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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
Witness in the Dust by Lorrie Reed
The Glass Pyramid by Vesela Patton
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Girl, Groomed
Carol Odell’s Girl, Groomed is a raw and unflinching memoir that traces her childhood experiences of grooming and abuse at a horse stable, the deep love she had for horses, and the long, painful process of understanding how that past shaped her adult life and relationships. Odell moves between her girlhood innocence, where horses offered her comfort and belonging, and the unsettling reality of how her trust was exploited. As she grows into adulthood, she reckons with the trauma, explores how it bled into her marriage and identity, and shows how therapy, reflection, and courage helped her reframe her story.
The writing is vivid, sometimes almost cinematic, and the way Odell describes both the beauty of horses and the darkness of abuse made me feel pulled in two directions at once. There were moments where I found myself smiling at her descriptions of childhood wonder, then seconds later reeling from the cruelty and manipulation woven into those same memories. I admired her honesty, but I also found myself feeling frustrated on her behalf, angry at how easily her vulnerability was taken advantage of, and heartbroken that the safe space she longed for was the same place that hurt her.
What impressed me most was how Odell refuses to simplify her story. She doesn’t paint herself as a perfect victim. She shows her younger self caught in admiration for her abuser, which was difficult to read but also profoundly true. That honesty made the book feel even more important because it illustrates the messy, confusing ways trauma imprints on us. I appreciated the way she linked her past to her marriage struggles later in life, and I found myself pausing often to reflect on how our old, unexamined wounds shape the way we love, fight, and cope.
I would recommend this book to readers who want a deeply personal exploration of trauma and survival, but also to anyone interested in the psychology of how abuse and grooming take root. It’s not an easy read, but it’s an essential one. I think therapists, survivors, and anyone willing to confront hard truths will find it valuable. It left me unsettled and hopeful at the same time, which to me is the mark of a powerful memoir.
Pages: 222 | ASIN : B0D96PPVDQ
The Dressing Drink
The Dressing Drink tells the story of family, privilege, and damage dressed up in elegance. Thomas King Flagg weaves a memoir that feels both intimate and theatrical. At its heart is Dorothy Mary Flagg, a woman of society who lived with glamour, wit, and excess, yet was haunted by control, loneliness, and the weight of expectations. The book drifts through memories and family stories, some imagined and some painfully real, all tied together by the strange ritual of the “dressing drink,” a symbol of escape, courage, and self-deception.
I found myself pulled in by the writing. It is vivid, almost cinematic, with scenes that sparkle and sting at the same time. At points, I felt like I was in the room, watching Dorothy Mary pin orchids to her dress or sip champagne in secret. The language is playful yet sharp, laced with irony, and it never shies away from showing the cruelty that lives under polished surfaces. The details are lush, but I admired the author’s willingness to let the prose wander because it made the book feel alive, unpredictable, and oddly intoxicating.
What hit me hardest was the emotional undercurrent. There’s a quiet sadness that runs beneath the sparkle, a sense of people trapped in roles they never chose. Dorothy Mary is magnetic, but also tragic. I felt frustrated by her choices and yet sympathetic to her hunger for freedom. The book stirred something raw in me. It made me think of how often family history gets polished into legend, while underneath lies pain and secrecy. I liked how Flagg leaned into that tension instead of smoothing it out.
The Dressing Drink is both a spectacle and a confession. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy memoirs that feel like novels, who want to be dazzled and unsettled at the same time. It’s layered, indulgent, and sometimes heavy with sorrow. But for those willing to step into its tent, it offers a haunting show that I’m sure you will think about for a while.
Pages: 382 | ASIN : B0FDBNJW8G
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Life
Laura Muirhead’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Life is a memoir that moves through childhood, teenage years, early adulthood, and the deep reckoning of midlife with both candor and heart. She tells her story through episodes that range from tender family memories to shocking discoveries about her own parentage. The book blends personal narrative with reflections on resilience, gratitude, and the strange ways life can twist, betray, and yet still surprise with meaning. At its core, it’s about finding strength in truth, even when that truth shatters the story you thought you knew.
What struck me most was the honesty in her voice. She recalls being a child lost in a swirl of divorce, stepparents, and hospital stays, and later a young woman stumbling through identity crises, bad relationships, and financial struggles. The writing feels raw and unfiltered, which made me lean in closer rather than back away. At times, I was frustrated on her behalf, especially in chapters where her stepmother’s cruelty and her mother’s betrayal came through in sharp detail. Other times I felt relief and warmth, like when she described the steadfast love of her grandmother, or the freedom of learning to fly on her own terms. Those shifts kept me hooked. I found myself thinking about my own life, my own plot twists, and how I’ve responded to them.
The heart of the book, for me, was her discovery in her forties that the man she grew up calling “Dad” was not her biological father. The way she described the unraveling of family secrets, the weight of betrayal, and the eventual path toward forgiveness carried a lot of emotional punch. I could feel the anger in her words, the ice cream in the freezer standing in for the weight of all those tangled emotions. And then later, the surprising peace she found in gratitude. I didn’t always agree with her conclusions, but I respected her process. There’s something very human in the way she stumbled, raged, reflected, and then tried again to make sense of it all. Her style of telling is simple but layered, moving between plainspoken anecdotes and larger reflections on truth and resilience. That mix made it feel both intimate and universal.
I felt that this book wasn’t just her story. It was also a nudge to the reader to look at their own. To consider where the cracks are, and whether those cracks let in anger or light. I’d recommend this book to people who enjoy memoirs that don’t sugarcoat the hard stuff, especially readers who are working through family secrets, identity shifts, or personal healing. It would also speak to those who just like a true story told straight, with grit, gratitude, and a good measure of heart.
Pages: 68 | ASIN : B0F3D9WNVT
Quiet Pride
In A Long Cast, you share with readers your experiences with family and friends over five decades of surfcasting on Martha’s Vineyard. Why was this an important book for you to write?
The stories were starting to evaporate as time went on. I could feel them slipping away, and I wanted to capture them so years from now the kids would be able to simply share the book with someone they cared about and say, “It was like this.”
For the last several years, my adult daughter would keep prodding: “You should write these stories down, Dad.” And I kept deflecting it. Then, when I turned 70, I secretly decided to give it a try so I could maybe surprise them in the end. But I stalled. It was just dry, boring details at first. But when I asked my fishing friends if there was anything they would like to share for the book, it became clear that they, too, wanted documentation for their family and friends to have forever. I sensed their quiet pride and an unspoken hope, and this is what gave me the motivation I needed to get it across the finish line. I used the Dedication page to give the rationale for the book.
Is there anything else you now wish you had included in A Long Cast? A memory? An experience?
No. Not at all. But if there was a Prologue, it would contain the reactions after it came out. Everything from the successful construction company owner who said, “Only read one book my entire life. But I read this one in two days.” I gave each of the twenty-five featured fishermen a copy when it came out. One guy, looking at his copy, said to the other, “Geez. Didn’t know he (me) could write.” The other fishermen replied, “Didn’t know you could read.” The wife of a fisherman texted and explained that she always wished him well as he headed out the door for his annual fishing trip, but never figured out why he liked it so much. Now she knew, she said.
Right after the book came out, he got really ill and had to stop fishing. One day, she was reading the book outside his hospital room and started to laugh out loud. He asked her what was so funny. She read him the two paragraphs, and he laughed so hard and long that they had to settle him down. “It’s true.” He kept laughing. “It’s true. That’s Ed.” (The fisherman in the story.)
Different fishermen would reach out and tell me which story they liked best, and everyone has a different one. A younger fisherman said he bought a copy for his dad and told him it was because of the piece on The Partner. Another told me it was Retie. I think mine might be The Car. I still laugh out loud when I read it.
What advice would you give someone who is considering writing their own memoir?
Don’t make it about you. Make it about the encounters and conversations and actions of others that have been illuminating, convincing, affirming, paradoxically true, righteous, courageous, challenging, grace- filled, perplexing. Don’t report facts, and details, and accomplishments. Tell the stories of who and what has enriched the journey.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your book?
I hope the reader can also find one or two things in the book to be true.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
In 1971, a father and son ventured out of their apartment in New Jersey to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard to try their hand at surfcasting. That trip began a life of Spring trips to the waters’ edge in search of bluefish and striped bass. Fifty years later, Mike Carotta takes readers along for thirty straight nights and days of fishing.
This is not a How To book. It does not contain the secrets to a fantastic fishing career. Rather, hard fishing has a way of revealing lessons from the shore and the people who gather there-binding together strangers in conversations and gestures, failures and successes, new learnings, and, eventually, creating old friends.
Through it all, more than fish are caught-and shared. The result is a thoughtful collection of essays on life with some notes from the trade filtered in. Join Mike on his pilgrimage back to where the distance between heaven and earth gets a little thinner and the real “keepers” of the trip go far beyond the fish on the end of the line.
“I am not a good surf fisherman. There are no helpful fishing hints here. This is a collection of recollection: stories of saltwater characters, occurrences, and conversations. Like stars in the night sky, they are best enjoyed when you get some distance from the lights of other stuff.” – Excerpt from A Long Cast
Remains of Silence : A Memoir of Breaking, Building, and Becoming
The memoir Remains of Silence is a raw and unflinching journey through a fractured childhood in South Africa and the long road toward healing and self-discovery. Stef-Albert Bothma recounts the turbulence of growing up with instability, neglect, and silence as constant companions, weaving together vignettes of fear, longing, and survival. The story traces his movement across landscapes both external and internal. From moments of danger on the road with an intoxicated mother, to nights of hunger and loneliness, to the later blossoming of a voice strong enough to speak truth, this book is both a testament to endurance and an offering of hope.
Reading this, I was struck by the stark honesty of the writing. It doesn’t hide behind fancy phrasing or soften the blow of hard truths. Instead, the words come at you plainly, almost like sitting across from someone who’s finally ready to say what they’ve never dared to. I felt anger rising at the injustices he endured as a child, and then a quiet admiration at his strength. The mix of sorrow and resilience pulled me in. There were moments when I had to set the book down just to breathe, but each time I picked it back up I was drawn deeper, eager to see how he pieced himself back together.
At times, the prose almost felt sharp, but that suited the story. Life in these pages isn’t polished, and the writing reflects that. What I appreciated most was the way Bothma balanced the heaviness with glimpses of beauty and grace. Small moments, like finding comfort in the kindness of strangers or the simple act of filling a tank of gas all the way full, took on the weight of triumph. The ideas in the book stirred something in me. I found myself reflecting on my own assumptions about strength, silence, and what it really means to survive when survival has become second nature.
I’d recommend this memoir to readers who value truth told without varnish, especially those who have lived through difficult beginnings or who seek stories of perseverance. It would also resonate with people drawn to reflections on family, memory, and the messy art of becoming whole. This book isn’t always easy to sit with, but that’s part of its power. It leaves you unsettled, moved, and somehow lighter for having walked alongside the author through the remains of his silence.
Pages: 357 | ASIN : B0FR2FLX4S
A Long Cast: Reflections on 50 Years of Visiting the Martha’s Vineyard Surf
The book is part memoir, part meditation, and part fishing journal. Mike Carotta takes us through five decades of surfcasting on Martha’s Vineyard, but fishing is only the surface. Beneath the striped bass and bluefish lies a deeper story about fathers and sons, the friendships that form in salt spray, and the way a place can wrap itself around your heart. He writes about the rhythms of the tide, the cast of characters who gather every spring, and the sense of the sacred that can sneak up on you when you’re standing waist-deep in the Atlantic. It’s not a manual on how to catch more fish. It’s a love letter to memory, ritual, and the Island itself.
Carotta admits, again and again, that he’s not all that great at fishing, and that humility makes the book sing. The style is conversational and warm, the kind of voice you want around a campfire after a long day outside. I found myself laughing at his stubbornness about new techniques, nodding along when he described how old hurts can fester, and tearing up when he spoke of his father. He isn’t afraid to mix the mundane with the profound. One page has him fumbling with tackle, the next has him brushing up against something eternal.
I loved how he wove in the idea of “liminal space,” that thin place where heaven and earth feel closer. His way of describing the Vineyard at night, with stars overhead and saltwater in his boots, made me feel like I was right there beside him. By the end, I wasn’t thinking about fishing at all. I was thinking about family traditions, about the way landscapes hold onto us, about how we carry certain people with us long after they’re gone.
A Long Cast is not only for fishermen, though anglers will find plenty to savor. It’s for anyone who knows what it feels like to return year after year to a place that heals you. It’s for readers who like stories told straight from the heart, without polish or pretense. If you’ve ever stood in your own version of the surf, whether that’s a kitchen, a church, or a backyard garden, you’ll find yourself in these pages.
Pages: 182 | ISBN : 978-1611535334
Meaningful Work Is Messy Work
Serving the Leftovers shares with readers your journey from a fractured marriage and unfulfilling jobs into a life defined by compassion, chaos, and canine companionship. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I thought I was simply documenting the brutal mathematics of animal rescue—the endless cycle of intake and loss that defines the South’s overpopulation crisis. But somewhere between chronicling emergency calls and heartbreak, I realized I was excavating something deeper: the emotional archaeology of a life rebuilt from scratch. People think we just “like” dogs, but I was drowning in stories I couldn’t tell at dinner parties—stories that revealed I’d been rebuilding myself one rescue at a time, transforming from someone just existing through disappointment into someone living with purpose. The book became my way of honoring both the dogs we’ve saved and the ones we couldn’t, while showing readers that animal rescue isn’t charity work—it’s emergency medicine for a crisis most people never see. It is also proof that transformation can happen to anyone brave enough to follow what calls to them, no matter how impossible it seems.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
I realized I’d documented a blueprint for quiet revolution—completely reimagining your life when everything feels impossible. The core message: the life you’re meant to live is already speaking to you. For me, it was that first dog I couldn’t turn away from. Each rescue was the universe saying, “This is your work.” Transformation doesn’t require permission or perfect timing. I started with a fractured marriage—hardly ideal conditions for a life-changing mission. Stop waiting for readiness that never comes. That thing pulling at your heart isn’t a hobby—it’s your next chapter trying to get your attention. Sometimes you have to trust the pull toward something that makes no logical sense.
Ultimately, our vision isn’t too big. Our current life is too small.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
Untangling the Beautiful Mess
The biggest challenge was trying to impose narrative order on what felt like controlled chaos—how do you create a coherent storyline when one day you’re fielding divorce calls while having an epiphany about purpose? Writing forced me to connect dots I’d been too busy living to notice—that every dog that changed my life had arrived exactly when I needed the lesson they carried, and that I hadn’t just been saving dogs, I’d been saving myself, one rescue at a time, building the person I needed to become to handle the life I was meant to live.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I hope readers walk away understanding that meaningful work is messy work—and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I want readers to stop waiting for a calling that comes without complications. The work that will transform your life isn’t the work that fits neatly into your existing schedule or makes sense to everyone around you. It’s the work that demands you become someone bigger than who you were yesterday—and becoming bigger always involves growing pains. The unglamorous parts aren’t obstacles to your dream—they ARE the dream. The sleepless nights, the impossible decisions, the moments when you’re too emotionally spent to remember why you started—that’s not evidence you’ve chosen wrong. That’s proof you’ve chosen something worth the fight.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
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