by Jennifer Wizbowski Rating: ***** Set in early eighteenth-century Venice, Poinsettia Girl unfolds the story of Agata della Pietà, who, at age ten, was placed by her dying Nonna , Guilelma, at the Ospedale de la Pietà , an orphanage that placed emphasis on nurturing musical talent and housed its own prestigious and mysterious conservatoire, the Figlie del Coro , for whom Vivaldi was a teacher and composer. Agata is supremely gifted, not only as a soprano but also as a copyi

by Jim Bates Rating: **** Science fiction/dystopian mash-up The Defectives  is set in the 27 th  century. Cockroach-esque creatures, the Tracliodytes conquered Earth in the 22 nd  Century, and humans were driven underground to live in cities deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Over the next five hundred years, they segregated into the “ Rich and Powerful ” and the “ Defectives ”, and life for the latter is brutal under the diktats of the Supreme Commander, Reginald Botta. When

by Robert Wilson Rating: **** Told in four parts over the course of the 1970s, The Love You Take  is a late coming-of-age novel focusing primarily on Andy Watson, from small-town Strasburg in Virginia as he matures from college student to married father. Surrounded by a select group of eclectic friends, all of whom have their vulnerabilities and moments of self-reckoning, Andy navigates the decade of Nixon, Vietnam, and socio-political unrest while wrestling with the responsi

by Lagnard Benz Rating: **** Don’t Study at University is a self-help book with a difference, offering much more than the title suggests, covering extensive, often esoteric ground. Benz essentially lays out a manifesto, backed by personal experience and thorough research, that scrutinizes traditional educational methods and, consequently, expected career/life trajectories. He rigorously questions and, in many cases, debunks prescribed belief systems, urging the reader to do l

by Adam Cosco Rating: **** Twelve-year-old Leslie Adams feels something is wrong with her, inside, but her dad insists she’s just sleepwalking. But she isn’t sleepwalking when Leslie slashes Tommy Spence to death at his own birthday party, although she cannot remember the attack. Six years later, Leslie tries to make a new beginning, enrolling at college to study investigative journalism, although Tommy’s murder haunts her.  When she starts to experience disturbing incidents

by E. Denise Billups Rating: ***** When Evangeline “Eva” Beauford was sent away at the age of ten by her mother without explanation from the family's olive plantation in Alabama, Beauford Grove, to live with her cousin in Boston, she felt abandoned and confused. Eighteen years later, Eva is a successful hematologist, studying the vagaries of human blood, and her own is yielding more questions than science can answer. When she receives a mysterious posthumous letter from her s

by Julio Fernandez Rating: **** Beginning in 2012 but rapidly taking the reader up to the present day, PopeLeo.ai and The God You Trained  delivers an uncomfortable sermon on the rise of AI, chiefly through the lens of Gabriel Menas, an AI engineer who had studied to become a priest but left the seminary shortly before ordination. The novel is also inspired by the cautionary remarks concerning artificial intelligence made by Pope Leo XIV, which were included in a Vatican pres

by Doug Owen Rating: **** In 2007, after several challenging months, Doug Owen, his wife Claudia, and their young daughters, Beth and Allison, moved to an ordinary, 1950s-style white ranch house in Nampa, Idaho, hopeful the relocation would signal a fresh start for the family. It does herald a new beginning, but not the one Doug was envisaging. The Unholy Silence  is his disturbing chronicle of exactly what occurred within that house, the manifestations, malignancy,  and demo

by Stephen M. Murphy Rating: **** When Judge Ferdinand “Ferd” Pitt realizes the disheveled defendant standing in front of him is the father who abandoned Ferd and his twin sister, Claire, over thirty years ago, he immediately recuses himself from the case.  Dwight Pitt is accused of murder, and the victim is Patrick Brady, founder and Chief Technology Officer of a software development company. Brady also happened to be Ferd’s son, Josh’s boss. When evidence not only places Dw

Edited by Donald K. Hartman Rating: **** In this absorbing collection, Hartman has gathered together twelve short stories and two novelettes whose primary theme and characters are female hypnotists and/or mesmerists. The tales move between genres but broadly encompass thriller, horror, and mystery, all with elements of the supernatural or the unexplained, and are often driven by revenge or passion. Having read two of Hartman’s previous compilations * , which are variations on