A Different Time and Space
Fae of Legacy and Lies follows a seemingly powerless priestess who leaves her home and discovers that her fae heritage, hidden magic, and even her identity have been shaped by secrets, and she now has to decide what path her destiny will take. What first inspired Magdalene of Avalon and the world surrounding her?
I read The Mists of Avalon during a rough transition right after I got out of the U.S. Military. The book had a way of pulling me into a different time and space that I deeply needed. That escape inspired me to go on a sacred sites tour of southwest England, where the heartbeat of King Arthur influenced me and the mysterious Black Madonnas scattered throughout the territory fed into a story developing in my head. Coupled with my lifelong love for Tolkien and a deep fascination with my Welsh heritage, the Magdalene of Avalon series was born.
Magdalene can be stubborn, insecure, devout, impulsive, and humorous. How did her personality develop as you wrote her?
I have to confess there might be a bit of myself in her—okay, a lot of myself. I’ve always used humor to soothe my nerves and unwind when tension piles up. Because of that, I ended up drawing on my own life’s progression to imagine how Magdalene would react, stumble, and grow as she faces the monumental challenges throughout the series.
The story repeatedly asks whether protection can become a form of control. How did that theme develop?
It naturally emerged as I wrote, but I’m no stranger to the theme itself. Whether people realize it or not, we often try to control the people we love. Be it out of fear or affection, we tend to place heavy influence on their choices in hopes of keeping them safe or close. I wanted a theme that readers could relate to from both sides of the coin—because we’ve all experienced being held too tightly, and we’ve all inadvertently held someone else too tight.
Without revealing too much, what aspects of Magdalene’s heritage and abilities are you most excited to explore as the series continues?
Oh my gosh, there is so much! I love writing her adventures because they lean heavily into Welsh folklore, which is where her true fae nature comes from. Her heritage as an elemental fae is just the beginning after Book One. I’ve packed this series with loads of power progression, deep magic, and plenty of surprises that I can’t wait for readers to uncover.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook – Author | Facebook -Books | Website | Instagram | TikTok
Priestess Mary has lived a shadowed life on Avalon, silenced by her vows. Determined to awaken her dormant fae magic, she defies ancient law and ventures to the mainland of Ancient Wales-an act that shatters her world.
Exiled for her actions and cast into the hands of her manipulative, estranged father, the druid Cyrus, Mary is no longer just a priestess; she is a target. Pursued by the blood-drinking Grymadder, she faces a perilous journey where visions foreshadow war, magic is unbound, and a forbidden attraction to a dangerous warder with a shifting nature threatens the wrath of the goddesses.
Caught between meddling deities and protectors she cannot trust, Mary must stop listening to the whispers of what others expect of her-and seize the power within her own blood, taking control of her journey. This isn’t just about returning home-it’s about survival. And as an imprisoned fae tribe calls for freedom, Mary must embrace her heritage, which is her greatest weapon and deadliest curse.
Perfect for fans of the high-stakes Fae magic of Sarah J. Maas, the capable heroine in From Blood and Ash, the intrigue of Outlander, and the mythic atmosphere of Daughter of the Forest. This immersive, slow-burn historical romantasy explores the struggle for identity and the courage to forge a path of one’s own.
With themes of prophecy, forbidden love and fated mates, this epic fantasy-where Welsh whispers within the fraying mists-is an essential read for those who crave origin stories that expand the heart of Avalon and Arthurian lore with Welsh mythical beings and beasts.
Ancient magic never truly dies.
It simply waits…
For someone desperate enough to wake it.
Where Wounds Live
Where Wounds Live by Dr. Sam Mishra is an ambitious and wide-ranging examination of the many places trauma can surface in a person’s life. Across its collection of articles, Mishra moves through abuse, addiction, body image and sexuality, family relationships, grief, social attitudes, somatic responses, empathy, transformation, and adult relationship patterns. What gives this breadth coherence is the author’s consistent interest in aftermath. Trauma is presented as something that can alter self-perception, attachment, bodily experience, intimacy, communication, coping strategies, and a person’s sense of belonging. Mishra’s own history is an important part of that approach. Her experience in nursing and midwifery, her work as a trauma and bodywork practitioner, and her personal experiences of abuse, chronic pain, grief, depression, and PTSD give the book a voice that moves between professional explanation and personal testimony.
One of the book’s strongest recurring ideas is that many behaviours commonly regarded as dysfunctional make more sense when understood as adaptations to pain. This is particularly clear in the chapters on addiction, nervous system dysregulation, attachment, emotional triggers, avoidance, and self-sabotage. Mishra repeatedly asks readers to look beneath behaviour for the fear, injury, unmet need, or survival strategy sustaining it. In the addiction section, this principle is stated with unusual clarity: the question should be “‘what happened to this person?’ rather than ‘what is wrong with them?'” That shift in perspective becomes one of the book’s central ethical commitments. It encourages compassion without eliminating personal responsibility and allows Mishra to discuss subjects as different as addiction, narcissistic abuse, family estrangement, avoidant attachment, and rescuing behaviour within the same larger framework. Her treatment of recovery consequently emphasizes safety, stabilization, boundaries, self-awareness, and gradual regulation.
The body is equally central to Mishra’s understanding of trauma. Throughout the book, she returns to the relationship between psychological distress and physical experience, particularly through discussions of cortisol, hypervigilance, dissociation, intimacy, scars, touch, breathwork, nervous system regulation, massage, and other somatic practices. In her discussion of body image, for example, recovery is framed as integration, with survivors learning to inhabit their bodies with greater agency. The result is an integrative book in the fullest sense: psychological research and attachment theory appear alongside real experience, medical knowledge, therapeutic observation, spirituality, and holistic approaches. Its article format also gives the work an accessible rhythm. Readers can follow its larger argument from beginning to end, but individual chapters can function independently as focused discussions of particular problems. That makes the book especially suited to readers who may want to return to a subject such as grief, intimacy, addiction, family wounds, or emotional triggers when it becomes relevant to their own experience.
Where Wounds Live is a book about what becomes possible once trauma is understood. Mishra doesn’t reduce healing to returning to an earlier version of oneself. Instead, she treats it as a process of integration, boundary formation, self-knowledge, nervous system regulation, renewed connection, and, at times, profound personal transformation. That philosophy is captured near the end of the introduction when she writes, “Your trauma does not define your worth or limit your potential.” The sentence reflects the larger character of the collection: compassionate without being sentimental, hopeful while remaining attentive to the long reach of traumatic experience, and deeply interested in helping readers find language for experiences that can otherwise remain confusing or isolating. With its combination of personal candour, explanatory writing, research, and practical reflection, Where Wounds Live offers a substantial resource for survivors, supporters, and practitioners seeking a broader understanding of how trauma can shape a life and how healing can reshape it in turn.
Pages: 888 | ISBN : 1807690873
Chronic Pain: The Voyage Through the Maze
Damian Hayes’s Chronic Pain is part personal account, part practical handbook, and part companion for people trying to build a life around pain that refuses to behave predictably. Drawing on more than two decades of experience, Hayes takes readers through treatment options, sleep problems, relationships, work, diet, exercise, emotional strain, and the countless small adjustments that become part of everyday life with chronic pain. What gives the book its character is the way medical research sits alongside moments from Hayes’s own life, sometimes serious, sometimes funny, and often recorded in the middle of another difficult night. The result feels less like being lectured and more like sitting beside someone who has spent years exploring the maze and is willing to share what he has learned.
One of the book’s strongest qualities is its practicality. Hayes examines conventional and complementary treatments, but he also spends considerable time on the ordinary things that can make an exhausting day more manageable: pacing activities, finding somewhere comfortable to sleep, taking a hot shower, walking, listening to music, keeping a journal, eating something comforting, watching a familiar movie, asking for help, or simply changing what you’re doing when pain begins to take over. His Micro, Meso, and Macro framework gives readers a particularly useful way to think about these strategies, matching different responses to different levels of pain. There’s a refreshing willingness throughout the book to value small victories. A few hours of sleep, a pleasant meal, an invitation accepted, a moment of distraction, or an activity adapted rather than abandoned can become meaningful achievements.
The more personal sections give the book its emotional depth. Hayes writes openly about sleeplessness, frustration, work, family, isolation, anger, embarrassment, dark thoughts, and the strange negotiations that chronic pain forces into relationships. He also brings considerable humor to the subject, especially through Des and Hope, the characters he creates to represent Despair and Hopelessness. By giving his tormentors names, he creates psychological distance between himself and the pain, then introduces Sunshine and Starshine as counterweights. That imaginative streak reaches its fullest expression in the “Voyage of Self-Discovery,” where Hayes mentally plays rounds of golf and lets each hole unlock memories, stories, lessons, regrets, and moments of gratitude. It’s an unusual idea, but within the larger book it makes perfect sense: attention, imagination, memory, connection, and storytelling all become tools for reclaiming territory that pain has occupied.
What stays with you after finishing Chronic Pain is Hayes’s insistence on participation in life. His approach is grounded in experimentation, self-awareness, relationships, professional medical support, and the willingness to keep adjusting when circumstances change. By the closing chapters, the maze of the title has become more than a description of chronic pain. It represents the continual search for routes through difficult days, along with the recognition that a worthwhile life can still contain friendship, humor, usefulness, curiosity, adventure, and joy. Hayes asks readers to pay attention to what still belongs to them and to keep using it, one decision and one day at a time. A warm, inventive and deeply lived guide to reclaiming a life that chronic pain keeps trying to shrink.
Pages: 145 | ASIN : B0H68JK49C
The Journey
The Journey by April Wurster is a Christian allegorical adventure that turns the life of faith into a vivid pilgrimage through danger, doubt, friendship, temptation, grief, and finally homecoming. At its center is Lawrence, a cat who discovers a mysterious Book and wakes to find himself carrying a crushing pack that embodies the guilt and burden he can’t remove on his own. What begins as a search for relief becomes something much larger: a journey toward the Celestial City and the King who waits there. Wurster gives spiritual ideas physical form, so doubt becomes a swamp, temptation becomes a glittering fair, despair becomes a dungeon, and faith becomes the courage to keep walking when Lawrence can’t see what comes next.
The story is especially effective when Lawrence’s outer adventures reflect what’s happening inside him. He’s frightened, impulsive, discouraged, stubborn, hopeful, and often unsure of himself, which gives the allegory an emotional center. His confrontation with Apollyon forces him to answer accusations about his own failures with the mercy he has found in the Book, while his arrival at the Cross brings the story’s central image of grace to life as the burden he has carried finally falls away. From there, Faith and Hope become more than companions with symbolic names. Through them, Lawrence learns that the journey isn’t meant to be traveled in isolation, and that another person’s courage can sometimes hold you steady when your own is nearly gone.
Wurster also understands that young readers can handle serious spiritual questions when they’re given a story sturdy enough to carry them. The Journey deals openly with fear, deception, suffering, death, despair, temptation, and the painful question of why terrible things happen even when someone is trying to follow God. Yet Scripture remains woven through the narrative as Lawrence’s compass, weapon, memory, and source of hope. That becomes particularly meaningful after Faith’s death, when Lawrence’s grief nearly swallows him, and later when he and Hope repeatedly wander, make mistakes, and have to find their way back. By the time they reach the river before the Celestial City, perseverance has stopped being an abstract lesson. It has become the accumulated result of every fall, rescue, wrong turn, remembered promise, and choice to keep going.
The ending gives the long pilgrimage the sense of arrival it has been building toward from the first pages. The Celestial City is rendered as a place of light, belonging, rest, and overwhelming welcome, and Lawrence’s meeting with the King brings the book’s themes together in a deeply personal way. The letter to children that follows makes Wurster’s purpose unmistakable: she wants young readers to recognize the spiritual battle she believes surrounds them, know Scripture for themselves, understand salvation through Jesus, and walk alongside people who will help their faith grow. The Journey turns faith into a road you can see, fear into an enemy you can face, and grace into a King who has been calling you home all along.
Pages: 149 | ASIN: B0G4SV8JQ4
The Debt of Free Men
Domingo Leonis’s The Debt of Free Men is an alternate history novel told through the journal of Jean-Pierre Bengoa, a young Basque seminarian who joins Napoleon’s army in 1813. What begins as a dream of glory becomes an intimate account of hunger, mud, exhaustion, fear, and comradeship during the final Napoleonic campaigns. The discovered-journal framing gives this Napoleonic historical fiction a firsthand immediacy, while letters and editorial notes expand Jean-Pierre’s personal story into a larger portrait of France under invasion.
Jean-Pierre makes an appealing guide because his convictions are always colliding with experience. He believes he’s defending liberty, his family, and the ideals of the Revolution, yet soldiering repeatedly forces him to confront what those principles cost in practice. His friendships with Mikel, Jean-Luc, Sergeant Roche, and the initially ineffectual Picard give the military historical fiction its emotional center. The quieter material involving Emilie and their Basque community matters just as much, grounding the campaigns in the homes, harvests, and relationships threatened by war.
Leonis writes combat with remarkable physical specificity. Muskets foul the air, cannon fire mangles formations, boots disintegrate, and endless marches reduce disciplined soldiers to instinct and endurance. The battle scenes are methodical and sometimes deliberately relentless, mirroring Jean-Pierre’s transformation from frightened recruit into seasoned infantryman. Period terminology, battlefield maps, French commands, and logistical detail make the book especially rewarding for readers of realistic Napoleonic War fiction, while the recurring questions of faith, honor, trauma, and moral responsibility keep the history connected to recognizable human struggles.
The alternate history element develops patiently, with the decisive divergence arriving when Marshal Davout joins Napoleon for the 1815 campaign. That choice reshapes Ligny and the Battle of Mont-Saint-Jean, producing a convincing “Napoleon wins Waterloo” scenario without losing sight of the ordinary men paying for it. The final turn is bittersweet and thematically exact: victory can change Europe while still arriving too late for the person whose sacrifices helped secure it. The Debt of Free Men is a richly researched alternate history, but its lasting power comes from its portrait of a young man learning that freedom, loyalty, and love all create debts of their own.
Pages: 284 | ASIN : B0HDYC11X8
Accidental Ironman
Accidental Ironman by Dr Finbar McGrady is a compelling memoir that combines an extraordinary endurance sports story with an honest exploration of burnout, resilience and personal transformation. When McGrady accidentally registers for a full Ironman instead of a half-distance triathlon in Portugal, he discovers the mistake just days before the race. His decision to tackle all 140.6 miles becomes the culmination of a much longer journey. Growing up as a painfully shy boy in Northern Ireland, he finds confidence through sport and music before pursuing a career in medicine, raising a family and gradually losing touch with the things that once made him happy. His story moves between childhood memories, the pressures of working as a doctor and the unexpected experiences that eventually help him rediscover his sense of purpose.
I think the most affecting parts of this inspirational memoir are McGrady’s accounts of professional burnout and the devastating loss of his cousin Niall, a talented musician and lifelong friend. His descriptions of working as an overwhelmed GP capture the emotional toll of caring for others while neglecting his own wellbeing. A family sabbatical in Australia provides a turning point, introducing him to a new professional passion for dermatology while rekindling his love of physical activity. As he gradually rebuilds his health and begins competing in triathlons, he also reconnects with music and discovers a more fulfilling direction for his career. His wife Deirdre, his children, his friends and the mentors who encourage him along the way bring warmth and personality to the narrative. McGrady’s willingness to share his insecurities, mistakes and moments of self-doubt makes his journey feel personal and relatable.
Alongside the autobiography and sports memoir, Accidental Ironman offers a practical approach to personal development and overcoming burnout. Drawing on his medical background, experiences with patients and lessons from endurance training, McGrady explores the space between what happens to us and how we choose to respond. It’s a philosophy that runs throughout the book, connecting his childhood struggles and professional challenges to his achievements as an athlete. He introduces accessible ideas about neuroscience, emotional regulation, mindfulness and the importance of developing habits that support long-term wellbeing. Each chapter includes takeaways and reflection questions, encouraging readers to consider how these lessons might apply to their own lives. His conversational storytelling, Irish humour and enthusiasm for everything from classic rock to competitive cycling make the self-help elements engaging and grounded in real experience.
The final chapters bring the story back to Portugal, where McGrady faces a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a full marathon with far less preparation than he’d intended. His account of the race captures the physical demands, mental battles and unexpected joy of testing his limits, bringing together the themes of perseverance, self-belief and responding thoughtfully to life’s surprises. There’s something particularly satisfying about the way his accidental Ironman becomes an opportunity to put years of personal growth into practice. This motivational memoir is about creating a life that reflects your values, finding fulfilment beyond professional achievement and learning to approach uncertainty with curiosity. With its combination of personal storytelling, endurance sports and practical advice on resilience, Accidental Ironman will resonate with readers interested in overcoming burnout, developing a healthier mindset and rediscovering the things that make life meaningful.
Pages: 182 | ISBN: 176445247X
Vigilante’s Handbook
Doc Richter’s Vigilante’s Handbook is a methodical thriller about Bill Starr, a retired technology executive whose goddaughter, Jayden, is brutally assaulted by a celebrated college football player. When influence and institutional pressure obstruct the investigation, Bill uses his technical expertise, wealth, and patience to manufacture a reckoning. That first act of vengeance becomes a broader mission as he builds an artificial intelligence system capable of identifying predators, preventing planned attacks, and uncovering miscarriages of justice. Richter gives the novel a strong emotional foundation through Bill’s devotion to Jayden, his friendship with her parents, and his companionship with Sam, his wonderfully energetic pointer.
The book’s engine is Bill’s meticulous planning. Richter walks readers through burner phones, false identities, surveillance, hacking, weapons, disguises, and escape routes with the detail of a procedural. That approach creates a particular kind of suspense because we understand how many small things could expose Bill. The story expands effectively when Lori enters his life. She’s perceptive enough to see through his disguise, compassionate enough to understand his motives, and forceful enough to become a genuine partner. Their romance adds warmth and gives Bill a fuller personal arc, while FBI agent Grace Wilson supplies steady pressure as she follows the digital and physical trail they leave behind.
Fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels will recognize the appeal of a highly capable protagonist delivering the punishment that official systems can’t. Bill shares Reacher’s confidence, practical intelligence, and willingness to act decisively, but his style is rooted in corporate technology and long-range preparation. He’s a planner who can hire elite hackers, weaponize data, and patiently build an operation over months. The novel also carries a touch of Dexter in its attempt to create rules for extrajudicial punishment. Bill’s repeated phrase, “If not us, who?” captures both the attraction and the danger of his worldview, especially once he and Lori turn their private campaign into an organized network.
Richter writes in a direct, accessible style and keeps the moral question close to the surface: what happens when good intentions, advanced technology, and personal certainty combine with the power to punish? The operational detail sometimes slows the momentum, and the repeated declarations of guilt and deserved retribution make the characters’ reasoning emphatic. Still, that suits a story about people continually justifying the line they’ve crossed. The final confrontation with Grace gives the ending a sharp jolt while leaving the central pursuit unresolved. Vigilante’s Handbook is an ambitious and provocative thriller that turns one grieving man’s revenge into a larger examination of justice, surveillance, loyalty, and the seductive certainty of taking the law into your own hands.
Pages: 313 | ASIN : B0HCTG9VHN
Beware The Golden Tigers
Beware the Golden Tigers by Aspry Jones is the second novel in the Light Crown series, and it operates on an unusually broad speculative canvas. The story combines superhero fiction, medieval fantasy, science fiction, spiritual mythology, time travel, and the multiverse without treating those elements as separate attractions. They belong to one history. The modern-day Protectors, including Dexter Park, or Sleepyhead, share the narrative with figures from ancient Torvinia, alternate realities, distant planets, and earlier generations of heroes. At the center of the novel is a conflict involving Ishan, the Golden Tiger, whose centuries-old understanding of the Hunger Witches collides with the Protectors’ growing conviction that inherited enmity shouldn’t determine how people are judged. That conflict gives the book a strong moral center while still allowing it to function as an energetic superhero adventure filled with investigations, battles, hidden histories, strange powers, and personal revelations.
Jones builds the novel through accumulation. Chapters shift among time periods and characters, sometimes interrupting the immediate action to explain the origin of a person, culture, power, or historical conflict. The result is a world that feels governed by its own mythology. Medieval Torvinia and its kings, angels, monks, criminals, and political institutions eventually connect to the technologically advanced present, while stories involving the Five Stars, the Hunger Witches, Xu Fu, the Kunglun, Suni Mako, and other figures gradually reveal how much of the present has been shaped by misunderstood history. The novel also treats reincarnation, parallel realities, and spiritual advancement as structural parts of its universe. Because so many relationships and revelations cross centuries, the book rewards close attention to names, beliefs, and seemingly isolated stories. Its density is part of its identity, creating the sense that every character is living inside a history much larger than any single adventure.
I think the strongest element of the novel is its sustained interest in compassion, perspective, and the possibility of change. Dexter’s development is especially important. His meditation with Nadaniel begins as a practical attempt to gain control over himself, but it gradually reshapes the way he sees criminals, enemies, friends, and even alternate versions of himself. That outlook becomes increasingly significant as the Protectors confront people whose violence comes from inherited beliefs, trauma, or radically different versions of history. Early in the novel, Beeswing tells King Greith, “When you are drowning in your worst hour, the Creator’s love will turn it into your greatest gift,” a statement that anticipates the book’s repeated transformation of suffering into moral choice. Near the climax, Dexter reduces that philosophy to its clearest form when he tells Ishan, “Choose love. I swear it will work.” Scarlet’s changing relationship with her own destructive hands, Suni’s complicated family history, Faden’s spiritual journey, and Ishan’s struggle with centuries of conviction all develop the same question from different directions: whether identity is fixed by the past or shaped by what someone chooses to do with it.
Beware the Golden Tigers moves between elaborate exposition, rapid action, irreverent humor, comic-book spectacle, and unexpectedly reflective passages. Jones is comfortable placing a philosophical discussion beside a violent confrontation or following a piece of ancient history with casual modern dialogue, and that contrast gives the novel a distinct personality. The large cast and extensive mythology make the book feel closer to an ongoing superhero universe than a narrowly contained adventure, with individual chapters often expanding the meaning of events that appeared straightforward when first introduced. Beneath the costumes, magic, aliens, alternate worlds, and centuries of lore, however, the novel is primarily concerned with how people understand one another. Its heroes are tested as much by their assumptions as by their enemies, and its central conflicts gain weight from the realization that certainty itself can become dangerous. Beware the Golden Tigers is therefore both an expansive genre adventure and a story about learning to see another person’s history clearly enough to choose something better than repetition.
Pages: 309 | ASIN: B0HCJMGHR9
