The Sticky-Fingered Foodie
Tom Beattie’s The Sticky-Fingered Foodie is a compact collection of two related one-act plays, The Sticky-Fingered Foodie and Vinyl, linked by the exuberant, sharp-tongued figure of Grandma. The first play operates as a fast-moving comic farce. Mikey and Mags, a young couple who have been robbing food trucks, are hiding out in Grandma’s apartment when her unexplained disappearance brings Officer Kapgun uncomfortably close to their crimes. Beattie builds the comedy through verbal misdirection, food puns, escalating anxiety, and the contrast between Mikey’s nervousness and Mags’s cool sarcasm. The deliberately bare setting keeps the emphasis where it belongs, on dialogue and performance, while Grandma’s return shifts the story toward a larger concern with hunger, generosity, and the assumptions people make about one another.
Beneath its farcical surface, the title play gives Mikey a modest but effective moral arc. Grandma’s decision to donate food to an LGBTQ community program initially draws suspicion and crude remarks from him, but the encounter gradually forces him to see hunger as a real problem. His eventual observation that “being hungry sucks” is plainspoken, almost comically obvious, yet that simplicity makes it persuasive. He arrives at compassion through something he understands intimately: food. The play doesn’t abandon its comic instincts to deliver that point. Mikey and Mags remain flawed, funny, and self-interested, and their decision to find legitimate work grows naturally out of the same appetites and anxieties that got them into trouble.
Vinyl changes the rhythm considerably. Set shortly after the first play, it reduces the cast to Grandma and Miss Erica Teal Dysfunction, a young drag queen, and turns their conversation over a collection of disco records into a reflection on memory, queer history, violence, friendship, and survival. What begins as affectionate banter about Sylvester and other disco performers gradually reveals Grandma’s personal connection to that era and the painful memories she has attached to its music. The strongest passage comes when Miss E.D. tells her, “Life’s a vinyl record, Connie. Scratches and skips can happen, but unless you drop the needle, you’ll never hear the music.” The metaphor neatly expresses the companion play’s central idea: remembrance carries pain, but refusing memory also means surrendering the joy, community, and meaning bound up with it.
The two plays form a comic work with an unusually warm emotional trajectory. Beattie’s humor is broad, bawdy, topical, and frequently built around wordplay, but the recurring jokes also create continuity between the characters’ private appetites and the book’s wider interest in basic human needs. Grandma is the connective force. Her irreverence allows the book to move easily between bawdy jokes and serious subjects, while her generosity gives both stories their ethical center. Beattie explains in his closing comments that the project began as two related short plays centered on Grandma, later shaped by a news story about a food-truck robbery and a broadcast of Sylvester’s music. The finished book reflects that unlikely combination: part farce, part character comedy, part remembrance, and a celebration of fellowship, resilience, and the small acts through which people learn to recognize one another.
Pages: 109 | ISBN : 978-1737981299
Book 5 – Rosalind Franklin’s DNA Discovery: Dr. K’s Portal Through Time
Rosalind Franklin’s DNA Discovery, the fifth book in Dr. Katherine E. A. Korkidis’s Dr. K’s Portal Through Time series, blends time-travel adventure with an introduction to molecular biology. Jennifer and Daniel journey to 1950s London, where Rosalind Franklin guides them through her laboratory work, the creation of X-ray diffraction images, and the evidence behind DNA’s double-helix structure. Their visit later expands to Franklin’s research on viruses, giving readers a broader picture of her scientific career and influence.
The science is presented patiently and in concrete terms. DNA becomes a twisted ladder, diffraction patterns become clues written in light, and model-building turns an invisible molecule into something children can picture. Ideas such as base pairing, replication, hydration, and the connection between structure and function appear several times, creating a steady instructional rhythm. The resource section and science-primer links also make the book especially practical for classroom lessons or further exploration at home.
Franklin emerges as precise, resilient, and deeply committed to evidence. The book pays close attention to her working methods, showing discovery as a process of preparing samples, controlling conditions, recording results, and revising interpretations. It also addresses the prejudice Franklin faced and the delayed recognition of her contributions in clear, age-appropriate language. Much of the story unfolds through explanatory dialogue, so the experience often feels like joining an unusually memorable science lesson with a warm adventure wrapped around it.
I’d recommend Rosalind Franklin’s DNA Discovery to curious upper-elementary and middle-grade readers, particularly children who enjoy biology, experiments, or stories about overlooked figures in history. Parents and teachers looking for an accessible bridge between scientific concepts and character education will also find plenty to discuss, from research ethics and collaboration to perseverance and fair recognition. It’s a thoughtful invitation to see science as both a body of knowledge and a human pursuit shaped by patience, integrity, and curiosity.
Pages: 146 | ASIN : B0H9ZSBQ6F
Our Lives Could Be Told As A Myth
The Ring of the Dark Elves follows a cursed ring through gods, elves, giants, and mortals until the heroic Sigurd and shieldmaiden Brynhild are caught in a tragic struggle between love, betrayal, and fate. What drew you to the cursed ring as the foundation for this novel?
I first listened to Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung, and realized I had never heard the story before. Not surprising, since Wagner created it by fusing Norse sagas with German medieval epic and myths. In his work, the enchanted ring causes all the trouble, just as in Tolkien’s trilogy. It’s a great symbol for love of power and the corruption it can cause.
How did you balance staying faithful to Norse mythology with making the story accessible to readers unfamiliar with the original legends?
Much of mythology is based on human nature, so it’s not hard to translate it into more accessible terms. We are not as distant from our ancestors as we like to think. We still suffer from jealousy, envy, greed and the pangs of love.
Sigurd and Brynhild’s relationship becomes the emotional heart of the novel. How did you approach developing their romance within a story whose tragic outcome is rooted in myth?
A myth is a traditional story explaining some natural phenomenon in a supernatural sense. Almost any of our lives could be told as a myth. Love is a mysterious, powerful emotion and/or decision which we only partially understand. I believe it’s the foundation of our existence. When I was a child, looking at sunlight on a tree, I had a revelation in which I saw that love is what sustains the universe. So I just told their story like any other love story, which is powerful enough in itself.
The novel shows powerful characters discovering that they cannot fully control fate. What did you want readers to take away from that theme?
When I’m writing, I don’t really think about themes. I just focus on what’s happening to the characters, what drives them, and the consequences for them. Odin, lord of the Aesir, tries to postpone the end of the world, which isn’t wrong, but he learns that he can’t force other people to follow his agenda. Gunnar, indeed all of the Giukung royal family, use deception and manipulation to increase their power, and learn that it ends in ruin.
Sigurd seeks truth and honor, and like many of our heroes even to the present day, is destroyed by those who hate goodness.
It would be a bleak tale, if it were not that it is not the last word. I left hints in the book that Odin and his Aesir are not the final arbiters of fate; the runes of truth and justice are carved as deep as a spear is long into the World-Ash Tree, and the Aesir did not carve them there.
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Finalist 2026 Fiction Book Award in Fantasy
This is the tale of the enchanted ring, cursed by the dwarflord to bring doom on all who desired it.
In his vision Odin saw a ring, glittering and bright, a thing of great beauty and danger. And the face of a mortal man, stern and beautiful, his fair hair blowing in the wind of battle as the fire-edged sword in his hand rose and fell. So Odin, lord of the nine worlds, saw Sigurd Dragonslayer for the first time. He alone could recapture the ring of power from the cruel dragon Fafnir.
In his effort to regain the ring, Odin ensnared Sigurd and the race of the Volsungs in his schemes, for if he failed, it would mean the beginning of Ragnarok, the end of all worlds. Set in the savage, beautiful world of Norse legend, this is the epic quest of romance, enchantment, adventure and treachery from which Richard Wagner created his magnificent operatic cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung. William Morris said of the tale of Sigurd, “This is the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks.”
Originally published in 2003.
Human Natures: Of Animal and Spiritual
Carroll Blair’s Human Natures is a compact work of moral philosophy built from aphorisms, reflections, and extended meditations. Its central idea is simple and demanding: humanity’s next stage of evolution depends on moving beyond ego, greed, domination, and self-interest toward humility, compassion, courage, and service. Blair presents spirituality as a lived discipline, one measured by how consistently a person acts for the good of others.
The book’s short passages give it a steady, contemplative rhythm. Many read like thoughts meant to be carried through the day, while recurring images of light, gardens, flight, hunger, and captivity make the spiritual struggle feel concrete. The repetition creates pressure as well as emphasis, returning the reader again and again to the same essential question: Which part of our nature are we strengthening?
Blair’s framework is deliberately stark, and that starkness supplies much of the book’s force. At times, its division between the animal and spiritual sides of human life compresses complicated social and psychological realities into a single moral contest. Yet the book’s conviction remains compelling because Blair applies his argument everywhere, from private relationships and career ambition to politics, environmental destruction, and humanity’s collective future.
The epilogue broadens the book from personal reflection into an urgent argument about human survival. Blair suggests that the instincts which once protected our ancestors now threaten a technologically powerful civilization unless they’re transformed by spiritual consciousness. The result is a serious, searching book that asks readers to judge growth by the generosity, integrity, and courage they bring into the world. “Human Natures turns the oldest struggle within us into a clear, insistent summons to become worthy of our humanity.” I recommend Carroll Blair’s work to readers who enjoy thought-provoking explorations of human nature, compassion, and personal growth.
Pages: 140 | ASIN : B006W0PDBI
What If He Was Only A Man
Conspiracy of Faith follows a human and fallible Jesus who conspires to survive the crucifixion, only to discover that a disciple is turning the deception into a religion that will erase the man behind the message. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Conspiracy of Faith started with four years of downtime.
I spent that stretch living in Algeria, head coach of the national basketball team, which sounds busier than it was. Between training sessions and travel for competitions, there were long, quiet hours to fill, and I filled a lot of them thinking about history, faith, and the things I’d grown up believing without ever really questioning.
The actual spark came later, on a trip to Rome with my wife. We were sitting outside St. Peter’s Basilica, a couple of beers in, looking up at one of the largest monuments to religious power ever built — and I remember thinking, plainly: this could not be what Jesus intended.
That thought turned into a question I couldn’t put down: What if he was only a man, and everything still happened exactly as it did?
That question became this book.
The writing came in broken mornings and late nights. The editing took longer than I expected. I was cutting, tightening, deciding what the story actually needed to say versus everything I wanted to say. This taught me more about writing than writing itself. Conspiracy of Faith is the result: a story about a man, the people who loved him, and what happens to a message once it outlives the person who spoke it.
How did you approach the challenge of humanizing figures such as Judas and Jesus while respecting their cultural and religious significance?
That tension was really the starting point of the whole book. I grew up in Catholic school, so the crucifixion story was never abstract to me. It was liturgy, ritual, something I heard told the same way every year of my childhood. Years later I lived in Algeria, a predominantly Muslim country, where Jesus is also deeply revered, a prophet honored and loved, but the story around him is told completely differently. There’s no crucifixion at all in the traditional Islamic account. That contrast never left me. Here was the same man, central to two enormous traditions, and the ending of his story simply diverges depending on where you’re standing in the world.
Living inside that contrast for years, rather than just reading about it, is what planted the seed. I wasn’t trying to adjudicate between those traditions or pick a side. I was interested in something underneath both of them: what would it take, physically and emotionally, for a man to survive his own execution and protect the people he loved by letting the world believe he hadn’t? That’s a human question, not a doctrinal one, and it felt like the one place I could stand that wasn’t already staked out by one tradition or another.
Judas came out of the same instinct. Every version of this story I’d encountered, Catholic and later the very different framing I found in Algeria, treated Judas as a symbol first and a person second: the betrayer, a name that’s become a synonym for treachery in half the world’s languages. I wondered what that story looks like from the inside, if the “betrayal” wasn’t treachery at all but the hardest, most loyal thing a brother could do, taking on a lifetime of being hated by history so someone he loved could live. Once I had that reframe, the rest of the book followed naturally. Peter, Mary, Joseph, Vespasian, all of them became people making difficult choices under pressure rather than figures fulfilling a preordained script.
My goal was never to provoke anyone or pick a fight between traditions. If anything, living in Algeria taught me how much reverence different faiths can hold for the same figure while telling entirely different stories about him. I wanted to write toward that shared humanity rather than away from it: strip away the certainty each tradition brings to its own ending, and ask what’s left when you’re just looking at a man, his family, and the people who loved him enough to risk everything. Whether readers come to this book from a Christian background, a Muslim one, or no religious background at all, I hope what they find is a story about love, sacrifice, and the terrible cost of protecting the people you care about. That’s a human story before it’s anyone’s theology.
Why did you choose Peter as the character who transforms Jesus’s compassionate teachings into a system based on spectacle, guilt, and institutional power?
Peter was a deliberate choice, both narratively and historically. There is an old saying that when investigating an unforeseen death, the first person you look at is the one who has the most to gain. During my research, I kept returning to that question: who stood to gain the most from transforming Jesus’s teachings into something more structured, authoritative, and institutionally powerful?
Peter emerged as a compelling answer. For the story to challenge the traditional understanding of Jesus, the opposing force needed to be someone who held genuine reverence in the modern vision of Christianity, not simply an obvious villain from outside the faith. Peter occupies that position. He is remembered as one of Jesus’s closest disciples and as a foundational figure in the Catholic Church.
I was also drawn to the historical relationship between Peter, Rome, and the development of church authority. During some of the most corrupt periods in church history, Rome and the institution built around Peter became focal points in discussions of religious power, wealth, and influence. That history provided a powerful foundation for the novel’s central conflict.
My intention was not to suggest that every aspect of Christian institutional history can be reduced to one man, or to make a claim about Peter’s actual historical motives. Rather, Peter became the ideal character through whom to explore the possibility that compassionate teachings could, over time, be reshaped into a system dependent on spectacle, guilt, and institutional power. He represents the tension between the message Jesus may have intended and what others might gain by controlling how that message is remembered and practiced.
What historical research helped you construct the practical details of the staged crucifixion, entombment, and recovery?
My approach to the historical research was to establish a consistent foundation rather than select individual details from different accounts whenever they suited the story. I limited my scriptural research primarily to the Gospel of John. I wanted the novel’s version of events to follow one narrative tradition, rather than picking and choosing between the four Gospels to construct the outcome I needed.
I also researched the practical details surrounding Roman crucifixion, including the use of wine and gall, as well as the procedures and structures associated with execution and entombment. These details were documented across multiple historical and religious sources, which helped me ground the fictional events in practices that were plausible for the period.
There is also a subplot in the novel suggesting that John may have been attributed to Mary, allowing the Gospel to be interpreted as Mary’s account of the events. That idea gave me another way to explore how history is recorded, preserved, and potentially shaped by those who tell it.
The tomb scene required a more practical question: could one man, in Jesus’s physical condition, have moved the stone? I researched the mechanics of ancient stone-moving techniques and the simple machines used by the Greeks and Romans. Those technologies demonstrated that very large objects could be moved by surprisingly few people, making the scene more plausible when approached as an engineering problem rather than a miracle.
The recovery itself became more straightforward once I considered the people involved. In the novel, Philip’s knowledge as a physician plays an important role, and I also examined the absence of explicit documentation that Jesus’s feet were nailed in the crucifixion accounts I was using. Those details helped me construct a recovery that relied on human knowledge, physical possibility, and preparation rather than supernatural intervention. The goal was to make the reader consider not whether the events could happen, but whether they could have been understood differently.
Author Links: Goodreads | Facebook | Website | X
History remembers him as the Son of God.
But what if history got it wrong?
Jesus of Nazareth is no miracle worker. He is a husband, a father, and a man determined to survive long enough to protect the people he loves. As his influence spreads across Judea, the Roman Empire tightens its grip and the religious elite demand his death.
Execution is inevitable.
Unless he can convince the world he died.
With the help of a handful of trusted allies, Jesus sets in motion an impossible conspiracy—one that must withstand betrayal, unimaginable suffering, and the scrutiny of Rome itself. Every wound must appear real. Every witness must believe. Because if even one person uncovers the truth, everyone involved will be executed.
The plan succeeds.
But the resurrection story takes on a life of its own.
As whispers become conviction and conviction becomes a movement, Jesus faces an impossible choice: reveal the truth and destroy everything…or remain silent and become the foundation of the greatest religion the world has ever known.
CONSPIRACY OF FAITH is a provocative historical thriller that blends history, suspense, and psychological drama into an unforgettable reimagining of one of humanity’s most influential stories.
What if belief wasn’t born from a miracle…but from the greatest conspiracy in history?
Somewhere Else
Alan McKee’s Somewhere Else is a literary speculative novel with the steady pull of psychological horror. Joe Patterson, a sixty-six-year-old history professor, discovers that touching certain artifacts lets him enter the experiences attached to them. He witnesses Jefferson and Franklin shaping the Declaration of Independence, Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon, Van Gogh painting The Starry Night, and the Wright brothers taking flight. These encounters feel intensely physical, complete with smells, emotions, and borrowed memories. They also awaken a dark figure that seems to feed on moments of human transcendence. What begins as a historian’s dream soon develops the rhythm of an addiction, with every extraordinary encounter making Joe’s present life seem a little dimmer.
The historical sequences are the book’s showpieces, and McKee writes them with warmth and sensory detail. His version of Van Gogh experiences color as sound and feeling, while Edison’s successful light bulb matters because it will allow an imagined child to finish reading after dark. These scenes reveal the novel’s generous view of achievement: history is made by vulnerable people who don’t yet know how their work will endure. McKee occasionally repeats phrases about consciousness, infinity, and transcendence more often than their meaning requires, but the recurring language also reflects Joe’s narrowing mind. His intellectual curiosity gradually hardens into a private creed, one that can justify each new deception and disappearance.
The novel becomes especially affecting when it returns to Margaret, Joe’s wife of forty-five years. Her chapters give ordinary life its own weight through coffee, paintings, family dinners, missed calls, and the familiar sounds of another person moving through the house. She understands Joe’s behavior as a wife watching a husband become less honest, less reachable, and less interested in the life they built. That perspective keeps the supernatural plot emotionally credible. Joe’s transformation isn’t treated as a simple fall from grace. He recognizes the value of Margaret, their son, and their granddaughter, then knowingly chooses something else. The ending lands because it preserves that uncomfortable truth, while the epilogue follows Margaret toward a hard-earned freedom from carrying his choice forever.
Readers of Stephen King’s 11/22/63 will recognize the fascination with entering history and the conflict between a monumental mission and an intimate human life. Both books treat the past as a seductive place that can rearrange a person’s loyalties, though McKee approaches that idea through concentrated visions. His strongest contribution is the question beneath Joe’s obsession: if transcendence asks us to surrender the relationships that make us human, what exactly have we transcended? Somewhere Else answers through Margaret’s paintings and memories, finding vast meaning inside finite moments. It’s a haunting first novel about history, compulsion, and the danger of valuing cosmic significance more than the person sitting beside you at breakfast.
Pages: 177 | ASIN : B0HCDR75Q2
Eliminate the Stigma
In Pizza Dog Annie’s Guide to Wellness, you blend memoir, humor, and practical guidance through Annie’s lively perspective, using the bond between you and your beloved dog to explore hope, healing, and resilience following your struggle with major depression. What inspired you to share your story?
I wanted to make the point that mental and physical illnesses should both be treated with compassion. It was my effort to eliminate the stigma by outing myself to change the way those with a mental illness are viewed.
Why was humor important to you when addressing such difficult subjects?
I believed that alternating dark subjects with humor would make it a more enjoyable read. My goal was a hopeful and joyful book despite the heavy subject.
What does your relationship with Annie reveal about the healing power of companionship?
Friendship with our pets and with our friends is essential to healthful living. Doctors should prescribe dogs and companion animals to the depressed and lonely.
After sharing this deeply personal journey, what does healing and resilience mean to you now?
I don’t feel ashamed anymore. My depression doesn’t define me. I don’t have to hide in the shadows. My recovery is complete, one day at a time.
Author Links: X | Facebook | Website
Across twenty-six compact chapters, Charns presents wellness as a collection of mutually reinforcing habits. Walking, medication, talk therapy, meditation, sleep, faith, friendship, reading, volunteer work, political participation, and gratitude all contribute to a balanced life. The book’s structure reflects this philosophy, moving briskly among personal memories, observations, photographs, and Annie’s comic complaints. Her demands for walks, games of fetch, and generous portions of dog treats give the narrative an appealing rhythm and keep its advice grounded in daily experience.
The book gains depth from Charns’s account of intergenerational trauma. His mother’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland, her later struggles with post-traumatic stress, and his own early encounters with Holocaust history illuminate the fears that shaped his family. Charns writes with particular honesty about psychosis, suicidal thoughts, sleep deprivation, and the stigma surrounding psychiatric hospitalization. The chapters on treatment and family support are direct and humane, presenting recovery as sustained work supported by professional care, meaningful routines, and personal relationships.
Annie’s humor gives the book its distinctive personality, but its strongest quality is the sincerity beneath the jokes. Charns’s affection for his dog becomes a way of expressing gratitude for the people, practices, and communities that helped restore his health. When Annie defines canine devotion by saying, “That is the power of the dog. Love. Love. And more love,” the line also summarizes the book’s central conviction. Concise, intimate, and encouraging, Pizza Dog Annie’s Guide to Wellness offers an accessible portrait of recovery rooted in companionship, purposeful activity, and care.” Literary Titan Review.
A Family Across Town
Aynah V. Askanas’s A Family Across Town is a candid memoir about growing up inside a secret whose effects were visible long before its facts were known. Askanas’s father, a Los Angeles pediatrician, maintained two households for more than thirty years, dividing his time between six children and two women. The memoir begins with the revelation of that double life, then returns to the family histories and childhood experiences that preceded it. This structure turns a startling discovery into a broader examination of secrecy, inheritance, and the emotional atmosphere parents create for their children.
Askanas writes in an intimate, conversational voice, building the family portrait through sharply remembered domestic details. Her mother’s cracked hands, her father’s closed bedroom door, an altered wedding photograph, and holidays celebrated on the wrong day all become evidence of a reality the children could sense but couldn’t name. Askanas captures that experience vividly: “Like corpses in an attic, the secrets emitted an odor that permeated our home, though my siblings and I didn’t know where it came from.” Her humor, often dry and self-questioning, provides necessary relief while preserving the gravity of the story.
The book’s emotional reach extends well beyond its central revelation. Askanas traces how the concealed family shaped each sibling differently, contributing to depression, aggression, substance use, perfectionism, and her own prolonged insomnia. She also places her mother’s choices within the economic and social constraints faced by women of her generation. These reflections give the memoir historical and psychological breadth. At times, Askanas presses the secret into service as an explanation for nearly every illness or misfortune, including physical disease. That interpretive consistency gives the narrative coherence, though some connections remain more speculative than demonstrable.
I think what distinguishes A Family Across Town is its willingness to hold affection and anger together. Askanas recounts her father’s deceit and cruelty while acknowledging the confidence, education, and love of reading he gave her. Her mother emerges as wounded and complicit, but also stylish, funny, devoted, and increasingly independent after the secret is exposed. The later chapters, which include a cruel dispute over paternity and the gradual softening of old judgments, deepen the book’s moral complexity. This is a clear-eyed family reckoning that finds healing in truthful testimony and in the durable bonds among those who survived the same divided home.
Pages: 256 | ASIN : B0GPDMYWJM
