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Tales of the Beechy Hollow Great Outdoors Club
Robert E. Saunders’ Tales of the Beechy Hollow Great Outdoors Club is a collection of wild, funny, and oddly heartfelt stories centered around a ragtag group of Appalachian misfits who call themselves the Beechy Hollow Great Outdoors Club. The book follows Rob Greenwood, a small-town journalist who returns home to Looneyton, West Virginia, and falls back in with his late father’s eccentric circle of friends, hunters, hikers, and backwoods philosophers who turn every camping trip into a slapstick odyssey. From “Bobcat Boogie,” a harebrained mountain lion hoax gone wrong, to “The Evil Psychic Mule of Devil Ridge,” each story feels like a campfire yarn told by someone who’s laughing too hard to finish their sentence.
This book made me grin like an idiot more than once. Saunders writes with that kind of sly humor that sneaks up on you, mixing tall tales with a sharp understanding of small-town life. The characters are loud and flawed and strangely endearing. Rufus Sneed, the ornery old-timer, might be one of my favorite literary rednecks of all time, and Rob’s dry narration grounds the chaos with a wry self-awareness. What I enjoyed most was the sense of place, the muddy trails, the smell of woodsmoke, the hiss of an old coffee pot in the corner of a rundown diner.
At times, though, the story lingers long on the jokes. I found myself wanting him to dig deeper into Rob’s quiet loneliness. Still, when the humor lands, it really lands. Beneath the goofiness, there’s a current of melancholy, a sense that these characters are clinging to something pure in a world that’s gotten too polished and fast. That emotional undertow surprised me and made the funny parts hit even harder.
Tales of the Beechy Hollow Great Outdoors Club is a gem for anyone who’s ever loved the woods, small-town storytelling, or that peculiar mix of friendship and foolishness that only seems to happen outdoors. It’s for readers who crave laughter with a hint of truth hiding underneath. If you’ve ever told a fish story that grew with every retelling, this book will feel like home.
Pages: 274 | ASIN: B0FTT78W4K
Pegasus Road
Pegasus Road is a haunting and beautifully written wartime novella that weaves love, loss, and resilience into a deeply human story. It follows Barbara, a young Englishwoman who refuses to accept that her fiancé, Andrew, a British lieutenant missing in action, is gone. Her journey from a quiet Dorset farm to the battered fields of Normandy becomes both a literal and emotional odyssey, one that explores devotion, courage, and the price of hope in a world torn apart by war. The book moves between Barbara’s desperate search and Andrew’s fight for survival, drawing the reader into both the intimacy of their bond and the vast chaos surrounding them.
The writing is cinematic and raw, full of moments that feel suspended between heartbreak and grace. Harry Black doesn’t rush anything; he lets silence do the talking, and that patience gives every scene its weight. What struck me most was how grounded the emotions were. There’s no melodrama, just quiet honesty. The war isn’t romanticized, nor is love painted as invincible; instead, both are messy, uncertain, and painfully real. The pacing slows at times, but I didn’t mind. The pauses felt like breaths between heartbreaks.
What really stayed with me was Barbara herself. She’s not a hero in the conventional sense, yet she embodies courage in its truest form, the kind that comes from stubborn love and relentless faith. Her defiance feels believable, even when it borders on reckless. And Andrew’s perspective balances hers with stoic tenderness, revealing the weariness of a soldier clinging to humanity in inhuman circumstances. The dialogue feels organic. It’s not the kind of book that shouts; it whispers, and somehow that makes it hit harder.
Pegasus Road left me reflective and strangely comforted. It’s a story about finding light in ruins, about ordinary people doing extraordinary things for love. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves historical fiction with heart, especially readers drawn to stories like Atonement or The Nightingale. It’s not just about war or romance; it’s about endurance, about how hope keeps flickering even when everything else burns out.
Pages: 129 | ASIN : B0FNXS83MX
A Retired School Counselor
Almost Fourteen follows a group of middle school students as they navigate the complexities of young love, friendships, and school drama, all while facing real-world dangers and moral dilemmas. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Almost Fourteen is actually a continuation of a series that originally I started for two of my grandchildren when they were in 5th and 6th grade (The Mystery of the Old Purse). As a writer I became invested in the two characters (Cali Snipe and Sky McCray), and I began inventing situations for the two characters. Also, as a retired school counselor, I was familiar with some of the school situations that teens encounter and need to navigate as they transition into adults. I try to include those situations in the novels.
I was also interested in showing examples of positive parenting, concerned and functioning adults trying to mentor their teen son or daughter in a beneficial fashion.
There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?
I hope the way they converse with each other, the dialog between teen characters, mostly ones who are motivated and have high personal expectations, would be realistic. Unfortunately for a writer, teen-speak changes rather rapidly so it is difficult to make dialog of characters always apropos for the current generation of adolescents. For example, currently (2024-25) most teens communicate largely via phone texts while when I was working as a school counselor most teens communicated face-to-face.
Judy Bloom and S.E. Hinton do this better than me. Their youth characters still register well with modern youth.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Teen romance, teen friendship, teen rivalries, inspirational teachers/coaches, healthy teen activities/sports, self-reliance when solving challenges.
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
As it now stands, the series has followed Cali and Sky and their friends through junior high and into high school. In Forced Apart, Cali and Sky are in eleventh grade. If I do write the eighth volume in the series, they will be in twelfth grade, will have already seen some of their friends graduate and go on to other experiences, and they will also be graduating and moving on to develop new friendships either in college, in the military, or in the workforce.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
One Big Misunderstanding
One Big Misunderstanding is a gripping and emotional story about how one impulsive act can unravel several lives. It begins with Ethan Cole, an ambitious young man betrayed by his mentor, Victor Langston, or so he thinks. In a moment of anger, Ethan sends flowers meant for Victor’s wife to another woman, unknowingly lighting the fuse that sets off a chain of heartbreaks, confrontations, and reckonings. The story weaves together the lives of Ethan, Victor, Sarah, and David, showing how assumptions, silence, and pride can destroy what love and loyalty tried to hold together. It’s a story about an affair, but also a story about communication, forgiveness, and the cost of misunderstanding.
The characters are flawed but painfully real. I could feel Ethan’s guilt and desperation as his good intentions collided with his worst impulses. Victor’s grief and need for control hit hard, too, especially when his past losses came to light. There were moments I wanted to shake these people, to make them talk, to make them stop hiding behind pride and fear. Yet that’s what made the story so relatable. Davis has this quiet way of showing emotion, not with big speeches or dramatic gestures, but with silence, hesitation, and all the words left unsaid. I found myself sitting there after certain scenes, just thinking, “Yeah, that’s exactly how people mess things up in real life.”
The writing itself feels raw and honest. It’s straightforward in a way that makes it easy to sink into. The pacing is steady, never rushed, and every chapter feels like peeling back another layer of these characters’ hearts. I liked how Davis played with moral gray areas. There’s no hero here, just people doing their best and failing in familiar ways. The tension builds not through action but through emotion, through the unbearable weight of choices made in anger or love. It reminded me of those moments in life when everything goes wrong, not because of cruelty, but because no one really listened.
By the end, I wasn’t just thinking about the story, I was thinking about all the small misunderstandings in my own life, the ones that could have gone differently if I’d just stopped and talked. The book is for anyone who’s ever wished they could take something back, or for anyone who’s been caught between love and pride. One Big Misunderstanding is emotional, heartfelt, and brave in how it handles the messy side of being human.
Pages: 109 | ASIN: B0FJY41F8X
PURGATORY – THE PALACE
C.M. Byron’s Purgatory is a haunting and emotional dive into the mind of someone living on the edge of their own sanity, guilt, and empathy. It begins with a raw depiction of mental illness and trauma, framed by the structure of the UK’s Mental Health Act, before unraveling into a dark, surreal journey through the mysterious Blackthorn Palace. The protagonist, a woman running barefoot from her past and her pain, finds herself in a Gothic world where empathy itself is both a gift and a curse. The story mixes psychological realism with supernatural metaphor, exploring themes of loneliness, trauma, redemption, and human connection through the lens of those society has cast aside.
Byron writes with such unfiltered honesty that it’s hard not to feel what the main character feels. There’s a rhythm to the prose that swings between poetic and brutal. At times, the writing feels heavy, even chaotic, but that chaos feels intentional. It mirrors the narrator’s fractured state of mind. The descriptions of Blackthorn Palace are lush and cinematic. But what hit me hardest were the quiet moments. The confessions, the loneliness, the small flashes of humanity that peek through the darkness. Byron doesn’t shy away from pain. They sit with it, let it breathe, and that’s what makes the story so powerful.
There are moments where the dialogue drifts into the surreal, and I found myself unsure what was real or imagined. But maybe that’s the point. Purgatory isn’t meant to be clean or clear. It’s meant to be felt. It’s a story about people who are too sensitive for the world, who see too much and can’t turn it off. I loved that it doesn’t romanticize mental illness or trauma, it just tells the truth of it. The characters are broken but not beyond repair, and that made me feel something rare: hope. I caught myself rereading certain lines, not for meaning but for how they made me feel in my gut.
Purgatory left me thinking long after I closed it. It’s heavy, emotional, sometimes disturbing, but also strangely comforting. I’d recommend it to anyone who has ever felt unseen or misunderstood, to those who find beauty in the dark corners of the mind.
Pages: 320 | ASIN: B0FR24B4RH
The Difficult Process of Emotional Recovery
Seven Blackbirds follows a law student trapped in an abusive marriage, struggling to protect herself and her infant son, who fights to escape her husband and rediscover who she is away from the abuse. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
During the course of writing this novel I was actively raising four children and became pregnant and gave birth to the fifth, so the way motherhood shapes and changes a woman was very much on my mind! I wanted to write about a protagonist who was not strong but became strong, found her voice and truly came into her own—regardless of the consequences for her marriage, which in this case was already rickety. My law studies had really opened my eyes to the impact of the legal system on mothers trying to dissolve the ties of organized society that bound them to their abusers while also trying to make their way through the difficult process of emotional recovery from that abuse. And I have to say that Tulsa inspired me as well. I lived there for several years and developed a deep affection for it. A strong sense of place is important to me as a writer. It grounds a story dealing with difficult subject matter so that the reader can wrap it around her like a cloak and really relate to the characters.
Did you plan the tone and direction of the novel before writing, or did it come out organically as you were writing?
There were maybe four things I was convinced of before I began. I knew I wanted to write about the “afterward” of Kim’s bad situation, that is, not dwell on the abuse, but focus on the recovery process. I knew I wanted to showcase a character who did not grow up in an abusive environment, because that would offer a pat explanation; I wanted this to be a shock and surprise to her, because there’s so much more meat to that story. I knew I was going to include humor because that adds realism—life is funny and sad and everything in between, all mixed up together. Finally, I knew I was going to need flashbacks because the recovery process is quite literally bringing the past back up into the present to meditate on it, digest it, and heal. That’s probably all the planning that went into it. I sketched out a few scenes and let things develop!
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Smashing the stereotypes around DV; physical and emotional abuse in the home cuts across all demographic categories.
The way that denial, deflection, minimizing, and holding toxic secrets impedes emotional healing and growth; and conversely, that bravery will get you everywhere!
That growing up means finding the voice of your soul, and trusting that the inner stability that brings will help you ride the waves in the outer world.
That the legal system is imperfect, but when a woman stops viewing herself as a victim in need of rescue by the system, she’s in the best position to wring what she wants out of it.
Were you able to achieve everything you wanted with the characters in the novel?
Yes, for the purposes of this particular novel. Some of the characters do return in the companion volume, “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” so I was able to work with them more and it was and it was fun to discover what came next. “Songs” picks up with our heroine Kim later on, and I was especially pleased to be able to flesh out the relationships within Kim’s family of origin—that’s definitely something that comes to the fore in middle age! I loved working more deeply with her mother and sister, and of course it was a pleasure to see the tiny boy in “Seven Blackbirds” grow into a teen.
Author Links: Amazon | Website
Not Just Another Brick in the Wall
Not Just Another Brick in the Wall! follows Calista “Cali” Snipe and Skyler “Sky” McCray through their first year at Parkington High, surrounded by a colorful circle of friends. It’s a story about growing up, testing limits, and figuring out identity during those shaky teenage years. The novel captures the texture of adolescence. The gossip, the awkward humor, the risky choices, the first brush with adult problems. There’s a lot of talk about friendship, loyalty, dating, and the lines between fun and danger. It’s a coming-of-age story that takes its time, mixing the sweetness of young love with the unease of real-world threats like drugs, death, and betrayal.
I found myself pulled in by how honestly it portrays teenage life. The writing feels raw and unfiltered, almost like eavesdropping on a bunch of high schoolers figuring things out as they go. Sometimes the dialogue rambles, but that’s part of the charm. It’s messy in the same way real conversations are. I liked that the author doesn’t talk down to teens. He lets them be confused, hormonal, funny, and scared all at once. Some scenes take their time to develop, and the number of characters can be overwhelming. Yet, beneath the chatter, there’s something genuine and kindhearted. The story cares about its kids, even when they don’t always make the right choices.
What struck me most was how the book balances innocence and tension. One minute it’s light and full of laughs, the next it dives into darker corners like grief, pressure, and manipulation. It doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths. I caught myself feeling protective of the characters, even the ones making mistakes. The counselor subplot gave me chills, not because it was overtly sinister at first, but because of how quietly it built up. The book made me remember what it felt like to be young, to think I knew everything, and still feel lost. That nostalgia hits hard.
Not Just Another Brick in the Wall! is an emotional and honest portrayal of adolescence. I’d recommend it to readers who like realistic teen fiction that doesn’t whitewash life. It’s heartfelt and worth reading together. For anyone who remembers high school as both the best and worst of times, this book will feel all too familiar.
Pages: 234 | ASIN: B0DNZ1LCCF
Son of Asmodeus
Son of Asmodeus throws readers into a world where angels, demons, and humans all fight over faith, fate, and the heavy price of truth. The story follows John “Sully” Sullivan, a former monk turned demon hunter who learns that his bloodline ties him to both Heaven and Hell. His battles stretch from the chaos of celestial war to the gritty alleys of Los Angeles, where divine secrets, lost memories, and half-truths come crashing together. It’s an urban fantasy layered with centuries of guilt, loyalty, and the question of what it means to belong when both light and darkness claim you.
The writing has a cinematic punch. Fights are vivid, and the tension never lets up, but what really hooked me wasn’t the action. It was the ache under it all. Sully’s struggle with identity and redemption hit me hard. I found myself rooting for him, even when he made choices that hurt. The mix of religious mythology and raw emotion worked better than I expected. Sometimes the dialogue leaned a bit heavy on exposition, but the story’s heart kept me going. I could feel the loneliness in every scene, the way faith can turn into a burden when you start to doubt your own soul.
The world itself is wild and haunting. The author plays with ancient language, heavenly wars, and smoky Los Angeles bars as if they all belong in the same universe. And somehow, they do. The pacing runs hot and cold. Slow, meditative moments mixed with sudden bursts of blood and fire, but I liked that rhythm. It gave me time to breathe before diving back in. The emotional pull is strong, too. There were times I felt uneasy, other times strangely hopeful.
Son of Asmodeus is the kind of story I’d hand to readers who love dark fantasy with a moral twist. If you like stories where angels bleed and sinners pray, where the hero is broken but still stands up swinging, this one’s for you. It’s not a light read, but it’s full of grit, heart, and that small flicker of grace that refuses to die.
Pages: 186 | ASIN : B0BLXMTCXC
LITERARY TITAN 