Chanticleer Book Reviews

Category: Reviews

The REFUSED by Ron Singerton – Historical Fiction, Action and Adventure Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller

Fine artist and award-winning author Ron Singerton turns his astute attention to some little-known history, enmeshed in immortal names and enduring truth in his mystery romance novel, The Refused.

The story boils from the first page, depicting families from the North and South in 1859 America. The brewing conflict will pull all of them into its orbit. In the South we meet Charlotte, her half-brother and slave, Jerome, who sail to France at war’s end.

Life and love in Paris become the vibrant heartbeat in The Refused.

Jack Volant, an aspiring painter and Union cavalry officer, wounded at Gettysburg, travels to Paris following the war to become a more accomplished artist. It is there that he begins a tumultuous relationship with Charlotte, a sculptor who sells her work to Empress Eugenie, wife of the Emperor, and a noted art patroness.

Jack’s younger brother Steven, while still in America, becomes embroiled in an affair with a professor’s wife. When the professor, an expert shot, learns of it, he challenges the young man to a duel. Fearing for his life, Steven changes his name and flees to Paris where he engages in the eerie occupation of unwrapping mummies in the salons attended by the elite.

All these dynamic characters, many involved in intrigue and murder, will interact in the decadent City of Light. They enjoy its ambience for only a short time, however, before war finds them once again. In 1870, the influence of the Empress, Prussian militarism and national rivalry will lead to disaster for France in the Franco Prussian war, the siege of Paris. In the chaos, Charlotte, deeply in love with Jack, waits anxiously as he attempts to save his brother and Jerome from the Prussian onslaught.

The Refused is more than the title of a novel.

Jack will find himself accepted by and creating new works alongside the Impressionist painters. Their adopted sobriquet, the Refused, stems from their rejection by the mainstream critics of the day. Their band includes Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Cezanne, and Renoir. They all resolve to paint what they want and hope for success, even if it be posthumous.

This novel explores far more than artistic expression.

Even after Prussian victories in the field, Paris holds out and becomes a hotbed of the Parisian underclass, the Communards. Jerome, with his sympathy for the desperately poor, joins the movement, putting his life in danger. As turmoil explodes around them, Jack, Charlotte, Steven, and Jerome attempt to survive as the reign of Emperor Louis Napoleon III and the Second Republic implode around them.

Singerton writes with verve and intelligence. He fashions several interwoven plots in numerous historical settings, while making all his players come to life as credible people, some with high aspirations and others with low scruples.

The author provides useful background in his “Author’s Notes.” He cites the real people and fact-based events that he selected for this engaging tale. The narrative encompasses formal dueling, womanly wiles, shadowy views of a typical morgue, costuming, cafés, conditions in Paris in wartime, and many other fine touches that powerfully immerse the reader in the times and places.

Singerton served in Asia with the US military, was a Civil War cavalry reenactor, an art and history teacher, and enjoys saber fencing and horsemanship. He has penned notable works of historical fiction. And significantly, he is also, like several of the book’s protagonists, a professional artist. All these interests weld neatly together into this enthralling novel, sure to please his current audience and garner new readership.

Read our reviews of Ron Singerton’s other books by clicking on their titles, A Cherry Blossom in Winter, The Silk and the Sword: Gaius Centurion, Book 2, and Villa of Deceit: A Novel of Ancient Rome.

January 17, 2022
COMMISSAR: A Novel of Civil War Russia by DV Chernov – Russian 20th Century Historical Fiction, Military Historical Fiction, War Fiction

DV Chernov delivers the first book of the Anna Sokolova series, an historical thriller Commissar: A Novel of Civil War Russia destined to capture readers’ attentions and have them coming back for more.

Chernov seamlessly blends historical figures with fictional characters in Commissar. Shining above them all is Anna Sokolova, a revolutionary who fights to protect the newly formed Cheka. Her idealistic goal is to improve the lives of her fellow countrymen.

Anna Sokolova steps off the pages as a gutsy and beautiful woman who is also vulnerable and idealistic. She will do anything it takes to find the British spy “Reilly,” a real character from history, who threatens her country’s new political system.

Chernov sets the scene in Moscow in 1918, after the revolution.

The big players in this international espionage thriller are broken down into two opposing forces: the Red and the White armies. However, outside influences from Britain and the United States complicate the struggles. Anna pursues the British spy, but he eludes capture even with her best agents’ intelligence.

Chernov expertly exposes the British and American desires of maintaining their outside capitalist ideologies within Russia. This forces the Reds to fight harder to preserve the newly formed government.

Anna’s romantic involvement with Sergei, her longtime friend and mentor, falls apart when Sergei becomes withdrawn and places the party over her. Anna’s family disappoints her as well. They intend to flee Russia to Switzerland and resume their bourgeoisie life of wealthy business owners. Anna stays behind and throws herself into her work. Will she ever catch the spy Reilly?

One day, Anna meets William, a representative of the American Red Cross, and with him plans the mission that will change her path forward. Together with Egorov and William, she drives a Rolls Royce, of all things, to southwestern Ukraine to entice a group of anarchists to help her catch the elusive Reilly.

There is another reason for her mission, one involving the Russian treasury and the Bolshevik cause.

Anna approaches Makhno, who helps her organize an ambush and attack of the heavily armed and guarded train transporting the gold, but he has two conditions. He gets all the gold as well as the train. Anna convinces him to split the gold 50/50, and she gets Reilly. Soon the mission details fall into place.

The mission unfolds in a tense battle that claims the life of Anna’s friend and comrade in arms, Egorov. The many deaths weigh on Anna. Coupled with another failure to capture Reilly, Anna’s confidence is rocked, which leaves her questioning the decisions made by her superiors and what the Bolsheviks have come to represent.

Even after her successful retrieval of three times the amount of gold she’d anticipated, Anna loses her drive for the cause. Her successful mission assures her a place in the government as a rising star, and as the winds of war change, the Reds gain control of the government.

Chernov’s masterful blending of fictional with non-fictional characters and events creates a blockbuster read. He gives us a high espionage thriller through the eyes of a daring protagonist, Anna Sokolova, and delivers a riveting story that will keep readers up into the night. Moreover, Chernov’s attention to detail will impress the most avid historian, and his storytelling will appeal to lovers of historical fiction and spy thrillers alike. Highly recommended

January 14, 2022
STONE: Rhone and Stone Series, Book One by Strider S.R. Klusman – Y/A Steampunk, Science Fiction First Contact, Y/A Western

Award-winning author, Strider S. R. Klusman’s Stone: Rhone and Stone Series, Book One is set in the high desert outside of the dusty town of Skragmoore.

With all the trappings of a western, he draws us into the Badlands and takes us on a merry and hair rising journey through lake strewn caves and the dusty little town of Skragmoore. This YA adventure will have readers riveted in place to find out what happens next.

Rhone has survived alone in the wilderness since his mother’s death, but he has learned to thrive and spends more and more time out of doors under the open sky than at home in his old, dilapidated house. So, when he hears a voice, and no one else is there, he is confused to say the least. Where is the voice coming from and why won’t it shut up?

Rhone has been carrying the stone in his pouch for several years.

The most beautiful stone he’s ever seen, it is his prized possession and now it’s talking? Yet, somehow he is calmed by the voice and develops a sense of well being as it speaks. Soon Rhone is talking back and finds the stone’s intelligent conversation philosophical and instructive. His new friend educates him about how a lump of mineral can communicate with a human and where it came from.

As part of a meteor that struck earth in the distant past, Stone’s story unfolds with the skill wielded only by Klusman’s master storytelling. Stone’s mission is to find more of his kind, the “We,” and Rhone pledges his services to help and his undying friendship.

Meanwhile in the dusty town of Skragmoore, we meet Commissioner Dodge.

A heavy-handed boss who drives his men with a clenched fist ready to strike. Dodge is planning his escape from the dying town, and when news reaches him of a beautiful stone that flashes blinding light, he knows it must be an artifact, and his dream of escape grows closer than he imagined. Thus begins the misadventure, and Rhone soon loses stone to Dodge’s men.

Rhone will never give up on Stone, though.

The bond they forged in the short time they were together is too strong for him to ignore, and Rhone won’t let his friend suffer at the hands of Dodge, who only wants to use Stone for his own gain. Rhone understands fully the Dodge will treat Stone as an object, not the sensitive, sentient being he is. Rhone uses the lessons that Stone instilled in him to memorize a route out of the maze of the badlands and rescue Stone.

The Counsel has Dodge on their radar as a person of interest for poorly overseeing his commission, and they have also been informed of Stone. Agents Aundrea and Bran arrive in the Badlands in search of this stone and the boy who found it.

Klusman’s fast-paced novel keeps readers turning pages to learn the fate of Rhone and Stone.

Rhone becomes the unlikely hero who will do anything to help his friend and unwittingly exposes Dodge whose ruthless and cold-hearted nature lose him any friend he ever had. Part fantasy, part western, part YA, part adventure/thriller, Klusman’s novel melds genres seamlessly to give us a riveting and rollicking story of friendship, trust, and adventure. This five-star read will keep readers entertained and wanting more! And they are in luck because Book II in the Rhone and Stone series carries on the adventure.

January 12, 2022
BEEBE and BOSTELMANN by Kent Politsch – Historical Fiction, Historical Biographical Fiction, Deep Sea Exploration

Dive deep into a three-part saga illuminating underwater discovery in Kent Politsch’s historical fiction novel, Beebe and Bostelmann.

Well-researched with a strong environmental focus, Beebe and Bostelmann captures the incredible accomplishments of a multi-faceted naturalist and adventurer. But this charismatic man, Will Beebe, navigates his own emotional journey as well as the deep sea. Collaborating with him, Else Bostelmann brings life to his oceanographic discoveries through her artwork.

In 1929, Will Beebe, newly wed to a young female writer almost half his age, sets out to understand the deep sea. As an ornithologist and explorer, he ventures nearly half a mile beneath the ocean’s surface.

In his passionate quest, he connects with Otis Barton. The famous fortune seeker designs an enclosed submersible able to withstand the pressure of record-breaking dives.

With entertaining pitches and backing from various patrons, the project begins south of Bermuda. Once there, the research team gathers at a laboratory set up on Nonsuch Island. However, technical delays, necessary testing, precarious refinements, and a stock market crash threaten the completion of the “bathysphere.” But Beebe and Barton persevere. They put their trust, and lives, in the hands of the invention.

Politsch delivers brilliantly detailed descriptions of Beebe’s various sightings. Whether “coral clinging, weaving seaweeds dangling … tissue-thin pearl shells … ” an unknown quartet of fish, with “bird-like beaks … standing upright on a thin tailfin … colors brilliant” or bioluminescent fish in an abyss likened to “a moonless starlit night” – the intricate illuminate the nuances of this far-reaching, mysterious seascape.

Politsch weaves themes of love, loss, and heartfelt burdens through his story.

While Else Bostelmann employs her unique ability to translate Beebe’s reports into beautiful artistic renderings, Beebe enjoys an open marriage – disregarding his wife’s feelings on the matter; indeed, he has several romantic liaisons. Bostelmann proves a character with the skill to observe human dynamics taking place within the island and its work. And, ultimately, this story shows the need for forgiveness and letting go of resentments.

Beebe clearly possessed the ability to charm and attract women through both charismatic and intellectual means.

However, Politsch distinguishes him as a mentor who gave women opportunities in the scientific field. The idea that “There is nothing about science that makes a man wiser than a woman …” may have been Will Beebe’s attitude regarding gender equality at the beginning of the 20^th century, though his many liaisons would certainly cloud a person’s image in society today.

Politsch’s final pages include short biographical sketches of the real-life individuals from whom this work derives. In addition to the intertwining human interest aspect of Beebe and Bostelmann, the author details the many dangerous dives far beneath the water’s surface. These dives highlight the significance of the ocean in the origins of life on our planet – and our ultimate future.

Amidst the wonder of the sea, Will Beebe and Else Bostelmann play an essential part in the advancement of oceanic science. Beebe and Bostelmann serves as an artful and engaging odyssey introducing their important work to an audience that might otherwise be unaware of their significant place in history.

January 10, 2022
The WORLD PLAYED CHESS by Robert Dugoni – Coming of Age, Vietnam War, Friendship Fiction

Robert Dugoni’s novel, The World Played Chess examines the demands of society and family, through the dawning adulthood of three different men in three different eras.

Vincent Bianco, a Southern California lawyer raises his teenage daughter and high-school-senior son. He unexpectedly receives the Vietnam journal of William Goodman, with whom he had worked construction in 1979. Goodman scribbled the journal in pencil during desperate breaks in his service in Vietnam. This record describes Goodman’s harsh initiation and horrifying acclimatization to the war.

Mirroring the Marine’s rapid maturation in the jungles of southeast Asia, Bianco recalls his own privileged coming of age. He compares it with his son Beau’s coming of age in present-day 2016 and 2017. With each entry in Goodman’s journal, Bianco remembers conversations, events, and decisions of his own pivotal summer. He sees similar decisions play out in his son’s life. What happens when they make decisions without thought, in frustration, or when they don’t make decisions at all?

Tragedies and near-tragedies mark all three of the novel’s timelines. The three primary characters think and overthink their choices.

Goodman’s squad leader, Victor Cruz emerges as the true protagonist of the story. Victor watches over Goodman during his time in Vietnam, providing contrast to Goodman’s background. His actions after Goodman suffers a wound and returns to duty provide the impetus for the shocking key moment in this novel.

We all must determine who we will be. Men, according to Dugoni, find this choice critical to a good life.

Dugoni picks at the threads that have woven the lives of his most important characters. What leads to our academic careers and work lives, what brings us together with the people we care for? These questions, while not always clear, have crucial and sometimes horrible consequences. In the end, we are faced with the lives we have led and can either come to terms with them or not. Either way, one question remains: do we deserve our fates?

Dugoni’s novel zigs and zags, just like the decisions and events that comprise human life. The reader can come to a conclusion about the novel’s characters in a gestalt way, only in the end realizing how artfully the author has led them to self-examination. We live our lives in moments, and, like William Goodman, Vincent Bianco, Beau Bianco, and Victor Cruz, we get the lives we deserve — even if we don’t deserve them.

January 7, 2022
The INCIDENT by Avis M. Adams – Teen and Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, Teen and Young Adult Literature and Fiction, Teen and Young Adult Suspense

In The Incident, Avis Adams’ creative young adult novel, two teens face the precarious events and consequences surrounding a natural disaster while ultimately realizing the true value of friendship and family bonds.

Nearly seventeen, Josh Woolf has recently lost his beloved grandfather and is now concerned that his Dad wants to sell the family farm. While his father is away at a conference to address climate change and the potential of “El Primo,” a violent storm system predicted to wreak havoc across the country, Josh and his Mom batten down the hatches in preparation for a severe weather front headed their way. Amidst the tumultuous mayhem of dropping trees, shattered glass, and unhinged window screens, Adams finely details the storm’s intensity. She masterfully captures the fear of the unknown as Josh is forced to deal with a significant medical emergency then later defend his family’s property against encroaching ne’er-do-wells.

Meanwhile, Emma Tate is at odds with her own Mom and ventures out of the house to attend a downtown climate change protest.

With worsening weather conditions, she gets caught up in violent winds but luckily finds shelter with Lilli and Jade, the quirky owners of an artsy tattoo establishment. Jade’s comment, “It’s been a long year today,” truly captures the essence of time’s slow passage during the continuing days of hurricane chaos. This new trio of “sisters of the storm” soon form an unlikely bond, depending on one another in their efforts to help Emma get back home. In the aftermath of continuing storms, Adams creates an atmosphere with an apocalyptic feel. Suddenly the streets are filled with zombie-like wanderers, dogs appear wild, and looting and shooting define daily life experiences.

The book’s chapters move easily between the difficult journeys of Josh and Emma’s coming-of-age narratives.

While each story encapsulates their personal experiences, Adams unexpectedly leads their teen paths to cross, allowing readers to recognize the similarities of their circumstances. Themes about the desire for parental approval, and family love and pride, are aptly woven within a narrative laced with newfound friendships, violence and upheaval, and budding amorous interests.

Whether showcased through Emma’s nervous habit of chewing on the end of her ponytail, a Grandmother’s Danish plate collection that withstands the wrath of Mother Nature, or Josh’s finding solace in playing his violin, such added intricacies all serve as calming elements in a storm. While the opening prologue also serves as an audience draw indicative of a central character’s precarious situation, Adams purposefully returns to the scene later in the story to reveal a fortuitous meeting.

Readers familiar with violent environmental events will recognize the chaos and casualties Adams showcases. The Incident clearly offers a message about the inability to escape a hurricane’s path and the web of destruction and feelings of fear and helplessness it often leaves behind for those in its wake.

Adams leaves us with a contemporary tale that brings two storylines into a clever joining. As the present state of global warming forces its way into our consciousness, with a bevy of well-crafted characters facing the rising tensions of a planetary dilemma, Adams’ The Incident provides a quality and thought-provoking read.

January 5, 2022
BINGE by Anne Pfeffer – Addiction, Contemporary Fiction, Romance

Twenty-seven-year-old Sabrina “Bree” Hunter has the chance to grasp her dream of being a published author, but will her binge eating spell the end of that dream?

After years of working for a demanding B-list talent agent in Los Angeles, Bree earned a publishing deal with Fast Track Books. She should celebrate, thrilled that her life will finally go down the right path since her graduation from Dartmouth. However, Bree has a problem that isn’t easily fixed. Her publisher expects the skinny beauty on her webpage, a picture taken many years previously.

Since the days of the photo, Bree has become a compulsive eater. She spends every moment of her day obsessing over junk food. Bree turns to food to comfort her, console her, and to bring her joy. This addiction has caused her to gain forty pounds since college. Finding dieting on her own harder than she expected, Bree agrees to attend a support group meeting. Her sister, Lena’s, boyfriend has recently found success in breaking his addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Bree just doesn’t believe the sharing and belief in a higher power will help–until she meets Daniel. A successful lawyer and recovering over-eater, Daniel now strikes the figure of a hunk with blue eyes, as if right off the pages of her own novel. With a three-month deadline looming, an unappreciative boss, and her own doubts, Bree must find a way to overcome her compulsion.

Sabrina’s addiction provides amazing insight into an area most people ignore.

Compulsive eating is as much an eating disorder as bulimia or anorexia. However, many choose to see it as a choice rather than a real issue. Even Bree herself has a difficult time properly naming the truth of her overeating–as an addiction. The depiction of her compulsion will be a revelation for most readers. From hiding food in her desk to digging in the ladies’ room trash for candy, Bree shows her compulsion. Her behavior mimics that of a drug addict to a sad and astounding degree. Bree cannot see that she loves comfort food like a user on a bender.

The extremity of Bree’s disorder will affect the reader. The burden of secrecy becomes overwhelming, crushing Bree’s spirit and her willpower at times. Her need to diet on a deadline only serves to enhance her cravings and creates a time crunch sensation. She struggles under the sense of an inevitable disaster with an impending, unavoidable culmination.

Setting the novel in a place where image rules and only the skinny succeed highlights Bree’s struggle. Bree sinks to shocking depths to fulfill her urges. She must hit that metaphorical bottom before she can admit her addiction and begin to climb away from it. Readers will celebrate with her as she finds her true self in the land of Hollywood fakes.

The reasons behind Bree’s addiction define part of her story, her growth into a confident, accomplished woman.

Bree began associating comfort with food when her mother left Lena and her with their absentee father. At only nine years old, Bree raised her baby sister. They waited hungrily for their father to bring home food for them after he finally left work. Lena became both sister and pseudo daughter to Bree, who continues to bail her out even at the age of twenty-three.

Bree has lost her vibrancy and her confidence, cowering behind her love for and addiction to sweets. Though she has accomplished more than Lena, Bree can only see her sister’s slimness, her perfect ease, in comparison to Bree’s own self-labeled corpulent incompetency. She will do anything, even considering bulimia and fasting, to achieve the same perfection in herself.

She knows her weight causes her doubt and unhappiness, but she cannot overcome it alone.

Through the insistence of the sister who works on her own issues, Bree attends a support meeting and begins the program that will change more than the numbers on the scale. When she meets Daniel, she has a hard time believing someone like him could like someone like her. However, spending time with him and the other members of her group soon empowers Bree.

Bree’s recognition of the imperfection of others begins her metamorphosis. She learns that even those people who have seemingly flawless lives are far from that ideal. She stops bullying herself and being her own worst enemy. Eventually, she fully sees the time she has wasted in pursuit of the unattainable and finds satisfaction in who she is and the potential her REAL life holds.

January 5, 2022
REDLINED: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago by Linda Gartz – Memoir, Racial Segregation, Sexual Liberation

Author Linda Gartz tells of her childhood and early adulthood amidst social upheaval in the city of Chicago in her memoir, Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago.

Gartz grew up the second child of second-generation immigrants to the US. Her father’s father boldly made the trip to the land of opportunity at age 21. She spent much of her childhood in cramped quarters with her parents and her older brother, living alongside strangers. They paid this price for the “dream” – the couple bought a house in a decent neighborhood; keeping roomers, even living in the same flat with them, helped pay expenses.

Gartz’s grandmother, a talented dressmaker, helped out with childcare and other chores while her mother worked to manage all the finances, tenants, and repairs in their rooming house; she had to do this alone half the year while Gartz’s dad traveled for his job. But Grandma K suffered mental illness and abused Gartz’s mother and father, sometimes violently. Gartz’s father felt oppressed by her presence, which caused ongoing, if mostly unspoken, conflict in the home.

Chicago’s social and economic upheaval served as a microcosm for national change, and as backdrop for the Gartz family drama.

African Americans fled the dangerous and economically dead-end South for more promising prospects in places like Chicago. But majority white cities and regions resisted their incursion through restructuring and re-designating neighborhoods and school districts. All the while, the civil rights movement sought large-scale change amidst peaceful protests, riots, and violent reprisals from the law.

The influx of black workers into her own neighborhood affected Gartz’s choice of schools and friends. Civil rights struggles incited her sympathies while her parents expressed their older prejudice. They feared that all of their hard-earned investments would vanish if “the colored” came in. Still, the teen had black friends and neighbors. She felt touched by the spirit of rebellion in a new testing of societal limits: sexual freedom.

Gartz felt driven to compose this intelligent account of the changing times when she and her brother “found our gold” in the attic of their parents’ home: diaries, letters, cards, calendars and notebooks reaching back to the couple’s own youth.

The undercurrent of family tensions became clear. Grandma K’s psychosis put the house on edge. Gartz’s father struggled to balance his home and work life, needing to earn money with a job that required six months of travel across each year, and also supporting his over-burdened wife with the demands of their rooming house with as many as eleven tenants. Her mother saw her behavior in the sexual revolution as shocking. Gartz includes details of the subtleties of “redlining” that allowed cities and regions to keep African Americans down and poor by limiting their ability to own property. Family photos pepper her book, lending emotive touches. The result is a vibrant look at the coming of age of a nation through the eyes of a frank, freethinking woman.

Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago by Linda Gartz won 1st Place in the 2019 CIBA Journey Book Awards for Narrative Non-Fiction and Memoir.

January 3, 2022
ANNIHILATION: Book 2, Gehenna Series by Kaylin McFarren – Occult Fiction, Paranormal Romance, Occult Horror

Samara Daemonium tries to break free from her father’s control as the realms of Heaven and Hell prepare for war, in Kaylin McFarren’s erotic supernatural novel, Annihilation.

Lucinda, the daughter of Satan, rules Hell with an iron fist. She sits on the throne thanks in part to the angel/demon hybrid Crighton and his angel soulmate Ariel. However, power changed Lucinda. She no longer stands as a brighter future in Hell, but rather as a demagogue driving her demons to rise up in battle against the hosts of Heaven. Crighton struggles between his loyalty to Lucinda, and his responsibility for his family—especially his pregnant soulmate. He doesn’t yet know the depths of Lucinda’s deception.

Crighton tries to hold his family together by force, as Ariel gives birth to Cassius and a stillborn Caleb. But Samara chafes under her lack of freedom, kept in a secluded cabin to hide her from the forces of Hell. She turns to her uncle Tyrus for help, and when dark forces descend on her family, she steps up to defend them. While Samara can help to save her parents and brother, she doesn’t see the danger to herself until it’s found her. Lucifer, returned to physical form in the body of Samara’s first love, drags her to Hell and the palace of cruelty he prepared for her.

McFarren illuminates the fantastical stretches of Hell in tactile, colorful description.

Torture, sex, and supernatural powers mingle together in an otherworldly display. Witches take vengeance on the demon who killed their sister, Lucinda consumes the souls of magically gifted beings, and Samara learns of a bloodline with incredible abilities. But amongst all the magic and hell spawn, themes of family and identity ground the central characters.

Lucifer fights the political influence of the Knights of Darkness, strengthening his hold on the realm of demons. Meanwhile, a group of cambions calling themselves the Crows try to stop an apocalyptic war from breaking out. And the Daemonium family fall into the sights of them all.

Though Samara yearns for her freedom, she fears that she won’t have a family to return to. Has her brother Cassius taken her place, left her forgotten? When Lucifer abuses and assaults her in Hell, when she’s abandoned by her father Crighton for two months, she can rely on next to nobody. Only Tyrus, now imprisoned and tortured as well, keeps her sane.

From the depths of Hell, Samara will face a destiny laid out since far before her birth.

Can she really save the world—more than one world, in fact—from Lucifer’s power mongering? The great Red War looms on the horizon, and Samara finds that in the end, she can’t even be sure of herself.

Throughout this story, readers will reel at Lucifer’s horrors, cheer for the protection of the bonds of love, and anxiously await their answers as to how the multi-faceted story lines of the series many characters will come together. Annihilation proves a suspenseful read. The characters stand larger than life, their personalities remaining solid from beginning to end.

December 31, 2021
TOM SAWYER RETURNS by E.E. Burke – American Historical Romance, Historical Fiction Western, Western Historical Romance

Tom Sawyer Returns is the second book in The New Adventures series by author E.E. Burke.

Readers join a now grown up and far more independent Becky Thatcher as she maneuvers her complicated life in Civil War era Mississippi. Tom has long since left, and Becky is engaged to Union Captain Alfred Temple, who offers her all the safety and security she needs in such uncertain times. But does she love him? Actually love him?

Becky soon discovers that her heart may have other plans.

When an injured Tom Sawyer bursts through her door and collapses onto the kitchen floor, Becky and her father – Judge Thatcher – take him in, care for him, and find out that he may have stumbled into the house for reasons more than the simple rekindling of a lost flame. With Judge Thatcher caught up in a twisted ploy posed by the rebels, Becky must partner up with Tom in order to save her father. But with Tom’s memories nowhere to be found, and his aptitude for ending up smack dab in the middle of trouble, the two find themselves venturing down a twisting road of discovery, mystery, and uncertainty.

Set in a divided world rife with danger and history, E.E. Burke takes characters so close to the heart of Americana and gives them new life.

Fans of Mark Twain’s original work will appreciate the attention to detail and the care in which the story is crafted, paying homage to the original tales of Tom Sawyer and his wild adventures. But this continuation sees a deeper, more intimate portrait of Becky Thatcher – a girl grown into a woman, who’s come into her own confidence and whose sharp mind sees her through many perilous situations.

While the title of the book may be Tom Sawyer Returns, don’t let that fool you – Becky Thatcher is the heart of this book, the backbone, the brains.

Both her and Tom have grown significantly since their childhood days, and Burke expertly takes two kids written nearly 150 years ago and turns them into adults whose life experiences have been shaped by the Civil War; two individuals who are fiercely independent, yet whose attitudes and opinions have been molded by the world they live in. They jump off the page as not simply characters, but as fully realized people. People with complexities, fears, and failures.

Not only does Tom Sawyer Returns take the reader on an adventurous ride filled with plots and ploys, but it also provides a beautiful romance that blooms amidst the thorns of trouble.

E.E. Burke writes with a balance of delicacy and sharpness, showing the true nature of love – that it is something tangled and complicated. As the reader follows Becky and Tom, they’re never made to doubt the pair’s attraction, but to instead find comfort knowing that while their combined history may complicate their feelings for each other, love will still prevail in end. As it always does, and as it always will continue to do.

December 29, 2021