Albert J. Myers tells a good story. Sometimes, it’s just parts of stories.

Mankind Man Unkind is a memoir of Myers’ military service in Vietnam. It begins with him arriving there in early 1968 as a 20-year-old Navy corpsman. Immediately after landing, as he waits for his flight to the combat base at Dong Ha, […]

After successfully publishing more than 40 poems in anthologies and journals, Rae Marie Bruce has self-published her first book of poetry, titled This Glorious Disorder. It is a well-thought-out, loosely categorized collection of reflections on family, history, place and art. Through her poetry, we see her life in all its glorious disarray: women gossiping in […]

The first poem in H. Ann Ackroyd’s anthology of short stories in free-form verse is a tale from two cultural viewpoints of British colonialism in Africa until the uprising by “black majority rebels.” Although not the epic poem it claims to be, “Colonial Adventure” is a narrative in verse. It contains 46 chapters, ranging from […]

A grizzled college professor teaching Sunday School? To fourth graders no less? That appealing scenario is the backdrop for Twenty-Five Years in the Fourth Grade, the booklet-size guide by Purdue University pharmacology professor Joe Borowitz on why Sunday school counts and how to give a classroom of wiggly kids your best.

That’s the good and […]

In Cuauhtemoc: Descendant of the Jaguar, the third in D L Davies’ fantasy series set in 16th century South America, readers learn more about Cuauhtemoc’s supernatural side and how the teen-aged emperor of Maya got his powers.

In the first two installments, the boy learned to fly a hang glider and became a birdman/messenger. He […]

Barnato’s adventure tale, which travels between Scotland and South Africa, begins dramatically in 1999 when Johannes, a young South African, sets fire to his neighbor’s house after catching him having sex with his wife. The next chapter rapidly shifts to a Scottish castle and is written through the eyes of Boysie, the new resident Jack […]

While riding a school bus for the first time, a six-year-old boy runs into bullies and makes a friend in this sweet but slow-paced picture book that, unfortunately, offers nothing new in the heavily visited premise about starting school.

First grader Harry lives at the end of a country road and can’t wait for school […]

T.W. Strait’s own work with the Missouri Park Board no doubt fuels his fiction in A Ranger’s Life, the story of adventurous main character Jack Anderson’s tenure as a ranger at Osage State Park. Strait’s first-hand experience shines through as Jack Anderson tells believable tales about his time at Osage, which include funny run-ins with […]

Anyone who has ever considered opting out of the rat race will admire the journey author Sid Bell recounts in his novel, Home on the Big Salmon. Bell’s story of a veteran who moves to the Canadian wilderness teems with the first-hand knowledge of a Survivalist 101 course. But unfortunately, Bell’s saga, which spans decades […]

In this imaginative but strange picture book, a count invents a flavor of ice cream from a princess’s golden locks and everyone who eats it grows hair all over their bodies.

When Count von Ice de la Cream sees how delicious Princess Clarisse’s hair looks, he asks her father, King Gustav, to waive a law […]