The Aloha Spirit by Linda A. Ulleseit begins in 1922, with a heartbreaking opening line stating that seven-year-old Dolores is deemed useless by her father. He never said it to her directly, but this is what has been running through his mind. This is because...

The Place Beyond Her Dreams is a young adult romance novel written by Oby Aligwekwe. Ona lives in the picturesque hillside town of Ntebe with her grandparents. For years, Ntebe had constant boundary clashes with the town of Ide. When Ona turns ten, a boy...

An intense historical novel that spans decades, The People of Ostrich Mountain by Ndirangu Githaiga chronicles the life of a Kenyan family that begins in 1952. A 14-year-old girl named Wambui Karanja, who lives in the small village of Kiandutu, is witness to the oppressive...

The preface to The Book of Agnes by Michael Pedretti reminds us that we are all descended from the same gene pool and may be related to every other living person on the planet. This book divided into Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. Air is...

The First Shadows of Morning by Timothy Noble is primarily the story of Alex, a young executive who has been sent from his company in England to Ukraine to fix a company that they own and is in trouble. When Alex arrives, he is surprised...

The Bertrams and the Jimenezes were two families that lived in El Salvador. While the Bertrams operated a thriving restaurant, Domingo Jimenez operated a repair shop. Both families had dreamed of moving to America, but they were doing okay in El Salvador until the maras...

The Greatest Game by Greg Rajaram is a light read that I would consider as one of the most philosophical works of fiction I have ever read. While Sophie’s World is too didactic for my taste, The Greatest Game is simply impressive in its uniqueness....

Twelfth Winter: Sequel to Summer of Two Worlds by J. Arthur Moore is a young adult coming-of-age tale about an orphaned white boy named Michael who was rescued as a toddler by a Sioux family and raised as their son, Prairie Cub. Now sent back...

The scope of Ian Williams’ collection of six short stories spans the time from the near future to far into the distant future with a range of topics. These cover global issues such as environmental decay and growing waste problems. These also dig into the...

Did he fall or was he pushed? So begins Dick Rosano’s mystery, The Etruscan Connection, on the Italian coast. Darren Priest is informed that an archaeologist died on a dig. He and his partner, Alana, a Viennese cop, head to the ancient remains of Etruscan...