial duties and economic circumstances.

The novel’s title character, journalist Bella Colquhoun, is reviewing old papers and a memoir she’d written years earlier when she sees an […]

The agony Patrick Yay suffered in his native Burma began in 1962 when he witnessed government soldiers massacring fellow Rangoon University students. His memoir focuses on the painful desecration of his homeland and beloved medical profession by a corrupt military regime.

Yay recounts Burma’s geopolitical history, painstakingly detailing events that fueled the corruption […]

A family physician specializing in mental health, Dr. Winfried Sedhoff uses a large canvas to explain how contemporary society became so fragmented, how individuals became so unhappy, and how we can cultivate close and casual friends to heal society and ourselves.

Sedhoff begins with the Balance of Self Model, constructed of Personal, Family and Community […]

The Civil War is the centerpiece of Nanette L. Avery’s engaging historical novel, Out of the Rabbit Hutch. While the war itself is realized in flashback, it’s bracketed by the impending cloud dominating years before and an intertwined narrative of the broken lives that it leaves afterword.

The author impressively juggles a range of plots […]

The Warramunga’s War is a compelling historical novel, the first in a series, featuring two Australian soldiers working with British intelligence in Egypt during WWII.

James Munro and Jack O’Brien meet in 1941 while assaulting Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon. Impressed by their skill, MI6 sends them to Egypt, to help root out […]

In The Dead Can Speak, author Leah Hill describes her marriage to a man she believes to be possessed by spirits, as well as her own conversations with the dead. The book is very short—Hill typed it all on her phone—and quickly gets both complex and confusing.

In chatty prose that leapfrogs from […]

In Christianity’s Missing Piece, peace activist Thomas K. Siemer chronicles his life story and search for purpose and meaning in a world where the possibility of nuclear war is all too real. Part spiritual autobiography and part call to action, the author traces the factors that ultimately led him to encounters with Pope John Paul […]

The genesis for Joe Aliberti’s autobiography was a visit from his grandson, who was curious about the family’s history. Aliberti couldn’t tell him much. His father, Guiseppe, was an only child who never spoke of his parents. And his mother, Maria, died giving birth to Joe in 1930.

Aliberti decided instead to tell […]

In Racist Hate, T. R. Affatato presents a scathing account of racism as it exists today and throughout history.  “[We] live,” he states, “in a world of racism that has been passed down through generations and throughout humanity.”

Affatato discusses some of racism’s roots, concentrating on those responsible for slavery, from the Greeks […]