The Cupcake Adventure by Strika Karmack, Navos Karmack, and Gus Karmack takes children on an exciting adventure with six cupcakes to a big old refrigerator. They cannot wait to reach there and find out what awaits them. Candy Cotton, Deep Dark Chocolate, Peter Pecan, Minty...

There is no tale quite like a good quest. I’ve read some great quests in my time. The Lord of the Rings is the one that comes to mind now, but there have been many more. Few of them compare in scope and quality to...

Little Frenchie and Mirror grew up together and they always spent a lot of time laughing, singing, and playing with each other. Little Frenchie's mother always told her how beautiful and precious she was. Lately Mirror had been telling Little Frenchie hurtful things about her....

Sagebrush lived with her parents Maverick and Ginger and they were house dogs of the young Miss, who was kind. The young Miss owned the ranch which had cows, horses, and ranch dogs. It was a beautiful ranch. Sagebrush was up that morning and she...

Joni Frank's children's book, Sagebrush and the Smoke Jumper: Corky Tails Tales of Tailless Dog Named Sagebrush, combines an entertaining tale with many educational points that would greatly improve a child's understanding and compassion towards environmental issues as well as animals. The story starts...

As Sagebrush and the Butterfly Creek Flood opens, it’s harvest time. Sagebrush and the young ranchwoman are picking apples. During the summer, a forest fire took the trees and ground cover from the mountainside. Rain is now washing dirt into the river, pushing Mr. Hiker...

Clio's Colorful Quest is an adventure-themed picture book for children written and illustrated by Aloubell. In her introduction, the author indicates that Clio represents “the process where I try to decide the color palette of a drawing;” which she describes as being one of her...

After the Calendar by Meg Heaven is a very much tongue-in-cheek look at what is clearly seen by women as a serious problem. For the past nine years, three respectable, middle-aged women have taken on the annual role of fundraisers for their local community hospice,...

In Terrene A. Davenport’s The Great Balance, Brie had been haunted by nightmares since the death of her mother, with dark figures and sinister occurrences plaguing her sleep. But little does she know that these night terrors are just the tip of her troubles. For...

Tiny Polly: The Story of a Brave Chicken is a picture book written by Jinan Samman and illustrated by Evgeniya Kozhevnikova for young readers. The story starts with a special chicken named Polly. Polly is unique because she is the smallest chicken of the flock...

Anneliese Möwis Pitt was born in 1929. She had three sisters and her parents, who all lived in Landsberg, Germany. Although denied affection and love by her mother and sisters, she was content and happy because life was good. Things took a nosedive when her...

The Crooked Forest: Legacy of the Holey Stone is an adventure fantasy novella by Joni Franks. Containing illustrations drawn by Ayin Visitacion, the book follows Willow, a little girl in search of her mother. Grief-stricken and heartbroken after losing her mother in a terrible storm...

Comfort in the Wings: A Novel Inspired by Love That Will Not Die by Jennifer Collins is a contemporary women's novel. It follows a protagonist named Larissa Whitcomb who, following a series of devastating losses, is absolutely shattered. A mother whose transient son Eric is...

Treat yourself to an inspirational tale of overcoming the odds with Hit the Buzzer: I Can Be an Ultimate Ninja by Mike Silenzi, Jesse Labreck, Jackie Piejak, and Jeff Piejak. On his first day at Ultimate Ninjas, Liam sees kids swinging on the rings, rock...

This is a fantasy novel in which the author has creates a new world where people don't graduate from school until they turn 90 years old. It flows well, although the plot could work better if more action were added. The story follows a young...

In the novel Stay, by C.C. Jackson, Callie is shocked when she is ripped from her home in Louisiana in the middle of the night by a mysterious, muscular man. He takes her to a city named Petrona, of which she has no recollection, and...

I’ve had the privilege of reading one of David McDonald’s earlier books, “There are No Unwounded Soldiers,” and because it was so emotionally charged, I wanted to read another one of his collections of poetry. McDonald is a hero in my view. In “I Never...

"Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child’s True Potential" by Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, and Mark S. Lowenthal, PsyD, explains how and why children struggle and distills “smart” parenting into four essential components: a compassionate ability to view the world through our children’s eyes; the...

Nine year old Jeff is homeless and is busy getting food to eat from the dumpster behind his favorite Chicago restaurant when he finds himself watching a man in a strange rubber suit destroy three men in the alley below him. Those three men were...

Author Bryna Kranzler writes of her remarkable grandfather's life as a young man in "The Accidental Anarchist: From the Diaries of Jacob Marateck". In the early years of the last century, a young Jew, Jacob Marateck, goes from his yeshiva onto enlisting in the Russian...