Everyone Deserves a Home
Baer Charlton’s historical fiction novel, Everyone Deserves a Home, traces the intertwined lives of Walter Humphrey, Leatha, Betsy Turner, and eventually Hannah Mariah Rose Humphrey. It begins in the American South of the mid-1800s, moves through New Orleans, crosses the ocean to England, and follows a family shaped by secrets of race, identity, and survival. From the first chapters, the story lays out a complicated inheritance: hidden parentage, passing as white, the legacy of enslavement, and the formation of a chosen family built not by blood but by loyalty. Even early on, you see how Hannah’s future as a surgeon grows out of this unconventional household where medicine, language, theater, and resilience are all part of daily life.
The writing moves with an intimate, memoir-like rhythm, especially in the prologue, where adult children recount their mother’s hidden Black heritage and how she “became white” at five years old. That moment alone sets the tone. It’s direct, a little painful, and strangely gentle. Scenes stretch out with detail you can almost smell or touch. Then, suddenly, a sentence snaps short and lands like a stone in the gut. I liked that mix. It mirrors the characters themselves. Walter’s voice, in particular, blends clinical precision with emotional restraint. Meanwhile, Leatha’s chapters feel grounded and visceral, as if she’s speaking while chopping vegetables or tying on an apron. And Betsy’s early chapters shimmer with that mix of bravado and fragility found in a teenager who has survived too much too young.
What surprised me most was how the novel lets relationships carry the ideas. Topics like passing, racial identity, gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy are present, but they arrive wrapped inside the everyday details of meals, births, surgeries, and whispered conversations over kitchen tables. The story never lectures. It just unfolds. Sometimes I found myself pausing, not because something dramatic had happened, but because a small detail shifted my understanding of a character. A hand on a shoulder. A joke in sign language. A quiet refusal to leave someone behind. These moments gave the book a warm undercurrent even when the history it leans on is harsh. And although the novel spans continents and decades, its emotional center always comes back to the home this unconventional family creates together.
By the end, I felt like the title wasn’t just a claim but a philosophy that the book keeps proving. The story champions people who carve out belonging in a world determined to deny it to them. It’s historical fiction, yes, but it reads with the intimacy of family lore and the clarity of someone finally ready to tell the whole truth. I would recommend Everyone Deserves a Home to readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction, stories about identity and chosen family, and novels that blend emotional honesty with rich, lived-in detail.
Pages: 263 | ASIN : B0FL13PG6X
I And the Village: Daughter of the Kibbutz
I and the Village: Daughter of the Kibbutz traces Estee Cohen Laub’s life from her early childhood in Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk to her family’s tangled past in Europe, shaped by war, migration, and loss. The memoir blends daily kibbutz life with the weight of inherited trauma. It moves between her own coming of age and the stories of her parents and grandparents who survived upheaval, exile, and the Holocaust. Laub paints a vivid picture of communal childhood, the rules that shaped it, and the emotional undercurrents that ran beneath a system built on ideals of equality and collective identity.
Laub’s writing is simple on the surface, yet it carries flashes of raw honesty that hit without warning. I found myself smiling at the small scenes of childhood, the games, the kids’ arguments, the curiosity, all of it wrapped in that strange mix of innocence and structure. Other times, the mood dropped fast as the family history unfurled. I kept thinking about how she held those two worlds together, the bright kibbutz sun and the long shadow of Europe, and how much strength it must have taken to look back without flinching. Her voice feels steady, even when the memories shake.
What stayed with me most was Laub’s openness. She lets the reader sit with her confusion, her longing for affection, her complicated relationship with her parents, and her deep pull toward dance. The prose wanders at times, but I didn’t mind. It felt true to the way memory behaves. Some scenes are so detailed that I saw them as clearly as if I were standing there, and other parts drift past like half-remembered dreams. I appreciated that looseness. It gave the story a human rhythm. I felt a quiet ache through much of the book, mostly because Laub writes about loss not with drama, but with this soft and steady truthfulness that lingers.
I And the Village is a good fit for anyone who loves personal histories, stories of survival, and reflections on what it means to grow up inside a system bigger than yourself. Laub’s memoir will also appeal to readers drawn to cultural history, communal living, or family stories shaped by war. I closed the book feeling moved and grateful for the glimpse into a life both ordinary and extraordinary in its own way.
Pages: 224 | ISBN : 978-1837944620
Mortal Vengeance
Mortal Vengeance, by Alejandro Torres De la Rocha, is a young adult supernatural thriller that follows a tight-knit but deeply troubled group of teens whose attempt to get revenge on a cruel teacher spirals into something far darker than any of them imagined. What starts as a grim school drama quickly escalates into a chain of betrayals, fear, and ultimately the appearance of a mythic, reaper-like being that shatters their lives. The book blends coming-of-age turmoil with horror and psychological suspense, and the shift from everyday cruelty to supernatural violence comes through sharp and sudden.
I was pulled into the heat and pressure of those classrooms and courtyards. The writing often leans intense, almost cinematic, with scenes described in a way that makes the emotions feel oversized, raw, and volatile. I caught myself thinking, these kids are carrying way more weight than they know how to hold. Marcos’s explosive anger, Mario’s guilt and fragility, Alex’s manipulative charm and insecurities, Melissa’s heartbreak, Enrique’s need to please everyone… every character is drawn with a kind of heightened emotional color. Sometimes it felt melodramatic, but in a way that matched the story’s pulse. The author’s choice to push sensations and metaphors to their limits gives the book a feverish energy, like the world is always one bad decision away from breaking.
What surprised me most was how quickly the story shifts from grounded teen conflict to something mythic and terrifying. One moment we’re dealing with bullying and revenge in a school hallway, and the next we’re staring down the Grim Cojuelo on a moonlit pier. That jump could have felt jarring, but for me, it worked because the emotional stakes were already running so high. The supernatural element feels like an extension of everything boiling inside these characters. Still, I found myself wishing for a few quieter beats where the emotions had room to breathe. When everything is dialed up, it can be hard to sit with the subtler moments. But there’s something gripping about how unafraid the author is to dive into intensity, whether it’s love, jealousy, fear, or guilt.
Mortal Vengeance is a story about how small cruelties grow into big consequences, and how revenge rarely lands where you expect. If you like young adult stories that mix school drama with supernatural horror, and you don’t mind a narrative that swings for big emotions instead of quiet restraint, this will be the perfect book for you. It’s a dramatic, dark, and sometimes chaotic ride, but it is delightfully entertaining.
Pages: 306 | ASIN : B0FDT6JYSQ
Navigating New Ideas
Surprising Max follows a soccer-loving boy who reluctantly practices piano and discovers, alongside a blooming amaryllis, that patience and care can unlock unexpected confidence and talent. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
A retired music professor and piano teacher, I made up Max’s story for Sunday School children, as an introduction to Advent, a season of waiting and preparation that precedes Christmas. A piano teacher enjoys a unique influence in a child’s education, guiding year-by-year growth. And, since music is a performance art, the recitals become the show and tell for performers and parents. Max GETS surprised, at his performance, at the appearance of the high school soccer star, who dazzles at the piano, and by the beauty of the red amaryllis. But, even more than that, Max IS the surprise. He has amazed the audience, his mom, and, of course, himself.
How did you approach writing a story about perseverance without making it feel instructional for young readers?
Max’s thoughts are expressed through his “italicized” questions. We are privy only to what he’s feeling: self pity, bewilderment, amazement, worry, and finally, a proclamation. For most children, navigating new ideas requires an emotional safety net that permits questions that may not have answers.
What role did the illustrations play in shaping Max’s emotional journey as you envisioned it?
Our sons’ favorite book was the great Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. While my illustrator couldn’t copy that little boy, she came very close to capturing that disheveled awkwardness. Max’s smiles bookend his experiences; he was happy playing soccer AND, eventually, playing the piano.
What do you hope children feel or reflect on after finishing Surprising Max?
A friend told me that, after receiving Surprising Max for Christmas, her grandchildren decided to take piano lessons. Obviously, that was a wonderful reflection on Max! Not every child will become a musician. However, the pursuit of music making is filled with life-enriching and life-enduring lessons. My hope would be that every child feels welcomed in that world.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Quantum Weirdness
Diverging Streams follows two young lovers who, after an accident, are separated and reunited twenty years later by another accident, leaving them with the ability to travel through time and dimensions. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I began working on this book over 30 years ago, and I really don’t remember any particular inspiration for it. At one point, in 2008, I gave up on it and published Chapters 2 and 3 as a stand-alone short story, but about 2010, I took it up again and finished it in 2015.
Your novel has some interesting characters with their own flaws, yet they are still likable. How do you go about creating characters for your story?
I know it sounds corny, but I listen to my characters and allow them to develop their own personalities. I like to compare it to those old Max Fleischer cartoons in which Betty Boop or Koko the Clown climbs out of the ink bottle onto the paper. And once the characters are fully developed, I let them write the story for me. I feel more like an observer than the creator.
The science inserted in the fiction, I felt, was well balanced. How did you manage to keep it grounded while still providing the fantastic edge science fiction stories usually provide?
I have long believed that time, like space, is three-dimensional, which I maintain offers the best explanation for quantum weirdness. The world I have created—the constantly dividing and diverging time streams, each with its own unique reality, follows necessarily from multidimensional time. Although the afterlife, as I have described it, is more speculative, it is perhaps more a case of probable than merely possible.
Will this novel be the start of a series, or are you working on a different story?
I have no interest in further pursuing this story. I have finished two more novels: Conniption Creek, a dark comedy in the tradition of Catch 22, and The Swing Time Soda Emporium, a coming-of-age story set in small-town America during the 1940s, which I hope to publish by late this year or early next.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Consistent with the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, time—like space—is three-dimensional, with a nearly infinite number of constantly dividing and diverging time streams, each stream containing its own unique reality.
Simple Intentional Acts
Sacred Celebrations is a warm and soulful guide to help readers who want to deepen their emotional and spiritual life by marking life’s transitions with intention and love. Why was this an important book for you to write?
As more people identify as “spiritual but not religious,” there’s a real need for a guidebook that can be returned to again and again when big life events arise. I’ve heard from readers who’ve used Sacred Celebrations to plan weddings, funerals, menopause parties, divorce parties, and other intimate gatherings. When they write to share their stories, I often find myself saying “YES!” out loud at my computer—usually startling my cat! It thrills me not only that the message resonates, but that readers are putting it into practice. The world needs more rituals, and one by one, readers are helping bring that vision to life.
We are craving connection and community more than ever. In our fractured world, it’s essential that we find our way back to one another—and rituals help us do that. They ground us, center us in the present moment, and invite us to truly witness one another during life’s milestone moments, whether they are filled with joy, grief, or often both at the same time.
Creating a new ritual or celebration can be overwhelming when someone already feels the need to slow down. What is a good starting point to help someone ease into this new way of thinking and create something meaningful for their lives without feeling overwhelmed?
Start small. Light a candle and write in your journal. Create a simple altar with photos of your ancestors on a bookshelf. Say a gratitude grace with your family at dinner. Invite a few trusted friends to offer prayers or blessings before surgery. Pick flowers from your garden and give them to a neighbor.
Ritual doesn’t need to involve lots of people, elaborate planning, or money to be meaningful. Simple, intentional acts can be incredibly powerful.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
My miscarriages. I experienced two miscarriages of twins within a 72-hour period. Writing about that time was an important part of my healing journey—though about 75% of what I wrote never made it into the book.
The portion that did remain included two rituals we participated in, one private and one public, that deeply supported us as we moved through profound grief. Rituals have a remarkable ability to help us navigate some of the most devastating experiences of our lives.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Sacred Celebrations?
That there is only one right way to do ritual: your way. This book is not prescriptive; it’s an invitation. An invitation to sense what needs to be honored, celebrated, or remembered, and then to use the tools and ideas I offer to create something meaningful and aligned with you and your community.
You can easily create simple yet memorable rituals that you and your community will remember for years to come!
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Sacred Celebrations | Amazon
Do you celebrate the joys, grieve the losses, and embrace the changes inherent in life’s natural cycles and seasons? In today’s fast-paced world, our souls are begging us to slow down—we must heed that call!
By blending her personal experiences, information about multicultural celebrations, and practical how-to steps, Elizabeth Barbour shares uniquely accessible advice for designing rituals. You’ll enjoy new elements to invigorate birthday gatherings and holidays and additionally be inspired by:
A beautiful grief ritual featuring white roses
An infant’s spiritual dedication in a labyrinth
A young girl’s playful and educational first moon party
An artist’s creative and meaningful “starting a new business” ritual
A divorce ritual punctuated by beating the furniture with a tennis racket
Sacred Celebrations is a resource you’ll come back to again and again to help you navigate emotional endings and beginnings with more presence, clarity and confidence.
Paddy and the Banshee: A Mythical Memoir Unlike Any Other
Paddy and the Banshee blends memoir and myth in a way that feels both strange and familiar. The book follows young Paddy as he is pulled between New York, rural Ireland, and the harsh mix of reality and imagination that shapes his early years. His world is full of upheaval, poverty, folklore, and fear. The Banshee becomes a symbol of everything he cannot control and everything he tries to understand. The story moves through his childhood with vivid moments of danger, loss, superstition, and humor, and it frames his memories as an adult who still feels the shadow of that mythical scream.
The writing is direct, clear, and unpretentious, and sometimes it even feels like a conversation you might overhear in a pub. I liked how the author shifts between the innocence of a child and the reflection of a grown man who is still trying to sort out what was real. Some scenes hit hard. The candle in the abandoned house. The black comb. The headless chicken sprinting across the yard. They all have this strange mix of terror and comedy that only childhood can produce. I felt pulled in by those moments because they were told with such honesty. Nothing felt polished or dressed up. It was messy and raw, and that made it work.
The book handles fear in an interesting way. The Banshee is a myth, but it is also trauma. Sometimes the writing circles that idea gently. Other times it just charges straight at it. I appreciated that. There is a kind of tenderness hidden beneath the darker scenes, like the book is trying to comfort the boy Paddy used to be. The writing is simple, but the emotions underneath it are not. The mix of family chaos, superstition, and survival created a kind of tension that stayed with me. It reminded me how kids make sense of things long before they have the words for them.
I felt like the book had given me a glimpse into a childhood shaped by folklore, hardship, and imagination all tangled together. I would recommend Paddy and the Banshee to readers who enjoy memoirs that feel unfiltered and a little wild, and to anyone who appreciates stories where myth serves as a mirror for real life. It is especially suited for readers who like cultural folklore, coming-of-age stories under pressure, and the strange ways childhood fear can linger long into adulthood.
Pages: 196 | ASIN: B0FMHFH1GY
Our Lives Mattered
In Stateless in Paradise, you share your family history, personal struggles, and your fight for recognition. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Stateless in Paradise was important for me to write because for most of my life, my existence was defined by paperwork I didn’t have, borders I couldn’t cross freely, and decisions made about me without my voice. When you are stateless, your story is often reduced to a case number, a detention file, or a legal problem. Writing this book was my way of reclaiming my humanity.
I wanted to document my family history and personal struggles, not out of self-pity, but out of responsibility. Statelessness is usually invisible. Millions live it, yet very few stories are told from the inside—from the fear of detention, the humiliation of deportation, the loneliness of exile, and the quiet resilience it takes just to survive. By telling my story, I wanted to put a human face on a condition that is too often discussed only in legal or political terms.
The book was also a way to honor the people who shaped and saved me: my mother, who raised me with dignity despite displacement; the strangers who showed compassion when governments did not; and the few mentors and loved ones who believed in me when the system erased me. Their presence in the book is my way of saying that survival is never a solo act.
Finally, Stateless in Paradise was an act of resistance. Writing it was my fight for recognition—not just for myself, but for others who live in legal limbo. I wanted to leave a record that says: we were here, our lives mattered, and our stories deserve to be heard.
I appreciate the candid nature with which you share your experiences. What was the most difficult thing for you to share?
The most difficult thing for me to share was not a single event, but the emotional truth behind them—the shame, fear, and sense of invisibility that came with being stateless.
It was hardest to write about the moments when I felt completely powerless: sitting in detention knowing my fate depended on signatures and stamps, being deported without dignity, or living in exile in American Samoa, where time felt suspended, and my life reduced to waiting. Those experiences stripped me not only of freedom, but of identity. Admitting how deeply that broke me—how close I came at times to losing hope—was far more painful than describing the physical circumstances.
Equally difficult was exposing the quiet loneliness. Statelessness isolates you in ways that are hard to explain: you cannot plan a future, you hesitate to form attachments, and you learn to survive emotionally by numbing yourself. Writing about that emotional survival mechanism meant confronting parts of myself I had long buried just to keep going.
I also struggled with writing about my family, especially my mother. Her strength, sacrifice, and the weight of what she endured as a refugee still carry deep emotional gravity for me. Putting that on the page meant reopening wounds that never fully healed.
But I chose to include these truths because anything less would have been dishonest. If the book was going to matter, it had to reflect not only what happened to me, but what it did to me. And in sharing that vulnerability, I hoped readers might better understand the real human cost of statelessness—not as an abstract issue, but as a lived reality.
What is one piece of advice someone gave you that changed your life?
What stayed with me—and ultimately became my guiding principle—was very simple advice: stand for yourself. Fight for yourself, because in the end, no one else is going to do it for you. When you are stateless, you learn very quickly that you are on your own. Sympathy is rare, and systems don’t protect people without status.
There was also a sentence someone once said— I don’t even remember who—that became my personal motto: try to take everything from this life, whether it’s good or bad, because one day you’ll turn around and realize the game is over. That thought struck me deeply. It forced me to stay awake, to stay present, even in the worst conditions.
That mindset carried me through six months in a detention center in Houston, through one year and five months of exile in American Samoa, and through nearly twenty years of being stateless in the United States. When everything is taken from you—your documents, your freedom, your future—the only thing left is your will to keep going.
So the advice I lived by was not romantic or comforting. It was survival advice: fight, don’t give up, and keep moving forward, even when you’re exhausted, even when the system is against you. Because stopping means disappearing—and I refused to disappear.
What is one thing you hope your readers take away from Stateless in Paradise?
If there is one thing I hope readers take away from Stateless in Paradise, it is this: a person’s worth is not defined by their legal status.
I want readers to understand that behind every label—stateless, undocumented, refugee, detainee—there is a full human being with dreams, love, intelligence, and dignity. Statelessness is not a failure of character; it is a failure of systems. And yet, even inside those broken systems, people continue to endure, resist, and find meaning.
I also hope readers walk away with a sense of responsibility. Not guilt, but awareness. Awareness that freedom, mobility, and belonging are privileges many take for granted—and that these can be taken away overnight. When readers recognize that, compassion stops being abstract and becomes personal.
Finally, I want the book to leave people with courage. If someone who was erased by borders, detained, deported, and exiled could keep fighting and keep moving forward, then maybe readers facing their own battles—visible or invisible—will feel less alone. If the book does that, then telling this story was worth it.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Instagram | Amazon
Stateless in Paradise is the deeply human journey of a man living between borders. From the South Pacific to West Africa, from Eastern Europe to the United States, Mikhail’s life is shaped by movement, uncertainty, and the constant negotiations required of someone without a recognized nation.
Forced into detentions, threatened with deportations, and stranded for months in American Samoa, he confronts the global systems that decide who belongs — and who does not. Yet this memoir is also filled with connection: the kindness of strangers, the discovery of chosen family, the beauty of cultures encountered, and the love story that becomes his safe harbor.
