Rooster: A Field Trial Fable
Rooster by Edward Pontacoloni is a sporting fiction novel with a strong thread of animal fantasy woven through it. The story follows Tom Quinn, a lifelong field trialer, and later young Mike, Amy, and the orange, floppy-eared dog Rooster, as they move through the competitive world of American bird dog field trials. It is about dogs, yes, but also about loyalty, cruelty, hope, old grudges, and the strange magic that can gather around people and animals who believe in one another.
I was pulled in by how much this book cares about its world. Pontacoloni writes field trialing not as a hobby on the edge of the story, but as the story’s soil. The rules, the horses, the handlers, the dogs on point, the talk of bloodlines and training, all of it feels lived in. At times, that detail slows the pace, but I didn’t mind it as much. It gave the book texture. I felt like I was being invited onto the grounds by someone who knew every rut in the trail and every old argument around the campfire.
The author’s biggest choice, and probably the one readers will either embrace or resist, is the blend of realism and fable. One moment the book is candid about the harshness of the field trial world, including culling, sabotage, pride, and rough men with rough methods. The next, it opens the door to pookas, talking dogs, and the idea that belief can bend the shape of what is possible. I found that mix oddly fitting. Dogs already make people a little more willing to believe in wonder. Rooster, as a character, earns that wonder because he is not presented as perfect. He’s a “mongrel breed” in a world that prizes pedigree, and that makes his rise feel both funny and quietly moving.
I would recommend Rooster most to readers who enjoy animal stories, dog books, sporting fiction, and gentle fantasy with an old-fashioned storytelling voice. It will especially appeal to anyone who has loved a dog and suspected, even once, that the dog understood more than it let on. Readers who like reflective, affectionate stories with heart, history, and a touch of folklore will find a lot to enjoy here.
Pages: 183 | ASIN: B01G686MHO
JAD: A Poem
JAD: A Poem, by James Richard Hansen, is a slim, intensely devotional book-length poem arranged around seven relational roles: Father, Mother, Brother, Child, Teacher, Lover, and Friend. The collection reads like one long act of gratitude toward a beloved figure, moving through scenes of protection, memory, spiritual rescue, childhood wonder, romantic recognition, and friendship. Its emotional center is love as shelter: the father tucking a child beneath a “canopy of lavender lace,” the mother pulling her from the path of a reckless car, the friend guiding the speaker out of self-made shadows, and the recurring rose imagery that turns vulnerability into something luminous and defended.
Hansen’s best moments have a clear, almost prayerlike stillness, especially when he writes about the daughter as “living poetry” or imagines connection as “liquid light.” Those images could feel sentimental in another context, but here they feel sincere because the speaker returns to them with such emotional consistency. The book isn’t interested in irony or restraint. It’s open-hearted, sometimes almost startlingly so, and I respected that. There’s a rare earnestness in the way it treats love as a sacred obligation rather than a mood.
At times, the spiritual language leans on familiar phrases about God, light, dreams, and the Self. Still, the repetition begins to create its own atmosphere. The poems keep circling the same questions: How do we protect someone without possessing them? How do we survive pain without letting it harden us? How does love become both refuge and instruction? I was especially drawn to the later “Friend” section, where the walk through the forest deepens into a confrontation with fatigue, escape, and renewal. The speaker’s movement toward the farewell-to-spring flower feels quiet and earned.
I felt that JAD is less a conventional poetry collection than a sustained private offering, intimate, reverent, and emotionally unguarded. Its strength lies in its faith in tenderness, in the belief that human bonds can become a kind of spiritual architecture strong enough to shelter a damaged life. I’d recommend it to readers who appreciate devotional poetry, reflective love poems, and work that values sincerity over polish, especially those drawn to writing about family, healing, faith, and the redemptive force of deep companionship.
Pages: 64 | ISBN : 978-1418493332
Biny and Dash: The Wild Between Us
Binny and Dash: The Wild Between Us follows Binny, a grieving house cat still aching over the loss of Moon Girl, as she’s pulled back into the troubles of her animal community. Raccoons are raiding the neighborhood, humans are setting traps, and the Friendly Pets Club needs Binny’s remarkable instincts before fear turns into violence. What begins as a fight against “masked bandits” slowly becomes something more layered, involving Lucy, a suspicious poodle with secrets of her own, the warrior cats Kohana and Maska, and Dash, a raccoon whose choices are tied to survival, motherhood, and misunderstanding. By the end, the story becomes less about defeating an enemy and more about learning when to protect, when to forgive, and when to look closer.
I found the emotional core of this book surprisingly tender. Binny’s grief is not brushed aside or neatly solved, and I appreciated that. She’s prickly, suspicious, brave, and often unfair, which made her feel more real to me than a perfectly noble animal hero would have. I liked watching her slowly move from fear toward discernment, especially in the way she judges Lucy and later has to sit with the possibility that someone can be secretive without being cruel. The book’s strongest idea, for me, is that peace requires more imagination than war. That’s a thoughtful message for young readers, and it lands because the animals have genuine reasons to be afraid.
The writing is lush and very sensory, full of damp earth, moonlight, storm winds, fur bristling, and scents carried through the dark. I could feel the author’s love of nature and animal behavior in nearly every scene. The drama gets quite intense, and some passages lean into big emotions, ancient destinies, visions, and warnings. The story doesn’t talk down to kids. It trusts them with complicated feelings, moral gray areas, and the idea that bravery is often messy before it becomes wise.
I was moved by this book’s heart. It has the soul of an animal adventure, but underneath that, it’s really about grief, community, inherited duty, and choosing mercy when anger would be easier. I’d recommend it for confident middle-grade readers who love animal stories with mystery, danger, and emotional depth, and I think it would also work well as a parent-child read for families who like pausing to talk about trust, fear, and compassion. It’s a heartfelt, stormy, deeply felt story for kids who are ready for an animal tale with real shadows and real tenderness.
Pages: 172 | ASIN: B0H42CB293
The Flavors Factor
The Flavors Factor is Bill Rennie’s practical, earnest guide to building a genuinely nourishing vegan, whole-food plant-based life without falling into the junk-food vegan trap. The book begins with Michelle and James, two well-meaning people who misunderstand plant-based eating in opposite ways, and then builds its case around “The Flavors Factor,” a foundation of eight food groups: fruit, legumes, alliums, vegetables, whole grains, mushrooms, seeds, and spices. From there, Rennie moves through nutrition, history, sustainability, recipes, and finally meal design tools like the Flavors Wheel and the playful F-Factor card-draw method, all with the larger promise that healthy eating can be flavorful, flexible, affordable, and sustainable.
I found the book most persuasive when Rennie gets personal and concrete. His childhood memory of chips and Heinz beans in Scotland gives the legumes chapter a lived-in warmth, and the opening contrast between Michelle’s vegan pastries and faux nuggets and James’s half-hearted side salads makes the book’s central argument feel immediately human rather than abstract. I liked that he doesn’t treat “vegan” as a magic word. He keeps returning to structure, which I appreciated, because that’s where a lot of diet books either get vague or punitive. Here, the message is gentler: don’t just subtract; build. Fruit isn’t scolded into the diet; it’s described as pleasure, memory, biology, and color. Beans aren’t framed as penance; they’re comfort food, protein, soil care, and cultural inheritance. That generosity gives the book its best emotional texture.
The writing has an appealing enthusiasm. “Life Favors the Flavors,” “Take the LEAD,” “flavorite,” and the many factor-based labels create a strong identity. Rennie’s ideas have real force. I admired the way he ties taste to adherence with the “6 F’s,” especially the blunt little truth that if food doesn’t taste good, it won’t last. The recipe section also helps the book avoid becoming merely theoretical. Moving from oat milk, lentil chili, Thai vegetable curry, mushroom Wellington, peach cobbler, and cashew-based sauces into the Apply and Design sections gives the book a nice arc from conviction to practice. I also appreciated the sober supplement section near the end, especially the attention to B12, vitamin D, omega-3s, iron, zinc, calcium, and iodine. It adds credibility because Rennie isn’t pretending plants solve everything automatically.
What stayed with me most is the book’s insistence that nourishment should feel abundant rather than grim. It’s not a flawless book, and its rhythms can be repetitive, but there’s a sincere intelligence underneath the repetition, a desire to make health feel doable instead of elite or joyless. I came away feeling that The Flavors Factor is best for vegan or vegan-curious readers who want a warmer, more structured path into whole-food plant-based eating, especially people who’ve been living on processed substitutes and need a kinder way back to the plate.
Pages: 502 | ASIN : B0H1T5FZYF
Tales From the Texas Timberlands, Volume 2
Tales from the Texas Timberlands Volume 2, by J. Andrew Rice, is a fiction anthology rooted in East Texas life, family memory, faith, work, and community. Across five stories, Rice moves from a postwar sawmill and a woman’s unexpected wrestling career to city management, football coaching, and church ministry. The book has the feel of stories passed down on a porch, where personal history, local color, and moral reflection all sit side by side.
What stood out to me most was the book’s steady affection for ordinary people doing hard things. Rice writes with a clear respect for builders, teachers, coaches, public servants, church members, and family elders. The stories are often direct, sometimes almost plainspoken, but that plainness works with the material. It gives the book an unvarnished quality. I felt like I was listening to someone who knows these towns, these arguments, these little rituals, and these long memories. The writing doesn’t rush to impress. It takes its time.
I also appreciated the way Rice lets each story carry a lesson without making the whole book feel like a lecture. That balance isn’t always easy. At times, the themes are stated openly, especially around faith, leadership, character, and perseverance, but the best moments come when those ideas rise naturally from the characters’ choices. Mattie’s strength in “Red Hammer Body Slammer,” Guy’s principles in “Sawmill,” Kent’s public service in “The City Manager,” Gary’s mentorship in “Coach,” and the narrator’s church life in “When We All Get To Heaven” all point toward the same belief: people are shaped by work, place, faith, and the stories they inherit. That idea really resonated with me.
As Southern historical fiction and a regional short story collection, Tales from the Texas Timberlands Volume 2 will appeal most to readers who enjoy character-driven stories with a strong sense of place. I would recommend it to anyone who likes reflective small-town fiction, family-centered storytelling, faith-inflected narratives, and books that treat local history as something alive rather than dusty. It’s warm, sincere, and grounded. Readers who enjoy stories about legacy, grit, and community will find a lot to appreciate here.
Pages: 171 | ASIN : B0H2DKDV3Y
Everything Is Connected
In Creature of Secret Sorrows, a shocking discovery in the woods draws a woman and her neighbors into a murder investigation that exposes generations of buried trauma and ancestral violence. What was the first image, character, or scene that sparked the story?
An image from the first book in the series, The Rightful Future, sparked this story. As the characters often reflect, everything is connected. A running theme of the series, A Cadence Mystery, is that long-buried secrets aren’t truly buried. They are simply waiting for the right convergence of people and events to reveal themselves. The narrator of the books, Marian Greene, saw a photograph of a lynching in book 1 in her discovery of the town archives. I always knew I would return to that image because it was so affecting for Marian just to see a photograph of a crime that heinous. And, of course, she is the one who discovers the horrific scene in the woods in book 7, Creature of Secret Sorrows. As the author, it’s paramount to keep track of those details across the span of the series, because, even if only the most discerning reader notices, those details serve as the glue to the world of Cadence. Everything is connected.
In this book, Randy has just been told by his birth mother that she is terminally ill and must see him to give him a family relic. Her devastating news sends him into the woods to search for a turtle stone to gift to her. At the same time, a young man of Ghanaian descent, Kwame Dua, from St. Louis, is headed to Cadence with his girlfriend after a series of unwarranted, racially-motivated police stops and an unsuccessful job hunt that he also believes was prejudiced by racial bias. At first glance, these two events seem completely unrelated, but the reader will discover they are deeply entwined in the secret about to be revealed.
The novel explores how violence echoes across generations. What inspired you to tackle that theme?
That’s a second theme of the series since the beginning. Here in the United States, there is a concerted effort by the current administration to erase the darker chapters of American history. That’s the wrong thing to do. We have to face our past, acknowledge it, reclaim the stories of the victims, and, finally, work toward restorative justice, so that the descendants of both the victims and the perpetrators can heal and come together. Our country is afraid to do that, most likely because it won’t be easy and will probably be a painful journey. But it’s necessary. We will remain divided until we do the hard work.
In Cadence, the past refuses to be erased or forgotten. Rather, it comes knocking on windows and demands recognition and restorative justice.
Readers will discover that trying to hide the past only complicates the present, and leaves certain characters to fuel grievances based on lies and myths. In Creature of Secret Sorrows, such subterfuge ends in tragedy. Had the truth been known, the outcome would have been very different.
Why do you think ghost stories and legends remain powerful ways of talking about historical trauma?
Ghosts and monsters exist in all cultures and are manifestations of our collective and personal traumas, fears, and unresolved sorrows. They are the very things that haunt us in our dreams and in stories passed down through the generations. Sometimes they are the manifestations of the evil perpetrated against others: heinous acts that could only be described as monstrous. Other times it is the longing for someone who suffered at the hands of violence. It’s a way to put a face and a name on that suffering and the ones lost, as well as the pain of being left behind to mourn them. And it is the hope that not only would these loved ones who were ripped from families through violence not be forgotten but that such egregious acts against humanity would never be repeated.
Can fans look forward to more installments in the Cadence Mystery series?
Book 8, as yet untitled, is already nearing completion. Based on an Inuit mythological creature, this story opens when an ice storm and ICE converge on Cadence, causing chaos and fear, and leaving characters to question their safety and their sanity. Readers will be asking, “What happened to the children?” This book promises to be a supernatural thriller steeped in folklore that tackles the roles of religion and faith, respect and acceptance of multicultural beliefs, and personal limits and ethics. An added bonus: you’ll learn some of the many words the Inuit of Nunavik use to describe different kinds of ice.
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Then, real terror visits. A cursed object alters perceptions of familiar places and faces. A mythical creature taunts police officers. And the past comes calling for justice, leaving the tightknit community of Cadence splintered by fear and suspicion.
When more people go missing and another body is discovered, the only thing left behind is unanswered questions. Who was the young man who died so violently? And who among them is harboring secrets and dispensing a depraved retribution?
A Mystical Time
Indigo, The Deep follows a group of people united by the strange magic that gathers around Dipitous Beach during the autumn equinox. What draws you to write for teen and young adult readers?
Coming-of-age stories are where I’ve found joy and consolation throughout my life. Teen stories are the great connectors of the generations. If we’re young, we’re living it; if we’re older, we’ve passed through it, hopefully with a few helpful lessons learned. I love writing about the sparkling energy of teens, reminding all of us to stay curious and embrace new perspectives. After all, life is a bold adventure, laced with grief and pain, but ripe with wonder-filled mysteries and happy surprises, too.
What drew you to setting the story around the autumn equinox and its sense of transformation?
Ah, the changing of the seasons is a mystical time. The shift in light, weather, and tides alters human rhythms, calling us to what we cannot comprehend. Nature smiles, taps us on the shoulder, and whispers in the wind… everything, you know, is always changing. The tide folds, the light blends, shrinking the long light-infused days of summer into the golden days of autumn. During the equinox, the scene is brilliantly set for mystery. The turning of the seasons is when the magic happens!
What did you enjoy most about writing the bond between Condi and Firth?
Condi and Firth are thrown together in an unlikely set of circumstances. When they resist their uncomfortable living situation and see one another as only annoying, a palpable tension arises. I love writing about tension and how it often leads to growth! When Triponica, the wise leader of the Beachlings, points out that Condi and Firth are very much the same, the story begins to change. Firth, fearless and reckless, dives into the deepest of the sea caverns, determined to push his limits. Condi, hoping to mend a broken heart, takes unnecessary risks with her surfing. As the story unwinds, we come to know that Triponica was right. Their bond is unmistakable.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book in the series takes us back in time. What the Surf Master Knows explores life in Dipitous Beach in the seventies. Triponica, mysterious leader of the Beachlings, is a young healer. Andy Marshall, the enigmatic surf master, and Grand Ella, Condi’s insightful yoga teacher grandmother, are teens. Once again, they are swept into strange adventures, encountering the ocean’s wild and mercurial magic.
The prospective release date is the summer of 2027.
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Fifteen-year-old Condi Bloom knows the magic will happen again. The autumn equinox is looming. Strange currents are sweeping through her coastal town. Tides are turning wild, and a mercurial mist cloaks the lonely rock tower known as Windy Hollow, long believed to be haunted.
When a silent threat glides into the cove, altering the fragile ecosystem and drawing sharks close to shore, Condi ignores the danger. A fierce surfer, she insists on pushing her skills to the limit, hoping to heal a broken heart. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Firth Cristo, a bold free diver, is tormented by a past he cannot reveal. Guided by the Beachlings, the mystical women who teach the secrets of the deep, he dares to explore remote underwater sea caverns, navigating the pulsing tides of a shimmering enchantment.
Inspired by the certainty of wonder and the uncertain nature of time, Condi and Firth dive into their rawest places, discovering that healing-of nature, of others, and of themselves-is found in the bounty of a limitless sea.
But what is love to Oksana’s world?
The Matriarch Mission follows a Krymchak girl caught between duty, forbidden love, political violence, and mystical inheritance as she uncovers an ancient feminine power shaping history. What were some sources that informed this novels development?
The world-building in The Matriarch Mission is a result of meticulous, multi-lingual research and sourcing. The resulting historical backdrop is anchored by numerous source documents and the historical facts validated by three LLM engines.
The Romanov exiles primary sources:
- Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich: Supreme Commander of the Russian Army (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) by Paul Robinson
- The Flight Of The Romanovs: A Family Saga by John Curtis Perry
- Shavel’skii, Vospominaniia, vol. 2 Chapter XII. The Volunteer Army (translated from Russian title)
Barchenko expeditions and Cheka link primary sources:
- Most online resources are recycled “kook” posts. Most records about him and his expeditions were confiscated by NKVD during the Great Purge and held as USSR state secrets.
- However, the following article may have direct references from Barchenko’s grandson having been allowed to read some pages of the case against his grandfather.
- Prof. Alexander Barchenko(1881-1938): biography / Александр Барченко: факты биографии (Academia.edu/31167541)
- However, the following article may have direct references from Barchenko’s grandson having been allowed to read some pages of the case against his grandfather.
- An English accounting of Barchenko’s activity is found in this book:
- Znamenski, Andrei. Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia – Chapter 3
- In regards to the Kola expeditions, the Sami legends, the artifacts of an ancient civilization, there are many, many online references. That said, the best is a Russian source which is now blocked:
The Kyrmchaks
- Given how few Krymchaks lived in 1920 and how only a small percent survived the Holocaust, there only a few resources about these people. Here’s two of the germane summaries:
The rural Crimean world
- Inspired by the novel And Quiet Flows the Don (Russian: Тихий Дон) by Soviet-Russian author and Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov
- Visualizations inspired by the 1957 Russian film version by director Sergei Gerasimov
Oksana’s voice is emotional, anxious, funny, and deeply self-questioning. How did you develop her first-person perspective?
Readers of The Matriarch Messiah may remember Rachel Capsali first-person narrative in chapter 8 – dry wit and tactile mind wrestling with her inherited destiny. Inspite of editors’ advice, I wrote this one chapter in first-person so the reader would have deeper bonding with the emotional and cultural dilemma faced by Rachel.
Oksana is Rachel’ great great-grandmother. The first-person vista in The Matriarch Mission was expanded into a whole book. Rachel got her dry wit and tactile mind and her inherited destiny from Oksana.
More important, I chose the first-person point of view specifically to help reader learn about the mythologies, the lore of the Mystery of the Matriarch series through the eyes of a thirteen year old girl. As she struggles to understand, ultimately masters different elements, and overcomes life’s challenges, the reader learns along with her.
And as a coming-of-age character, she is inherently a unreliable narrator, albeit quite funny at times. This narrator style allows for many of the unexpected twists and turns in the novel.
Love in the novel extends beyond romance into motherhood, family duty, sacrifice, and feminine inheritance. What did you most want readers to understand about love through Oksana’s journey?
Modern romance is on the wane. Multiple sources say that formal relationships are on the wane. So what is love in the mid-2020’s? Situationships across GenZ in many countries. Love becomes situations and friendships in the modern world.
But what is love to Oksana’s world? And is it now an archaic notion. For she starts with the notion that love is a romantic. About finding the right life partner. But what she learns is that love transcends the feelings in a committed relationship. By the book’s end, Oksana understands that love is about the sacrifices one makes for one’s self, one’s family, one’s most important relationships.
Is that lesson still valid today and beyond? I believe it is. Love is what you do for yourself and others. Love includes what you do for your faith. Love today is more and more about love of self first. Less about love of others. One hopes that Oksana’s journey, her self-awareness growth leads readers to rediscover the great meanings of love.
Since this book serves as an origin story for the larger Mystery of Matriarchs series, what can readers expect from the series after Oksana’s personal reckoning?
The Matriarch Mission sets up the notion there’s a masculine legend and a hidden feminine legend. A concept that parallels what has happened in history as the feminine side of history often is erased or hidden. That idea plays out across the entire series.
The patriarchal legend of Murometz forms the driving force in The Matriarch Matrix. The matriarchal legend of Zara Khatum and Oksana’s great great-granddaughter Rachel forms the polar opposite driving force in The Matriarch Messiah.
What connects all books in the series is the spherical nature of time and logic in this series. Linear time — the way we are trained to think from point A to point B — is only one dimension of what time actually is. Oksana encounters this idea in her very first meeting with Asherah. The series reveals, book by book, that the women carrying the matriarchal legend are not moving through history sequentially. Hence the multiple plotlines across history in the next two books. These main female characters are part of something that bends back on itself in ways that will only become fully visible in the final books.
To that theme, the Matriarch Mission epilogue establishes that Oksana has two daughters whose diverging destinies will drive the fourth and fifth books in directions readers won’t expect. What begins as a hidden feminine legend becomes something far larger — a reckoning with what history chose to bury and what refuses to stay buried.
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1913 Crimea. Thirteen-year-old Oksana Mangupli enters the legendary cavern of blue light and answers an ancient calling from a forgotten goddess.
From the polar north to Moscow to the Black Sea, she will search for Her truth.
As revolution tears Russia apart, Oksana is haunted by Zoran Murometz — a man of terrifying power who will destroy everything she loves to take the truth she carries.
The man seemingly destined to love her will become the reason she must question everything.
Because the goddess didn’t give Oksana just a mission.
She gave her a question.
What is love?
The answer will cost everything.
For readers of Kate Quinn and Alice Hoffman — from the award-winning author of The Matriarch Messiah and The Matriarch Matrix.
“A richly layered narrative blending historical fiction with speculative mysticism.” — The Book Commentary
Perfect for readers who believe history is hiding something:
Romanov shadows, Bolshevik terror, and the sacred secrets both wanted to destroy
A destined love forged in revolution — and the sacrifice it demands
The divine feminine, erased from history, alive in the blue light of a hidden cavern
Through Oksana’s eyes you will discover the mythology and the divine feminine that powers an entire award-winning saga
Pick up The Matriarch Mission today.
