Elizabeth and Tori are young Christian wives and mothers in small town Kansas, who meet each other and fall in love during the late eighties. The pair battles fierce opposition, and even violence, from their families, friends, church, and the courts as they defy the law and flee to Colorado.

This earnest, well-intentioned narrative of […]

A deeply disturbing story revolving around a traumatized girl whose nightmarish experience living with an alcoholic father literally fractures her into two personalities, Sweetheart’s Lullaby is a psychological horror that takes place in the fictional town of Emily, Maryland, a setting similar to Stephen King’s Castle Rock and H.P. Lovecraft’s Innsmouth that is steeped in […]

In the fast-spinning world of texts, tweets and emoticons, it can seem quaint and old fashioned to remember there are actual words that make up the English language. Lots and lots of them, some of which are common, others that have slipped from usage save the occasional crossword puzzle or Scrabble game

Longtime elementary school […]

Feeling blue about your life? Pick up a copy of Joel “Yang Guang” Tedder’s A Heart’s Cry. It’s a case of perspective by sledgehammer, as Tedder lays bare a life defined by unrelenting tragedy.

Now 57, Tedder recounts a childhood marked by repeated abuse, first at the hands of his birth father, and later by […]

The majority of chapters in Ervin Grant’s slim book, Trials of a Small Town Lawyer, are a scant two pages long–long enough for us to gradually take pleasure in the Kansas author’s plainspoken voice, but not long enough, unfortunately, to get a good sense of his experiences, let alone go along for the ride.

Grant […]

Among the forgotten tragedies of World War II, the destruction of Convoy PQ-17 in the Arctic Ocean is surely one of the most poignant. Following an initial assault by German torpedo planes and U-boats on July 4, 1942 and a seeming threat from Hitler’s battleships, the British Admiralty ordered the doomed convoy’s destroyer escorts to […]

Law School: A Dream Or A Nightmare? is ostensibly a novel centering around Dexter and Judy, two married law school students passionate about the rigors of the legal training in which they are immersed. They start each morning excited about whatever topic is scheduled for class that day and go to bed enthralled about what’s […]

Have the highlighter handy. One indication of a good self-help book is the amount of passages readers find thought-provoking enough to mark for future reference. Being Better Than You Believe has plenty.

Philip A. Berry’s advice is gleaned from his career as a “human capital improvement” leader and executive at companies such as Colgate-Palmolive and […]

This sequel to Charles L. Fields’ first Charles Stone adventure, Sentimental Me, finds the lawyer, sculptor and amateur poet on the case once again for Franklin Life Insurance Company. This time, Stone must leave his Boston home for Arizona to investigate a renegade Mormon sect led by self-styled prophet Lucas “Luke” Simon.

Simon is an […]

In the mid 1950s, World War II veteran Jim Hall abandoned a series of dangerous dead-end jobs and followed accounts of gold deposits to the high Sierras of central Mexico. Although he never became fabulously wealthy from his subsequent adventures, the search was, according to this engaging memoir, filled with weird and wonderful encounters.

Most […]