Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
Restoration by Laura Brooke
Even Angels Wear Leather Jackets and Ride Motorcycles by J.A. McGovern
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Nonfiction
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes outstanding nonfiction books that demonstrate exceptional quality in writing, research, and presentation. This award is dedicated to authors who excel in creating informative, enlightening, and engaging works that offer valuable insights. Recipients of this award are commended for their ability to transform complex topics into accessible and compelling narratives that captivate readers and enhance our understanding.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Childrens’ Books
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes children’s books that mesmerize audiences with incredible narratives, vibrant illustrations, charming characters, and fresh ideas. Offering well-earned accolades, we salute the imagination and exceptional skill of authors who create tales that spark curiosity and delight in young minds.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Poetry
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes poets who demonstrate exceptional artistry and proficiency and push the boundaries of language and expression. The recipients are poets who excel in their technical skills and evoke deep emotional responses, challenge thoughts, and illuminate new perspectives through their work. The award honors those who contribute to the literary landscape with their unique voices and powerful words.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Silver Book Award
Celebrating the brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.
Award Recipients
Crescent City Requiem by Brian Kaufman
Sunday Morning at Cafe Noir by Jo James
The Suicide Council by Victer Hugo Basurco
Departure from Innocence by WILLIAM WILSON
Steel & Ballast by Markella Kara
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Disheartened
A.L. Waddington’s Disheartened, the second book in the Spirit Quest Series, follows Sidney as she lives two parallel lives 160 years apart. In 2020 Boston, she and Landon face medical school, hospital work, the COVID-19 pandemic, political unrest, and a painful family loss. In 1860, she is married to physician Keifer, gives birth to their son, visits his family in Savannah, and travels to Chicago as the nation moves toward civil war. Through the inherited gift of E.V.E., Sidney remembers both worlds and struggles with the desire to protect people whose futures she already knows.
I liked the alternating chronology because the two periods reflect each other without feeling identical. Both are marked by fear, social division, and families trying to preserve ordinary life while larger events close in. The domestic scenes give the novel much of its texture: shared meals, hospital shifts, childbirth, letters, road trips, and quiet conversations between couples. Sidney’s grief over Nicholas is especially effective because he connects her two lives, and his death leaves her emotionally unmoored.
The novel is also strongly political. Its characters debate COVID restrictions, race, elections, slavery, taxation, secession, and Lincoln’s role in the coming war. These views are presented from a distinctly conservative perspective, and readers will need to be comfortable with that approach. At times, the political dialogue slows the story and makes several characters sound alike. The book is strongest when those beliefs produce personal consequences, especially in Keifer’s divided loyalties and Sidney’s confrontation with the father who abandoned her.
I’d recommend Disheartened to readers of historical fiction, time-slip fantasy, family saga, political fiction, and romance. Its divided-life premise recalls Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, though Waddington focuses more on parallel families and foreknowledge. Disheartened is ultimately about having two homes and knowing neither can ever be safely left behind.
Pages: 442 | ASIN : B0GR9PWSL2
Built to Matter
Built to Matter is a practical leadership book organized around a clear proposition: enduring companies are built through the alignment of mission, disciplined growth, trustworthy leadership, and human judgment. Drawing on Dr. Srikanth Gaddam’s entrepreneurial experience, the book moves from the founder’s mindset to organizational culture, sustainable scaling, legacy, and artificial intelligence. Its thirteen chapters form a coherent leadership architecture, with each chapter combining a narrative example, a management framework, key takeaways, and specific actions readers can apply. This structure makes the book especially useful for founders, executives, and managers who want both strategic perspective and operational guidance.
The book’s strongest contribution is its treatment of purpose as an operating discipline. Gaddam argues that values become meaningful when they shape hiring, client relationships, resource allocation, and difficult decisions. His statement that “growth is good, but enterprise value is everything” captures the book’s broader emphasis on durability over short-term expansion. Chapters on trust, culture, coaching, intrapreneurship, and impact measurement extend this principle across the organization. Together, they show how leadership choices accumulate into systems that either strengthen or weaken a company as it grows.
Gaddam also offers a thoughtful account of artificial intelligence and its role in modern business. He presents AI as a powerful source of leverage for solo founders and established organizations while keeping human expertise at the center of value creation. The later chapters address adoption barriers, data readiness, accountability, and the gap between impressive demonstrations and effective implementation. The book’s central insight on this subject is expressed with admirable precision: “AI raises the baseline for everyone. The ceiling is still entirely human.” This perspective connects the technology chapters naturally to the book’s earlier discussions of empathy, trust, ethical responsibility, and contextual judgment.
The book’s accessible style is reinforced by memorable frameworks, recurring real-world scenarios, and direct reflection questions. At times, its lessons are stated repeatedly across chapters, particularly the importance of trust, values, and human-centered leadership, but that repetition also creates thematic consistency. The strongest sections are those in which Gaddam pairs a difficult business experience with a specific leadership principle, allowing the advice to emerge from consequences. Built to Matter is a purposeful and highly applicable guide to building organizations that can grow without losing their standards, relationships, or sense of responsibility.
Pages: 143 | ASIN: B0H273VR1N
The Popcorn Burglar
The Popcorn Burglar by Gloria G. Adams is the first entry in the Silvee Spoon, Junior Chef Science Mysteries series. This middle-grade mystery follows ten-year-old Silvee Spoon and her triplet siblings, Parker and Trina, after strange noises echo through their converted factory apartment building and someone sneaks into their father’s restaurant kitchen. Missing food, two abandoned milk glasses, a hidden doorway, and a trail of popcorn give the young detectives plenty to investigate. The setup is easy to grasp, but it has enough twists and suspicious characters to keep the case moving.
Silvee makes an engaging narrator because her curiosity feels active rather than merely described. She notices details, tests theories, and turns her knowledge of cooking into practical detective work. Parker contributes math skills and quick observations, while trivia-loving Trina adds humor, imagination, and the occasional ghost theory. Their orange cat, Hashbrown, brings some welcome chaos to the investigation. Together, the siblings have the comfortable teasing and cooperation of a real family, and their different interests give this children’s mystery book a lively group dynamic.
The strongest feature of this STEM children’s book is the way food science becomes part of the mystery instead of interrupting it. Short science sections explain why popcorn pops, why chocolate melts, and why tonic water glows under a blacklight. Silvee then applies those ideas in the kitchen, most memorably when she makes glow-in-the-dark popcorn balls to track the culprit. Recipes, trivia, and puzzles extend the experience after the story, making the book feel like a blend of science mystery, culinary adventure, and hands-on activity book. The illustrations also help establish the old building’s shadowy spaces, the bustling restaurant kitchen, and the personalities of the Spoon family.
Underneath the clues and experiments, The Popcorn Burglar is a warm story about responsibility, curiosity, and kindness. Chef Spoon’s rules provide a natural moral framework, particularly the reminders to clean up after yourself, control your anger, and sprinkle kindness over everything. The solution adds emotional weight without becoming heavy, showing Silvee that understanding someone’s circumstances matters as much as identifying what happened. With short chapters, playful dialogue, accessible science, and a satisfying case, this educational chapter book should connect especially well with young readers who enjoy mysteries, cooking, experiments, or all three.
Pages: 76 | ASIN : B0H94SYS7B
