Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Historical Fiction

LIGHTEN The LOAD: Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail Book 2 by David Fitz-Gerald – Historical Fiction, Oregon Trail, Mystery

Once on a grand adventure to a new life with her husband and young family, Dorcas suddenly finds herself the sole shepherd for her children into the unknown, in David Fitz-Gerald’s historical fiction novel, Lighten the Load.

Owner of a fully loaded wagon, in a train of travelers on the truly wild western trail, Dorcas must give every decision her full attention. She faces immediate life-altering choices, some threatening her own safety and others putting her children at terrible risk. The expedition rolls forward over a mystery yet to be solved and an underlying paranormal mystique.

On this dangerous venture west, Dorcas is called upon often to help and comfort her fellow travelers. As she and her family face escalating dangers and devastating catastrophes, can she learn to Lighten the Load and accept help when she desperately needs it?

Dorcas and her children struggle to adjust to all they’ve faced since they left home.

This future was certainly her husband’s dream, but did she really share it? Dorcas and her family begin this episode of their lives where there is no sign of civilization other than the people of the wagon train where they’ve hitched their hopes. And as her oxen struggle to pull forward their heavy wagon, Dorcas debates if Oregon is still the best future for them. With all the deaths so far on the trail, will any of them even reach Oregon?

The leader of their caravan has concerns too, and offers a controversial solution. Dorcas is called to the campfire to meet a man willing to marry her. Though she embraces the romance, of her own choosing, her heart and thoughts weigh heavy on her. She takes responsibility for her children and the tragic circumstances of those around her: her new friend’s difficult pregnancy; those who are grieving; and others who are discouraged from pursuing their dreams. And always that push, rolling forward deeper into new territory.

The difficulties on the trail contrast with majestic views of the great outdoors, as well as the camaraderie, sacrifice, and friendship of those around Dorcas, and the vision of what could be.

There are surprises around every corner. A lingering mystery casts a shadow over the notorious lothario, Armand Bartholamieux. Clues begin to surface, and Dorcas seeks answers. All the while, she cares for her children, trying to teach them lessons of self-reliance. But her daughter Rose continues to be drawn towards a supernatural force. Dorcas worries and debates how to best help her daughter, until Rose disappears. And lurking in the shadows are the mysterious Viper and his brothers.

Hitch your team up for a memorable journey into the 1850 American West. Award-winning author David Fitz-Gerald skillfully guides readers through vivid descriptions of a setting filled with ever-changing extremes.

Lighten the Load will introduce you to fascinating characters who relentlessly continue their life’s journey toward destiny. Dorcas must learn how to move forward after all she’s faced, and if she can, she just might find Oregon, a bright future, and even blooming love.

February 21, 2024
DAUGHTER Of HADES by Mack Little – Historical Fiction, Caribbean Piracy, Slavery

Mack Little’s historical fiction novel Daughter of Hades explores the lives of slaves during the age of pirates.

Little’s research shines in her thoughtful presentation of the Caribbean islands, the escaped slaves who found freedom amongst them, the lives of buccaneers and maroons, and their daring and dangerous exploits.

On the first page, Little introduces us to Geraldine, or “Dinny”, running for her life from her owner, Owen Craig, who has just raped her.

Dinny’s father had arranged for her to be removed from the plantation before Craig molested her, but he’d miscalculated Craig’s lust. Dinny is rescued by her twin brother, Jimmie, and Leixiang, and taken to the Hades, a pirate ship captained by the buccaneer Duff.

Lei is drawn to Dinny, and when he finds out Craig raped her, he tells Duff against Dinny’s wishes. Duff organizes a retaliatory raid.

Their revenge sets in motion a series of events that Duff and Company must overcome, namely the wrath of the Craig family.

Little exposes the harsh cruelty and treatment of slaves during the 17^th century, revealing a life in the Caribbean that was sometimes beautiful for the Maroons, but was also fraught with danger and the constant fear of being recaptured and punished to near death.

Expertly building this world, Little fills it with characters that readers will love and hate, especially as they root for Dinny, Lei, and Duff.

Dinny’s future looks bleak, and she gains knowledge of Owen Craig’s father that shrivels her heart against the Admiral and his housekeeper Jane.

With the whole island aware of Admiral Craig’s deviant ways, and Jane’s assistance in finding him young boys to satisfy his lust, the clock is ticking before the island erupts in violence. Little’s plot twists and turns to keep readers on the edge of their seats as she slowly reveals the resolution to Craig’s revenge.

Author Little’s research into the history of buccaneers and the lives they led– right down to the democratic approach some captains took in including their crew in the decision-making process– creates a rich setting for this tale. Her skill in developing such a varied cast of characters will delight readers, and the love story that ties the novel together will draw readers in until the very last page.

Daughter of Hades will provide hours of entertainment and satisfy history buffs and romance readers alike. Little enthralls us with Dinny’s compassion, courage, determination, and strength, as this intelligent woman pursues a life of conviction and honesty.

Daughter of Hades by Mack Little won Grand Prize in the 2022 CIBA Chaucer Awards for Early Historical Fiction.

February 16, 2024
Valentine’s Day 2024 – SWEET READS From Chanticleer with all the Genres of the Heart

Will your book be our Valentine?

At Chanticleer we love Romance Books and we love to show it off with our Chatelaine Awards! We’re currently working as hard as we can to get out the Finalist List for those Awards, and you can see the Semi-Finals for them here! Who will win? Only time will tell.

However, right now we just want to celebrate some of the best romantic books we’ve been able to discover. Like chocolate, romance is one of those extraordinary genres that can go with almost anything! Historical Romance, Mystery Romance, YA Romance, SciFi Romance, Fantasy Romance, the list goes on!

Even better, romance is one of the bestselling genres out there! Being able to add that tag to your book makes it that much more marketable! For our own Chatelaine Awards, we’re always happy to crow about our winners!

Our 2022 Chatelaine Grand Prize Winner was Operation Mom by Reenita Malhotra Hora.

What does Chanticleer have to say about Operation Mom?

Master storyteller Reenita Malhotra Hora’s YA romance Operation Mom: My Plan to Get My Mom a Life and a Man takes us on a charming journey through the life of one teen, Ila Isham.

Hora introduces Ila and her best friend Deepali, two boy-crazy teens on a summer quest. Readers will fall in love with the smart, sassy, angst-filled, rebellious Ila. A typical teenage girl, Ila lives in Mumbai with her mom and Sakkubai, their house manager. Ila’s mother calls her obsessed, but that seems unfair. Is she obsessed just because her every waking minute is spent thinking of Ali Zafar, famous pop icon, singer, and heartthrob? Or is she obsessed with fellow classmate Dev?

No, Ila couldn’t be taken with Dev because he’s one of three young men that her best friend Deepali is juggling in her summer experiment of exploring her “feminine mystique.” This turn of phrase becomes just one of many opportunities for Hora’s humor to shine as Ila remarks, “That’s a book by Gloria Steinem . . . no Betty Friedan.” Deepali’s response? “Yaar. Don’t be so literal.” The delightful balance between Ila’s book smarts versus Deepali’s street smarts carries us through Hora’s expertly crafted story.

Read more here!

Operation Mom also took home a First Place Blue in the Dante Rossetti Awards for Young Adult Fiction. We’d love to share other romance books that meet with other genres and why they touch our heart!

A SPYING EYE: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel
By Michelle Cox
2023 Overall Grand Prize
Grand Prize for the M&M Awards for Cozy Mysteries

A Cozy Mystery Romance!

Brooding Château du Freudeneck, just outside Strasbourg, France has villains in the drawing rooms, stolen art hidden in the cellars, and bats in the belfry – all the best elements for a 19th-century Gothic mystery.

However, in Michelle Cox’s novel, A Spying Eye it’s the 20th century. The Great War is passed, but the next war already looms on the horizon. The people of Strasbourg feel the growing conflict sharply, at the heart of Alsace-Lorraine, a fertile region that has been contested between France and Germany since time immemorial.

Which means those bats are in the unfortunate head of the elderly Baron Von Harmon, the current lord and master (as much as he’s still able to be, at least) of the Chateau, while the stolen art is pursued by both the villainous Nazis and the only slightly-less villainous agents of Britain’s MI5.

Read more here!

THE LAST LUMENIAN
By S.G. Blaise
2023 Cygnus Grand Prize Winner

A SciFi Romance!

Nineteen-year-old Lilla could have an idyllic life, but in The Last Lumenian by S.G. Blaise, she comes face to face with a rebellion and their just cause.

Lilla’s father leads the Pax Septum Coalition, a nineteen-planet confederation. As a princess in her own right, she should be enjoying the status and wealth that comes from living on Uhna, the richest planet in the coalition due to the diamond mines found by her pirate ancestors centuries ago. She most definitely shouldn’t be worried about the rebellion brewing right under her father’s nose. However, when Lilla meets rebels in a refugee camp, she thinks she has found her destiny, a true purpose.

Wanting to fight against the injustice and horrific treatment of the refugees, Lilla tries desperately to prove herself, especially after a disastrous first mission where she not only crashes her ship but also ends up in the hands of General Callum, leader of the Teryn Praelium.

Read more here!

NORTH QUEEN
By Nicola Tyche

A Fantasy Romance

Norah Andell, Princess of Mercia and future North Queen, has been missing for three years.

Her father secreted her away to protect her from a prophesied attack in a ten-year war, but he dies shortly after their departure and takes her location to the grave. Alexander Rhemus, Lord Justice to Queen Regent Catherine, Norah’s grandmother, was told by a seer that Norah would be found in the deep forests of the Northern Kingdom, and has searched the woods ceaselessly. Having loved her since they were children, Alexander’s desperation leads him to the Wilds, a legendary and feared area where men often do not return. So opens The North Queen.

To Alexander’s shock, he finds Norah, who has no memories of her former life or even of her own name. At first, she refuses to believe she’s the missing princess, now Queen, and bristles against her newfound world and the restraints it casts upon her.
Norah struggles with a position she doesn’t want, governing a people on the verge of starvation and facing an arranged marriage to protect her people from the Shadow King, a ruthless man hell-bent on taking her kingdom.

Read more here!

A PLACE Of REFUGE: Book Four of First Light
By Linda Cardillo

A Historical Romance

Izzy Monroe has lost herself. Three months after an accident that damaged a portion of her brain, she isolates herself in her parent’s home on Chappaquiddick Island, on the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard.

She has spent her life in the world of academia, working on a doctorate in literature at Harvard, but now with her short-term memory gone, she has to give up her dreams. Her emptiness and doubt have left her rudderless and deeply depressed.

When her former college roommate, Maria, suggests she intern at Portarello, Maria’s grandfather’s self-sustaining farm in the Italian countryside, Izzy isn’t immediately convinced she can make the journey alone much less work at the successful inn and thriving farm. However, Izzy remembers the peace she felt there on the one visit she and Maria made years ago, and she knows this is her only chance to regain any sense of normalcy.

Read more here!

Thank you for joining us on this adventure of books, and we hope you found a read that caught your fancy!

Looking for more quality time with us?

Join us at

The Chanticleer Authors Conference

Featuring authors like D.D. Black, book doctor Christine Fairchild, and Mark Berridge, our twelfth annual conference is shaping up to be excellent! You won’t want to miss out on the best tips around the business of being an author!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

We’d love to see you there!

February 14, 2024
THE SHERIFF: Book Three of The Druid Chronicles by A.M. Linden – Historical Fiction, Medieval England, Mystery

The Sheriff, the third installment of A.M. Linden’s Druid Chronicles series about 9th-century life in Anglo-Saxon England, fully immerses readers in that distant era with all of its joys, conflicts, and hardships.

Trained from his youngest years in the military, Stefan has learned both battle skills and leadership, with the ability to approach a situation without causing it to get out of hand. He is fiercely loyal, but continually denied a larger role in the kingdom’s army. His latest indignity came with the king assigning him as sheriff of Codswallow, a paltry village. With a retinue of less than 10 people including his slave, he has to collect taxes and keep the peace.

The novel shows two major episodes. The first follows his Codswallow days, including his relationship with Jonathan, owner of the Three Dragons Inn. Stefan learns that Jonathan is paying protection money to keep bandits away from the inn, and carries out a series of plans to discover who is, what we could call, the crime boss.

But Stefan stirs up yet more trouble in Codswallow.

A Druid priestess and her niece, relatives of Jonathan, take refuge in the Three Dragons Inn after their sacred shrine is discovered. The niece may actually be Jonathan’s child by his marriage to the queen’s sister, and things get complicated when Stefan, unhappily married with three children of his own, sets his eyes on her.

Before he can act on his romantic impulse, Stefan is summoned to track down a princess who went missing on the day she became betrothed to the ruler of a neighboring kingdom, possibly being abducted by that king’s enemies, or even killed. The possibility that she ran away to avoid being wed to the notoriously cruel king, was barely a consideration. It would take a person of Stefan’s many skills to find her and reunite her with her king, whether she wanted to or not.

Overall, The Sheriff is a well-rounded character study of Stefan himself.

We see him as a child, and when his warm family is torn apart by a searing dispute between him and his father. He is apprenticed to the military and is trained by Matthew, a devout Christian who sees in the youth the makings of a leader, later becoming his most loyal soldier.

Stefan shows his disappointment in the king not assigning him to the post that he deserves, but he handles trouble effectively, diffusing potential conflicts and becoming a careful investigator. He doesn’t reflect on himself, instead focusing on the problems of those around him.

This book takes time to fully establish the world and people of its stories.

Of the large cast, many characters have detailed backgrounds, some connected to previous books in the series. Thankfully, a detailed character glossary makes it easy to keep up with everyone.

The Sheriff succeeds most in its feel of authenticity.

While life in early England cannot be fully known, The Sheriff gives the reader enough granularity to help them imagine what it would be like to live there. It isn’t about the battles that often dominate history, but rather the regular people who could be our family, friends, and neighbors even though they exist in a time so far gone.

Readers who enjoy being taken away to the distant past, feeling as though they could breathe the air of something different from what they know, will find The Sheriff a fascinating and satisfying read.

January 31, 2024
ELODIA’S KNIFE by Robert S. Phillips – Historical Fiction, Action/Adventure, Roman Empire

Elodia is a young woman driven by dreadful circumstances to act with deadly force in the Robert S. Phillips novel Elodia’s Knife.

What Elodia hoped would be her leap away from danger instead left her surrounded by perilous threats that now threaten to consume her. Armed with her courage, determination, instincts, and a trusty knife, Elodia faces a hostile world in foreign territory.

Not all are against her though. Allies– even a friend– can be found, if Elodia can summon the bravery to listen to her feelings and own deep wishes.

Young Elodia is unhappily married to an abusive husband. But when he tries to attack her again, she strikes back and kills him.

By her own hand, she is set free from a brutal life, yet not fully liberated. Now her husband’s family pursues her, intent on revenge. Elodia must flee for her life, driven into the unknown, alone across the Danube River. She can never return, but what she finds before her is a crumbling empire on the brink of war. They view her as one of the enemy, to be conquered and enslaved. Refusing to be bound again, she keeps her knife close at hand, and her wits about her at all times.

Elodia is captured upon landing by men who blame Gothic peoples, like her, for the troubles in the Western Roman Empire of the late 4^th century CE. But among them is Caius, who sees her in a different light.

He treats her not as a prisoner, but as a person. Is his compassion genuine? As he oversees the work he orders her to complete, that’s when she first notices his smile. A small smile, and a friendly one. Will Caius become a possible ally? Even someone she could trust? Or possibly more? Elodia allows hope to churn within her. But she cannot dwell on that hope alone. She will need to foster the strength to rise out of slavery in this foreign place.

Elodia takes thrilling actions to seize the day and take control– to lead a Roman city.

Elodia’s Knife surrounds readers with a vivid and riveting time in early history.

Author Phillips shows the fascinating details of how people of those times faced the challenges of life and a complex society. He skillfully weaves the decline of the Roman Empire– a world on the brink of collapse– into the pulse of this exquisite story.

Lives and times change, but human nature is at the heart of it all. The struggles of these characters leap off the page with fervor. Readers will cheer for Elodia as she fights with hope fueling her soul and Elodia’s Knife clutched, at the ready.

January 22, 2024
A GRAVE EVERY MILE: Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail Book 1 by David Fitz-Gerald – Historical Fiction, Oregon Trail Fiction, Family Saga

Each day’s trumpet blasts the predawn quiet of the sleeping wagon train, demanding that its migrating families face what’s ahead, whether incredible scenery or mortal danger, in David Fitz-Gerald’s A Grave Every Mile.

This beautifully told story mixes adventure, survival, community, and history, all shown through the eyes of Dorcas, a feisty mother of four. She’s dreamed of hitting the trail to the storied West for so long, but much about this trip and their destination remains unknown.

Another wagon travels alongside hers. Who are they? Will they remain strangers, or become friends? Now that Dorcas stands with her family at the trail’s starting point and on the brink of changing their lives forever, a tremor of doubt surfaces about what lies ahead. Is her family strong enough to face their future? Will it be everything she and her husband hoped for? That future is 720,000 turns of the wagon wheels away, and there may be A Grave Every Mile. It all starts with that first pull by the team of oxen.

The action starts on page one when an intense fistfight breaks out amid a crowd of people stocking up their wagons.

The crowd cheers on the two combatants in a frenzy. Dorcas, however, has seen enough. Leveraging her athletic and tall physique, she moves in to break up the fight. Her boldness will have to carry her forward on the trail, as she and her family face unfamiliar challenges every day. They struggle to keep their wits and sense of humor about them through the rigors of the daily chores and travel. Even something seemingly straightforward, like crossing a river, requires skill and careful planning in 1850.

Human nature remains unpredictable. A traveling caravan becomes a community of individuals with joys, but also concerns and burdens.

Can these strangers pull together in tough times and help each other, or do they tear each other apart? Each family’s story is deeply touching. Traveling this path, the tensions and frictions within a family grow until they can’t be ignored. Further down the trail, those wounds may not be able to heal.

Children are not immune to the effects of these wild, open spaces. As with adults, previously hidden aspects of their personalities take hold.

Dorcas sees her oldest daughter’s soulful reaction to tragedy as bordering on the paranormal. Her adventurous son becomes even more daring, while her other son enthusiastically begins a newsletter as he researches and documents incidents along the way. Underlying all the travails, there is love. Sometimes that love is found when and where it is not expected. Sometimes it sparks jealousy. And so often that love is cherished. Yet, there will come a time when Dorcas is going to have to make a very difficult choice.

Climb on board and get those wheels turning to experience a journey into the frontier of 1850, described in full sensory detail.

Award-winning author David Fitz-Gerald’s fascination with this era is skillfully displayed throughout this novel. Historical insights and facts are skillfully woven into the plot, with a hint of the paranormal sparking some intrigue. His memorable characters warm the heart, excite the conscience, and will often take readers by surprise. This novel’s unique writing style is incredibly engaging, as the pages and the days on the trail eagerly turn from one to another.

January 10, 2024
WAGES Of EMPIRE by Michael J. Cooper – Historical Fiction, WWI, Action & Adventure
Michael J. Cooper’s latest historical fiction novel, Wages of Empire, draws readers into the perilous journey of sixteen-year-old Evan Sinclair and his father into WW1. On this path, their lives will intersect with such historical figures as TE Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, the Arab nationalist Faisal ibn Hussein, the proto-Nazi and advisor to the German kaiser Guido von List, and Kaiser Wilhelm II himself.

Set in the summer of 1914 we find Evan living in the American southwest where his father moved the family from England for his Oxford sabbatical. Evan struggles to cope with his mother’s death in childbirth and yearns to escape his father’s controlling grip. As war breaks out in Europe, Evan decides to leave home and join the fight, without telling his father.

By the time Clive realizes Evan is missing, the war is in full swing. Clive returns to England to search for Evan and reactivates his commission at the War Office in London. There, Clive uses every means available to find Evan. Meanwhile, Evan has made his way across the Atlantic and into France with the hope of joining the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), but instead he is arrested by the Paris police as a possible German collaborator. He escapes, but by mistake, crosses into occupied Belgium where he barely survives a German artillery barrage with poison gas. Joining the Flemish resistance, he is badly wounded after helping to flood the lowlands, a deciding factor in stopping the German army. After recovering in a BEF hospital in France, Evan begins a romance with a beautiful young nurse just before he is discharged to return to England by hospital ship.

Cooper masterfully weaves a compelling narrative that includes fictional and historical characters with high stakes in the conflict. Wages of Empire takes us from Whitehall in London to the Western Front in Flanders, where we glimpse a world of imperial power where massive casualties result from outdated military tactics in the face of new wartime technologies. Cooper also provides an intimate look into the German Kaiser’s machinations in the conflict and his intentions for the Holy Land.

The Kaiser, who anticipates victory in the war, has sent his agents to facilitate his rule in Jerusalem as Holy Roman Emperor with dominion over Arabia’s rich oil reserves and control of the Suez Canal. And from his throne on the Temple Mount, he plans to extend a vision of German-Nordic racial supremacy throughout the world. Woven into this challenge, we glimpse a covert fellowship of Guardians of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. This mysterious and clandestine community is aware of the Kaiser’s intentions and dedicated to stopping him.

With gripping tension, Cooper keeps readers on the edge of their seats as the stakes are raised with each turn of events. Will Evan and Clive be reunited? Will they survive the war? These questions and more are left echoing in the reader’s mind long after the story’s conclusion.

Michael J. Cooper’s Wages of Empire is a must-read blockbuster for history buffs of all ages. The novel’s masterful storytelling will leave readers wanting more. Available for pre-order now.
November 1, 2023
IF IT’S The LAST THING I DO by David Fitz-Gerald – Financial Thrillers, Historical Fiction, Small Town Fiction

If It’s The Last Thing I Do by David Fitz-Gerald tells the story of Misty Menard, a 69-year-old woman who in 1975 returns to her upstate New York hometown to attend the funeral of her beloved father. She is dumbfounded to find she has inherited his business, making wooden dowels and buttons.

A receptionist for most of her adult life, with no business experience, she is at best ill-suited to the job. Personal problems hang over her as well, as a divorcee determined to keep sober and cigarette-free while in weekly therapy. But to keep her father’s memory alive, she is determined to keep the business afloat while she decides what to do with it in the long term. The last thing she imagined she would be doing on the cusp of 70 was running a business.

She turns the business into an employee-owned enterprise, an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan.) This gives her employees a shot at owning part or all of the business. The skill with which If It’s the Last Thing I Do integrates ESOP into its story, making it digestible, is among its many pleasures.

Her three-man management team is aggressively against it, and the local bank that hosts the trust and handles its transactions is resistant to providing loans to facilitate the deal. As the ESOP continues taking shape, the bank becomes its mortal enemy.

While those issues would be difficult on their own, the collapsing economy of that era pushes Misty’s company to the brink of insolvency.

Buyers emerge offering to purchase it on the cheap. There are unexplained incidents of vandalism on the premises. And in an almost Biblical moment, a huge storm brings raging floods that threaten to destroy the company’s physical foundations.

The decision to turn the company over to its employees, giving them a stake in its future, becomes more complex as the financial noose tightens.

Misty’s family life adds yet more weight to her shoulders.

Her husband abandoned her for another woman. One of her two sons is dead, leaving the other son to bring up his nephew, who in turn has a child. That child, a boy nicknamed Four, has ambitions to become an Olympic skater, but finds his path may not wind up as he envisioned.

Misty is filled with self-doubts. She makes decisions from the heart instead of from practicality. But her belief in the rightness of her decisions, her essential goodness, is one of this novel’s strengths. People both good and wicked drive this story, their motivations and machinations not always apparent at first.

Readers who enjoy a well-paced, gripping novel should put If It’s The Last Thing I Do on top of their reading list. Misty’s complex relationships with her family and her own mortality, combined with her efforts as a CEO, turn this novel into a true page-turner.

October 23, 2023
THE PENNY MANSIONS by Steven Mayfield – Historical Fiction, Mystery, Small Town Fiction

The Penny Mansions by Steven Mayfield, a historical novel of Paradise and Boise Idaho at the end of WWI, offers a concert of drama, comedy, and noir-tinged crime thriller.

The town of Paradise, Idaho, grew as a prospecting town, but the gold and people alike have dwindled. They no longer have a high enough population to keep the state government from taking the land through eminent domain. So, the town counsel puts an ad in papers across the country for families to purchase one of four mansions in town for only a penny. There’s a catch, of course – they must move in, fix the place up, and remain there for the next census count in 1920.

Readers will love the colorful characters who fill Paradise, from Bountiful Dollarhyde, an African American woman raised by the madam of what used to be the local bordello, to Lariot, a genius orphan skilled with rope tricks, and Goldstrike, an old prospector who gladly shares his strong opinions. These lively folk face a powerful threat. Gerald Dredd, a greedy land baron with a high office in the state government, uses his clout to bludgeon others into his schemes to ensure that Paradise doesn’t hit their all-important population count.

Through the people of Paradise, Mayfield explores themes of communities and found families – and what people will do to save them. He shows the dangers of government corruption gone unchecked until it creates malefic control.

Many of the characters are willing to sacrifice so much of themselves to save this small town in the Pacific Northwest frontier. And as the story pushes forward, even the newcomers to the town – not necessarily there in good faith at first – fall in love with the community and stand up against weaponized bureaucracy to save their newfound friends and home.

Mayfield’s writing style is extremely personable and fun.

The dialogue is playful and, at times, terrifying. Readers will connect with and worry for their favorite characters, and rightfully despise the antagonist and his willing compatriots. The Penny Mansions is also among the best depictions of a community banding together for a single cause.

There is a bit of a stylistic shift part way through the novel. After a major event, the story abruptly moves from a historic drama to a noir crime thriller. While this change might be jarring to some readers, the charm and humor of the book remains throughout.

The Penny Mansions will make readers chuckle and smile, and grimace with anger. Mayfield juggles emotion with ease, all while chugging the plot forward to intense confrontations.

October 16, 2023
THE RELUCTANT VISIONARY by Datta Groover – Magical Realism, Historical Fiction, Multi-Generational Fiction

Visions of the future swirl, unclear and contradictory, giving dire warnings of lives soon to be cut short, in Datta Groover’s The Reluctant Visionary.

Three women, Anna Mae, Kat, and Jess each confess to being the visionary of her era. They never asked for the ability to glimpse danger ahead, to have the opportunity to save others from a terrifying destiny. It’s a heavy burden when people refuse to believe them, and the dangerous consequences of their visions lay in wait. The best of intentions lead the ladies further into a dire struggle. Can they survive all that life throws their way, and learn how to reshape the future? Or will they lose their way in the blur of chilling prophecy?

Jess is in her mid-twenties, a resident of a rural town in contemporary Texas. She works hard with her family to hold on to the ranch that’s been with them for generations.

No matter what they try, they continue to experience misfortune and lose more money. As they slip further and further into debt, they wonder what is the root of all their bad luck. Jess juggles this financial struggle with her visions of the future, just like her mother, Kat, did. Visions of violent and heart-wrenching crimes haunt Jess and drive her to act defiantly and protect the innocent victims.

As she delves into a criminal mystery, she has no idea the danger she’ll face along with her family, and the secrets she’ll uncover in her mission to change the future. She partners with the lone law enforcement officer who believes in her and her visions, but can she resist his charms?

In the 1960s, an entrancing story set in rural Tennessee plays out parallel to Jess’.

Anna Mae has just turned eighteen and lives at home with her abusive parents. Her visions of the future are met with anger and fear from the people she’s trying to help, and someone even reports her to the police when her attempt to save a child in danger is deliberately misinterpreted. Anna Mae seeks a tranquil and happy life but her disturbing visions make that wish impossible.

She finds herself in the middle of an investigation when the police accuse and arrest the wrong person for a crime. She’s determined to save him. In the midst of the chaos, Anna Mae falls in love with the wrong man and is faced with a drastic, life-altering decision. Will she find a wise path forward in her visions?

Author Datta Groover tells a story of three generations of strong female protagonists.

These women show how a determination to light a hopeful way forward ignites courage despite threats of desperation and peril. Their contrasting struggles, inherent to different decades and settings, leap off the page, relatable and emotionally vivid. And just as in real life, the ending of the story is filled with unexpected surprises, even for these visionaries.

Available for Pre-Order Now! Comes out 9/6/23!

August 18, 2023