Category Archives: Five Stars
Avoiding Muddy Foxholes: A Story of an American Bombardier
Avoiding Muddy Foxholes follows the life of Richard “Dick” Loveless as he grows from a young man in Washington, DC into an Air Corps bombardier during World War II. It traces his courtship with Mary Lu, his grueling training, his early missions over Europe, and the unbelievable trials he survived as a prisoner of war. The author also highlights the quiet strength of the families back home. The story blends historical moments with personal memories, and it moves through fear, love, hope, and heartbreak in a way that feels close and honest.
When I first got into the book, I found myself surprised by how quickly I cared about Dick. His honesty and occasional stubborn streak made him feel real to me, and I caught myself rooting for him even when he stumbled. The writing leans into emotion. I liked that it did not try to polish everything. Some moments felt raw, and that rawness gave the book its heart. I could almost hear the noise of the barracks or imagine the cold nights in the POW camp. Sometimes the pacing slowed, yet even those stretches helped me sit with the weight of what these people lived through.
As the story went on, I felt more connected to the relationships than to the battles. The love between Dick and Mary Lu pulled me in every time it appeared. I kept thinking about how young they were and how quickly life forced them to grow up. The author’s voice added another layer because I could sense the pride he felt for his parents. That made the book feel warmer and more intimate. At the same time, the writing often slipped into straightforward talk that matched the everyday nature of the characters. I liked that mix. It made the heavy moments hit harder. There were places where the dialogue felt slightly too polished, but the emotional truth still came through.
Avoiding Muddy Foxholes made me think about the courage it takes to stay hopeful in the worst circumstances and about how love can hold people together when everything else is falling apart. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy personal wartime stories, especially those who want something heartfelt and grounded in family ties. It is a good fit for anyone who likes history told through the eyes of ordinary people who found themselves doing extraordinary things.
Pages: 339 | ASIN : B0CF3C4LM8
Teach Me How to Die. A Novella and Other Stories
Teach Me How to Die opens with a quiet but striking premise. A small group of strangers gather in a New York rehearsal studio to attend a master class on writing suicide notes. Their teacher, Professor Scott Mirrormord, runs the class with a mix of dry humor, unsettling calm, and sudden flashes of emotion. Each character carries a private storm. The Violinist trembles under his own sensitivity, the Hunter bristles at the world that has rejected him, the Accountant clings to order like a life raft, the Poet aches for beauty, the Loser sinks under the weight of lifelong disappointment, and the Philosopher hovers above them all with cool detachment. Across several sessions, their stories unravel in ways that feel surreal, funny, raw, and sometimes painfully honest. The novella blends this unusual setup with short stories that explore gender identity, empathy, loneliness, and the strange ways people hold themselves together when the world feels inverted.
The writing feels theatrical in the best sense. Scenes move with quick beats, like spotlights snapping on and off, and the dialogue carries a rhythm that made me imagine the characters speaking just inches away. Sometimes the tone shifts fast. One moment I laughed at Scott’s odd habits. The next I felt a sharp ache when the Poet revealed the quiet desperation behind her romantic bravado. The emotions hit hard because author Lisa Monde does not overcomplicate them. She keeps them human. There were times I wanted the prose to hurry because the tension between characters felt so tight it made me restless. Still, that uneven pulse worked. It mirrored the way real people think when they are standing at the edge of something dark and trying to talk themselves back toward the light.
The book treats suicide with seriousness and compassion. It does not glamorize it. It does not trivialize it. Instead, it asks why a person might arrive at such a thought and what might pull them away from it. The Poet’s loneliness shook me the hardest. She sees beauty everywhere, yet cannot see herself reflected in anyone else. I also found myself oddly moved by the Accountant, who tries so hard to appear composed while cracking open from the inside. Even the humor carries weight. It softens the darkness without hiding it. The stories that follow the novella expand the book’s themes in unexpected directions. Some felt warm. Some felt strange. All of them carried a heartbeat that stayed with me after I closed the pages.
Teach Me How to Die would be a meaningful read for anyone who enjoys character-driven stories that ask real questions about why people suffer and how they heal. It is also a good fit for readers who appreciate theater and intimate ensemble pieces. For readers willing to sit with tough emotions and still look for hope, this book will land with force.
Pages: 216 | ASIN : B0FXNNRLR3
Who Trains, Wins: How anyone can train for SUCCESS & WEALTH with THE MARTIAL ARTS Train and Grow Rich
Who Trains, Wins is a personal guide to growth through martial arts, written with a mix of tough love, lived experiences, and clear admiration for the warrior path. The book blends personal stories, practical training advice, and reflections on discipline, emotion, and mindset. It walks through the author’s own training across many countries and styles, and it ties each lesson back to everyday life. The message comes through loud and clear. Training shapes the body, the mind, and the choices we make.
Some parts felt almost like a coach shouting from the sidelines, and other parts felt like a quiet conversation late at night when you admit things you rarely say out loud. I liked that contrast. It kept me awake. Author Matthew Black writes with a kind of sharp honesty that sometimes pokes at you. I felt it most in the sections about discipline and frustration. They reminded me how often we get in our own way. The storytelling adds heart. His memories from childhood scraps or tough nights on the job land with real weight. They give the book grit and color, and I appreciated that he never tries to make himself look perfect. It made the lessons easier to trust.
His talk about training against yourself really resonated with me. It is easy to chase external markers of progress. It is harder to sit with your own limits and push past them. I liked how he tied emotional control to fighting, and how those thoughts spill into everyday challenges. He writes in a way that makes you feel both seen and pushed. At times, the tone got intense, yet it also carried warmth. It made me feel motivated and a bit humbled at the same time.
By the end, I felt the book had given me more than advice. It had given me a mood. A sense of wanting to do better for myself. I would recommend Who Trains, Wins to anyone who wants a mindset shift and not just a workout plan. It is perfect for people who crave discipline, or who feel stuck and want a spark to move forward, and for anyone curious about the deeper side of martial arts.
Pages: 290 | ASIN : B0G4NFFWX8
Yasuke: Dead Man Walking
Yasuke: Dead Man Walking opens as a sweeping historical fantasy that follows two rising forces whose lives move toward eventual collision: a young Oda Nobunaga shaking off immaturity to claim power in a fractured Japan, and Majok, an enslaved African warrior whose journey through loss, love, survival, and purpose slowly shapes him into the man history will one day call Yasuke. The book blends political intrigue, action, and character-driven storytelling, shifting between Nobunaga’s ruthless ascent and Majok’s transformation with a pace that feels cinematic.
I was pulled into the grounded emotional beats first rather than the sword clashes. Nobunaga’s early chapters surprised me, especially the way they trace his shift from reckless youth to cold, decisive leader. His world is painted with detail: the scent of incense in Kyoto, the tense quiet after battle, the heavy expectations of lineage. The writing keeps these moments vivid without slowing things down. When the betrayals start hitting him from every direction, the story sharpens. The tone grows darker, hungrier. I noticed how the author lets Nobunaga learn painful lessons through blows rather than lectures, which makes the moments that change him feel earned. Majok’s chapters carry a different emotional weight. They’re quieter but more intimate, and they made me pause more often. His memories of home, the tenderness with Amara, and his love for his daughter create a softer countercurrent that keeps the book from drowning in war and ambition.
I also appreciated how the author plays with contrast. Nobunaga’s path is all fire and force while Majok’s is rooted in endurance and the slow rebuilding of self. Their stories feel like two storms forming on opposite horizons. The fantasy elements appear with restraint at first, which I liked, because it keeps the genre grounded in history while still promising something larger. The pacing sometimes jumps quickly between timelines or tones, but the shifts feel intentional, like the book wants you to stay just a bit off balance as these characters become who they must become. The action scenes hit hard, while the emotional ones are slow and thoughtful. And when brutality appears, it’s not glamorized; it’s presented as the cost of survival in a world shaped by war, pride, and fear.
By the end, I felt like I’d traveled through two very different lives carried by a single thematic spine: what a person becomes when the world refuses to let them remain who they were. The story sits firmly in the historical fantasy genre, but its emotional centers feel close enough to real history to make you think about the people behind the legends. If you enjoy tales of rising power, morally complex leaders, richly built worlds, and characters shaped by both tenderness and violence, this book will speak to you. It’s especially fitting for readers who like their fantasy threaded with cultural depth, political tension, and personal transformation.
ASIN : B0G4NSDKC2
The Bequest of John T Ward: Uncovering A Hidden Legacy in Black American History, Exploring Stories of Antebellum Resistance
The Bequest of John T. Ward traces the long arc of a family’s history from the violent beginnings of colonial Virginia to the fierce resistance of one man who chose courage over silence. The book follows John T. Ward’s journey from enslavement to manumission, then into his work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Alongside his story, the author weaves the deeper roots of the Ward lineage, exposing land grabs, plantation brutality, survival strategies, and the generational spirit that shaped a family determined to rise despite every force working against them. The narrative blends historical records with vivid storytelling that brings the past into sharp focus.
As I moved through the chapters, I felt pulled in by the immediacy of the writing. The author has a way of shifting from personal reflection to historical detail with a rhythm that feels alive. Sometimes the prose hit me hard, especially in sections that explored the emotional landscape of enslaved families. I found myself pausing, letting the weight of those moments settle before reading on. The writing shows how memory, trauma, love, and resistance lived in the same breath for people who had so little room to exist freely.
The voice jumps between past and present, and it carries a raw, personal tone that makes the history feel close and human. I liked that. It felt like someone talking directly to me about their family, not a distant academic piece. The intensity of the language sometimes crowded the quieter insights, and I wished for more calm pauses to let the facts open up on their own. Even then, the author’s passion gave the book a heartbeat. The ideas about inheritance, responsibility, and the duty to remember left me thinking long after I closed the file.
The book gave me a clearer picture of how individual lives fit into the larger struggle for freedom and how resistance did not start or end with famous names in textbooks. I would recommend this book to readers who want a deeply personal look at Black American history and to anyone who appreciates stories that mix truth-telling with emotional depth. It is especially fitting for people who enjoy family histories, hidden legacies, and accounts of courage that echo into the present.
Pages: 582 | ASIN : B0FBT3HTL8
ENTWINE
ENTWINE sweeps through forests, brooks, moonlit branches, and wingbeats, all woven with a steady pulse of wonder. The book moves through poems and meditations that circle hummingbirds, birches, hawks, seeds, storms, memory, and grief, and it builds a picture of the Hudson Highlands as a living, breathing companion. It feels like a record of attention, a long look at the more-than-human world, and a quiet insistence that our lives thread through soil and water, whether we notice or not. The poems shift between close observation and big feeling, and the book holds everything from scientific detail to spiritual yearning in one continuous braid.
Author Mary Newell writes with this mix of tenderness and excitement that made me lean in and then lean back as if I needed more room to breathe. Some poems rush with energy like the hummingbirds she studies, while others settle into slow, grounded rhythms. I loved that variation. It kept me off balance in a good way. I was wrapped up in her affection for trees and birds and rocks, and then suddenly swept into her grief for lost species or her worry that the land is shifting faster than we can keep up. That emotional jumpiness felt real to me. Life is like that. Beauty and ache and humor all at once. The writing invites that kind of response.
I also found myself reacting strongly to the way she folds her own life into the landscape. Her stories of drought, gardening, watching hawks, losing her mother, or waiting for a familiar hummingbird all cracked open something soft in me. None of it felt forced. I could sense how hard she listens to the world around her and how much she wants to meet it with honesty. Sometimes the imagery felt wild and tangled. Sometimes it hit with a clarity that made me stop reading for a moment so I could feel the point land. I appreciated the intimacy of that.
ENTWINE is perfect for readers who love nature writing that feels alive, for people who enjoy poetry that is tender. If you like work that blends science with feeling or work that welcomes you into the woods and asks you to stay awhile, ENTWINE will be a good companion.
Pages: 94 | ISBN : 1609644921
The Gap
The Gap is a survival-horror novel that follows a group of migrants forced through the Darién Gap under the control of brutal coyotes. The story begins with a claustrophobic march through the jungle, where the guides Pinche, Mosca, and Guapo terrorize the group, and the environment itself seems determined to finish the job. As the days stretch on, exhaustion, cruelty, and the strange dread creeping through the rainforest shape a journey that becomes as psychological as it is physical. By the time the story reaches its ending, the line between man and monster feels disturbingly thin.
The writing is direct and raw. The misery hits you in small, relentless details: ants marching through a dead boy’s mouth, water that can’t be drunk without risking agony, a jungle that seems to breathe around the characters. The choices the author makes feel purposeful, even when they’re harsh. Scenes of violence make your stomach churn. At the same time, there’s a strange tenderness woven in through the quiet connections the migrants form, even when they don’t share a language. Those brief human moments, scattered among the horror, make the whole thing feel heavier.
What surprised me most was how the novel blends realism with a slow, creeping sense of the uncanny. For a long stretch, it reads like pure survival fiction, the kind grounded in real-world danger. Then the edges blur. Nightmares start to feel prophetic. The violence becomes ritualistic. By the end, the horror has tilted into something almost mythic, and the shift feels earned because the world was already so brutal that monsters didn’t seem far-fetched. I kept thinking about how trauma can warp perception, how the mind tries to make meaning out of dread. The book never overexplains its stranger moments, and that restraint makes them even more intriguing.
The Gap is a gritty survival horror novel with psychological and supernatural undertones, and it leans hard into the reality that human beings can be more dangerous than any jungle. I’d recommend it to readers who appreciate dark, visceral fiction that doesn’t pull punches, especially those who like their horror rooted in real places and real suffering.
Pages: 356 | ASIN : B0DQJ85XCG
Duck It!
Duck It! follows Lionel Romero, one of the few survivors of a world crushed by a fast and merciless sickness. He leaves his dead parents’ home in Florida and heads toward the Midwest, writing about the trip in a plain notebook. The story blends road travel with emotional fallout, and it traces how he sees the ruined world around him while digging into the memories that shaped him. The book moves between his present journey and his old hurts, which come alive again as he confronts fear, quiet, and the strange freedom of having almost no one left.
I was pulled in by the voice. It is raw, jumpy, funny in dark ways, and full of chaotic honesty. The writing has a rhythm that hits hard because Lionel keeps drifting between bold thoughts and quiet self-doubt. I appreciated how the author let him ramble, swear, and laugh at himself. Sometimes the scenes hit me with this weird mix of dread and warmth, like when Lionel finds comfort in silence or when he sees animals in the open fields and suddenly feels joy. I enjoyed that emotional swing. It made the world feel alive even though most of the people in it are dead.
The idea of being forced into a life you never chose, which Lionel describes through his years working under the Florida sun, came through with sharp detail. The book lingers on resentment. It lingers on guilt. It lingers on that strange sense of floating through your own life. Those moments felt personal. When he describes seeing the dead family on the road, I felt this heavy pressure in my chest. The scene pushed me to imagine what he was too scared to say straight out. The story works best in those places where the emotion sits just under the surface.
By the end, I felt like I understood Lionel’s loneliness, even if he masks it with jokes, curses, and stubborn pride. The book struck me as a study of what a person becomes when the whole world falls apart, and it does this without trying to be poetic or grand. It is simple in its words and messy in its feelings. That mix gives it a strong pull. I kept wanting to hear more of Lionel’s voice.
I would recommend Duck It! to readers who enjoy intimate, voice-driven fiction. Anyone drawn to end-of-the-world stories that feel grounded in real emotion would appreciate this book. It suits those who like flawed narrators, rough humor, and a story that cares more about the person than the plot.
Pages: 315 | ASIN : B0GDS32354
LITERARY TITAN 