Chaucer Finalist Lisa Llamrei brings her book to life!
Readers will follow her characters’ footsteps through Egypt!
When your mission is to Discover Today’s Best Books, you love to come across good news regarding authors!
Lisa Llamrei, 2024 Chaucer Award Finalist, is combining her passion for Ancient Egypt with her travel expertise to lead an exclusive literary tour in March 2026!
The author behind Feather of Ma’at and Quest for Ma’at isn’t just writing about Nefertiti and Tutankhamun—she’s taking readers directly to their world. As both a travel agent specializing in Egypt and a novelist whose Ancient Egypt trilogy earned recognition in the Chanticleer International Book Awards, Llamrei has crafted a unique itinerary that brings her fiction to life.
“Egypt may be addictive,” warns Llamrei, who first fell in love with the land of pharaohs as a teenager. Her March 5-13, 2026 tour will visit off-the-beaten-path sites like Amarna (ancient Akhetaten, where Nefertiti ruled) and includes exclusive access to King Tut’s tomb—essential stops for readers of her novels.
This isn’t just any Egypt tour. Llamrei has curated experiences that directly connect to her award-winning historical fiction, allowing travelers to walk in the footsteps of the characters she brings to life on the page. From the temples and tombs featured in her books to the vibrant souks of Islamic Cairo, she’s sharing her decades-long love affair with Egypt.
With her second novel already released and the trilogy’s conclusion with her publisher, Llamrei is planning additional literary tours based on beloved novels like Shogun and The DaVinci Code.
Don’t miss out! Several Chanticleer International Book Award divisions have deadlines fast approaching. Whether you’re crafting historical fiction like Lisa’s Chaucer Award finalist Feather of Ma’at or working in any of our divisions, there’s still time to get your work recognized. Our awards provide the credibility and visibility that can transform a passion project into a professional platform—just ask Lisa, who’s now leading international tours based on her award-winning novels.
Anne B. Barriault’s Moroccan Musings is a creative blend of personal journal, travelogue, and historical narrative about an ancient culture and civilization.
The slim three-part volume delivers contemplative vignettes that showcase Barriault’s draw to the intoxicating beauty of this North African country and the openness and sincerity of its people. Early on Barriault relates that her story was born of wanderlust, curiosity, ignorance, yearning, and desperation. In the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11, her quest for knowledge about the Middle East grew, along with a desire to better understand Islam and the Muslim world.
Inspired by a trip to Italy where Arab-Islamic cultures had been present in the 13th and 14th centuries, Barriault ultimately joined a “Moroccan Discovery” museum tour group. The experience gave a voice to her writing as she described her visit to a region that was “sensuous, intoxicating, spiritual, and earthbound.” From olive groves, cork tree orchards, and dogs rooting for flavorful white truffles, to the contrast of an unremarkable Moroccan home exterior and its interior of marble floors, colorful tiles, filigree arches, silk & brocade fabrics, and calligraphic Koranic blessings, Barriault invites readers along on her excursion.
She reflects on the beauty, friendliness, and curiosity of the young people she meets in a place where adolescent boys are taught the art of selling and trading, as they entice visiting foreigners to speak bits of the Arabic language. Meanwhile, three generations of women in the central marketplace show the changing culture, the covered elders, their daughters in European attire wearing the hijab head scarf, and a granddaughter defying tradition by choosing clothing inspired by pop stars.
In part two of this travel memoir, Barriault showcases her solo journey to Fes.
Here she notes that her first trip to Morocco was “through the lens of a five-star hotel.” “This time around was the lifting of the romantic veil.” She details an ancient city with shops, houses, and astonishing artisanship. Free concerts in the public square, along with a sacred music festival offer enticement with their carnival-like atmosphere. Lunch with a hosting family features an array of delectables from salads and couscous to roasted meat, along with fresh fruit and the ritual of mint tea. Unfortunately, she puts future travel plans on hold due to the restless discontent in the country.
Part three in this trilogy of essays finds Barriault on a family trip to Marrakesh for Christmas of 2018.
With time’s passing, the area is now home to 2 million people. A new museum has opened to preserve the city’s heritage, and the Moroccan King and Queen are now divorced. Barrialult spends Christmas in the desert, artfully describing the beauty of the sand dunes changing color with the light, a flavorful tagine lunch at camp, and a precarious ride aboard a long-lashed camel with its “camelicious thoughts and sideways glance of bemusement.” From the ancient Berber influence that permeates the city and the five times daily call to prayer, to the Western presence that finds Marrakesh a modern-age mecca for the likes of expatriates, rock stars, and hippies, Barriault’s revelations are rich, sensory, and alive.
Looking at the I&I, Harvey Chute, and Mind & Spirit Awards
There are two types of Non-Fiction that we commonly see: Narrative Non-Fiction and Prescriptive Non-Fiction.
Just what is the difference between types of Non-Fiction?
Narrative often makes the most sense, but that doesn’t mean that Prescriptive Non-Fiction deserves a bad rap. Let’s look at some definitions:
Narrative Non-Fiction:
The primary focus is story. Often a beginning, middle, and end, it stands strong with most fiction stories, with the notable difference that it is, in fact, Non-Fiction. Memoir is similar, though obviously focused on one person’s first person experience of their own life.
Prescriptive Non-Fiction:
The primary focus here is conveying a message. Narrative and writing style help convey this message in the same way it conveys theme in a Narrative Non-Fiction. The person writing must be an expert in the subject. How else do you make a full book of it?
While we’re going to focus on three different genres of Prescriptive Non-Fiction, you can always read more about it through resources like this one here.
Three Genres of the CIBAs for Prescriptive Non-Fiction
While you can see our full list of Non-Fiction Genres (including the newest for Military and Front Line Books) here, we consider our I&I, Harvey Chute, and Mind & Spirit Book Award Programs to be closest to Prescriptive Non-Fiction. The main focuses for these three Awards programs are How-To, Business & Finance, and Spirituality and Mindfulness.
There’s a good deal of overlap with the other Awards as sometimes the instructional side of a workbook takes over more than the part that looks directly at financial or spiritual welfare. However, the key here is that you learn while enjoying a book. Maybe the book is framed through someone’s personal experience, their clinical experience, or told in the form of a travelogue, but no matter what it brings you through to a new understanding by the end.
What Does Prescriptive Non-Fiction Look Like?
Examples are always best in these cases. Here are some of our favorite Non-Fiction books that we’ve reviewed recently focusing on How-To, Business & Finance, and Spirituality.
EMOTIONAL MAGNETISM: How to Communicate to Ignite Connection in Your Relationships
By Sandy Gerber
Emotional Magnetism: How to Communicate to Ignite Connection in Your Relationships is a self-help and marketing book in one—in fact, it’s a self-marketing book.
A seasoned marketing professional, author Sandy Gerber uses common elements in marketing theory to aid those who wish to enhance their communication skills and ability to get along with people around them. It’s easy to be misunderstood or unheard, and it’s even easier to be at cross-purposes, leading to frustration and animosity. But using Gerber’s SAVE technique, understanding what we mean and what we need becomes clear.
In this work, we learn what emotional magnetism is, and how well we can communicate when we learn how to harness it. We also learn about how emotional magnetism can be repelled when it’s not done right. But in order to use emotional magnetism, we must first learn what the emotional magnets are, using the acronym SAVE—short for safety (S), achievement (A), value (V), and experience (E)—and how they are reflected in our personalities.
HEALING OUT LOUD: How to Embrace God’s Love When You Don’t Like Yourself
By Sandi Brown & Michelle Caulk
Two writers – friends, and former counselor and client – combine forces to create Healing Out Loud, a dynamic book aimed at understanding and overcoming the deficits that life hands us.
Sandi Brown, a radio personality with more grit than she realizes, seeks professional help. Michelle Caulk’s therapeutic methodology perfectly suits this case. The two offer examples of wishing for and finding true mental health through the development of a remarkable communicative relationship.
Each chapter of the pair’s psychological explorations begins with a memory from Sandi, accompanied by her expanded view of incidents from childhood and beyond. These ruminations are then matched by counselor Michelle’s personal grasp of Sandi’s specific dilemmas, and well-constructed guidelines for a healing process that readers can incorporate into their own lives. Sandi, grappling with low self-esteem, was traumatized as a child when her father left her mother and brother, loudly and finally, with no explanation.
WELFARE CHEESE to FINE CAVIAR: How to Achieve Your Dreams Despite Your Upbringing
By Thomas Wideman, MBA, PMP
First Place Winner in the Harvey Chute Awards
Thomas Wideman, the author of this dynamic self-help manual, Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar: How to Achieve Your Dreams Despite Your Upbringing, rose from poverty and dismay to a life of security and personal achievement through techniques he shares with readers who can incorporate them into their own life plans.
Wideman came from an impoverished African American family wracked by confusion, chaos, and, at times, criminality. His mother had three sons by three fathers, and he would come to know his own father only peripherally, eventually learning that the man murdered people and subsequently died in prison. The boy grew up in tough neighborhoods and ate “welfare cheese” (a block of pre-sliced heavy American cheese that supposedly melted well). Every month, making ends meet became more and more difficult. In an early chapter of this finely woven chronology, we see him taking food from trains parked along the railroad tracks and running from the authorities. In this, as in each new chapter, he speaks of confronting severe issues and finding ways to resolve them. In the case of the theft and other childhood incidents of fighting, experiencing bullies, and battling racism, he speaks of making up his mind that “my circumstances need not be my limitation.”
A math whiz, Wideman found his strengths through schoolwork, striving for A’s instead of merely accepting B’s.
GATHERING PEBBLES: Learning How to Make Your Own Chicken Soup
By David Okerlund
Inuit of the Canadian Arctic are known for creating stone structures used as navigational points and message centers for fellow travelers. Some of these directional monuments provide a spiritual connotation meant to enrich the journey.
Gathering Pebbles is David Okerlund’s own “inukshuk” of sorts, a book filled with stories, recollections, and memorable life events that have become part of his personal road map for living. Okerlund, a world-class inspirational speaker, shares his best stories to help you create your own life-path. He shares this collection of nuggets in the interest of helping others along their chosen path and hoping to encourage their own “gathering” and sharing of valuable knowledge.
Okerlund directs his writing in a casual, user-friendly style. Each of the book’s chapters is highlighted as a pebble gathered on his winding life’s path. Titles are effectively posed as questions to help draw readers into the topic at hand. Each chapter is formatted with a variable mixture of contemplative quotes, poetry, recaptured historical moments, and personal experiences, to showcase qualities such as perseverance, retaining a sense of childhood wonderment, the importance of faith, and following your dreams.
Each of these books does an excellent job navigating their genres (and their cover designs!), making it clear who they appeal to and how they can help the reader.
A disinclined traveler journeys into the heartland of the revered Mount Kalash Parikarma in Tibet. Inner Trek by Mohan Ranga Rao follows a voyage that culminates in self-discovery and spiritual enlightenment.
Mohan Ranga Rao, a retired Indian businessman, finds himself between a rock and a hard place when a ruthless Bangalore mob boss threatens him to sell his land at a throwaway price. The situation escalates when he discovers that his trusted lawyer has joined forces with the enemy. He can only turn to his wife for solace.
With nothing for him to do about his land, Rao vows to trek around Mount Kailash, a holy Tibetan Mountain. This travel memoir traces his and his wife’s journey to the deified Himalayas, the land of Lord Shiva. Rao shares intimate details of his experience, including the spiritual transformation that he went through during his challenging high-altitude trek.
Like a medieval troubadour, the author writes with keen precision and finesse.
Deriving his inspiration to visit the holy mountain from his wife Mamatha, Rao is candid in spelling out the reasons why he was initially reluctant towards prayers and their healing power. In tandem, he deftly careens through the emotions he experienced upon catching sight of the mountain along with the noteworthy aspects of the journey. This swiftly culminates into a very colorful and informative insight.
Further, Rao examines what it is about Mount Kalash that has compelled so many people to take the plunge. He studies why travelers would willingly put themselves through such risk and adversity for the pilgrimage to Tibet. He does not shy away from sharing the sacrifices that they made – financially, emotionally, or otherwise, but does it in a witty and heartening tone. The chapters are a refreshing respite from the monotony of daily routine that at times threatens to envelop us.
Written with emotional lucidity and propped up by his relaxed aura of reporting, Rao’s eyewitness account of the arduous journey is an outstanding win.
Buoyed with remarkable photography, each picture tells a story of its own. This makes Inner Trek: A Reluctant Pilgrim in the Himalayas a captivating read for both ardent and armchair travelers. Rao shares his indelible account and experiences in a riveting manner that pulls the reader into these mountains.
Every line in this travelogue runs truer than any ornate prose could, creating a well-layered and tightly braided portrait. Some illustrations invite the reader to laugh, apprise, and reflect, while others spur the urge to travel. Far more than an adventure tale, Inner Trek by Mohan Ranga Rao deftly balances escapist entertainment with wisdom as it morphs into a spiritual lesson about human life and the importance of staying true to one’s faith.
In 1993, Brewer took advantage of an opportunity to go on a fishing expedition in a remote part of Alaska. As the bush pilot guided the plane to their first destination in the great northern wilderness, Brewer was so entranced that he told a fellow passenger that he intended to buy a float plane, learn to pilot it, and “explore Alaska.” He did that and more over the next twenty-some years. Brewer states that he did not set out to write a book. Rather, one day as he reflected on his time in Alaska, he wrote a single poem, and within a month, twenty-two reflective poems followed. Brewer wrote the back stories to each poem, and the Back Story Alaska was born. Each chapter ends with an integrated poem which cleverly summarizes the events of the chapter. Throughout the memoir/travelogue are photographs of wild animals and outstanding Alaskan scenery.
After that first encounter with the Alaskan backcountry, Brewer, a lawyer in southern California, gradually established Camp Brewer, a summer retreat for friends and family. It’s there that he shares the experience of the rustic charms of the forty-ninth state. He gained multiple ratings as a seaplane, ski-plane and helicopter pilot which he uses as a means to explore Alaska. The wildlife available for viewing around his camp include brown bears, moose, eagles, foxes, wolves, and salmon so plentiful that in places, a fisherman may find himself walking on a living carpet of them.
Stories of Brewer’s “Campers” – those he’s introduced to his cherished wilderness – give testimony to the effect that Alaska has on a newcomer, a surreal combination of feelings that, Brewer says, “stir yet calm.”
A practiced raconteur, Brewer writes with intelligence and emotion, sparked by his wry sense of humor. He gives each visitor to the camp a nickname – usually the animal that the person most wanted to see – so there are tales of Mr. Fox, Mr. Wolf, and Mr. Eagle, and a little boy named Master Bird. His observations about his Campers, the habits of the game they encounter, the many still largely unspoiled regions of the Alaskan bush with its capricious, unpredictable seasons and rapidly changing tides, will whet the armchair traveler’s urge to get up and go north.
One segment is especially gripping, as Brewer follows the running of the famed Iditarod dogsled race from stop to stop, overseeing the action in an unpredictable ski plane that took two hours to start in the 20-below temperatures.
Brewer’s writing serves as a travelogue, reminding us that Alaska, often depicted on US maps as a small inset, is twice as big as Texas, holding more coastline than all the other states put together. The many color photographs give the book further allure, taken by Nat Geo award-winning photographer Bob Dreeszen, whom the author calls Ugashik Bob after the settlement where they first met.
A wolf nestled in a stand of blue flowers, foxes sparring, an eagle making a landing on the surface of the water – these images and more add piquancy to a book already spiced with poems, family nostalgia, a heaping helping of rough adventure and a frisson of danger.
Anne B. Barriault’s Moroccan Musings is a creative blend of personal journal, travelogue, and historical narrative about an ancient culture and civilization.
