Author Archives: Literary Titan
Peaches and the 19 Cobras
Peaches and the 19 Cobras tells the story of Peaches and Jake, two sweet rescue dogs who misunderstand COVID-19 as “19 cobras” and spend the pandemic doing everything they can to protect their mom. The book moves through their daily adventures from quarantine in Florida to summers in Maine. There are masks and costumes, funny misunderstandings, shiny Christmas trees, and a whole lot of love. The dogs tell the story in their own voices, so the whole thing feels warm and comforting.
As I read it, I kept catching myself smiling. The writing feels like someone chatting with me in their kitchen. It’s simple in a good way and full of genuine emotion. The idea of hearing the pandemic through the ears of two confused and devoted dogs was surprisingly emotional. It reminded me of how strange that time was and how pets kind of carried so many of us through it. Some moments even made my eyes sting a little because the mix of humor and fear from that year still sits in my chest. Seeing the dogs try to make sense of everything made the whole memory softer for me.
I also loved how the book leans into joy. There are photos everywhere, and they’re adorable. The stories jump from masks that never stay on to gigantic Christmas trees to lobster dinners in Maine. It felt chaotic in a charming way. Like watching someone you love tell a story while getting distracted every few sentences. I honestly laughed out loud when the dogs kept ditching their masks or when Peaches tried to look fierce with her tiny warrior stance. The whole thing just felt honest. Not polished in a stiff way. More like real life with all the messiness and sweetness mixed together.
Peaches and the 19 Cobras is great for kids who want a gentle way to understand a heavy moment in history and for adults who want a soft, funny reminder of how we made it through. Anyone who loves animals or who leaned on a pet during the pandemic will feel this one. It’s light and goofy and unexpectedly touching. I’d happily pass it along to families, teachers, grandparents, and anyone who just needs a picture book that feels kind.
Pages: 88 | ASIN : B0DDW3GM88
Ghosts and Baklava
Ghosts and Baklava follows Rehan Monsoor, a thirty-something Pakistani American “numbers guy” who thinks his biggest problem is getting a promotion at Nexus Billing. He is fired instead, and a weird chain of events drops him into his uncle’s struggling restaurant, Baklava Express, where ghosts, jinn, and a doomsday cult keep showing up with very personal plans for him. The story jumps between his teenage dare in a haunted “Spook House,” his present-day fight against a vengeful jinn and a group called the Ten, and his slow-burn love story with Wava, the girl he crushed on in high school and never quite forgot. Food, family drama, creepy magic, and wisecracking horror scenes all swirl together until Rehan has to decide what kind of “merchant” he is and who he wants next to him when the supernatural countdown hits zero.
I had a lot of fun with the voice in this book. The narration sounds like a friend telling you an insane story. Rehan cracks jokes when things get tense, and the humor stays pretty sharp, even when people are literally catching fire in front of him. The dialogue moves fast and feels natural, and the running gags about 90s music, Vanilla Ice, and Desi aunties gave the whole thing a warm, familiar vibe. Sometimes the banter leans a bit heavy, and a few emotional beats get undercut by a punch line, but the mix of horror and rom-com mostly lands. I also liked how clear the action scenes felt, even with cultists, ghosts, and flying furniture in the same room. The pacing dips a bit in the middle when the lore around the jinn and the book of spells gets explained, yet the story never fully stalls, because the character chemistry keeps pushing it forward.
Rehan’s “cursed mark” and the Spook House incident read like a metaphor for that one bad choice or trauma you keep dragging behind you, even after you grow up and get a corporate ID badge. His fear of being ordinary, his obsession with the promotion, and the way his whole identity collapses when he gets fired all feel uncomfortably real. The supernatural trouble almost feels like anxiety made physical, something that creeps out of old stories your parents told you and refuses to stay imaginary. I really appreciated the way the book treats community, too. The Desi family stuff, the restaurant regulars, the blend of faith, superstition, and everyday hustle, all give the horror weight. The jinn is scary, but the cult’s willingness to sacrifice other people for their “Harvest” feels like the more pointed commentary. It is about how far people will go when they convince themselves they are chosen or special.
I’d call Ghosts and Baklava a lively, heartfelt supernatural rom-com with some surprisingly grounded thoughts about failure, faith, and second chances baked into all the chaos. It fits readers who enjoy character-driven stories, pop-culture jokes, and mashups that put jinn, cults, and awkward Desi family dinners in the same scene without blinking. If you like your spooky reads with romance, comfort food, and a main character who copes by oversharing, this book is a pretty tasty pick.
Pages: 374 | ASIN : B0FRZPYGW1
Fungus Theory of Conscious Growth
Fungus Theory of Conscious-Growth is a speculative science and philosophy-of-consciousness nonfiction book that argues all life on Earth is really one vast, ancient fungus that exists to grow consciousness to its maximum potential, with humans as the spore that eventually carries that consciousness off the planet and into space. The author starts with cosmology, describing a universe that hides our true origin, limits our lifespans, and ties us to fragile biospheres, then walks through biology, evolution, technology, and psychology to claim that everything from slime mold to smartphones is part of one continuous fungal system pushing us toward “maximum conscious growth” and eventual evacuation of Earth.
Mark L. Christensen mixes straightforward explanation with capitalized concepts and acronyms. Underneath the terminology, though, the core ideas are simple: the universe is built so we can never fully know where we came from, we all die, and we are stuck on a planet that will eventually cook us, and those three constraints are what force intelligence and technology to grow. I appreciated how the chapters loop back to the same framing, so you never forget what the author is trying to prove. The long passages on cosmic expansion, black holes, and the difficulty of tracing any “true origin” were a bit dense, yet they set a clear mood of mystery and frustration that fits the book’s central question.
Where the book got most interesting for me was in the biology, technology, and psychology sections, where the fungus metaphor gets fleshed out. The idea that all plants and animals are variations of the same original fungus, and that this fungus has slowly prepared the planet for a bipedal creature with a big, hungry brain, is truly compelling. I liked the image of early fungi and plants essentially “setting the table” with rich fruits and vegetables, so a future human brain could have the calories it needs.
The technology chapter frames every tool, from early adaptations to modern spaceflight, as a kind of informational mycelium spreading through minds, with certain thinkers as “spikes” in the network that accelerate the whole system. The psychology chapter leans into this even more, describing a “void of psychosis” that opens when humans become aware that they cannot know their true origin, and arguing that our drive for identity, conflict, communication, and eventually space travel all come from trying to fill that void. I did find myself thinking about how much of my own motivation comes from not knowing, and from not wanting life to feel pointless.
I see Fungus Theory of Conscious Growth less as a strict scientific thesis and more as a big thought experiment in speculative science. It asks you to imagine the entire history of life as one fungal organism trying to launch itself into the dark, and to see humanity as the spore that might carry that effort into the galaxy. If you like big-picture questions, cosmic timelines, and philosophical riffs on evolution and technology, there is a lot here to chew on. I would recommend this book most to readers who are comfortable living with unanswered questions, who like their popular science mixed with metaphysics, and who do not mind a bold, unified theory that sits somewhere between lecture and late-night conversation about why we are here at all.
Pages: 402 | ASIN : B0CVXCNBY7
Indra’s Net: A SEEKER’S Guide to the Human Experience
Indra’s Net, by Indra Rinzler, is a spiritual guide built from seventy-eight themes that weave stories, reflections, and practices into a single tapestry of awakening. The book blends personal experience, Tarot-inspired structure, mythic symbolism, and grounded spiritual lessons. It invites readers to look inward, release old patterns, and explore consciousness with curiosity. The author draws from decades of study, travel, meditation, and teaching to create a kind of living manual that meets readers wherever they are. The effect is a blend of memoir, parable, and spiritual toolkit.
Reading the book, I kept feeling a mix of surprise and comfort. The writing carries a warm, almost conversational honesty that makes even the heavier ideas feel approachable. I liked how the author refuses to separate the mystical from ordinary life. A simple bowl of oatmeal becomes a miracle. A long walk in Thailand becomes a spiritual dilemma. A beggar’s smile becomes a master class in grace. The stories feel loose and unforced. I found myself nodding along, then stopping, then looking up from the page because something landed in my chest. The rhythm moves from personal anecdote to broad spiritual teaching so quickly that it left me slightly off balance in a good way. It reminded me that understanding rarely arrives in a straight line. It sneaks up on you.
At the same time, the ideas stirred up a strange mix of awe and restlessness. The author talks a lot about surrender, intuition, and letting life unfold. Some moments felt so gentle that I relaxed into them. Other moments poked at me. The theme of impermanence, for example, made me strangely uneasy. I felt myself push back, even as I knew the point was to soften. That emotional tug made the book stick with me. I appreciated how the stories never try to be perfect teaching moments. They wander and land where they land. The book feels authentic, and that gave it a texture that pulled me deeper.
By the last pages, I felt a quiet gratitude for the way the Rinzler uses imagery and structure. The Tarot framework, the themes, and the practices are presented at the end of each chapter. It all creates a rhythm that feels like a long walk with someone who has been on the road a while and wants you to see the scenery with fresh eyes. I would recommend Indra’s Net to readers who enjoy reflective, spiritually curious writing and who like books that offer small, steady insights rather than big proclamations. It is especially good for people who want a companion on their inward journey. Someone who wants to feel less alone and more connected to something larger and kinder than their own thoughts.
Pages: 286 | ASIN : B0FX65LB69
Letters From the Sand
Reading Letters from the Sand, by Scott G.A. Metcalf, felt like sitting down with someone just back from deployment and asking, “So what was it really like?” It is a military memoir that follows one soldier from the shock of stepping off the C-130 into the brutal desert heat, through the daily grind of patrols, life in canvas tents and crowded barracks, cultural encounters with Iraqi civilians, holidays spent far from home, and finally the uneasy process of coming back. The book moves in clear stages, from arrival and adjustment to stress and resilience, and then into reflection and return, so by the end I felt like I had walked the full arc of a tour alongside the narrator.
What stood out to me first was the writing. It is vivid. The heat, the dust in your teeth, the smell of jet fuel and sweat and canvas, the cramped bunks and noisy mess hall, all of it is described in careful detail that pulls you into the space rather than just telling you what happened. The style leans toward long, rolling sentences that mirror the drag of long days on base and on the road, then suddenly there is a short, sharp line that hits like a snapped command. The first-person voice helps a lot. It feels controlled and thoughtful, not like a raw journal dump, which gives the whole memoir a steady, grounded feel.
I also appreciated the way the author handles choices and ideas rather than just scenes. There is a lot here about routine and discipline, but underneath that is a constant question about what all of this is doing to the people involved. The book lingers on small human moments in the barracks, late-night conversations, card games, letters home, the way guys arrange their bunks with photos and little bits of home to hang on to who they are. It also pays attention to the civilians around them, the awkwardness of brief meetings in villages, and the mix of suspicion, fear, and curiosity on both sides. The memoir never turns into a big political argument, which I actually liked. Instead, it lets you sit with the tension between duty and doubt, pride and fatigue, connection and distance. By the time you get to the later reflections, the early scenes of arrival and “mission talk” feel heavier, because you have watched what that environment does to people over months, not days.
Letters from the Sand is a good fit for readers who like reflective, character-focused military memoirs rather than pure action stories. If you are a veteran or close to someone who has served, a lot of this will ring painfully true and might give you language for things that are hard to explain. If you have never been near this world but want to understand what “deployment” really feels like on a day-to-day, human level, this book is a patient, honest guide.
Pages: 201 | ASIN : B0G2335VNQ
The Split
The Split gathers the voices of women who faced the unraveling of marriages, families, identities, and long-held beliefs. Across these stories, the writers look directly at pain, loss, and the complicated paths toward freedom. Instead of treating divorce or separation as a collapse, the book reframes each ending as a turning point where women choose themselves, rebuild their lives, and honor the truth that wholeness can follow even the hardest breaks. By the final pages, the collection stitches together a message that is steady and hopeful. These women are not broken, and they are becoming something stronger.
Reading their words, I felt an ache in my chest more than once. The writing is striking in its honesty, and the stories breathe with real life. Brandee Melcher’s chapter opens with the raw confusion of childhood and grows into a powerful reclaiming of self, and her voice shook me because of how clear and grounded it becomes. Her journey from chaos to confidence made me root for her, and it reminded me how childhood patterns can shadow adulthood until we finally name them. I also found myself lingering on Sierra Melcher’s reflections on choosing peace over performance. Her reminder that children do not need perfect homes, they need healthy adults, resonated with me personally. The stories impact in different ways, but all of them bring a unique emotional punch.
Some chapters hit harder than others, and the shifts in tone from one writer to the next made the book feel unpredictable in a way I genuinely enjoyed. That variety gave the collection its energy. I especially appreciated the moments when the authors stepped back from the trauma and wrote about joy creeping in again. Those small wins felt huge. They made the book less about loss and more about rebuilding something real. At times, I wished a few stories went deeper into the “after” rather than the “during,” but even that unevenness felt honest. Healing rarely moves in a straight line, and the structure of the book mirrors that reality.
The Split would be a meaningful read for anyone standing at the edge of a major life change, especially women navigating separation, divorce, or the quiet breaking points that do not always have names. It would also help friends, partners, and professionals who want to understand what these experiences actually feel like from the inside. The book sits with the hard parts, and it also leaves space for light. I would gladly recommend it to anyone who needs a reminder that endings do not mean failure. They mean a new chapter is ready for you, and you get to decide what it becomes.
Pages: 144 | ASIN : B0G274WVFH
LITERARY TITAN 