I love books with great openings, because the opening is always a promise. But what happens after that determines the storytelling skills of the author. Lyrical and engaging, Fort Sarpy, the second book in the Riverboat series by Dave Lloyd has a gripping opening with...

Up until now my favorite books on the subject of early American life were those of James Fenimore Cooper. The Leather Stocking Series is classic, and few books can compete with its detailed description of both Native American and European life in early America,...

Twenty-one-year-old James Jerome Johnson, or J.J., was a drop out, forced to take a job to support his mother and siblings, but conditions at his work place were getting to him. He joined the army, slipping the recruiter ten dollars to be directed to the...

The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter by Mimi Matthews is a Victorian romance set in 1861. Tristan Sinclair is a viscount, a world-weary man who has sunk to the lowest depths. Valentine March is a vicar’s daughter and when she gets a job as a...

To Be Had by Sava Buncic is a great read with compelling characters. A lawyer who doesn't earn more than a waiter, Boris feels trapped in Greentown. But how can he give his family the life they deserve when there are no prospects of advancing...

This is the first novel I have read by Katie O’Rourke, and I’ll be sure Blood & Water is not the last. At first I started to worry about how well I could connect with the story, since we do get to follow five different...

In Christmas, Alabama by Susan Sands, the story follows Rachel Prudhomme’s new life in the town of Ministry, Alabama. After all the suffering due to her father’s behavior, she is now trying to overcome her fears in order to trust men again. Dr. Nick Sullivan...

Santiago Tales by Terry Tumbler is a brilliant, refreshing, and gripping collection of tales crafted around a group of retired people on a pilgrimage to Santiago, a contemporary kind of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Led by an ex-detective, readers are introduced to a...

Angie must come to terms with the death of her best friend in Feast: A Gitksan Story by Roy W. Russell. Walt has died while in college in Toronto, halfway across the country from the reserve on which the Gitksan people live in the Pacific...

I have read Kathryn R. Biel's work in the past, and her books have always been such fun to read. I was so intrigued by the premise of Once In a Lifetime – a former girl group getting together for a reunion concert. Um, yes...