Blog Archives
Murdered by the Books
Murdered by the Books by Jodi Casstevens-Short brings a new children’s bookstore, a busy family, and a budding romance into the same small-town murder mystery. Jillian Edwards has spent years working toward opening Whimsy & Wonder in Willow Springs, and her excitement gives the opening chapters an appealing sense of purpose. When a friend’s death interrupts the celebrations, Jillian’s concern pulls her into an investigation that soon competes with the demands of running her shop. I liked how much she cares about both responsibilities. She wants answers because someone she loved has been harmed, and she wants her bookstore to succeed because she believes children deserve a place where reading feels welcoming. Those commitments give the story a personal stake from the beginning.
I found the collection of people around Jillian to be very interesting. Her sisters, Cate and Amanda, and her best friend, Becca, express affection through teasing, unsolicited advice, and a steady supply of food. Their conversations capture the familiarity of people who know exactly which buttons to push. Aunt Grace adds her own brand of disruption with bold outfits, tea-leaf readings, and absolute confidence in her predictions. The family’s faith and Grace’s spiritual interpretations give their concern for Jillian a distinctive flavor. Then there are Abbey and Hayley, Jillian’s schnauzers, whose personalities and routines receive plenty of attention. If you love dogs, you’ll appreciate how fully they belong to her life. I also enjoyed the bookstore details, especially its lending library for children who can’t afford books. That feature makes Jillian’s enthusiasm feel practical and generous.
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories came to mind as I read, particularly in the way a neighborhood becomes a source of information. Casual conversations, watchful residents, and everyday encounters all matter to the investigation. Jillian’s ability to put people at ease helps her hear things they’re hesitant to share with the police, and her teaching experience gives her an amusingly firm way of managing difficult personalities. Casstevens-Short gives this familiar style of amateur detection a strong romantic emphasis through Jillian’s growing connection with firefighter Travis Stevens. Their attraction gets considerable attention, including the awkwardness of early conversations and the anxiety of deciding whether to trust someone new. The firefighting scenes also give Travis a working life beyond his role as a romantic interest. Readers who enjoy courtship woven closely into a mystery will find plenty to follow here.
The book’s affection for its characters comes through, and Jillian’s concern for her friend gives weight to the investigation amid all the social activity. I’d recommend Murdered by the Books to readers who enjoy mysteries with extensive family interaction, enthusiastic pet ownership, and a substantial romance. I had fun with this book, and I think its most appealing quality is the care Jillian puts into the people, animals, and books around her.
Pages: 384 | ASIN : B0D1SZ25TP
The Last Missioner
John Paul Russo’s The Last Missioner is an ambitious scriptural fantasy that blends science fiction, theology, adventure, and post-apocalyptic worldbuilding into one unusually detailed story. Russo imagines Earth long after a catastrophic event called Uri-Bin, when humanity’s surviving “Remnant” has lived for a thousand years under the rule of the Primary. The world is divided into distinct cultures, including the priestly Jurans, the technologically gifted Lewans, and the nature-centered Noochi, all of whom depend on one another through the Universal Communion. Russo describes the novel himself as a fantasy inspired by Revelation 20:1-3, and that biblical foundation shapes nearly every part of the book.
At the center of the story is John Micah Leers XIV, a twelve-year-old Juran whose life is already mapped out for him. He’s supposed to train for the priestly League of the Thousand Drones, but strange voices, visions, and encounters begin pulling him toward a very different calling. His curiosity makes him a good guide through a world where almost everyone else has accepted the rules of the Constancy as permanent. Once he leaves Atalan Jur, the story opens into a much larger journey involving the Noochi rebellion, political maneuvering in Lews, Exer dissidents, dangerous expeditions through Meric, the mysterious Orlen, the White Elders, and eventually a mission into the frozen darkness of the Shol-hemis. The book has the structure of a quest story, but the quest keeps expanding until John Micah’s personal calling becomes tied to the survival and spiritual future of the entire Remnant.
The worldbuilding is probably the novel’s most distinctive feature. Russo doesn’t simply put biblical names onto a conventional science-fiction setting. He builds an entire social and physical order around sacrament, covenant, interdependence, and spiritual gifts. Quantum arts function almost like a scientific vocabulary for abilities associated with mysticism: Jurans manipulate light and practice inner locution, Lewans shape matter, and Noochi “sire” living organisms. The Universal Liturgia is both religious ritual and the mechanism through which the population receives nourishment, so a theological idea becomes part of the world’s actual economy and biology. The glossary makes clear just how extensively Russo has worked out this system, from quantum arts and the three charisms to the Remnant’s geography and institutions. That density asks for some patience, especially early on, but it also gives the novel a strong sense that its civilization existed before the reader arrived.
Russo’s approach reminded me most of C. S. Lewis, particularly the way Lewis uses speculative fiction to make theological ideas concrete. Like Lewis, Russo is comfortable letting spiritual realities become literal parts of the plot. Angels, demons, grace, temptation, sacrifice, and divine providence aren’t metaphors hovering behind the action. They’re active forces in the characters’ world. Russo, though, works on a much larger systems level than Lewis usually does. He spends more time explaining institutions, histories, technologies, genealogies, rituals, and political relationships. There’s also a stronger swashbuckling streak as the novel progresses, with pursuits, flying craft, hostile landscapes, imprisonment, demonic armies, and a final conflict that draws together threads planted hundreds of pages earlier. Readers who enjoy Lewis for the meeting of Christianity and imaginative fiction will recognize some common interests here, but Russo’s version feels more encyclopedic and more openly apocalyptic.
What stayed with me most was the way The Last Missioner gradually turns John Micah’s desire to understand his strange experiences into a story about vocation and trust. His mission requires him to move farther and farther beyond everything his society considers familiar, right up to the final sacrificial act that gives the book its title. The ending brings the imagery of sacrifice, manna, the mercy seat, darkness, and returning light together with satisfying symmetry. Even the altered world begins moving again, and the final sunrise feels earned because the book has spent so much time establishing what a motionless sun meant to this civilization. Russo has written a large-scale religious fantasy with a remarkably specific cosmology, and its strongest moments come when all that theology and invented history narrow down to one young person having to decide whether he’ll follow a calling he can’t fully explain.
Pages: 440 | ASIN : B0HBRN4QHV
The Price of Redeeming Love: A Modern Retelling of Ruth
The Price of Redeeming Love is a work of Christian fiction and contemporary biblical retelling that reimagines the Book of Ruth in a modern setting, moving the story into drought-stricken California and a farming community in Sonora, where loss, migration, loyalty, and costly love shape the lives of Grace, Lucía, and Bo Porter. The book begins in collapse and keeps one eye on grief even when it turns toward romance, which I appreciated. It is not shy about its roots either. Mike Cleveland openly frames the novel as a faithful modern Ruth retelling, with Grace standing in for Naomi, Lucía for Ruth, and Bo for Boaz, and that clear framework gives the whole story a steady backbone.
I found the protagonist compelling because she feels shaped by pressure rather than built as a symbol first. Grace, especially in the opening stretch, comes across as tired, doubtful, loving, and stubborn in a way that feels relatable. I liked that she isn’t presented as endlessly strong. She is grieving even before the worst losses arrive, and her faith is frayed, which gives her emotional weight and makes her growth feel earned. She carries the novel’s questions about loyalty, survival, and grace without ever seeming too neat, and that roughness is part of what made her believable to me.
What stayed with me most was how grounded the emotional world felt when the book was at its best. The early sections, especially the move from a dying farm into the strange abundance of Sonora, have real texture. I could feel the dust, the heat, the fatigue, and then that almost disorienting shock of green after so much loss. Author Mike Cleveland writes grief in a direct way. He doesn’t try to make it pretty.
I also found the author’s choices interesting because he is doing more than updating a Bible story. He’s translating its moral and spiritual shape into modern concerns like immigration status, farm labor, climate strain, and belonging. That gives the book a wider frame than a simple inspirational romance. Bo is clearly written as more than a love interest. He carries the kinsman-redeemer role very deliberately, and the novel makes its Christ-centered symbolism plain. That will certainly be moving for some readers. For me, the strength of the book is that it understands redemption as something material as well as spiritual. Food, shelter, paperwork, work, land, family, protection. Love here is not abstract. It has weight. It costs something. And that idea gives the story a sturdy, old-fashioned force.
By the end, I came away feeling that this is the kind of novel best read by people who don’t mind wearing their hearts a little closer to the surface. I would recommend The Price of Redeeming Love most to readers who enjoy Christian fiction, redemptive romance, and biblical retellings that stay openly tethered to scripture while still trying to live and breathe as contemporary fiction. Readers who want a story about grief slowly turning toward grace, and who want that story told with conviction, will probably find a lot to value here.
Pages: 395 | ASIN : B0GRCWP23X
Get Involved However You Can
Worth of a Girl centers around an eight-year-old girl from Uganda whose young life is altered forever when she is forced into a trafficking ring disguised as a trade school. Why did you choose to tell the story through eight-year-old Bibi’s perspective?
I chose a young girl’s point of view to show perspective. The innocence of a child who trusts adults to do right by them and to help, not hurt, them provides a stark contrast. It reveals truth versus the ugly evil of the world. A child tells the story much better than an adult.
How did you approach writing trauma in a way that is honest but not overwhelming or exploitative?
My books are about children and the evils they face, whether it addresses abandonment, exploitation, or abuse and loneliness. Because the plot is meant to be inspirational, I want to give the reader a sense of the trauma without actually telling it with explicit words. Grueling words, swearing, or foul language are not necessary if the author can show the action. One’s imagination can play a bigger role if the reader is told what to think. It’s been proven: ‘you’re more afraid of what you can’t see. ‘They’ll understand and see it, feel it, if it’s written honestly and plainly without a lot of detail.
The contrast between promise (school, clothing, opportunity) and reality (exploitation) is powerful. How did you develop that tension?
First, and foremost, I pray and ask God to help me write words that convey reality and tug on readers’ heartstrings. Then, I put myself in the main character’s head as much as possible. Although I’ve never faced these terrible conditions, I can imagine what it must feel like. I’m probably not even close. I do know, however, what failed promises feel like and the disappointment that follows. Extensive research (over three years) went into this book from interviews with African missionaries to documentaries and other reading. I learned what many girls had to do and endure to survive. Many of the incidents in the book were derived from real testimonies.
What kind of conversations do you hope this book starts among readers, churches, or communities?
The goal of this book is awareness of child exploitation. The awful plight of innocent children who are taken and abused, tortured, and sometimes killed needs to be known. It doesn’t just happen overseas. It’s close to home; it might even be happening down the block from where you live. Who would know? I hope readers will get a sense of urgency to help these children in some way, even if it’s through their church in helping children, fostering kids, or opening their hearts to volunteer. Not everyone can donate money. Many communities have groups that minister to children in some way. I sew dresses for girls overseas. It is known that if they have a new dress, especially with a label on it, it means they are being watched — thus, less likely to be taken by a predator. If I’ve helped just one girl in that way, my mission and goal have been fulfilled. I hope others get involved in any way possible.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
When Bibi faces challenges beyond her control, her bold, unshakable faith guides her with courage and strength. But how will she endure her fate? What will it take to save her?
When the new missions doctor, Dr. Steve Warden, arrives in Uganda, he suspects something nefarious is going on at the trade school. He never expected to unearth the dark underbelly of Evil directly beneath those who vowed to help the children. With righteous indignation ignited, he determines to seek justice for the children and rescue Bibi, even if it means taking down his own colleague and well-known people of the community.
The Bible of Blackwater County
What first struck me is how confidently The Bible of Blackwater County builds its world. From the opening pages, author Jenny Cafaro gives Blackwater County the weight of a lived-in place, not just a backdrop, with Bessie’s voice carrying gossip, pain, memory, and warning all at once. The setup is instantly compelling: an eighteen-year-old Bessie is being drawn into marriage with sixty-two-year-old Grady Richardson, and the novel makes that fact feel both personal and social, like one woman’s crisis and a whole community’s moral failure rolled into one. The Depression-era Appalachian setting feels gritty without turning into museum glass, which helps the book feel alive instead of dutiful.
The strongest thing here is the narration. Bessie doesn’t sound polished, and that’s exactly why she works. Her voice has texture, humor, anger, and a kind of hard-earned clarity that keeps the book from slipping into generic historical fiction. Even when the prose is dealing with cruelty, judgment, and the way a town can feed on scandal, it keeps its grip on the intimate human cost. There’s a line early on about truth being messy and bloody and not always making sense, and that idea seems to shape the whole novel. Cafaro is more interested in emotional truth than tidy storytelling, and the book is better for it.
The novel doesn’t beg the reader to admire its seriousness. It trusts the material. The dedication to Grandmaw Bessie and the framing as a story drawn from family history and a newspaper article could have pushed the book toward reverence, but instead, it feels urgent and personal. The result is a story that is raw without being shapeless. At the same time, that rawness may be a challenge for some readers. The trigger warning is there for a reason, and the book seems willing to sit in ugliness. Still, that choice feels honest to the world it’s portraying.
The Bible of Blackwater County is a memorable, voice-driven novel that succeeds because it feels told rather than manufactured. Its biggest strength is the sense that someone is finally saying the thing that was buried for too long. That gives the book a pulse that will stick with readers. It’s not always easy, and I would not call it subtle in the delicate literary sense, but it’s vivid, emotionally committed, and grounded in a strong sense of place. For readers who want historical fiction with bite, personality, and a narrator who feels like a real person, this book has a lot going for it.
Pages: 399 | ASIN : B0G5Z9KQ42
Adventure Into the Unknown
The 6th Heaven centers around a plastic surgeon whose life is turned upside down when mysterious tattoos begin to cover his body, and he sets out on a journey to the Amazon jungle to find the key to his curse. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
The idea for the novel grew naturally from the first two books in the 21 Tattoos Series. As Derek’s journey of self-discovery reaches both emotional highs and lows, he becomes increasingly driven to find answers—how the tattoos appeared, what they signify, and whether he can ever be free of them.
Did The 6th Heaven begin as a spiritual story, a psychological one, or an adventure into the unknown?
It started more as an adventure into the unknown. I didn’t know what would happen next to Derek until he made the decision to enter the jungle—then the story began to unfold on its own. As I continued writing, I realized that his struggle in the jungle mirrored the conflict within his own mind, and I expanded on that connection.
Where did you find the inspiration for Derek’s traits and dialogue?
It developed over time. I started writing about a man waking up with tattoos, and he just started to develop in my mind, and as I researched the meaning of tattoos I got to know him. Most of the material relates to experiences in my life.
Can we look forward to another installment in The 21 Tattoos Series soon? Where will it take readers?
My 4th book will be out in September 2026. Already with the publisher.
My 5th book will be out in September 2027. 50% finished.
My 6th and final book of The 21 Tattoos Series will be out in September 2028.
Each book follows Derek and Kendal as their relationship deepens, facing life’s challenges and evolving into the people they’re meant to become.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Derek Hollinger has walked a long, hard road since a fateful encounter with an Indigenous shaman woman turned his life upside down. Now married to Kendal, his angel and savior, Derek desperately wants to be the man she deserves. But his obsession with his tattoos-what they mean and how to get rid of them-is tearing down everything they’ve built together.
Paralyzed by depression and self-loathing, Derek is convinced that only one person can help him now: the granddaughter of the shaman whose power inked him from head to toe. Enlisting the aid of his loyal friend and spiritual advisor, Father Mike, Derek treks deep into the heart of the Amazon jungle, where a final reckoning between good and evil awaits.
But God’s plan for Derek isn’t what he expects. And coming back alive-whole in mind, heart, and spirit-will require every ounce of his fortitude and faith.
The 6th Heaven is Book 3 in The 21 Tattoos Series, by Monica Broussard. Read Book 1 (21 Tattoos) and Book 2 (The 7th Dimension) to jump into this saga filled with heart, passion, faith, and fear. Discover how Derek Hollinger’s journey for answers begins.
Worth of a Girl
Worth of a Girl is a faith-centered suspense novel that follows eight-year-old Bibi, a Ugandan girl who thinks she is being sent to school, only to be drawn into a trafficking operation disguised as a trade school. From there, the story becomes a survival narrative about deception, cruelty, rescue, and the long road back to dignity. It’s fiction, but the book makes clear that it is rooted in real patterns of child trafficking, and that real-world grounding gives the novel its weight.
I enjoyed how plainly C.A. Simonson tells this story. The writing is direct, accessible, and emotionally clear. There is no fancy distance between the reader and the pain here. We experience so much through Bibi’s innocence, and that choice gives the early chapters a hard kind of irony because I understood the danger long before she did. That made the book unsettling in an effective way. I also thought Simonson handled contrast well. The false promises of dresses, schooling, and food sit right beside the reality of exploitation, and that gap becomes the whole engine of the novel. The dialogue and character lines felt pointed at times, but in this case, I could see why. This is the kind of book that wants to tell a story and sound an alarm at the same time.
I found myself responding just as much to the author’s moral choices as to the plot. This is not a morally gray book. It is openly interested in evil, faith, protection, and restoration, and it leans fully into a Christian framework where prayer, providence, and courage shape the way forward. That will work well for some readers. For me, it mostly worked because the book’s strongest thread is not abstraction but worth itself, the insistence that children who are treated like property are still fully human, still precious, still deserving of safety and a future. I appreciated that the ending does not stop at rescue. It keeps moving toward rebuilding, education, work, community, and leadership, especially in Bibi’s later life, which gave the novel a sense of earned hope instead of quick relief.
I would recommend Worth of a Girl most strongly to readers of Christian fiction, issue-driven suspense, and redemptive drama, especially those who want a novel that is emotionally straightforward and grounded in a real social crisis. It’s not a subtle book, and I don’t think it wants to be. It wants to witness, to warn, and to restore some sense of hope. I respected that. Readers who want a heartfelt, faith-shaped novel about survival, rescue, and human dignity will likely find a lot to appreciate here.
Pages: 314 | ASIN : B0G6KNFMNB
Quiet Sacrifice
Family follows a grieving woman who stumbles upon a family secret when she attempts to trace threatening letters back to their mysterious sender. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
There is a very old, soft leather wallet from before the Civil War that has been handed down in my family. In it are letters. They outline one man’s attempt to hold on to our family’s good reputation when his brother‑in‑law and sister allegedly stole their father’s cash, leaving many debts. This was a family matter—no charges made in a court of law, but a conviction made in the court of public opinion. The man’s sister blamed him. The brother‑in‑law and sister left for Ohio.
The man stayed. He worked for years to pay off every one of those debts and avoid selling his father’s farm in a depressed market. When prices finally rebounded, he did sell it, then sent money to his brothers—and yes, to his sister.
That mixture of duty, hurt, and quiet sacrifice stayed with me. Family is my way of exploring what happens when secrets, loyalty, and public reputation collide in another time and place.
Were there any twists or revelations that changed during the writing process?
Yes. I’ve worked with this story for years, so there have been more changes than I can easily count. But that’s part of what I enjoy about writing. I originally drafted more than twenty books in this series just for my own pleasure, and now I’m editing them so I can share them with others. Each book goes through several iterations as the characters and their choices become clearer to me.
The revelation I enjoyed most in Family was the carriage scene where the older, married people are sharing their most embarrassing courting stories. Those moments arrived quite naturally on the page—and yes, both stories are drawn from my own experience. I laughed while I wrote them.
Faith is woven naturally into the characters’ lives rather than presented as a simple solution to problems. Why was that approach important to you?
I chose to write about 1619 London because faith was central to life then. For many people, it was simply the air they breathed. I wanted to give readers a chance to think about how people can live with faith in that kind of world—sometimes through short, sincere prayers in the moment, sometimes through wrestling with God rather than receiving quick, tidy answers.
My hope is to gently encourage readers who are inclined toward faith to consider weaving it into their ordinary days—not because I think they “should,” that’s between them and God, but because of the comfort and peace it often brings. I admire people who can quote chapter and verse. I can’t. And I don’t believe the insight and comfort I gain from a passage is always the same as what someone else might take from it. That’s part of the beauty for me.
On my website I offer a free 35‑page booklet titled Living With Faith… When You Feel… It looks at feelings many of us experience at one time or another—being overwhelmed, afraid of the future, and discouraged. It’s not a project or a checklist; it’s meant to be a quiet companion. You choose a verse that might speak to how you’re feeling and let it sit with you. No memorizing. No turning it into another task in an already busy life. Put it near your coffee maker or toothbrush, let your eyes land on it, and allow its meaning to stretch forward to greet you where you are on your journey.
That’s the kind of faith I wanted to reflect in Family: honest, present, sometimes questioning, always entwined with real life.
What is the next book you are working on? When can readers expect to see it released?
Thankless Child, book three in the On The Wings Of Angels series, is set in 1619 London. Elizabeth Bowmar’s life is shattered when she tries to help an old friend. Forced into an uneasy alliance, she must unravel a conspiracy of greed and betrayal to save herself and expose the corruption strangling the city.
Thankless Child is currently in edit and will be released in a few months. I’m excited to bring readers back into Elizabeth’s world as she faces new dangers and deeper questions of justice, loyalty, and faith.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Website | Amazon
Amidst the shadows of 1619 London, Elizabeth Bowmar, a young midwife devoted to helping others, confronts an unseen menace that strikes at the heart of her own household. Whispers in darkened doorways, missing letters, and subtle threats all point to a danger that knows her routines, her loyalties, and her weaknesses far too well.
As conspiracy and fear tighten around her family, Elizabeth must trace the threat back to its source before it destroys the people she loves—and the hard‑won future she is only beginning to claim. Her world may be 1619, with cobbled streets and dim candlelight, but her fight for independence and the right to choose her own path is timeless.
When every choice seems to carry a cost, Elizabeth must decide whom to trust, how fiercely to protect her family, and how far faith can carry her when those closest to her may be hiding the deepest secrets.
Set against a richly drawn London on the brink of upheaval, Family weaves together mystery, faith, and love as Elizabeth uncovers a plot that could shatter more than her home. Step into a world where history unfolds, faith prevails, and love stirs in this gripping Christian historical mystery, Book Two of the On the Wings of Angels series.
Family will appeal to readers who enjoy the rich historical atmosphere and slow‑building romance of Julie Klassen and the faith‑forward intrigue of Roseanna M. White.
