Blog Archives
The Third Twin: Love, Lies, and Billionaire Secrets
The Third Twin is a romance thriller that follows Sienna Casanova, an ER nurse whose world fractures the moment she feels her identical twin, Savannah, scream. Savannah, a famous investigative journalist, has gone dark, leaving behind only a bloodied necklace and a trail of danger. As Sienna races to find her, she’s pulled into a violent web involving black-market adoption rings, corrupt insiders, and Luca Stone, her sister’s brooding head of security. The story blends high-stakes suspense with an evolving, combustible romance. It’s very much a romance thriller at heart, stitched together with family secrets, danger, and the messy intensity of twinhood.
Reading it felt like riding in a car that never dips below fifty. The writing is fast and cinematic, with fight scenes that crack like glass and emotional beats that don’t waste time getting to the point. Parker leans fully into immediacy. Characters breathe hard, move fast, and react without overthinking. There were moments when I wanted the prose to linger or soften, but the clipped style fits the story’s heartbeat. Sienna’s voice oscillates between raw fear, jealousy, tenderness, and grit, and I found myself liking her more whenever she admitted something uncomfortable. Luca, meanwhile, carries that familiar romance-thriller energy: stoic, lethal, frustrating, and of course, irresistible. Their dynamic is chaotic in a way that feels intentional, like sparks thrown off metal.
What surprised me most was how the book knits an intimate relationship into the tension of a broader conspiracy. The author could have relied on the dangerous-man-protective-woman trope alone, but she gives the siblings’ bond real weight. The “twin sense” isn’t just a gimmick. It becomes the emotional spine of the story and gives the romance a stronger foundation than heat alone. Some emotional transitions happen fast. One chapter, you’re dodging gunmen, and the next, you’re collapsing into each other’s arms. But honestly, the abruptness works in a romance thriller. Bodies crash together under pressure. People cling to whatever feels solid. It all felt believable within the world that author Lexi Parker is building.
I’d recommend The Third Twin to readers who love romance thrillers packed with danger, devotion, and a relentless pace. If you enjoy bodyguard-romance energy, high stakes, and stories where fear and attraction tangle together until you can’t tell them apart, this one will hit the mark. And if you like your books to read like movies playing out in real time, you’ll have a good time here.
Pages: 190 | ASIN : B0FWC5VJFP
Mental Gymnastics
Dig Two Graves follows a man recently released from prison, armed only with a Bible, rage, and an unresolved history, as he attempts to reclaim his place in the world and regain his respect. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Two primary inspirations, which I discuss in the Afterword: the Egyptian novelist (and 1988 Nobel Prize winner) Naguib Mahfouz’s short novel from 1961, The Thief and the Dogs, which is set in the aftermath of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, and living in Southwest Florida, which has undergone its own climatic, cultural, and political upheavals in recent years.
When creating Von Martin, did you have a plan for development and character traits, or did it grow organically as you were writing the story?
Since I was following the plot of The Thief and the Dogs pretty closely, I knew WHAT Von was going to do at every turn. What grew organically, and what interested me enough to actually write the novel in the first place, was that it seemed I knew WHY he would be doing these things, the mental gymnastics he would go through to make each terrible decision seem like the correct one to him. Von’s internal narrative, his voice, carried me through to the end.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The idea of respect, as opposed to revenge, is huge, obviously. Is respect something you must earn from the people in your life? Or is genuine self-respect a prerequisite?
I’m also fascinated by how I, and many of us, take actions that we are 100% convinced are correct, or righteous, or just, or good, but then these actions have terrible consequences for those around us, and for ourselves. We are often our own worst enemies, and Von is an extreme example of that.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
The next book is a dark fantasy titled This Accursèd Blade. It’s the story of a cursed sword, from the sword’s point of view, and is also centered around a strong revenge plot: Illyria is a young woman whose soul has been trapped in this sword, and she is determined to work her way back to the sorcerer who put her there to exact her vengeance. I’m presently editing the manuscript, and hope to have it out by the end of the year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | YouTube | Amazon
Von Martin walks out of prison with nothing—no job, no home, no real plan. His ex-wife has moved on with his former best friend. His daughter doesn’t recognize him. His old boss pretends he doesn’t exist.
Everyone tells him to play it safe. Keep his head down. Stay clean. Rebuild.
But Von knows respect isn’t something you get by asking politely.
What starts as a quest to salvage his dignity quickly spirals into a blood-soaked reckoning through the sultry heat and septic underbelly of Southwest Florida. Brutally funny, cynically violent, blisteringly sunburnt, this is the story of a man fighting to reclaim his place in a world that has long since left him behind.
You probably shouldn’t root for Von Martin.
But you just might anyway.
Car Trouble
Car Trouble follows Jim Crack, a down-and-out young man whose misadventures across the freeways and backstreets of Southern California form a gritty, chaotic odyssey of personal implosion. What begins with his Volkswagen catching fire on the 5 Freeway spirals into a bleak but strangely comic day filled with existential spirals, weed smoke, porn, broken relationships, and failed attempts to find meaning in a world so dependent on cars, status, and surface-level happiness. Through vivid flashbacks and derailed digressions, Jim’s day of misfortune exposes a lifelong grappling with abandonment, identity, trauma, and a simmering, unshakeable rage toward the machinery of life, both mechanical and societal.
Reading this book was like crawling inside someone’s unfiltered stream of consciousness. Zorn’s writing is raw and intense, often hilarious, sometimes painful, and always fully immersed in Jim’s spiraling, disillusioned psyche. There were moments I laughed, like the pure absurdity of a landscaping crew rescuing Jim from a flaming car, only to feel a gut punch pages later as he sinks into total emotional paralysis on a crusty couch with nothing but a bong and old porn for comfort. Zorn captures the erratic rhythm of thought with a ferocity that reminded me of Bukowski meets Vonnegut, but with more exhaust fumes and burnt-out brake lights. The prose veers wildly. Sharp, punchy lines land like jabs to the ribs, then unravel into stoner-poetic rants or tragic internal monologues that drip with disillusionment.
But what really hit me hard was how real it all felt. Jim’s pain, his failures, the weird moments of tenderness or sudden clarity linger. This book doesn’t follow a clean arc. It doesn’t tie up neatly. That felt true to life. At times, I was frustrated by the sheer amount of dysfunction, the digressions, the lack of redemption. But maybe that’s the point. This isn’t a story about fixing things. It’s about someone living in the fallout of a life already shattered, trying, failing, and trying again in ways that are small, stupid, human. The way Zorn writes about cars as both literal death traps and symbols of modern isolation stuck with me after I closed the book.
I wouldn’t recommend Car Trouble to everyone. It’s harsh. It’s crude. It’s uncomfortable. But if you’ve ever been young, broke, high, angry, and unsure what you’re supposed to be doing with your life, this book will feel painfully familiar. It’s for readers who crave something raw and don’t mind wandering through the smog of existential burnout.
Pages: 273 | ASIN : B07CP4R132
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
Driven to the Edge
Car Trouble follows a young man staggering under the weight of personal chaos, societal dysfunction, and one disaster after another—starting with his car catching fire on the freeway. Jim Crack is a fascinating character. What scene was the most interesting to write for that character?
The scene that got the ball rolling was walking down the sidewalk with my/his shirt off like at the beginning of the novel. Jim is a very personal character; he’s not me, but parts are; When I was in my early twenties, I was parking cars and working at a liquor store and had gone through a series of breakdowns, car-wise, if not mentally, including having a car breakdown on the way to get to a car that had broken down, and in the midst of being car-less, I was walking down the street with my shirt off on a hot day to my drug dealer’s house and imagined I must look like a desperate character to people driving by in their air-conditioned cars; This Jim Crack fellow was born of that, combined with having had a car burn down at an earlier point in my life on my way to a theme park where I worked (not Disneyland). Of all the stupid things I’ve done, maybe the dumbest was taking a ridiculous number and variety of guns a housemate had in his room because he owed money for rent. I drove around with them in my trunk for several weeks, during which I risked being pulled over for driving in a condition in which society prefers we not drive. I was also arrested once for stealing my car from a tow yard after a situation similar to Jim’s. I tried to build this into long-form, character-driven fiction. It was my first attempt at writing a novel, which I’m sure shows, but in trying to weave together a coherent narrative, the entire sentence-by-sentence process was interesting.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Being young and without resources while being maladapted to consumer culture underlies the main conflicts in the story. Without him realizing it exactly, Jim senses that the mechanized manner in which we live, represented especially by the automobile, is unnatural, and in certain terms, bad for the soul and the planet. Jim is a character driven to the edge of madness by the capital necessities to which we must all adapt every day or risk pushing our belongings around in a shopping cart, begging for food—which we see reflected in reality by the crisis of homelessness throughout the US. This idea is in opposition to the fantasy of Disneyland, where we find the sanitized version of the American Dream, where everyone is moral and upstanding. Against this backdrop, Jim seeks human connection, which for him comes through a VCR, while for Adam and Tink, sexuality is at odds with religious principles, and so the primate human animal desire is at odds with civilization as envisioned by Disney, Christian conservatism, and corporate America: that people grow up in happy homes with parents who love each other.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
Fans. Ha. My next book, Maineiac, is a memoir about a time when I was not much older than Jim Crack, and I was doing a lot of psychedelics and drinking too much but was in love with a good Christian woman who was a friend from high school. I followed her out to Maine, driving across America, where I got a job on a lobster boat, and tried to work up the courage to tell her how I felt while struggling with alcoholism and doubts about religion. It’s set to be released by MSI/San Juan Press near the end of August.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
When his car burns to the ground, wallet and keys inside, twenty-one-year-old anti-hero Jim Crack is launched into an epic journey. He goes from being a Disneyland Goofy caught in a love triangle to jail for grand theft auto and from a reunion with his estranged father to running guns for a possible terrorist cell in Las Vegas. Jim’s only hope of redemption seems to be following his alcoholic Mormon friend back to Utah, where he hopes to get clean and escape to a more natural way of life.
Throne of the Peacock Angel
Throne of the Peacock Angel is a gritty, surreal, and sharply written novel that blends supernatural mystery, urban grit, and political intrigue in a New Orleans setting that’s as alive as any of its characters. The story centers around Adam Worthy Deen, a man with a haunted past, supernatural baggage, and a life that keeps pulling him into secrets far deeper than he wants. He’s got a scarab attached to his heart—literally—which grants him enhanced strength and long life, but also a dangerous hunger for human energy. As ghosts from the past, shadowy organizations, and foreign aristocrats begin converging, Worthy finds himself drawn back into a world he’s been trying to leave behind.
The writing is snappy. Khalid has an ear for dialogue and a knack for making his characters sound real—especially the banter between Donny and Eva, which had me smirking more than once. It’s got that smooth, jazzy rhythm that suits New Orleans perfectly. It’s those moments—where the book lets its characters just be—that give it such strong personality.
The mix of genres here is bold. You’ve got noir-ish crime elements, a secret society feel, hints of espionage, and supernatural dreamscapes with a giant dung beetle made of crystal feeding at a lake of blood. Honestly, that dream scene threw me in the best way. It reminded me of old-school horror-fantasy with just enough weirdness to keep it unpredictable. Worthy’s struggle with the scarab feels symbolic and raw—he wants to live a normal life, but that talisman keeps pulling him toward darkness. It’s the push-pull of destiny vs. desire that gives the book a pulse.
There are a lot of moving parts—government agencies, aristocratic secret missions, shady families like the Bacons, and street-level drama with Donny’s hilarious misadventures. Sometimes, I had to stop and remind myself who was who and why certain plot threads mattered. But it works, mostly because the characters are vibrant. Eva, for instance, steals the show at times. She’s fierce, sarcastic, and has this unspoken loyalty to Worthy that feels earned.
By the end of the opening chapters, I was hooked. Khalid’s world has weight, and Worthy is one of those characters that sticks with you—a reluctant hero who carries pain like a shadow. This book would be great for fans of supernatural thrillers, noir with a twist, or folks who just like their fiction weird but grounded. If you like John Constantine, True Detective, or anything with secret histories and mystical scars, you’ll find a lot to love here.
Pages: 422 | ISBN : 978-1665543224
Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies
After reading Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies by Karl Wegener, I’m left both shaken and impressed. The novel is a slow-burning but deeply immersive espionage thriller set against the backdrop of post-World War II Poland. It follows a deadly cat-and-mouse game between Soviet-backed Polish authorities and remnants of the Polish Home Army. The story unfolds with brutal precision, opening with a horrific ambush and evolving into a tightly woven narrative of deceit, identity, and revenge. At the center of it all is Ada Bialik, a woman shaped by war and driven by a quiet, burning fury. Through calculated acts of rebellion and sharp instincts, she becomes the most compelling figure in a world where trust is rare and survival depends on cunning.
I found Wegener’s writing to be razor-sharp in its detail and emotional depth. The characters aren’t just chess pieces in a war story—they’re raw, bruised humans, often trying to make sense of a world shattered by ideology. The language is spare but impactful, often letting silence and implication carry emotional weight. I appreciated that. The dialogue never felt forced. It carried a natural, believable rhythm, which grounded the story in a gritty realism. There’s also a strong visual element—the way forest paths, bloodied uniforms, and stark interrogation rooms are described pulls you in like scenes from a black-and-white film. I found myself holding my breath during key sequences.
But what really got to me was the moral fog that hangs over everything. There are no clean hands in this book. Wegener doesn’t preach, doesn’t glorify violence, but he doesn’t flinch from it either. Some parts made me uncomfortable, like the cold way Lieutenant Colonel Sokolov manipulates others, or how easily people vanish into the system. And yet, it all felt real. That murkiness is part of the book’s strength. It reminds you that history isn’t neat. The idealists don’t always win. People betray each other. Sometimes for survival. Sometimes for belief. Sometimes for nothing at all. The emotional undercurrent is subtle but devastating.
I’d recommend Operation Nightfall to anyone who loves historical fiction with a hard edge, especially fans of John le Carré or Alan Furst. If you’re looking for a tidy, good-guys-win sort of spy story, this isn’t it. But if you want a gripping tale of loyalty, survival, and the deep scars left by war, this book delivers in spades. It stays with you. I’m still thinking about Ada. Still wondering what justice looks like in a world built on lies.
Pages: 336 | ASIN : B0DBN6CD4X
Revenge Theory
Revenge Theory by Onkar Sharma is a gripping tale that weaves together themes of vengeance, power, and complex human emotions. As the title suggests, the narrative delves deeply into revenge, but it also goes beyond, exploring justice, forgiveness, and the long-lasting effects of trauma. Shyama Devis, a talented and accomplished businesswoman, finds herself ruined by a powerful politician. The story tracks Shyama’s relentless pursuit of retribution as the politician’s influence grows. Sharma’s characters are richly developed, and the plot is filled with twists that keep readers engaged from start to finish.
The novel opens with a series of fast-paced vignettes, each turn in the story surprising and full of suspense. Sharma knows how to build tension, keeping readers on edge as each new revelation unfolds. The characters are not only well-defined but also deeply human, with clear motivations and emotional complexity. Shyama stands out as a resilient, empathetic protagonist, while Amarnath Chauhan, the antagonist, is the kind of villain who stirs a strong desire for justice. Although revenge serves as the central theme, Sharma doesn’t rely solely on it to carry the narrative. The novel also probes deeper questions of justice and the potential for forgiveness. It thoughtfully addresses the consequences of past actions, making the story more than just a tale of retribution—it’s a reflection on the human condition. Set against the picturesque backdrop of Himachal Pradesh, the novel uses the region’s natural beauty as a striking contrast to the intense personal struggles of its characters. The landscape adds a visual richness to the reading experience, creating a vivid setting that enhances the emotional depth of the story. Readers unfamiliar with the culture or locale might initially find the colloquialisms and local institutions a bit challenging. However, these elements quickly become part of the novel’s unique charm. While certain genre tropes, such as melodrama and coincidence, can feel overused at times, the story’s momentum and character development make these moments forgivable. Once immersed in the world Sharma has created, the unfamiliarity of the setting transforms into a captivating exploration of culture.
Revenge Theory is not only an entertaining novel but also a thought-provoking one. Onkar Sharma’s skillful storytelling and multidimensional characters create a narrative that resonates long after the final page. It delivers a richly layered and insightful story, making it a compelling read for anyone drawn to tales of revenge and redemption.
Pages: 232 | ISBN : 8196397429
LITERARY TITAN 