Blog Archives
Nero’s Nile
Nero’s Nile, by Rowan O’Neill, is a historical fiction adventure that follows Emperor Nero’s obsession with discovering the source of the Nile. To carry out that ambition, he draws Titus Statilius Taurus back from the quiet life he has earned and sends him into Egypt and beyond, while Rome itself rots under ambition, violence, grief, and spectacle. The novel moves between imperial politics and expeditionary danger, mixing Roman history, Egyptian myth, and supernatural menace into a fast, dramatic story about power and the price of being useful to people who see the world as something to own.
What stood out to me first was the pace. This book doesn’t linger at the doorway. It kicks it open. O’Neill writes in bold strokes, and the result is a novel that often feels closer to a sword-and-sandals epic than a restrained historical drama. Battles, assassinations, betrayals, crocodile attacks, ancient temples, and political murders arrive with steady force. I liked that confidence. The writing sometimes favors impact over subtlety, especially in the dialogue, where characters often say exactly what they mean and say it loudly. That can make some scenes feel theatrical rather than natural. But honestly, that theatrical quality also fits Nero. His world is all performance, blood, gold, and applause, so the heightened style makes a strange kind of sense.
I was most interested in the author’s choice to make the Nile expedition more than a geographic mystery. The book treats the river almost like a living border between history and myth. Titus becomes the steadier center of the novel, a soldier who wants peace but keeps getting pulled toward other men’s dreams of glory. Nero, meanwhile, is written as both ridiculous and dangerous, which can, at times, be a hard balance to hold. He is vain, childish, cruel, and sometimes oddly sad. I found that mix compelling, even when the character work leans broad. The historical fiction genre gives the novel its bones, but the adventure and supernatural elements give it its pulse. By the time the darker mythic material moves closer to the surface, the book has shifted from Roman intrigue into something stranger and more feverish.
I would recommend Nero’s Nile to readers who enjoy historical fiction that is energetic, dramatic, and unafraid to bend history for the sake of the story. If you like ancient Rome, dangerous quests, myth-soaked adventure, and a plot that keeps throwing new hazards into the river, they will probably have a good time with it. I did. The book is a torchlit march into empire, obsession, and chaos, and it knows exactly the kind of spectacle it wants to be.
Pages: 269 | ASIN : B0GY27MQ2B
TRAUMA RECOVERY: Integrating Biblical and Psychological Perspectives for Emotional, Relational, and Spiritual Wholeness
Karen Gustafson’s Trauma Recovery is a faith-centered and research-informed guide to understanding trauma and healing from it. The book brings together biblical reflection, psychology, attachment theory, personal experience, and practical recovery tools in a way that feels sincere and purposeful. Gustafson writes from both professional training and lived grief, which gives the book a grounded, compassionate voice.
This is a book about wounds and restoration. Gustafson explains trauma as something that can affect the brain, body, spirit, emotions, relationships, identity, and even a person’s relationship with God. Early on, she writes, “Post-traumatic emotions can last for years, but it’s possible to understand and recover from them so that they don’t last a lifetime.” That sentence captures the book’s steady tone: trauma is taken seriously, but healing is treated as real and reachable.
One of the book’s strongest threads is the comparison between the biblical parable of the four soils and the psychological framework of attachment styles. Gustafson returns to this image often, using it to show how environments shape people and how healthier emotional and relational “soil” can be cultivated over time. The gardening metaphor works well because it keeps the discussion of trauma from becoming abstract. It gives readers a simple way to picture growth, damage, patience, and repair.
The book is also practical. Chapters move from the impact of trauma into recovery, covering emotional healing, differentiation of self, relational repair, and recovery in one’s relationship with God. Gustafson’s tone is often instructional, but it stays warm because she’s clearly writing for people who may be carrying pain. When she says, “There is no better reward than seeing those who have been trapped in trauma symptoms experience the benefits of trauma recovery!” it reflects the book’s larger sense of mission.
Trauma Recovery is a thoughtful resource for Christian readers who want a bridge between counseling concepts and biblical faith. It’s part teaching guide, part devotional reflection, and part recovery roadmap. Gustafson gives readers language for what trauma does, but she also gives them a hopeful picture of what healing can look like: deeper self-compassion, safer relationships, renewed faith, and a life that can grow again.
Pages: 466 | ASIN : B0H4WN84NV
Beyond Superhero School
Beyond Superhero School, by Gracie Dix, is a middle-grade superhero fantasy adventure about a group of young heroes trying to survive normal school while hiding powers that are anything but normal. After leaving Superhero School behind, the students land at Lily Flower High, where bullies, awkward classes, emotional wounds, and secret dangers follow them through the halls. Underneath the school drama is a much larger threat: VORK, an evil organization determined to destroy people with powers. The story grows from first-day chaos into a bigger battle involving friendship, fear, family, and what it means to protect each other when the world feels stacked against you.
This book moves fast. Sometimes it feels like the characters barely get a second to breathe before the next problem crashes into them, whether it is a teacher being unfair, a friend disappearing, or a villain stepping out of the shadows. That pace gives the story a lively, comic-book feel, which fits the genre well. I also liked how Dix lets the characters sound young. They argue, tease, panic, overreact, and make jokes at exactly the wrong time. It is messy, but it feels alive. I appreciated the character list at the beginning because the large cast can be a lot to keep track of, especially because so many characters have multiple powers and emotional storylines.
The author’s choices are interesting because the book is not only about superpowers. In fact, some of the strongest parts are about what the powers cannot fix. Nick’s trauma, Spencer’s fear of leaving his friends, Rachel’s anxiety, Will’s struggle to stand up for himself, and the pressure everyone feels to stay hidden give the story a more serious center than the playful title might suggest. I liked that contrast. One moment, the book is goofy and loud, and the next, it is dealing with PTSD, loss, loyalty, or the ache of feeling different. That is a hard balance to pull off, and while the tone can shift suddenly, I found that honesty refreshing. It reminded me that superhero fantasy works best when the powers are not just flashy tools, but extensions of what the characters are feeling inside.
I recommend Beyond Superhero School most to readers who enjoy fast-paced middle-grade fantasy, superhero teams, and stories where friendship is treated like a superpower of its own. Fans who like their adventure loud, emotional, and packed with twists will have a lot to enjoy here. Readers who prefer quieter, tightly focused stories may find the pace intense, but for someone looking for a colorful superhero adventure with heart, humor, and high stakes, this book delivers a spirited next chapter in The Vork Chronicles.
Pages: 543 | ASIN : B0F7MPV4Y5
Who Wants To Be A Billionaire: A Benjamin de Walters Case
Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? follows Brussels notary Benjamin de Walters as he presides over the strangest inheritance case of his career: the estate of Johan Paepe, a reclusive billionaire author whose will first leaves his family one euro, then twists into a billion-euro moral trap. Six heirs, one secret beneficiary, an AI-assisted police investigation, and a possible murder turn what should be a formal reading into a pressure cooker of grief, greed, accusation, and revelation. What begins in the controlled civility of a notary’s office keeps widening, from Johan’s decaying mansion to Usufruct, to the machinery of the Paepe empire, to an almost cosmic final passage over the Bermuda Triangle. It’s part mystery, part family reckoning, part philosophical fever dream.
I found the book most alive when it let people talk themselves into ruin. The early scenes around the table have a prickly, theatrical charge, with everyone trying to sound reasonable while their desperation leaks through the seams. Céline’s grief over Jens, Kenny’s wounded confusion about Joyabel, Pieter’s abrasive refusal to play along, and Nele’s quiet devotion to Brenda all give the inheritance plot a bruised emotional texture. The AI investigation is a smart provocation, too, because it’s not just a gadget. It becomes a mirror that flattens suffering into scores, reducing bankruptcy, illness, addiction, and bereavement into motive. I felt the book was asking a sharp question: when technology claims to see the truth, what parts of the human soul does it trample on to get there?
The writing is eccentric in a way I mostly admired. Benjamin’s voice wanders, digresses, lectures, remembers, and circles back, sometimes like a man telling a story over too much coffee, sometimes like a notary trying to notarize chaos itself. His long riffs on Hitchcock, especially Rear Window, The Birds, and Saboteur, could easily have felt ornamental, but for me they gave the book its strange weather. They echo the themes of watching, staging, suspicion, and performance. Not every detour lands with the same force. Still, I liked the unruly ambition of it. The book isn’t content to be a clean little puzzle box. It wants inheritance law, family trauma, cinema, capitalism, AI, religion, and metaphysics all seated at the same disastrous dinner table.
By the end, I was less interested in who “won” the fortune than in what the fortune had revealed about everyone who came near it. The epilogue in the purple sea of Hallerbos resonated with me because it lets the noise drain away and leaves only survival, tenderness, and the mercy of being understood. This is a strange and heartfelt novel. I’d recommend it to readers who like locked-room mysteries with philosophical tangents, family dramas with teeth, and books that aren’t afraid to veer from legal realism into something far more uncanny.
Pages: 210 | ASIN : B0GYMF6JMW
Take It To The House: Rebuilding Relationships with Clarity, Intention, & Consistency in Truth
Take It to the House, by Shae Pratcher, is a relationship-centered personal development book told through the story of Jordan and Marcus, a couple forced to face the truth after one message changes the shape of their future: “I didn’t know he was engaged. I’m so sorry.” From there, the book becomes more than a story about betrayal. It’s a guided look at what happens when two people stop reacting long enough to see what’s actually happening between them.
Pratcher uses Jordan and Marcus’s relationship as the emotional center of the book, but the structure is built around the C.L.A.R.I.F.Y. System. Each section moves the couple through a different part of rebuilding, from clarity and listening to boundaries, integrity, focus, and yielding control. The coaching scenes with Coach Avery give the book its practical backbone, while the “in motion” chapters show what those lessons look like in everyday conversations, tense moments, and small choices at home.
What makes the book easy to connect with is its directness. Pratcher doesn’t dress up the work of rebuilding as something soft or simple. She shows how messy it can feel to pause, listen, tell the truth, and choose differently when old patterns are right there waiting. The repeated idea to “Recognize. Regulate. Respond with intention” becomes more than a phrase. It becomes the rhythm of the book and the lens through which Jordan and Marcus begin to understand themselves and each other.
The conversational style gives the book a steady, reflective pace. It often reads like a story, a coaching session, and a journal prompt all working together. Readers who like relationship books with clear takeaways will likely appreciate how each chapter connects emotional moments to usable practices. The book isn’t just asking readers to watch Jordan and Marcus rebuild. It’s asking them to notice where they react, where they assume, where they avoid, and where they might choose something more intentional.
Take It to the House is ultimately a book about building a relationship with clarity, consistency, and truth. Its strength is in showing that repair doesn’t happen in one dramatic breakthrough. It happens in repeated choices, honest conversations, and the willingness to keep showing up with more awareness than before. Pratcher gives readers a story they can follow and a framework they can actually use, which makes the book feel personal, practical, and grounded in real relational work.
Pages: 190 | ASIN : B0GX2YNY5X
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats is a reflective career memoir about leadership, mentorship, and the complicated machinery of global logistics, told through Rich Higgins’s more than forty years in the field. Using tugboats as his central metaphor, Higgins looks back at the people who steadied him, pushed him, protected him, and taught him how to lead. The book moves from noisy trucking docks and deregulation to retail bankruptcies, mergers, Asian port visits, union conflicts, public speaking, health struggles, and late-career reinvention. What holds it together isn’t just supply chain expertise, though there’s plenty of that. It’s gratitude. Again and again, Higgins returns to the idea that a career is rarely built alone, and that the best leaders are the ones powerful enough to guide without needing the spotlight.
I appreciated the book’s emotional honesty. Higgins doesn’t polish himself into some flawless executive hero, and that gives the memoir its warmth. The scene where Tom drives him to work every day after his DUI is one of the book’s most affecting moments because it’s both painful and generous. Higgins lets us feel the shame of that mistake, but he also lets us feel the astonishing grace of a friend who simply shows up. I found that more memorable than many of the larger corporate victories because it captures the book’s real subject: character under pressure. The same is true when he writes about relocating his family and watching his daughters struggle, or turning down the dream job in St. Louis so he could be near his dying father. Those passages carry a quiet ache. They remind us that every career decision has a private cost, and Higgins is at his best when he lets that human truth sit beside the business lesson.
The writing is plainspoken and sincere. Higgins writes like a man talking across a table, and that directness suits the material. The book uses a lot of quotations, acronyms, and operational detail, especially when it gets deep into detention, demurrage, ocean rates, UPS contracts, and best-practice checklists. I did occasionally want a little less instruction and a little more scene. But even the technical passages have an authentic authority. When Higgins describes eliminating rail detention by teaching the distribution center team how the clock worked, creating a Container Priority Report, and getting everyone aligned around FIFO, the lesson lands because it’s concrete. The ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in action: Charlie trying to turn C players into B players, Dave bringing in positive reinforcement training, Greg keeping a position open until Higgins found his way back, Jimmy valuing expertise over age. The book’s moral universe is clear, maybe even stubbornly so, but I liked that about it. Tugboats, captains, crew members, pirates. It’s simple language for complicated workplaces, and it sticks.
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats feels less like a conventional business book and more like a thank-you letter written after a long and meaningful voyage. Its best moments are tender, funny, and grounded in hard-earned perspective, especially when Higgins admits what he didn’t know, who helped him survive, and which values still matter after the titles and relocations fade. I closed the book feeling that its deepest argument isn’t about logistics at all, but about remembering who carried us when we couldn’t quite steer ourselves. I’d recommend it to readers in supply chain, retail, transportation, or operations, but also to managers, mentors, and late-career professionals who want a candid reminder that leadership is built through patience, integrity, gratitude, and the grace to help someone else reach safe harbor.
Pages: 78 | ISBN : 978-1970751505
The Whole Picture
So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete offers young readers insight into becoming a professional athlete, focusing on talent, discipline, and handling the inevitable pressure. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Because the dominant story kids are handed about professional athletes is almost all highlight reel — the game-winning shot, the gold medal, the 10 seconds that make the broadcast — and almost none of the 10 years behind those 10 seconds. I wanted to write the book that lives behind the camera. The 5 AM alarms. The ice baths. The thousand quiet repetitions a coach asks for to get one motion automatic. The work nobody films.
I also wanted to push back, gently, on a phrase I think hurts a lot of young athletes: “natural talent.” The book makes the argument as plainly as I could that the athletes who last aren’t necessarily the most naturally gifted. They’re the ones who take the whole job seriously — recovery, sleep, nutrition, mental preparation, the parts no one applauds. Talent gets you to the starting line. Discipline gets you to the finish. That’s a truer story, and I think it’s a kinder one, because it tells a kid that what they can control is what actually matters.
One of the book’s strengths is its honesty about injuries, routine, and the short length of many sports careers. Why was it important to show those realities?
Because a children’s book that hides those things isn’t really written for the kids; it’s written for the adults who don’t want to disappoint them. I think kids can hold the whole picture, and I think they’re better served when we trust them with it.
So the book tells them the average NFL career is about three and a third years. It tells them careers can end in a single moment of a single race — and then it tells them the Derek Redmond story, where a hamstring tears at the Olympic semifinal and the runner finishes the race anyway, on one leg, with his father’s arm around his shoulders. It tells them Simone Biles withdrew from a final she was expected to win because something inside her body was wrong, and that this was the most professional choice she could have made.
What I want the young reader to take from this is not a warning. It’s an inheritance. Sports give a person something rare: a daily relationship with honest feedback. The clock, the score, the tape from yesterday’s practice — none of them flatter you, and none of them lie. A child who grows up inside that kind of feedback learns early what most adults spend decades trying to learn: how to see themselves clearly, how to take in hard information without falling apart, how to separate effort from outcome and keep showing up to both. That self-knowledge is the real gift of the work, and it travels with the athlete long after the uniform comes off. I wanted kids to see that whole, because the trophy is the smallest part of what they would actually be earning.
The book also has a page about retirement that I’m proud of. Almost every career book ends at the peak; this one walks a few steps further, to the empty stadium and the question of what comes next. I wanted children to understand that an athletic career ending in your 30s is not life-ending. It is the beginning of a second act that the first act has been quietly preparing you for the whole time. The discipline, the resilience under pressure, the ability to be coached, the habit of showing up before dawn when nobody is watching — none of that disappears when the career does. It becomes the foundation for whatever comes next, whether that is coaching, building a business, raising a family, returning to school, or something nobody, including the athlete, can yet imagine.
How did you approach explaining sports psychology, pressure, and mental preparation in a way that younger readers could connect with?
I tried to give them the actual vocabulary. Flow state. The prefrontal cortex going quiet so trained instinct can take over. Visualization. Pre-performance routines. Body intelligence — the ability to tell the difference between productive soreness and the early signal of injury. Once a child has those words, they can describe experiences they’ve already been having on the soccer field or at the piano bench but didn’t have language for.
I also leaned hard on the idea that the mental side isn’t separate from the physical side. It is the physical side, at the level where competitors are most evenly matched. In the 100-meter dash, gold and fourth place can be one one-hundredth of a second apart. Less than a blink. Everything an athlete does — every nutrition decision, every recovery session, every breathing protocol — exists to find that one one-hundredth of a second. Once a kid sees that, they understand why the mental work matters, and why a sports psychologist isn’t a luxury or a sign something is wrong. It’s part of the job.
What is one thing you hope young readers take away from So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete?
That athlete is not a job they have to wait to be given. The book ends with this line, and I mean it as plainly as I can: professional is a destination, but athlete is an identity. A kid lacing up shoes on a front porch, about to go outside and find out what their body can do — that kid is already an athlete. Nobody has to certify it.
Most professional athletes will tell you the same thing in their own words: the love of moving, of testing yourself, of getting measurably better at one specific thing through focused work — that’s what carried them. The contract came later. If a reader closes this book and goes outside, that’s the whole thing. The rest of the work, they can begin tomorrow morning.
And the deeper takeaway, whether or not sport ever becomes their chosen profession, is that the way a serious athlete learns to live is the way any serious person learns to live. Showing up before dawn when no one is watching. Doing the boring repetitions because that’s where mastery actually resides. Losing, looking honestly at why, and trying again. Trusting a coach. Trusting a team. Being patient with a body, or a skill, or a goal that is improving on a timeline you cannot rush. Those habits not only build athletes. They build doctors, engineers, teachers, parents, and citizens. A child who learns them through sport carries them into every room they will ever enter. The trophy on the shelf is a small thing. The person formed in the pursuit of it is the whole point.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
This illustrated nonfiction guide takes young readers ages 10 to 14 inside the real world of elite sports — not the highlight reels and trophy ceremonies, but the thousands of hours of training, discipline, and sacrifice that happen long before the arena lights come on. From pre-season conditioning and sports science to in-season competition and recovery, this book shows kids what professional athletes actually do every single day to perform at the absolute edge of human capability.
You will discover how athletes build their bodies through periodized training programs, nutrition science, biomechanics, and carefully planned sleep and recovery. You will learn how they develop the mental toughness and psychological resilience to handle pressure, failure, and the relentless scrutiny that comes with competing at the highest level. And you will see why mindset and discipline matter just as much as speed, strength, or natural ability — because at the professional level, the margin between winning and losing is smaller than most people can imagine.
This is also a book about what a sports career really costs and what it gives back. It covers the full arc of an athletic life — its intensity, its brevity, and how the best athletes build confidence and prepare for what comes after the final game. It explores the team behind every athlete: the coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists who work in careful coordination so that one person, in one moment, can do something extraordinary.
Packed with vivid illustrations and real stories of what elite training looks like from the inside, this guide treats young athletes as equals. It does not talk down. It does not oversimplify. It brings kids all the way into a world most children only see from the stands — and gives them honest, specific answers about whether this demanding path might be their calling.
Whether your young reader dreams of competing in baseball, soccer, basketball, swimming, or any sport that demands everything they have, this book was written for the boy or girl who is never just playing. The one who is always competing, always measuring, always reaching for something just beyond their current best.
Somewhere right now, in a gym or on a field or in a pool, the next great athlete is doing the work that no one sees yet. This book is for the kid who wants to know exactly what that work looks like.
Memories From Childhood Summers
The Ghost of the Deserted House follows two friends who sneak into an abandoned house on a summer night, where they encounter an unexpected visitor and wonder if the house is haunted. What was the inspiration for your story?
My Active Kids Series currently includes four books: The Ghost of the Deserted House, Luke’s Sailing Adventure, A Museum Robbery, and The Leading Role. Already, the series’ name and the books’ titles suggest that the heroes are a group of children who encounter surprising, interesting, and sometimes even exciting situations. These stories are based on my own childhood games and the friends and siblings who joined in.
This particular book takes place during the summer and tells the story of a visit to a friend’s family’s summer cottage. I had similar visits as a child, and they always felt like an adventure. Spending the night with a strange family can be tough for a kid. It might be an unfamiliar place to sleep, and the family might eat something different from what you’re used to at home.
And how well do your skills hold up in unfamiliar environments? A beach can feel strange and unsettling. Is it deep? Is the bottom muddy, or are there nasty, slimy aquatic plants growing in the water? What about those dark, enticing yet scary attics or abandoned houses? I still get chills thinking about how exciting a nature walk at dusk is!
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
The main focus of this book is actually summer nature. At least Finnish children have the chance to experience it in many ways. I want to take my readers to an environment filled with summer scents, trees, plants, and birdsong. It was also the rural environment of my childhood, by the beautiful lakes of Eastern Finland.
I’ve drawn many memories from childhood summers throughout my adult life. I can still close my eyes and return to those landscapes in my mind. Nature is the greatest teacher. It allows us to see and experience things from small to large, helping us reflect on life as a whole. And children feel connected to the vastness of nature, even when they’re just playing a simple game with stones and squatting on the ground.
I also remember how inspiring it was to constantly learn new things. I believe a child is a kind of explorer, whom we adults should give a rich environment to explore and challenges to face. Ideally, children should explore and learn early with their friends. In this story, two young friends share the same experience, and supporting each other becomes essential when things get too exciting. – They say shared joy is double the joy, and I believe that, too!
What scene in the book did you have the most fun writing?
The adult me was, of course, captivated while writing a nostalgic journey through my childhood and its experiences in nature. But the most fun and inspiring part was writing the sections where the children set out on their own adventure in the abandoned house.
After all, the attic scene is the most exciting part of the story. There, the children display independence and a bit of daring. Such activities are usually the most fascinating for young readers.
I wanted to take my readers on an experience they might not have in real life. It’s always fun when an adult in a story does something funny or even gets caught up in a prank or trick. I think the father snoring in a hammock is quite endearing, especially when the kids attack this “ghost” in the dark attic.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
In our small family business, I get involved in various parts of our publishing process. It’s rewarding to have direct contact with the people who create illustrations, edit, and lay out the work. As usual, I have numerous book projects at different stages. Some are still in the illustration phase on the artist’s desk, while others have just returned from editing.
I just published my 80th English children’s book in my writing career—there are even more in Finnish. The book The Hermit’s Hut is the fourth installment in my Lyrics of Life Series. This time, the story was inspired by John Lennon’s song Imagine. I believe the next sequel to this series will likely be published sometime next year.
Before that, I plan to publish two slightly longer novels for young readers. Those are really fun to write now and then. You get to create a longer adventure with a more complex plot, which allows more focus on the characters. These upcoming children’s novels include the exciting time travel adventure Professor Dreistein and the Captured Lightning and The Singing Ghost of Troll Village, which centers on a talent competition in a troll village. We can expect these new novels to be released later this year.
Until then, we at Wickwick need to focus on promoting our Bilingual Books Series—there are many titles featuring various language pairs! I hope these books help children worldwide master situations where they need to immerse themselves in two languages. It’s definitely more enjoyable with a good story and beautiful illustrations.
Creating new books is truly wonderful, but it’s also rewarding to share them with international publishers, such as at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair or the Frankfurt Book Fair. I was especially excited this spring when the Finnish version of one of my stories, “Carried by Wings,” was nominated for a prize in a Finnish competition. Wish me luck!
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Warm Values | Facebook | LinkedIn | Amazon
Something strange happens when the boys decide to escape the heat and mosquitoes and go to the attic of the deserted house next door.
Do ghosts suffer from the heat too?
