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The Legend of the Silver Star
The Legend of the Silver Star is a thrilling children’s adventure that follows siblings Gabby and Anthony as they journey through time via a magical pine box in their Aunt Sophie’s attic. Transported to the Old West, they meet legendary U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves and find themselves embroiled in a mission to deliver a dangerous outlaw to justice. Along the way, they encounter blacksmiths, bandits, cattle rustlers, and a caring Chickasaw community, learning valuable lessons about bravery, honesty, and the power of standing up for what’s right. Full of charm, danger, and heart, the story weaves together history and fantasy into a compelling ride.
The book is written with such energy and warmth, and the pacing is spot-on. The dialogue feels real, the characters are instantly likable, and there’s a lot of clever humor woven in. Gabby, with her sharp wit and fearless spirit, is an absolute standout. And Bass Reeves? What a figure. He’s cool, wise, and full of grit. The writing isn’t flowery or complex, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s punchy and clear, the kind that makes young readers sit up and hang on every word. The story moves quickly but never feels rushed. It’s adventurous without being scary, smart without being preachy.
I enjoyed the depth packed into this short book. It introduces big ideas like racism, justice, and courage, without ever feeling heavy. There’s a real tenderness in how the story handles fear, responsibility, and teamwork. I found myself grinning at the kids’ antics one moment and getting choked up the next. The way the book highlights Bass Reeves, a historical figure often overlooked, is powerful. I felt genuinely moved by the ending, especially the moment with the silver stars. That got me.
This book is a gem. I’d recommend it to kids in upper elementary grades, especially those who love action, history, or stories with gutsy young heroes. It’s also a great read-aloud for classrooms or families. There’s something magical about how it mixes real history with fantasy. I walked away from it not just entertained, but inspired. If you’re looking for a story that makes kids feel brave and seen, this one’s for you.
Pages: 101 | ISBN : 1959110136
Kid Pharaoh
The Secret Key Adventures: The Kid Pharaoh is a time-traveling adventure that follows siblings Anthony and Gabby as they stumble into ancient Egypt via a mysterious special key gifted by their eccentric Aunt Sophie. They meet the young Tutankhaten, soon to be King Tut, and after an uncanny resemblance between Anthony and the boy pharaoh, a classic switcheroo sets off a chain of risky encounters, political intrigue, and personal growth. The story combines humor, suspense, and history in a fast-paced narrative packed with colorful characters, vivid settings, and plenty of heart.
What struck me first was how fun this book is to read. It’s loaded with personality. Anthony’s wide-eyed curiosity and Gabby’s razor-sharp wit make for a perfect sibling duo. Their banter felt real and funny. I was especially charmed by Tut himself. He’s playful, burdened, and a little rebellious, which makes him relatable. I didn’t expect to laugh, but moments like the ostrich egg breakfast or Tut’s street market blunders genuinely cracked me up. The pacing is brisk without feeling rushed, and the short chapters kept me flipping pages. The language is simple and accessible, but never dumbed-down. It’s the kind of storytelling that respects its young audience.
The book surprised me with how layered it is. Behind all the comedy and chariot chases, there’s a thoughtful message about responsibility and leadership. Anthony starts off wanting adventure, only to realize that being Pharaoh means more than parades and fancy clothes. Gabby’s arc was especially powerful. Her experience as a servant opens her eyes to inequality and unfairness, and she comes out stronger for it. The villain, Baki, is just the right amount of creepy without being cartoonish. The tension builds slowly, and the final scenes had me holding my breath. There’s also a real emotional payoff at the end.
The Kid Pharaoh is a total win. It blends imagination and history in a way that feels fresh and exciting. Young readers who love adventure, history, or sibling hijinks will have a great time reading this book. But honestly, even as an adult, I had a blast with it. This book would be perfect for middle-grade readers, classrooms studying ancient civilizations, or any kid who dreams of opening a secret door and ending up somewhere wild. It’s clever, heartfelt, and just plain fun.
Pages: 102 | ISBN : 1959110039
The Sins of a Mermaid
The Sins of a Mermaid is a poignant and surprisingly heartfelt novel set in the sleepy coastal town of Amorosa. What begins as a quiet tale of small-town rhythms and forgotten places slowly transforms into a deeply moving story about belief, loneliness, and the unexpected intersections of science and myth. At its core is Munir, a socially awkward marine archaeologist, who arrives in town claiming he’s researching the appearance of a mermaid. His presence upends the town’s fragile quiet. But it’s the parallel story of Summer, a young woman fighting a brutal battle with leukemia, that gives this novel its emotional backbone. Through their strange but tender friendship, the book weaves a story about loss, hope, and the raw hunger for meaning.
There’s something about the way Piroso writes that makes the book feel both otherworldly and grounded. His sentences often land like quiet waves, slow and soft, but every so often one crashes over you and pulls you under. I was especially taken with the atmosphere of Amorosa and how vividly it was rendered. It felt real. But what really hooked me was the character work. Munir is awkward and stubborn, but his pain, especially his deteriorating vision, is portrayed with such honesty that I couldn’t help but feel for him. And Summer… her sections resonated with me. Piroso captures her despair without wallowing in it. He lets her be angry, cold, funny, smart, bitter, hopeful, everything at once. That made her feel real.
The story moves slowly. It lingers. There were parts where the prose felt indulgent. But even in those slower bits, the heart of the story never disappeared. It’s also a bit wild in tone. Part small-town character study, part magical realism, part medical drama. Somehow, it all holds together, and when I reached the final pages, I realized I’d been holding my breath. The ending doesn’t offer tidy resolutions. It offers a quiet and aching beauty.
I’d recommend The Sins of a Mermaid to readers who love intimate, character-driven stories with a touch of mystery and myth. If you’re someone who enjoys books that make you sit in your feelings and think about the lines between belief and reason, life and death, love and surrender, this one will stay with you.
Pages: 243 | ASIN : B0F75HQ388
To Gaze Upon a Darkened Cloud
To Gaze Upon a Darkened Cloud is a genre-blending speculative novel that unfolds in a world gripped by mysterious and deadly cloud storms. The story follows multiple characters: Michelle, a climatologist estranged from her rural roots; Juliana, a devout Ghanaian woman caught between duty and faith; Jonah, her husband, in desperate search of her; and a secretive religious Order that believes the storms herald a spiritual transition. As lives unravel across continents, each narrative thread explores personal identity, faith, science, and the unsettling unknown. The plot moves between intimate domestic scenes and globe-spanning catastrophes, building tension while deepening emotional connections to its characters.
The writing pulled me in right away. The pacing is quick but never rushed, the dialogue natural and sharp. I felt Michelle’s anxiety and her frustration with her family’s resistance to science. I also found myself rooting for Jonah in a way that surprised me. His grief felt real, his determination grounded. The world-building was eerie and imaginative, especially the strange rain and the blue-light phenomenon. The author avoids info-dumps, instead letting the details creep in slowly, which gives the whole book a simmering kind of suspense. The switches in point of view added richness rather than confusion. I never felt lost, only curious and sometimes a little scared.
Still, parts of the story made me uncomfortable in a good way. The religious Order, with its creepy obsession over “the Guide Couple,” got under my skin. The teen marriages, the patriarchal structures, and the way belief was used to justify control, it all hit me hard, especially because it didn’t feel exaggerated. It felt disturbingly real. And yet, the book didn’t beat me over the head with judgment. It left space for complexity. Even Elder Ferguson, one of the most devout, was filled with doubt. That tension between faith and reason runs through every part of the book. What would I do if I saw what Michelle’s father saw? Would I look up?
I’d recommend To Gaze Upon a Darkened Cloud to readers who enjoy dystopian fiction with a touch of the supernatural, but who also want depth and heart. It’s perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood or Octavia Butler, people who like their fiction smart, unsettling, and emotionally resonant. This book isn’t just about surviving weird weather. It’s about what happens when the ground beneath your beliefs starts to crack. If you’re looking for something haunting but human, this one’s for you.
Pages: 304 | ASIN : B0FG35KMY3
Wednesday Night Whites
Wednesday Night Whites is a taut and provocative thriller set in the chilly backdrop of Chester, Nova Scotia. The story follows Azalea “Zale” Augustine, a determined lawyer drawn into a deep and dangerous conspiracy involving the town’s decades-long epidemic of missing women. What starts as a cryptic WhatsApp message leads her into a hidden war room beneath a beloved library, where truths unravel about white supremacy, political corruption, and the horrifying commodification of women. Zale’s world spirals as she learns one of her own law partners, an arrogant, magnetic, and secretly monstrous man, may be at the heart of it all. What unfolds is a story of fear, betrayal, strength, and the long shadows of history reaching into the present.
The writing is crisp and fast, the kind that doesn’t ask for your attention but grabs it by the collar and won’t let go. The dialogue, especially between Zale and her friend Jett, felt raw and real, like actual women whispering in a kitchen late at night. I found myself rooting for Zale hard. She’s sharp but not perfect, confident but wounded, and so very relatable. Her trauma is treated with care, not glossed over. The tension builds fast and deep, with revelations that made my stomach twist. Melvin does an incredible job layering dread with hope, fear with grit. The pacing is relentless in a good way. No fluff. No drag. Just a relentless storm of plot, character, and emotion.
But what stuck with me most was the guts of this story. The way it dared to look at how women disappear, figuratively and literally, and how society just keeps going like it’s normal. The white supremacy thread was chilling, not just because of its historical roots, but because it’s all too believable. There were moments I had to stop and take a breath. Melvin doesn’t hold back. And while some of the plot elements stretch reality, it never breaks. It just leans into its own dark momentum and dares you to follow. The villains are grotesque in a way that feels scarily possible, which makes the stakes feel even higher. Also, her writing on female friendship and resilience hit a nerve. It’s angry in the right places. It’s tender where it needs to be.
If you’re looking for a story that blends psychological suspense, crime drama, and social commentary with a raw emotional edge, this book is it. I’d recommend Wednesday Night Whites to readers who crave dark, intelligent thrillers with a strong feminist backbone. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt afraid walking alone or felt the chill of being dismissed, doubted, or watched.
More Hype Than Anything
The Gestalt in the Machine follows a tech journalist as he’s dragged from covering an AI hype-fest into a deadly conspiracy that forces him to question who’s lying and what it means to be real. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I used to be a tech journalist and I’ve sat through a lot of hype. The bombast and over-the-top promises of PanoptiCon are actually pretty realistic, at least as far as what tech companies claim, and AI is more hyped than anything.
What’s different with AI is that there’s even less skepticism about it than other new technologies, I think because pessimists who might otherwise call out a bubble are instead drawn towards something else: The fear that it will destroy the world. With fans of the technology hoping that it will give them eternal life, the stakes are pretty high.
Adam Arrowman is an intriguing and well-developed character. What were some driving ideals behind his character development?
I wanted the protagonist to have realistic human flaws, which naturally are expressed more as he’s under the stress of investigating a murder. He isn’t some crime-solving mastermind: He quickly gets out of his depth, a feeling I think we all have when dealing with tech giants, and doesn’t necessarily react to that well. Then when he does make progress, he’s often reliant on others.
I tried to do the same with the other characters. Kelvin Clipper is the main antagonist and the book is in some ways a warning about the risks of his worldview, but I hope that readers will be agreeing with what he says at least some of the time. Who wouldn’t want to live forever?
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The two big ones are the effects of AI on our society and what happens when the push for an ever-accelerating economy runs up against physical constraints. I think that Singularity vs. Limits to Growth is going to be one of the biggest issues we face in the future, if the machines don’t destroy us first.
The book isn’t just about that, though. It’s a story of young people trying to make it in a world many see as doomed, of a devastated media that’s left a smoldering crater in place of consensus reality, and of where we invest our hopes for salvation following the death of God. And, I hope, an exciting thriller.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
When I was writing the book, I thought it would be one and done. Not because I’d run out of things to say, but because AI was progressing so fast that I assumed it would replace human authors before I had a chance to write another.
Now I’m not so sure: Though the Internet is drowning in AI slop, a language model still can’t match a good human writer. I think the reason I was wrong isn’t so much because AI has slowed as that it’s moved on to things that are potentially more profitable than stringing words together. In fact, that seems a good topic to write about….
Author Links: GoodReads
His detective work takes him into the world of Kelvin Clipper, an imperious CEO who promises that ever-accelerating artificial intelligence will let him outrun death. Thousands of protesters disagree. Their warning: Infinite growth is an illusion and Big Tech is actually racing toward the extinction of humanity.
Caught in the middle, a band of hackers searches desperately for a way to align algorithms with human needs. More violence hints at a connection to a president threatening World War III, lobbyists trying to free corporations from their stockholders, and an app that claims to resurrect the dead.
Can Adam find the killer before the killer finds him? What secrets did the victim die to protect? And will Clipper’s Singularity deliver immortality in our time, or damnation for us all?
Mission Teen Berets: Assault on Ravens Rest
Mission Teen Berets: Assault on Ravens Rest by Kitty Tolsma Anderson is a riveting espionage sci-fi novel that brilliantly incorporates the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic into its pulse-pounding narrative. Anderson’s seamless blending of real-world events creates a gripping and timely story that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.
A family of spies go on a daring rescue mission to save one of their own, Fiona—a virologist after 40 years of captivity by the Sino-Chosen-Russian-Iranian Bioweapons spy ring. This rescue mission is based on a new clue received during the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to thwart the sinister plans of the SCRIB spies who now take on the family with renewed urgency in the midst of a global pandemic.
This book is a faith-infused, family-centered narrative that takes readers on a spellbinding odyssey into the lives of the Purdy family. The author meticulously crafts a narrative laced with suspense that unfurls like a flower bud in full bloom. It’s a story that traverses the precipice of life’s fragility as the shadows of tragedy descend.
Anderson’s storytelling ability shines through in her skillful exploration of familial bonds and unyielding principles. The characters, especially the teen berets, were keenly developed, with opportunities presented for readers to see the workings of the characters’ minds.
What distinguishes Mission Teen Berets: Assault on Ravens Rest is its harmonious blend of faith-based values and a spine-tingling espionage narrative. It’s a narrative that beckons the characters to make soul-stirring sacrifices, reinforcing the unassailable creed of the family.
It’s a gem for a curious reader who will find it touches different career paths in the biological sciences. Author Kitty Tolsma Anderson has painted a vivid book that readers will not soon forget.
Pages: 240 | ASIN : B0FK86T8Q3
Azazel’s Scriptures
Azazel’s Scriptures, by S.F. Parkhurst, is a richly textured novel that blends historical mystery with magical realism, immersing readers in a vibrant medieval setting laced with supernatural elements. It follows a trio of friends, Simon, Hugh, and Newt, as they become entangled in dark folklore involving the demonic grimoire of Azazel, the ancient Druids, and mysterious beings known as the Daegons. As secrets unfold and tensions rise, they find themselves confronting forces that blur the lines between reality and myth, testing their courage and friendships in unexpected ways.
I found myself completely absorbed by Parkhurst’s lyrical yet accessible prose. The vivid imagery and atmospheric storytelling evoked genuine emotional responses, sometimes fascination, sometimes unease. The author effortlessly drew me into a world where the mystical seems entirely plausible, making even the more fantastical scenes feel believable. Particularly impressive is the way Parkhurst crafts dialogue: each character speaks with a distinctive voice that genuinely matches their persona, providing a sense of depth and realism. Though the writing flows well overall, at times it felt slightly dense, requiring deliberate attention to fully grasp the subtleties of the narrative.
The ideas Parkhurst explores are captivating and unsettling. Themes such as immortality, friendship, and the dangerous allure of forbidden knowledge run deeply throughout the story. Parkhurst does not shy away from portraying complex moral dilemmas, which often left me pondering the ethical gray areas presented in the book. While I appreciated the layers of intrigue and symbolism, the volume of interconnected plots and historical references sometimes made me lose track. That said, the confusion was fleeting and never severe enough to detract significantly from my overall enjoyment.
Azazel’s Scriptures is not a casual read. It demands a willingness to engage deeply with its historical mysteries and magical undercurrents. I recommend it to readers who enjoy thoughtful storytelling blended with dark folklore, especially those who appreciate narratives that explore the boundaries between reality and legend. This book would resonate particularly well with readers drawn to medieval settings and characters whose humanity shines brightest against the backdrop of supernatural darkness.
Pages: 375 | ASIN : B0FGGVHJYV
LITERARY TITAN 