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

by Jim Bates Rating: **** When time-traveling healer Torak is sent to the realm of Anon to treat the victims of a plague, he hopes this task will help him overcome the profound crisis of confidence he is experiencing after failing to stem a pandemic in the 21st Century during his previous assignment. What and who he finds in Anon begin to set him on the path to redemption, but when he is called upon to heal the brutal, psychopathic despot King Zorandon, Torak finds himself no

by Emily Leung Rating: **** When Krone Airways Flight KA1530 from Copenhagen lands at Heathrow with all passengers and cabin crew dead, the finger of suspicion begins to point at flight attendant, Beatriz Sarmento. But why would such a dedicated member of the cabin crew commit such an atrocity, and what does the sigil written on the cockpit door mean?... Rewind six months. Beatriz can’t wait to take to the skies again and make her mother in Faro proud after being made redunda

by George Veck Rating: ***** Veck produces another blistering look at those who have fallen far down through the cracks in society and the broken wretchedness of the system that has failed them. Centred around the Morywelon homeless hostel in North Wales, 91-Day Sanction  follows a group of tragicomic figures as they stumble through days filled with futility, fatality, and desperation. 91-Day Sanction  is a Veck tour de force . Longer than his previous novels * , it rarely le

by P. C. Darkcliff Rating: ***** Living with his parents, Baard and Diara, in the peaceful village of New Thorstorm, eighteen-year-old Derrik Thon is tired of being treated like a child and dreams of becoming a warrior. When he has a chance to prove himself, together with friends Glen and Broose, at the village’s perilous coming-of-age task, known as the “Passage”, he grabs it despite his parents' fears. But the danger posed by the Passage pales into insignificance as the Dar

by Ken Steele Rating: ***** The Promise of Unbroken Straw  unfolds the rags-to-riches story of the Landrum family through the eyes of the younger son, Paul, using dual timelines, one set in the mid-1940s and the other in the mid-1980s. Motherless, living with his father, Jake, grandfather, Eli, and brother, Tim, Paul navigates an awkward adolescence marred by secrets, guilt, and Jake’s cold aloofness while the family scratches a living in the wheat fields of Oklahoma during W

by Jim Bates Rating: ***** Bates’s On Rainy Lake  is a collection of eleven short stories mainly set in and around the Hennepin County and Orchard Lake areas of Minnesota. They are broadly contemporary, although characters unburden themselves and reveal historical reasons for their current motivations or situations through flashbacks, memories, and conversations, both internal and with others. Nine tales are written from first-person perspectives, and all main protagonists ar

by Kathryn Amurra Rating: **** When Erin Dovetree’s grandmother, Rose, mentions her new landlord, Will Abbott, to Erin, she is clearly trying to matchmake. Amused but not interested, Erin dismisses the ploy. However, when she meets the handsome, enigmatic Will, their attraction to each other is immediate. Both fight against their growing feelings, but for different reasons. Erin has unresolved trust issues, and Will happens to be nearly one hundred and seventy years old, curs

by Erik Larson Rating: ***** The World’s Columbian Exposition, hosted by Chicago in 1893 and known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was a monumental feat of architecture, engineering, and design, showcasing not only art, antiquities, and cultural exhibits but also innovative, ground-breaking ideas and technologies of the late-Victorian age. However, the wonders of “The White City,” as the fair was additionally named due to the buildings being painted white, came at a tremendous m

by Wendy Waters Rating: ***** With her entrancing singing voice and heavenly face to match, fifteen-year-old serving girl Miriam Tilby would always be a target for Rathe Courteney, the Master of Radclyffe Hall, as her mother, Eirinn, feared. Six years later, in 1593, accused of bewitching him, poisoning his wife, and pregnant with their child, Miriam is sentenced to be burned at the stake in Smithfield, London. But the night before the pyre is due to be lit, a black-clad stra

by Adam Cosco Rating: **** Barbara and Teddy O’Brien desperately want to believe their daughter, Ava, an anxious, watchful eleven-year-old, when she breaks down and describes an alarming incident that occurred during the school day with her classmates.   With no proof and unreliable witnesses, Barbara, along with almost everyone else, is inclined to dismiss Ava’s bizarre account of rituals and masked figures as a product of her daughter’s overwrought, febrile imagination, but

by Emilia Rosa Rating: **** Finding Cristina: Treasures on Earth  is the third installment in Rosa’s Finding Cristina  series *. It’s 1933, Cristina is thirty and now has three children with husband, Robert. Together with their extended, blended family members, they’ve relocated to an idyllic smallholding in southern Brazil, the land of the Gaúchos .    However, Cristina’s charmingly rustic existence begins to be threatened by unexplained acts of sabotage, revenge missions,