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Beyond the Sky’s Edge
In Beyond Sky’s Edge, by Pat Wahler, readers are transported to the year 1912 to follow the transformative journey of eighteen-year-old Olivia “Livvie” Newcomb. Living in St. Louis under the thumb of her protective and traditional parents, Livvie chafes against the societal expectation that she marry her childhood friend, Leonard Wyatt. Her world is cracked open during a trip to Kansas City, where she experiences the exhilarating freedom of a tethered hot air balloon ride. This brief taste of the heavens ignites an obsession with aviation, a passion further fueled by the real-life exploits of female pilots like Harriet Quimby and Katherine Stinson. When her family is suddenly plunged into financial ruin and social disgrace after her father is unjustly dismissed from his drafting job, Livvie decides to take her destiny into her own hands.
The novel is a beautifully paced historical coming-of-age story that masterfully contrasts the restrictive domestic spheres of the early twentieth century with the expansive, untamed arena of early aviation. Wahler excels at capturing the sensory details of the era, from the oppressive summer heat of St. Louis and the rustle of restrictive petticoats to the oil-scented, wind-whipped thrill of the airfield. At its heart, the book is less about the technicalities of flying and more about a young woman’s struggle for self-determination. Livvie is a compelling protagonist whose stubbornness and vulnerability make her intensely relatable as she navigates parental disapproval, a bittersweet falling out with a well-meaning but betraying suitor, and her own physical battles with vertigo.
Wahler gracefully charts Livvie’s transition from a sheltered daughter to the pragmatic head of her household. After selling a precious family heirloom to fund her secret flight lessons at Kinloch Field, Livvie begins to see the true cost of independence. The emotional weight of her father’s subsequent illness and death, paired with her mother’s descent into grief, forces Livvie to grow up quickly. She begins to view her headstrong nature not as a rebellion, but as a necessary tool for her family’s survival. Her training under the quiet, scarred mechanic Jake Fleming serves as a crucible, teaching her that “flying takes courage” and that she must “respect the power you hold in your hands.” Through this mentorship and her growing friendship with Katherine Stinson, Livvie finds a community of trailblazers who refuse to let the earth hold them down.
Beyond Sky’s Edge is an inspiring and emotionally resonant novel that celebrates the resilience of the female spirit. It vividly captures the dawn of aviation when flight was a dangerous, poetic adventure, and women had to fight for every inch of sky. By the time Livvie finally takes the controls for her first solo flight, fans of historical fiction will find themselves thoroughly swept up in her triumph. Wahler has crafted a rich historical narrative that reminds us how stepping into the unknown, though terrifying, is often the only way to truly find ourselves.
Pages: 368 | ASIN : B0HCT5WY7Z
When Paris Whispers
When Paris Whispers is a reflective work of literary women’s fiction with strong coming-of-age, romance, and travel fiction elements. The novel follows Catrine Gray, a young woman from Virginia who leaves grief, a controlling mother, and a cramped sense of self behind when she moves to Paris in 1981. What begins as a long-dreamed escape becomes something more complicated: a test of friendship, a love story, a reckoning with family secrets, and a journey toward finally choosing her own life.
I was drawn to the way Marianne C. Bohr makes Paris feel both magical and stubbornly real. This isn’t just postcard Paris, though there are plenty of cafés, pastries, literary streets, and romantic corners. It’s also dirty laundry, bad directions, bruised knees, awkward French, and the ache of realizing that a dream place will not fix you unless you are willing to change. I liked that. Catrine’s love of France could have become overly sweet, but the novel gives it texture. Paris whispers to her through literature, memory, and those strange guiding voices, yet she still has to do the hard human work herself.
The author’s strongest choice, for me, is making Catrine’s growth feel gradual. She doesn’t arrive in France fully formed. She is bookish, wounded, naive, observant, and sometimes frustrating in the way real people can be when they have spent years being diminished. Freddie is a sharp contrast, all color and appetite and performance, and their friendship has that uncomfortable sting of a bond that once saved you but later starts to shrink you. The romance with Vincent adds warmth, but I appreciated that the deeper love story is really Catrine learning to trust her own mind. That part resonated with me. The family revelations near the end widen the book beyond Paris and romance, giving the story a fuller emotional shape.
I would recommend When Paris Whispers to readers who enjoy character-driven literary fiction, women’s fiction, and coming-of-age stories set against a richly rendered European backdrop. It will especially appeal to Francophiles, readers who love books about books, and anyone drawn to stories about leaving home, making peace with the past, and becoming brave by practice rather than by nature.
Pages: 372 | ASIN : B0H2NT46LQ
Wrecking Ball
Wrecking Ball, by Pamela Summers, follows Bethany, an environmental safety inspector trying to recover from a dead-end relationship with career-obsessed Joshua, only to have her orderly life jolted by Leon, a construction worker whose charm arrives with concrete dust, hard hats, and several spectacular misunderstandings. What begins as irritation over a filthy car and an awkward confrontation becomes a workplace-adjacent romance full of missed signals, handwritten notes, old emotional bruises, family complications, and the stubborn hope that two people can still build something solid after making a mess of the foundation.
I enjoyed how Bethany is written as both capable and gloriously fallible. She is not a glossy romance heroine gliding through conflict with perfect hair and perfect instincts; she overthinks, snaps back, spirals, embarrasses herself, and occasionally turns a small problem into a full civic emergency. That made her feel relatable. The humor works best when the book lets her private commentary run wild, especially around the “cluck club,” the construction crew, and her own unwilling attraction to Leon. The story has a bright, unruly energy, like a romantic comedy that wandered onto a job site and refused to wear proper protective gear.
Leon works because he brings warmth without becoming bland. His “Fuzzy Hero” hard hat, his devotion to Rosaline, and his careful attempts to reach Bethany give the romance a sweetness that balances the book’s steamier moments. I was most drawn to the sections where the comedy gives way to hurt pride, miscommunication, and second chances; those scenes give the novel its emotional ballast. The misunderstandings pile up in a way that feels almost theatrical, but that heightened quality is part of the book’s engine. It wants the chaos, the fluster, the door-slamming embarrassment, and then the catharsis of people finally saying the thing they should have said three chapters earlier.
This book is a good fit for readers who like contemporary romance, workplace romance, romantic comedy, and second-chance-adjacent love stories with open-door heat and a lively heroine. Fans of Tessa Bailey’s blend of blue-collar attraction, humor, and emotional sincerity may find a familiar kind of pleasure here, though Pamela Summers gives the story her own chatty, combustible rhythm. Wrecking Ball is a romance about demolition, repair, and the reckless little miracle of trusting someone near the scaffolding of your heart.
Pages: 114 | ASIN : B0FNKZ9H5K
Lifelines
Loving Josephine follows a young woman whose life begins in the shadow of a brothel, finds mercy from a stranger, and learns to face the man whose cruelty shaped her fear. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Loving Josephine grew out of my fascination with the quiet resilience of women who survive circumstances they never chose. I wanted to explore what happens to a young woman whose life begins in a place meant to break her—and what mercy looks like when it arrives in the form of an unexpected stranger. The setup came from my desire to show that even in the harshest beginnings, a single act of compassion can redirect an entire life. Josephine’s world is rough, but her spirit is tender, and I wanted readers to feel both truths from the very first pages.
How did you balance Jo’s vulnerability with her strength?
Balancing Jo’s vulnerability with her strength meant honoring the truth of what she’s lived through. Losing her mother so young left her without the one person who might have protected her, and that loss shaped both her fear and her longing. She’s been shaped by fear, but she hasn’t lost her capacity for hope or connection. I wrote her with the understanding that courage doesn’t always look loud or defiant—sometimes it’s the quiet decision to keep going, to trust again, to face the person who once held power over you. For me, Jo’s vulnerability isn’t a weakness; it’s the very place her strength grows from.
Why do you think female friendships and mentorships are such powerful storytelling elements?
Women often become each other’s lifelines. In stories—and in real life—female friendships and mentorships create spaces where women can be seen, believed, and strengthened. These relationships offer a kind of emotional refuge that allows characters to grow in ways they couldn’t on their own. In Loving Josephine, the women who cross Jo’s path help her reclaim pieces of herself she thought were lost. Their presence reminds her she’s not alone, and that kind of support can change the trajectory of a life.
What do you hope female readers see in Jo’s journey?
I hope women see that healing isn’t linear and that their worth isn’t defined by where they started. Jo’s journey is about reclaiming her voice, her safety, and her sense of self—slowly, imperfectly, and bravely. If readers walk away feeling even a small spark of recognition, that they, too, can rise from the shadows of their past and step into something gentler and truer—then Jo’s story has done what I hoped it would.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
One journey.
One life hanging in the balance.
Chicago, 1879. Fourteen‑year‑old Josephine is expelled from boarding school and sent back to the St. Louis brothel where she was raised. There she finds her mother gravely ill and held under the control of a ruthless strongarm. Stranded in a world she barely understands, Josephine steels herself as danger closes in and faith becomes her only refuge.
Hundreds of miles away in Rosewood, West Virginia, newlywed Beth Wallace receives a bewildering letter meant for a man long gone. Its message unlocks long‑buried secrets Beth never imagined, awakening a conviction she cannot ignore. Trusting God’s prompting, Beth leaves her new family and sets her face westward, determined to answer a call she never expected.
As Josephine fights to survive and Beth races toward Missouri, their lives converge in a journey marked by peril, providence, and the quiet courage of women who refuse to surrender.
Loving Josephine is a Christian historical romance woven with suspense, redemption, and grace. Set in the post‑Reconstruction South, it continues the saga begun in Loving Beth, bringing to light the hidden past that will change both their lives forever.
This is Book Two in the Daughters of Appalachia series and continues the story of Beth and Jacob from Loving Beth. Readers will enjoy this book best after reading Book One.
A Soldier’s Burden
A Soldier’s Burden, by Natia Khaduri, translated by Mzia Kvirikasvili Lawrence, follows Colonel John Kartvelishvili, a Georgian peacekeeper in Afghanistan, whose military duty is entangled with prayer, moral exhaustion, and an unexpected bond with Sharon, a woman carrying her own history of violence, exile, faith, and maternal grief. What begins as a war-zone encounter becomes a story of restrained love, spiritual endurance, and the terrible cost of surviving when the heart has been repeatedly conscripted into pain.
I was most struck by how openly the novel lets its characters think and feel. John and Sharon don’t simply speak to each other; they argue with God, with memory, with the brutal arithmetic of war. The book has a devotional intensity that gives even ordinary gestures, a letter, a touch, a saved object, the weight of a sacrament. Sometimes the prose feels less like conventional realism and more like a long confession whispered beside a battlefield.
The emotional force of the book comes from its refusal to make love easy. Khaduri writes love as burden, refuge, debt, punishment, and grace, sometimes all in the same breath. The translation occasionally carries a raw, uneven cadence, but that roughness also gives the novel its unique feel; the sentences often feel bruised rather than polished, and that suits a story about people who have lived through more than language can neatly hold.
This book will speak most strongly to readers of military fiction, Christian fiction, war drama, romance, and women’s fiction. Readers who appreciate the spiritual suffering and moral questioning in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns may find a related ache here, though Khaduri’s novel is more prayerful and more openly philosophical. A Soldier’s Burden is a wounded love story with a soldier’s discipline and a mourner’s soul.
Pages: 282 | ASIN : B0CW1FWNH4
La Llorona: The Awakening
La Llorona: The Awakening is a grief novel wrapped in folklore, family drama, and psychological suspense. Mary Romasanta builds the story around Ruth and Mi-Ra, two women tied together by love for the same family and divided by old wounds, cultural expectations, and the kind of pride that keeps people from saying what they actually mean. From the preface’s plain statement, “Grief is an unwelcome guest,” the book tells you exactly where it’s headed: into the rooms grief takes over, and into the strange things people start to hear, see, and believe when loss has nowhere else to go.
What makes the book compelling is the way it treats the supernatural as both literal and emotional. La Llorona and Mul Gwishin aren’t just spooky figures hovering around the edges of the plot. They’re part of how the book thinks about sorrow, motherhood, guilt, and inheritance. Water shows up again and again as danger, memory, temptation, and purification. The scares work best when they feel intimate, like a drip in the dark or a voice calling from just beyond what a character can prove.
The heart of the novel is really Ruth and Mi-Ra’s relationship. Their early scenes are sharp with resentment, especially around family traditions, fertility, food, and John’s attention. Mi-Ra can be cruel, but the book spends enough time inside her grief that she becomes more than a difficult mother-in-law. Ruth, meanwhile, has her own guardedness and ambition, yet she keeps choosing care when bitterness would be easier.
The pacing is intense, especially after John’s death shifts the book from a tense family gathering into a story about survival after devastation. Romasanta leans into big emotions, and the prose often has a cinematic, high-pressure quality: kitchens feel like battlefields, bathrooms become haunted spaces, and ordinary objects take on unbearable meaning.
La Llorona: The Awakening is an emotionally driven novel about how grief can isolate people, distort them, and still leave room for connection. It’s part ghost story, part family reckoning, and part meditation on the stories cultures use to explain pain. Its strongest moments come when folklore and domestic realism overlap, letting a haunted house, a strained marriage, a mother’s envy, and a grandmother’s longing all feel connected. The book stays with the question of whether sorrow will pull its characters under or teach them how to reach for one another.
Pages: 272 | ASIN : B0DQLXJB83
Twenty Years & Then Some: The Year the Compass Broke
I found Twenty Years and Then Some to be a restless, intimate novel about a woman trying to make sense of desire, faith, memory, and selfhood while moving between London, Iraq, and later Mashhad, all under the pressure of romantic entanglements that never quite become refuge. Aisha’s story unfolds through encounters with men like Mustafa, whose gentleness can’t kindle love, and Diyaa, whose emotional evasions wound precisely because the chemistry feels real, while her spiritual life keeps pulling her toward shrines, graves, prophecy, and questions of intercession that are not ornamental to the plot but the plot’s deepest engine. What emerges is less a conventional romance than a record of inner weather, a book about a woman whose compass is broken not because she lacks intelligence, but because feeling, belief, and longing keep pointing in different directions.
The book’s voice has a confessional intensity that can be startling, sometimes almost feverish, and when it works, it really works. I kept thinking of the scene in Najaf where shared laughter with a grieving woman breaks the heaviness for a moment, and of the visit to the grandmother’s grave, where longing for marriage, fear of death, family history, and theology all gather in one charged space. Those moments feel lived rather than engineered. The prose often reaches for grandeur, but it also knows when to come down into a sharply human detail, like Aaliya arriving with thyme pastries and Arabic coffee, or Aisha watching Diyaa’s restraint on the sofa and feeling that non-kiss as a form of intimacy more unsettling than an actual touch. I admired how often the writing refuses embarrassment. It’s earnest in a way many contemporary novels are scared to be, and that earnestness gives it heat. The novel can sometimes circle the same emotions, the narrator’s self-awareness sometimes deepens the feeling, and sometimes merely names it again. Still, even that repetition began to feel like part of the design, the rhythm of someone who knows the lesson intellectually long before she can bear to live it.
I was equally taken by the book’s ideas, especially because they’re inseparable from the narrator’s emotional life. This isn’t a novel that treats faith as background decoration. Its Shia spiritual imagination, its meditations on shrines, the dead, intercession, visions, and historical erasure give the whole book a metaphysical charge that sets it apart from more familiar breakup fiction. I found the contrast between Aisha and Diyaa especially revealing: he reaches for Helen Fisher and the anatomy of love, trying to reduce heartbreak to something legible and clinical, while she insists that love belongs as much to myth, intuition, and holiness as it does to biology. That tension gives the novel real intellectual texture. I also appreciated the passages where private suffering opens onto political and sectarian history, especially the reflections on demolition, memory, and the Wahhabi project. Those sections are bold and deeply felt, though they can be more essayistic than dramatic. I liked that the novel had something serious to say, but there were moments when I felt the fiction briefly gave way to argument. Even so, the argument is never hollow. It comes from a bruised inner life, which gives it conviction.
I came away from this book feeling I’d spent time inside a mind that is ardent, contradictory, wounded, and fiercely searching. It’s strongest when it allows romance, theology, and memory to collide without trying to tidy the mess. I’d recommend it to readers who like emotionally candid literary fiction, especially those interested in faith, sectarian identity, diasporic loneliness, and the unnerving gap between knowing what’s good for you and wanting something else anyway.
Fiction Became My Canvas
Song of Hummingbird Highway follows a wounded woman who journeys from Michigan to Belize, where myth, music, and motherhood force her to discover her own strength and truth. what was the inspiration for the setup of your story.
The inspiration connects to the universal arc of pain to empowerment—an evolution I’ve lived and continue learning. I carried physical and emotional wounds for years, clinging to resentment like pennies in a purse, their weight familiar, even comforting. Then I understood what Nelson Mandela meant: “Resentment is like taking poison and hoping your enemy will fall.” It serves no purpose except to weaken resolve.
For an instant, I considered writing a memoir, but fiction became my canvas—a space where my characters could teach me what I needed to understand about releasing what no longer serves us. Terri’s journey from pain to empowerment unfolds through learning to trust her own strength and believe in authentic connections that tell a story. Redemption isn’t dramatic; it’s simply making better choices about viewing the challenges we face.
I’d traveled to Belize years earlier and felt something shift when I heard Garifuna drums for the first time—not a soundbank from a midi drum machine, but the real thing, played by people for whom rhythm is prayer. Those drums stayed with me for decades, insisting I tell this particular story about a woman who needed what I’d discovered: that transformation requires stepping into unfamiliar territory where we can finally hear ourselves clearly.
What drives the story’s heart: myth, music, and motherhood aren’t manufactured calculations—they’re driven by the human pulse. I wanted to create something structurally innovative—a novel where 100+ carefully curated songs aren’t just soundtrack but architecture, where each of 30 chapters opens with original black-and-white photography that functions as visual meditation. Musical notes paint pictures in our hearts, creating immersive experiences that bridge the gap between what we feel inside and what we can express.
Like the authentic connections I nurture with people I meet, Terri’s journey mirrors that search for genuine resonance. The drums of Belize don’t just provide a soundtrack; they become a language for emotions she’s kept locked away, each note a key turning in a rusted lock. The setup pairs internal wounds with external displacement—Michigan represents everything familiar but confining, while Belize offers spiritual traditions and sacred spaces that don’t require her to be anyone she’s been before.
Terri longs to be truly seen, yet struggles to trust herself. What drew you to that emotional tension?
That tension between visibility and trust fascinates me because it’s fundamentally incongruous—we can’t be truly seen until we trust ourselves enough to show what’s real, but we can’t build that trust without being witnessed. It’s a cyclic sequence most of us repeat unless we reframe our perspective.
I rarely think about my childhood—instead, I feel like I was plopped into adult life at seventeen. Like Terri pointing at the Caribbean on a map, I picked Long Beach, California with five hundred dollars in my pocket and the dreams of writing a book someday. That early leap taught me about the courage it takes to follow your heart before you fully trust it.
For a long time, I allowed others to judge me, steer me, always trying to change myself to please them. It took me years to gain the confidence to listen to my own heart, to love myself, to function from a place of strength rather than constant accommodation. I wanted to write a character who couldn’t articulate her own desires because she’d spent so long performing. Terri knows something is missing, but she doesn’t have language for the absence.
That’s where music becomes essential to the narrative structure. The 100+ songs curated throughout the novel speak what Terri cannot yet say aloud. Strength is ours to keep or give away—we choose whether to take responsibility for our own choices or hand that authority to someone else. We all own our power, like choosing which song to play after a hard day.
The technical challenge was showing Terri’s evolution without spelling it out, trusting readers to recognize the shifts. Early chapters include songs about escape and longing. Later, the music transforms, becomes grounded, rooted, rhythmic rather than melodic. The music evolves with Terri becoming the language she finally trusts.
Writing this book in the early mornings and weekends over three years, some mornings Terri refused to cooperate. She’d make choices I hadn’t planned, reveal vulnerabilities I found uncomfortable. That’s when I knew I was writing someone real—someone wrestling with the same question I was: What is my truth? Terri’s quest taught me that we get to decide which melody defines our lives.
Ancestral voices, Mayan cosmology, and ritual appear through the book. How did you research and approach these traditions with care?
Throughout my life, I’ve been drawn to spiritual texts like a compass needle finding north—the Bible, The Four Agreements, The Power of Attraction, Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer. As a young adult, I fell in love with Caribbean folklore, particularly the stories of Anansi the spider. He’s not so different from Brer Rabbit and that’s when I understood: I’d rather focus on what we share than what divides us.
I deeply love and respect the Belizean people who welcomed me into their homes and lives, who shared the beautiful, intricate aspects of their culture. I traveled to Belize grieving and felt something shift when an elder from Hopkins shared his wisdom of the earth, the plants, the ancestors. I heard Garifuna drum rhythms that stayed with me, insisting I tell this story.
When I approached the magical realism sections, I researched meticulously, anchoring fictional possibilities in documented truth and fact. The story required three years of cultural research with Mesha Steele, a Belizean-born cultural consultant, songwriter and music educator, because I strove to capture a glimpse of the depth of Belizean spiritual traditions, as anchors and beauty, not as decorative elements.
At the book’s end, there’s a bibliography and references section that I insisted on, even though my publisher said fiction doesn’t require one. I wanted readers to know I respected these cultures enough to attempt to truly understand the complexities of this diaspora, I categorized 245 references by cultural elements, images, poems, lullabies, books, hymns, songs and television shows.
Cheryl L. Figueroa-Noralez, president and founder of Garifuna-American Heritage Foundation United, read my book cover to cover and caught inaccuracies that needed to be revised. Those corrections mattered more than any other editorial feedback because they protected the integrity of communities that trusted me with their stories.
I walked everywhere with a pen and notepad, talking to people, really hearing their stories—not just waiting for my turn to speak, but listening to the rhythm beneath their words. The characters developed and grew the same way I did while writing: by paying attention to voices that have been singing long before we arrived.
What do you hope lingers with readers after the final page?
Hummingbirds represent optimism and hope, their wings beating seventy times per second, creating a hum that sounds like possibility itself. But Song of Hummingbird Highway doesn’t offer neat resolutions because transformation rarely works that way. Instead, I hope readers will sit with discomfort: What would it cost to walk away from everything familiar? Can we trust our own hearts when they lead us somewhere terrifying?
While writing, I spent time with all of my characters—loving them, painting their strengths as well as their flaws. Nothing is black or white in this story. I saw each character as both champion and victim in their own ways, making choices that felt right in the moment even when those choices caused harm. I love that complexity that makes us human.
What I hope lingers is the music and the art. The songs embedded in chapters create an accompaniment that extends beyond the page. A soundtrack not driven by algorithm, but by heart. Music that transcends eras, encouraging readers to replay scenes in their minds with their own emotional rhythm attached. Drums and funky beats speak what words alone cannot, building bridges between us—much like the 30 photographs that open each chapter, visual meditations in black and white rag paper, revealing conviction about our innate wisdom, and the imagery of nature revealing who we are and who we’re becoming.
I dream that in a hundred years, someone could pick up Song of Hummingbird Highway and walk alongside Terri as she discovers something essential about herself in the most unexpected places. That they’ll understand the courage to step into unfamiliar territory and listen to what they find there.
The words that capture this story are journey, connection, truth. Not destinations, but the path we take. Not easy answers, but genuine curiosity, questions we’re brave enough to ask ourselves.
Always ending with my signature question: Are you creating?
Author Website
When her son vanishes, Terri, a woman with more bravado than self-esteem, must navigate betrayal, sacrifice, and deadly secrets-or lose her child to forces she doesn’t understand.
To find him, she must track her son through folklore and mysterious cenotes, guided by music that connects past wounds to future healing. In a journey where maternal love becomes the most dangerous magic, she discovers a powerful truth: Pain can become her greatest teacher.
From Los Angeles to Belize’s sacred caves, Song of Hummingbird Highway explores how love, loss, and a mother’s fierce resolve converge into a story as intricate and luminous as the music that inspired it.
