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