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Childhood’s Hour: The Lost Desert
Childhood’s Hour: The Lost Desert by E.E. Glass unfolds in a dark and unnerving world where memory, identity, and survival constantly collide. At its heart is Loste, a man who emerges from the mysterious Fray with no clear past, only fear and a desperate drive forward. He stumbles into a land of sapphire sands, uncanny creatures, and strange sentient companions like Nadhez, whose furred presence and bound loyalty blur the line between guide and hallucination. The novel draws heavily on the clash between what is real and what is illusion, blending cosmic dread with intimate moments of connection. Every page balances wonder against horror, and every encounter threatens to dissolve into the static haze of madness.
The prose is lush, almost dreamlike, yet it never lingers too long on beauty without reminding me of the lurking terror beneath. I felt caught in the same paranoia as Loste, scanning every moment for the telltale crackle of the Fray. That immersion was brilliant, though it sometimes left me exhausted, like I had trudged through the dunes alongside him. The rhythm of fear and relief, tension and stillness, worked on me in waves, and I admired how the author never let comfort last for long.
What I liked most was how human the book felt despite its alien setting. Loste’s fractured identity, his mistrust of others, and his fragile hope for connection all hit me in the gut. Nadhez, with his easy laughter and sharp teeth, became a figure I wanted to trust, even when I doubted his reality. The dynamic between them gave me flashes of warmth, then snatched it away with reminders of cruelty and despair. That tension felt real, and it left me questioning my own instinct to trust. I also appreciated the playful absurdity woven through, the honking seal pup, the comic relief of bodily mishaps, which gave the darkness a sharper contrast.
Childhood’s Hour is not a book for the faint of heart. For readers who enjoy strange, surreal fantasy that bends toward horror while still offering moments of raw human tenderness, it is unforgettable. I’d recommend it to readers who like their fiction unsettling and immersive, who don’t mind being disoriented, and who find beauty in the uncanny.
Pages: 550
When Hearts Heal
When Hearts Heal sweeps us back into Milford-Haven, a small coastal town brimming with secrets, passions, and the quiet hope of second chances. At its center is Miranda Jones, now married to her astronomer husband Cornelius, as the two begin their new life together. Their story intertwines with those of her sister Meredith, her friends Sally and Samantha, and the wider cast of townsfolk who grapple with family tensions, lingering grief, and the possibility of forgiveness. Underneath it all runs the unsettling mystery of a missing journalist, a thread that lends the story a sense of urgency amid the slower rhythms of daily life on California’s Central Coast.
I enjoyed how lived-in this world feels. The writing carries a warmth that makes Milford-Haven less like a backdrop and more like a character itself. I found myself pulled into the streets and cafés, listening in on conversations, feeling the salt air press in from the Pacific. Purl’s prose is unhurried yet never flat. It’s like being invited into someone’s home where the pace of life is measured not by deadlines but by the shifting of tides and the turn of seasons. At times, some of the details were drawn out, but then I’d be caught off guard by a tender moment or a surprising twist that reminded me why I cared about these people in the first place.
What I loved most, though, were the relationships. They’re messy, often painful, yet also full of grace. Miranda and Cornelius radiate a quiet kind of joy that feels earned, while Meredith’s struggles hit a rawer note. Sally’s story, balancing motherhood and her own wounds, moved me deeply. And then there’s Samantha, whose journals cut to the heart of the novel’s themes: healing, forgiveness, and the uneasy dance between past and present. There is a tangled web of characters and that’s exactly what gives the book its richness. Life isn’t tidy, and neither are these lives.
When Hearts Heal left me with the sense of having visited old friends and walked away with a little more compassion for how complicated and beautiful people can be. I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy stories steeped in community, where character and setting matter as much as plot. It’s for anyone who wants to sink into a small-town saga that doesn’t shy away from heartache but ultimately points toward hope.
Pages: 390 | ASIN : B0FFZZVQ3H
A Cry for Vengeance
The story begins in Tucson in 1968 with a hospice nurse who records a dying man’s confession. He reveals that his true identity is Franz Dietrich, a Nazi officer who escaped justice and lived under an alias in the United States. What follows is a tense unraveling of secrets. A writer, Bryan De Luca, is drawn into the mystery and begins tracing the threads of Nazi war criminals who were protected after the war. Along the way, he uncovers government complicity, survivor testimonies, and chilling reminders of how the past refuses to stay buried. The novel blends history, moral questions, and suspense into a gripping narrative that moves across personal stories and larger political shadows.
I easily sank into the flow of the writing. The conversations feel natural, almost like eavesdropping on people with something heavy on their hearts. There is a rawness in the way guilt, regret, and fear are drawn out, yet it never tips into melodrama. At times, the pacing slows, almost deliberately, as if to make me sit with the weight of what is being revealed. That worked for me. It made the moments of tension sharper and more unsettling. I’ll admit, though, there were times I wanted things to move a little quicker, but then I’d be pulled right back in by a revelation or a moral dilemma that felt too real to ignore.
I felt anger at the injustice, sadness at the lives lost or scarred, and frustration at the bureaucratic indifference that let murderers live quietly in suburbia. There’s a thread of hope in the survivors’ voices, but also a deep weariness. I appreciated how the author didn’t try to tie everything neatly with a bow. Life, especially life touched by atrocity, rarely allows that. At times, I found myself thinking not just about the characters but about my own willingness to look away from uncomfortable truths. That kind of reflection is what makes this story powerful.
I’d recommend A Cry for Vengeance to anyone who likes a blend of history and thriller, but also to readers who don’t mind being left with hard questions. It’s not just about chasing old ghosts. It’s about the cost of silence, the burden of memory, and the uneasy choices people make in the name of survival or justice.
Pages: 191 | ASIN : B0FJ5257B6
The Grotesque
The Grotesque is a dark novel that dives headfirst into trauma, obsession, and the blurred edges between reality and delusion. The story shifts perspectives between characters who are each broken in their own ways. Katrina, a dancer clawing through rejection and danger. Jared, a haunted figure battling inner demons and visions that blur into nightmares. And Michael, a man desperate to control his own narrative. Their paths intersect in a cityscape soaked with menace, hallucination, and fleeting moments of hope. What begins as a tense character study unravels into something stranger, almost dreamlike, where memory and horror bleed together and nothing feels entirely safe.
The writing has a raw, abrasive energy, like it’s trying to peel back a layer of skin. I couldn’t look away. Foy writes with an eye for the grotesque, both in the literal violence that shadows the characters and in the quiet cruelties they turn inward on themselves. Some scenes made me tense up, almost angry, but that anger was directed at the world he was showing me, not at the prose. The language is sharp, cynical, often bitterly funny, and it fits the mood. It’s not elegant in a polished sense, but it’s alive, and I felt its pulse.
There were moments I loved too. Small sparks of connection, odd flashes of warmth, even in the middle of so much darkness. Those moments felt like stolen breaths, like someone opening a window in a suffocating room. They didn’t last long, but they mattered.
Reading The Grotesque felt to me like stepping into the fractured, hallucinatory world of American Psycho, only with more aching humanity flickering beneath the horror. I’d recommend The Grotesque to readers who aren’t afraid of stories that claw under the skin. If you want tidy resolutions or comforting escapes, this isn’t your book. But if you’re drawn to characters who stumble through shadow and survive in fragments, and if you’re willing to sit with unease, you’ll find something here that lingers.
Pages: 348 | ASIN : B0FPLW71S1
Hikeological Escape
When I opened Hikeological Escape, I expected a straightforward travel memoir, but what I found was a layered story of self-discovery told through two epic journeys: the Camino Santiago and the Pacific Crest Trail. Chris “Windscreen” Homan begins in Saudi Arabia, stuck in an expat life that feels suffocating, and from there his story unravels into a series of steps, literal and spiritual, that lead him through mountains, deserts, and questions of faith, belonging, and identity. It’s not just a story about hiking. It’s about what happens when someone walks away from conformity and comfort in order to face the messy, liberating chaos of being human.
What struck me most was the honesty in Homan’s writing. He doesn’t polish his doubts or hide his discomfort. He lets them sit in the open. There’s humor here, sometimes dark, sometimes lighthearted, and it balances well against the rawer moments of pain or uncertainty. At times I laughed at his dry commentary, and other times I felt the weight of his solitude press down on me. The descriptions of trail life, like cowboy camping, battling hunger, and trading banter with strangers, made me feel like I was walking alongside him, sweating under the same sun. Yet beneath all of that, I could sense the real story: the struggle of someone trying to reconcile a fractured sense of purpose with the beauty of the present moment.
I also admired how he handled spirituality. There’s no preaching, no easy answers. Instead, the book lingers in the gray space between faith and skepticism. He questions, he wrestles, he admits what he doesn’t know. I felt both challenged and comforted by his willingness to leave questions unresolved. His alter ego, Windscreen, gives the narrative a slightly mythic quality, and I liked how it blurred the line between storytelling and confession. The voice is casual, almost like a long conversation with a good friend who isn’t afraid to tell you the truth, even if it stings a little.
By the end, I realized this isn’t just a book about hiking or travel. It’s a meditation on freedom, risk, and what it takes to feel alive. I would recommend Hikeological Escape to anyone who feels stuck in their own routines, anyone who’s toyed with the idea of walking away, or anyone who just loves a good story about taking chances. Homan reminds us that sometimes losing the path we thought we needed is exactly how we find ourselves again.
Pages: 332 | ASIN : B0FJZQWP94
Corsair and the Sky Pirates
From the first page, Corsair and the Sky Pirates drops you straight into a swirl of history, imagination, and high-flying adventure. It starts with Jules Verne and Nikola Tesla in a café in France, dreaming up impossible machines and strange new power sources. That meeting sparks a chain of events that explodes into a world of airships, sky pirates, secret plots, and the dangerous lure of comet fragments with world-changing energy. At the center of it all is Corsair, a rogue pirate who’s as much a freedom fighter as he is a thief, and his diverse crew of outcasts who take on empires, corporations, and tyrants in an age where science blurs into fantasy.
I found myself grinning at how much fun the writing is. The prose is quick, like a stage play mixed with pulp adventure, and it leans hard into spectacle. The characters are bold and colorful, each with their quirks, backstories, and weapons that are almost as wild as their personalities. There were moments where I rolled my eyes at how dramatic some scenes were, but I also loved it. It felt like the book knew it was larger than life and leaned all the way into that spirit. I kept turning pages because I wanted to see what trick or twist would come next.
At the same time, the ideas underneath the adventure stuck with me. There’s a real push and pull between invention for progress and invention for profit. The way the story frames Edison, Tesla, and ERP as forces shaping the world gave me something to chew on between the swashbuckling fights. I felt frustrated at the greed and cruelty shown by the corporate powers, and I rooted for Corsair even when his choices were brutal. The story isn’t subtle, but sometimes that’s the point. It makes its villains nasty, its heroes daring, and its stakes almost absurdly high, and that gave me the freedom to just sink into the ride.
When I closed the book, I thought about who would enjoy it most. If you like steampunk worlds, if you enjoy a good pirate tale with a twist of history and a lot of flair, or if you just want to escape into something that’s fun, fast, and fearless, this book will be right up your alley. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants adventure with heart and a lot of imagination.
Pages: 303 | ASIN : B0BRX8SBVM
Well, Mama, This is It (it’s Now Or Never)
Well, Mama, This is It (it’s Now Or Never) is unlike anything I’ve read before. It’s part confession, part storytelling, and part letter-writing, all stitched together with raw honesty and a strong emotional pulse. The book moves between voices, sometimes it’s a teenage boy writing to his grandmother, other times it’s a young woman chasing a dream life, or even a haunting personal tale of loss and survival. At its heart, though, the book is a letter to her mother, a brave and vulnerable coming-out story wrapped in poetry, reflections on love, faith, and the messy business of being human.
In “A Story of a Friend of a Friend,” when Adaina shares her journey from being a teacher to a stripper, the descriptions are almost cinematic. She writes about smoky eye makeup, French pedicures, and stepping into the strip club as if it were a Hollywood set. It’s dazzling, but then the tone flips as she describes the loneliness and danger behind the glamour, and suddenly I was pulled from the surface glitter into the heavy silence of regret. That swing between fantasy and reality is something the book does again and again, and it made me feel the same kind of emotional whiplash she must have lived through.
I also loved the way she mingles imagination with truth. Take “Secret Agent (Voodoo Princess),” where Rebecca Tanon, a demon-child-turned-undercover-agent, blurs the line between folklore and personal reflection. At first, I thought it was a sharp left turn into fiction, but it clicked for me as a metaphor for how heavy family expectations and inherited trauma can feel like being born with a mission you never asked for. The story gave me chills, not just because of the supernatural edge, but because of what it revealed about how powerless a child can feel in the hands of adults.
In “To My Newest Pen Pal, Jant Leaps,” Adaina writes a heartfelt letter that evolves into a romantic confession, blending vulnerability with defiance against judgment. In “Sexual Orientation,” she reflects on faith, family, and identity, ultimately affirming that love is sacred regardless of gender. She weaves in verses about love, love with a woman who makes her feel free, love that pulls her away from Hennessy and Ecstasy, love that feels holy even when the world insists it’s wrong. There’s vulnerability in her admission, “I never thought I could fall in love with Eve’s gender,” but also defiance when she insists, “Yes, I am a Christian, but my religion is kindness.” That blend of fear, yearning, and courageous self-acceptance struck me deeply. It’s not polished in the way mainstream memoirs often are, but that’s what makes it powerful. It feels like a real letter, one that trembles with truth.
In the end, I walked away from this book feeling like I had just sat across from someone who didn’t hold anything back. It’s raw. It’s uneven at times. But it’s alive with feeling, and that’s rare. I’d recommend this book to anyone who craves honesty in writing, teens struggling with self-expression, readers curious about queer coming-of-age stories, or anyone who wants to feel less alone in their own mess of faith, love, and identity. It’s not a book for someone looking for clean lines or tidy endings, but if you’re okay with sitting in the chaos of someone else’s truth, then Well, Mama, This is It (it’s Now Or Never) will move you the way it moved me.
Pages: 51 | ASIN : B0DT7FZS7Q
LITERARY TITAN 