In This Troubled Ground, retired Lt. Col. Les Carroll offers a deeply authentic tale of war’s aftermath, following an Air Force officer and a grieving mother through loss, hope, and the search for meaning.
BookTribJuly 9, 2025
What if the story behind Valentine’s Day isn’t just a legend? In The Legend of Valentine, award-winning filmmaker Sheldon Collins breathes life into this historical legend through a brave Roman soldier named Valentine Romanus. This richly detailed story will take you into a world of forbidden love, relentless persecution, and…
Natalia KavaleJanuary 21, 2025
With a flair for mining out remarkable women from obscurity in history, Jenny L. Walsh has once again unearthed the extraordinary in her latest novel Ace, Marvel, Spy. Alice Marble was a trailblazer, tennis champion, spy, and overall American icon. I’ll be the first to admit that I had never…
J'nell CiesielskiJanuary 3, 2025
It is a grey November morning when an American foreigner in the Peace Corps makes his way through Ukraine aboard a cramped bus. Here, in an unfamiliar land, he hopes he can start fresh and leave his Army days and the war behind him, but he has yet to reconcile…
Megan BeauregardNovember 7, 2024
The Colony Club is the epitome of what historical fiction should be, as the genre all too often misses the mark, riddled with anachronisms or carelessly blatant errors. Author Shelley Noble deftly balances clearly identified actual people, places and events with plausible vibrant fictional characters portrayed in a lively story…
Linda HitchcockNovember 7, 2024
Books & Looks: Real Books for Real Readers was started as a podcast to supplement Blaine Desantis’ website, ViewsOnBooks.com, and expand into audio interviews with authors. With Books & Looks, Blaine’s goal is to focus on real books that real people will read. At least half of the books he reviews are either…
Blaine DesantisOctober 25, 2023
It’s not enough that Tony Hill suffers from bipolar disorder, has been homeless and lived in his car with his two kids for three months, has been incarcerated stemming from domestic abuse, has not kept a job for more than a year, was dishonorably discharged from the Navy, and battles…
Jim AlkonFebruary 28, 2022
“A writer at the height of her powers.” That’s how Oprah.com described Melissa Pritchard, whose latest work, Flight of the Wild Swan, is a majestic novel about Florence Nightingale, whose courage, self-confidence and resilience transformed nursing and the role of women in medicine. Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild…
BookTribMarch 12, 2024
Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens? — Job 35:11 Communist authorities in 1984 in a small Poland community create laws chasing longtime families out. The grown son, his wife and child prepare for a difficult goodbye…
Jim AlkonSeptember 27, 2023
Mrs. Lowe-Porter (Jackleg Press) is a captivating biographical novel by award-winning author Jo Salas that blurs the lines between rather bare bones known historical facts and a fictional story adding great emotional depth with richly imagined innermost thoughts and feelings of its subject. This book effectively projects American author and translator…
Linda HitchcockFebruary 26, 2024
Much like the dynamic and accomplished women in The First Ladies, Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray have forged an incredible friendship and partnership. Following the great success of The Personal Librarian, they have released their second collaboration, The First Ladies. Please find the video recording of the…
Jennifer BlankfeinOctober 4, 2023
Steven A. Yagyagan’s latest novel, Heather: Tuu Maia Lou Lima Give Me Your Hand, is an imaginative retelling of the real story of Heather Tauvela, a woman who overcame tremendous hardship and trauma to build a new life for herself and her children. When Heather asked Yagyagan to share her…
BookTribJune 29, 2023
Thanks to the rage for popular history, Americans have been treated to hundreds of images of the Roaring Twenties. Although a full century has passed since the ascension of flappers, jazz, blues, speakeasies and airplanes, the wonder and calamity of those years have become familiar to us through film and…
Claudia KeenanMarch 27, 2023
It’s the story of countless American cities. A harsh line severs the community, cutting Black residents off from more affluent white neighborhoods. Those who do venture across are at risk of being met with threats, violence and displacement. Whether the line was established during the segregation era or was quietly…
BookTribSeptember 6, 2022
"Quinn manages to give her readers something that’s both engaging because it’s well written and exciting because it’s grounded in truth." —∞— Amid WWII, can Lady Death, a quiet bookworm turned lethal sniper, hit her mark? Based on an incredible true story, Kate Quinn’s latest novel, The Diamond Eye (William…
Lydia LefevreApril 18, 2022
If you only read one book about women who served in the military during World War II, I heartily recommend Angels of the Pacific (William Morrow) by Elise Hooper. Many books have been written about the war in the Pacific, the occupation of the Philippines by Japanese troops and the…
Linda HitchcockMarch 11, 2022