Partly based on the author’s childhood memories, this somber novel chronicles a family’s difficulties during the Great Depression from the alternating perspectives of a mother and daughter.

Jenny is crushed when her husband Jonathan abruptly tells her in 1930 that he’s lost his job and they are moving to Duluth. A year later, Jonathan is […]

From the difficult-to-read cover type to the dense chapters to her somewhat muddled parting words, “enjoy or again maybe not, but hopefully though you’ll still get something out of it anyway…,” Tara Ratney’s religious self-help book issues an implied challenge: “Read me, if you dare.” Spelling, punctuation and grammar aren’t conventional. Paragraphs go on for […]

Blowing up Walmart and other Florida and California Stories is a collection of short stories, poems and a play. Many of the stories share a common theme of life in sunny communities where retirees reign, while others explore the intricacies of family relationships.

In the title story, “Blowing Up Walmart,” a pair of senior women […]

Desolate, dusty Killjoy, Texas, was home to eight, dirt-poor sharecropping families in 1930. Slavery was over, but “freedom” wasn’t something they could eat or drink, and the promise of “forty acres and a mule” didn’t materialize. Hired to work the fields, they were cheated out of wages while being tied to soul-breaking work.

This fictional […]

When Victor Krait, a Jeremy Irons look-alike and “functional psychopath,” is released from prison after serving 12 years for bank robbery, he’s fixated on one thought: murdering Jack Stiles, the Los Angeles police officer who killed his co-conspirator, Raphael Parra, and botched their heist. And if Traci Little, Stiles’ partner and the cop who held […]

With three startlingly inappropriate husbands behind her, long battles with alcoholism and Valium dependence, and time spent living in a porcelain-lined trailer due to chemical sensitivities, Ann Lloyd has surely endured a complicated life, which is detailed in her tangled but engaging memoir, Vodka on My Wheaties.

Born to comfortable but neurotic parents in Cleveland, […]

Powered by an intriguingly complex antihero, richly described realm-building, relentless pacing, and a darkly lyrical and deeply philosophical narrative, the first installment of J.R. Bailey’s fantasy series is gloriously comparable to classic adventure fantasy sagas like Moorcock’s History of the Runestaff, Howard’s Conan, and Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

After almost being turned into […]

A man, a woman, and a talking Martian plant walk into a bar…

OK, that doesn’t exactly happen in Falling into History–among other things, the plant doesn’t walk; it glides. However, Peter Fleming’s time-traveling tale is about a sentient, super-powered plant transporting itself and two human companions through time and space, and an eighteenth-century London […]

Coloring Our World: Look What We Can Do Together is the brainchild of Alberta Adams. Intended as an activity and coloring book to inspire very young children and their caregivers with a sense of equality, justice and the pure joy of play, the book was originally published in 1990 with grant support from AETNA Life […]

Assuming you still have money in these sour economic times, what are you to do with it? Veteran financial services professional Dean McLellan says you need to free yourself from “stuck and limiting thoughts you might have” and gain the wisdom and confidence in a stock market that cries for a descriptor stronger than “roller […]