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Have You Heard This One Before
Have You Heard This One Before is a lively mix of short stories. Each tale jumps into a different mood, scene, or style, and the collection opens by proudly admitting that nothing links these stories except the author himself. You move from haunted lighthouses and eerie déjà vu to strange pumpkins with suspicious personalities and even a falling piano that changes a gambler’s life. The stories swing between mystery, humor, horror, sentiment, and quiet reflection, and they do it with a kind of carefree confidence that feels refreshing in a world obsessed with strict genres.
Reading it, I kept finding myself surprised at how quickly the tone could shift. One moment, I was following a family heading toward an old lighthouse in The Loop, and the next, I was inside a gambler’s mind as he dodged two thugs moments before a piano drops out of the sky in Surprise. The writing has a steady clarity, and the ideas land fast. Sometimes the twists feel sharp enough to make me sit back for a second. Other times, I felt a simple warmth, like the narrator in Surprise looking back on a messy young life with equal parts regret and humor.
I enjoyed the way the book leans into its own freedom. The author admits right in the foreword that he wasn’t sure who would read a genre-free collection, which almost made me root for the book before I even hit page one. That honesty softened me. Then the stories did the rest. Some ideas feel whimsical. Others dig into darker corners. A few made me laugh out loud because of how strange and blunt they were. I liked the looseness of it all. I liked that every story seemed to shrug at the idea of rules. Even when a moment made me uncomfortable or confused, I felt like the book wanted me to just ride the wave and trust it.
If you like stories that pick you up, spin you around, and drop you somewhere unexpected, this book will treat you well. Readers who crave strict genres might feel lost, yet readers who enjoy surprises, playful ideas, and quick bursts of emotion will have a good time. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys short stories that don’t mind being weird, heartfelt, eerie, or funny, sometimes all in the same breath.
Pages: 165 | ASIN : B0FXCKZB4W
A Place for Memories
The Path to Heaven follows an aging Parisian tour driver haunted by grief and faith, who embarks on a cross-cultural journey to reconcile loss, belief, and the idea of heaven itself. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The seed of this story came from watching drivers and guides in Paris—people who spend their days ushering others toward beauty while quietly carrying their own lives in the background. I wondered what it might feel like to witness so many reunions, honeymoons, and celebrations when your own heart is learning to live with absence. Lucas emerged from that question: a man who knows every street in a luminous city yet is still learning the road back to himself.
I was also inspired by conversations across cultures and faiths—how a simple ride can open a door to someone’s private world. The novel began as a quiet scene in a cemetery and unfolded into a journey where each encounter gently reshapes Lucas’s understanding of loss, devotion, and what “heaven” might mean on ordinary days.
The writing in your story is very artful and creative. Was it a conscious effort to create a story in this fashion, or is this style reflective of your writing in general?
The style is both intentional and natural to me. I’m drawn to concise sentences that carry a quiet rhythm—language that leaves room for breath, like a prayer spoken softly. I wanted the prose to mirror Lucas’s inner pace: deliberate, attentive, tender. While I do adapt my voice to each project, I tend to favor imagery, musical cadence, and moments where silence speaks as loudly as dialogue.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
For many young people, faith, religion, and even the idea of life and death can feel distant—something abstract or far away from daily life. I wanted to explore that distance and quietly bridge it. I didn’t expect this story to open so many hearts, including my own. Through Lucas’s journey, readers begin to question what faith means beyond religion, and how love and loss can lead to a more personal kind of belief. What moved me most was realizing that a simple story could make people pause and reflect on something as vast as the soul.
Were you able to achieve everything you wanted with the characters in the novel?
Lucas and his daughter came into focus exactly as I hoped—quiet, resilient, imperfect, and brave. Some side characters, like the young Chinese artist and the Russian veteran, still linger with me; I can imagine returning to them in a companion novella or stories that follow the threads they began. But for this book, I’m content with the spaces I left for readers to inhabit—places where their own memories can meet the characters halfway.
Author Links: GoodReads
Something Resembling Love
Something Resembling Love tells the story of Jane Davenport, a young woman burdened by loss and a rare medical condition that shadows her every choice. After losing her parents and discovering she has hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, her life becomes a balancing act between survival and desire. Years later, she crosses paths with Peter, a quiet researcher haunted by his own solitude. Their worlds intertwine in Chicago through mutual friends, late-night labs, and hesitant hearts. The novel moves between perspectives, revealing how two people learn to accept imperfection and find something close to love amid fear, science, and second chances.
Author Elizabeth Standish writes with a kind of honesty that sneaks up on you. The story isn’t flashy or overly romantic, it’s gentle, careful, and raw in ways that feel human. I loved how Jane’s sharp wit balances her vulnerability, how her pain never turns her bitter, only more determined. Peter’s quiet awkwardness, his devotion to science, and his fumbling affection make him real and lovable in his own hesitant way. Their chemistry builds like a slow burn, full of small gestures and unspoken emotions, the kind that make you smile and ache at the same time.
What stood out to me most was how Standish weaves science into intimacy. The clinical details of DNA, blood vessels, and soil chemistry mirror the characters’ search for connection. The writing feels almost poetic in places, but it never drifts into pretentiousness. The dialogue feels lived-in, the pacing patient but never dull. Still, there were moments when I wanted the story to push harder, to show more of Jane’s darker thoughts, or Peter’s guilt, instead of keeping things so contained. But maybe that’s the point. Love here isn’t cinematic. It’s quiet, flawed, and a little messy. Just like the people trying to hold it together.
Something Resembling Love isn’t just a romance, it’s a meditation on resilience, grief, and the fragile beauty of being known by another person. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy character-driven stories with emotional depth, to anyone who’s ever loved someone despite fear, and to those who prefer subtle emotion over melodrama.
Pages: 317 | ASIN : B0FMP96X96
The Path to Heaven
The Path to Heaven follows Lucas, an aging Parisian tour driver haunted by grief and faith, as he seeks to reconcile loss, belief, and the idea of heaven itself. The story begins quietly at a cemetery, with Lucas talking to his late wife, and grows into a cross-cultural journey that pulls him into conversations with an artist, a Russian veteran, a Muslim family, and others who all carry their own versions of faith. The novel weaves together questions of love, purpose, and spiritual searching across continents. In the end, the story is less about finding heaven and more about discovering that it already lives within human kindness and memory.
I have to say, this book caught me off guard. The writing feels gentle but deliberate, full of poetic rhythm and soft pauses. Sometimes the language reads almost like prayer, simple sentences that hum with emotion. I liked that the story didn’t rush. It breathed. Each character arrived like a new chapter in Lucas’s soul, teaching him something small but unforgettable. The pacing is deliberate, and that quietness gave me space to feel. The author’s descriptions of Paris, of sunlight on graves and whispered prayers, stayed with me long after the end of the book.
What moved me most was how the story blurred the line between faith and love. The idea that heaven could be found in people, in shared laughter, in kindness, in forgiveness, felt relatable. I could feel the ache of Lucas’s devotion to his late wife and the strange comfort he found in strangers. The conversations between cultures were beautiful too. Each meeting chipped away at his sorrow, and at mine, in a way I didn’t expect. Sometimes the dialogue leaned into sentimentality, but honestly, I didn’t mind. It felt sincere. It felt like someone opening their heart.
I’d recommend The Path to Heaven to anyone who’s ever questioned what comes after loss, or who’s ever clung to the hope that love might outlive death. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy quiet stories that linger in feeling rather than action, who find peace in reflection and gentle faith. This isn’t a book to race through. It’s one to sit with, to let unfold slowly like morning light through a church window.
Pages: 193 | ISBN : 1069560006
Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment
Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment is a haunting collection of short stories that peels back the soft skin of ordinary life to reveal the raw nerves beneath. Each story takes place in familiar settings like a home, an office, and a neighborhood, but nothing stays familiar for long. Saxsma writes about people who are breaking down, sometimes quietly, sometimes violently, under the weight of their own choices and circumstances. The opening story, “Drive You to Violence,” sets the tone: a domestic world suffocating in silence and habit, where love and resentment sit side by side at the dinner table. The prose is stripped down, careful, yet full of emotional danger. By the end, the book has become a mirror that reflects not what we wish we were, but what we fear we might be.
What struck me first was the rhythm of Saxsma’s writing. It moves in circles, looping back on itself, pressing the reader to sit in the discomfort of repetition, the same routines, the same conversations, the same small cruelties. I found myself frustrated at times, but in a good way. That frustration was part of the experience. The language is plain and unadorned, but it works like sandpaper, roughing up the smoothness of everyday life until you can feel the grain. There’s an honesty to it that’s hard to shake. I didn’t feel like I was reading stories so much as eavesdropping on private lives that were coming undone in slow motion. Saxsma’s characters don’t confess their feelings. They leak them.
As I read deeper, I started feeling uneasy, almost complicit. The book makes you question what “normal” even means, and whether common sense is really sense at all or just a way to survive disappointment. Some scenes left me angry, others hollow. There were moments I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Saxsma has a way of making the ordinary grotesque without ever being sensational. The writing reminded me how fragile the line is between patience and despair, between love and control. It made me think of people I know, people who keep smiling while their lives quietly cave in around them.
This isn’t a feel-good read. It’s a feel-something read. I’d recommend Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment to anyone who likes fiction that cuts deep, that doesn’t flinch, and that finds truth in the cracks of small, painful moments. It’s for readers who don’t mind sitting in the dark for a while, trusting that somewhere in all that disillusionment, there’s something honest, maybe even redemptive, waiting to be found.
Pages: 258 | ASIN : B0D5BBB2FS
Grand Illusion: Lesson of a Balinese Lotus
The story follows Mara, a gifted Balinese fabric artist who rises from her humble beginnings in rice paddies to the glamorous world of Milan Fashion Week. Her journey is one of contrasts. She moves between the quiet values of her homeland and the dizzying pace of high fashion, and she becomes entangled in a complicated romance with Zayn, a wealthy heir from the Emirates. Along the way, the book explores friendship, loyalty, cultural identity, and the fragile balance between authenticity and the grand façades people build around themselves.
What struck me most was how personal Mara’s journey felt. The writing is vivid, almost cinematic, when describing fabrics and runways, yet it softens into something warm and nostalgic when she recalls Bali. I felt caught between those worlds with her, sometimes seduced by the opulence and sometimes yearning for the quiet of the rice fields. The emotional pull is strong. The dialogue sometimes feels a little too polished, but that polished tone also matches the glittering, high-society backdrop.
I also found myself invested in the themes of love and ambition. Zayn fascinated me as a character because he embodied both desire and duty, but I often grew frustrated with his indecision. Mara’s longing for something deeper tugged at me, and I caught myself rooting for her to choose herself over him. The friendships with Sarah and Annie gave the novel a heartbeat, reminding me that sometimes chosen family anchors us more than romance ever could. The way those bonds were written gave me moments of real joy and comfort while reading.
One character I kept thinking about was Wayan. His presence felt like a quiet anchor in the storm of Mara’s conflicting worlds. I admired his sincerity and the way he carried his past with such openness, sharing childhood memories of his father’s silverwork and his grandmother’s cooking as if they were gifts. He wasn’t flawless, but that made him feel real. His willingness to fit into Mara’s family life, to get his hands dirty in the rice fields, and to prove his intentions gave the story a sense of groundedness. Through him, I felt the pull of tradition, the comfort of roots, and the reminder that sometimes love shows itself most in the willingness to stay and to try.
Grand Illusion is a book for readers who love a blend of romance, cultural richness, and the spectacle of fashion. It is heartfelt and dramatic, with enough tension to keep you turning the pages. If you enjoy stories about women navigating identity in the face of dazzling but fragile worlds, this one will speak to you. For me, it was a reminder that no matter how grand the illusions of life may seem, the truth of who we are always waits to be chosen.
Pages: 288 | ASIN : B0FLVPHNND
That Kind of Girl
That Kind of Girl by Jacey Bici is a sharp, funny, and often painfully honest novel about Opal Collins, a dedicated physician whose life teeters between the chaos of her high-pressure hospital job and the fragile balance of her family life. The story follows her through frantic hospital shifts, tense moments with her husband Fox, and unexpected encounters, like meeting Fantasia, a stripper-slash-therapist whose fearless confidence rattles Opal’s view of herself. The book is about identity, ambition, and the difficult choices women face when juggling personal fulfillment with the demands of career and relationships. Bici builds Opal’s world with a mix of biting humor, messy realism, and moments of quiet vulnerability that keep the pages turning.
I loved how the writing felt alive. The humor is sly, often showing up in the middle of high-stress moments, and the dialogue snaps with authenticity. Opal’s internal commentary is razor-sharp yet tinged with self-doubt, making her both flawed and relatable. The pacing keeps you in that sweet spot between wanting to race ahead and needing to savor the detail. Still, there were times the book’s whirlwind of side characters and subplots made me feel a little like Opal herself, pulled in a dozen directions. It works thematically, but it occasionally left me craving more breathing room in the narrative.
The ideas at play here are what really stuck with me. Bici isn’t just telling the story of one woman in crisis. She’s poking at the bigger question of what it means to “have it all” without losing yourself in the process. Through Opal’s encounters, with her controlling boss, her relentlessly supportive yet sometimes misguided husband, and the magnetic Fantasia, the book explores power, compromise, and self-preservation. I appreciated that Bici never gave easy answers. Opal’s choices are messy, sometimes self-sabotaging, but they feel honest. The mix of humor and emotional weight keeps the themes from becoming heavy-handed, and the moments of intimacy, both in friendships and in marriage, felt refreshingly unvarnished.
By the end, I felt like I’d been through something alongside Opal, rooting for her even when she didn’t quite know where she was headed. That Kind of Girl would be a great pick for readers who love character-driven stories with bite, especially those who appreciate frank and slightly irreverent explorations of marriage, career, and identity. If you’ve ever felt the tug-of-war between ambition and the rest of your life, this book will make you laugh, squirm, and maybe even feel seen.
ASIN : B0FJNFV2CK
Connections Make the World Go Round
Before We Arrived follows three people, each marked by loss, resilience, and quiet strength, who seek refuge at a goat sanctuary; they find not only healing but also a found family. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
First I’d like to thank Literary Titan for the interview. I absolutely loved writing this novel and am thrilled it’s resonating with people on a deep level.
The idea for the rescue sanctuary came easily. I adore animals and the notion that they have the power to aid in the healing process for humans. ‘Herd’ species—goats, donkeys, horses, and alpacas—were chosen because they need each other as well as their human caretakers. It was also a way to inject a bit of fun into the mix with their shenanigans. I was keen to have the work volunteers live on-site, enjoying shared meals and private sleeping spaces. I’ve had personal experience with various forms of communal living and it made sense to incorporate that. I wanted King Solomon Sanctuary to serve as an interactive setting that chunks of the story arcs could pivot around. The workers have the option to come and go as they please during off-hours but most choose to stay in close proximity to one another and the animals—it’s their own special tight-knit community of second chances.
Henry, Rivka, and Jayce all come to the sanctuary for different reasons, holding onto trauma that has kept them closed off until now. What was the inspiration for the relationship that develops between the characters?
Connections make the world go round. In Before We Arrived we witness the interactions within each of the biological families, as well as between the narrators and secondary characters as new friendships are forged and old ties change shape. All three families have struggled through adversity, and we learn the details of their backstories as the chapters progress. The world can be harsh and cold, relationships complicated and messy. What are the multitude of elements that guide our path and our decisions? Can we build a meaningful life after experiencing tragedy? How do we best care for ourselves and each other? These are the kinds of questions that motivate me to create stories.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I’ll preface this answer by noting that I did not set out to write a book specifically about grief and resilience; that just happened organically as the outcome of each character’s story and their relationships with one another.
The novel explores questions about race/culture/identity, the short and long-term effects of personal and generational trauma, family dynamics, and issues around marginalization. I’ve also had a perennial fascination with ancestral memories, so that was layered in, along with the underlying truths about the universality of suffering and the value of connection and empathy. Naturally some of these themes overlap.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
Before We Arrived was recently released and I’m not quite ready to think about beginning a new project. Writing does energize me so another novel is within the realm of possibilities.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
In the summer of 2005, three dissimilar people—Henry, a grieving Black landscaper; Rivka, a restless Jewish social worker; and Jayce, a guarded Indigenous archaeologist—find their lives colliding in quiet, powerful ways.
From New England to Vietnam, this lyrical novel traces their search for peace, meaning, and joy amid the rubble of personal and ancestral trauma. Lush, moving, and deeply human, Before We Arrived is a celebration of resilience, found family, and love in its many forms.
Before We Arrived is a soulful, literary journey through grief, healing, and unexpected connections. Fans of James McBride and Lily King will feel right at home.
LITERARY TITAN 