The Soul-Sung by Daniel Sheley

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Author's Synopsis

Denny is a boy from the isolated settlement of Duskmere, known more for stargazing than accepting responsibility. When the sky splits and Draken fire falls on his home, Duskmere is erased in a single night. In the chaos, a dying Draken Watcher named Yverra finds him and entrusts an ancient world-song into his chest. The Song is the Veym’s ability to create change in the world. It is not meant for humans, and it does not settle gently. Denny survives the attack, but he wakes with something inside him that is trying to remake him from the inside out. Far from Duskmere,
Kaelari, a young leader among the Bloodstone people, is forced into authority as her own clan fractures under political pressure. A rival chieftain, Vaskor, pushes for dominance through brutality, while the ritualist Veridan works behind the scenes, seeking to control everyone. As scouts report unnatural fire, strange tremors in the Veym, and a “glowing survivor” moving through the wilds, both factions begin maneuvering to seize him. While an Ancient Draken Seeks to destroy him and the Song itself!

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Pages/Word count: 379 / 90,000

Oh Crap! It's Parkinson's, A Rebel's Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Life by Sara Whittingham, MD

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Author's Synopsis

Dr. Sara Whittingham, an Air Force veteran, physician, and endurance athlete, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age 46. Her response was immediate and intentional: learn, adapt, and keep moving forward.

Oh Crap! It’s Parkinson’s blends personal narrative with practical guidance to help readers navigate life after diagnosis with clarity and purpose. Drawing on her background in medicine and military service, Sara breaks down complex concepts into accessible insights and emphasizes the role of exercise, mindset, and daily habits in living well with Parkinson’s.

Through honest storytelling and hard-earned perspective, she explores the emotional impact of diagnosis, the challenge of identity shifts, and the importance of building a strong support system. Her approach is grounded, direct, and action-oriented, encouraging readers to take an active role in their health and their future.

Written for people living with Parkinson’s, care partners, clinicians, and advocates, this book offers a framework for approaching a life-changing diagnosis with resilience, discipline, and intention. It reflects the mindset of someone trained to face uncertainty head-on and find a path forward.

Oh Crap! It’s Parkinson’s provides readers with the tools to understand their diagnosis, make informed decisions, and move through the experience with strength and purpose.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 269 / 51,000

A Look Back in Time: Memoir of a Military Kid in the Sixties by Bernard N Lee Jr

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Author's Synopsis

A Look Back in Time: Memoir of a Military Kid in the Sixties, Vol. III, 1st Edition

A young adult. A military family. A rousing high school adventure.
You can relive those high school days with Bernard N. Lee, Jr., a determined military-teenager, as he navigates the challenges he faces on his job at The Club, and in his classes at the high school. In this third volume of A Look Back in Time:…. Lee invites readers to relive his experiences attending Lawton High School in the sixties. This son, of a career soldier in the army, finds himself torn between working to pull his weight as a young man, and yearning to fit into a social environment that is “just out of his reach.”

Can you imagine what it felt like to be halfway through high school and then have to move? For Bernard, it was his eighth move with his military dad. He wanted this move to be different. He yearned to belong. He needed a place where he could finally “make his mark.”

In these pages, Bernard reflects on the people, triumphs, and challenges that made this time in his life so memorable. He shares these stories with honesty, sincerity, and passion.
Join Bernard on a journey full of adventure, surprises, nostalgia, and life choices, including:
• Joyful moments – when you meet the new neighbors and swap stories from all over the world.
• Nervous moments – when you enter a classroom for the first time in a new school.
• Life changing orders – when your dad says you must get a job to prove you are a man.
• Gut wrenching moments – when you discover your new car is gone… stolen!
• Thrilling encounters – when you make the track team and race all over the southwest.
• Life altering choices – when you must balance working, studying, competing, and leaving home for good.

Whether you are a military brat, veteran, history lover, or someone who remembers your unforgettable time in high school, A Look Back in Time:.., Vol. III, will warm your heart and stir your soul.

Travel back in time. Experience those precious moments. Rediscover those pieces of your own story along the way.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Children & Young Adult—Young Adult (fiction or non-fiction)
Pages/Word count: 280 / 73,460

The Tilted Palace: Weeds of Misfortune by Paul Alenous Kluge

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Author's Synopsis

The story is one of solid history, a battle of minds and survivor's guilt more than it is firefights and napalm. Rudyard Kipling, the India-born British journalist and writer said it a century ago: "No one knows what the truth is until someone writes a story." The Tilted Palace is that story. The Vietnam War was the flashpoint for the 1960s and '70s. Civil rights, the draft, and "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was the times.

Jimmy Ray Crandall and his generation were the first to lose a war. That his nose is rubbed in that fact lives and breeds in his mind. They had not lost; just ask Jimmy Ray. He spouts the truth that America cannot hear. Tonight is 30 April, 1990, exactly fifteen years after the war ended. A stray dog interrupts the bottle of Jack Daniels and Jimmy Ray's intention with the .45 Cold, Model 1911, sitting and calling to him from the kitchen table. A preacher then gets into it. A woman.

Flashbacks portray teenage Viet Cong sappers and a nemesis Viet Minh or two from the previous Indochina war. Le Chang, a lowly charcoal burner cannot appease either side. Assassination is his response to a perverted South Vietnam government and a deadly Communist crowd, both corrupt and both using and taxing him. It is victimization for all.

Back in Vietnam after all this time, it finally comes together.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Pages/Word count: 279 / 104,145

The Time Traveling Scoreboard by Robert P. Chappell, Jr.

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Author's Synopsis

What if one scoreboard could show you baseball's past and change the future? Step inside Wrigley Field, where an aging scoreboard hides a secret, no one was meant to discover. In The Time Traveling Scoreboard, a devoted baseball fan stumbles upon a mysterious portal hidden within Wrigley's iconic scoreboard; one that opens windows into pivotal moments in baseball history. What begins as curiosity quickly becomes something more dangerous when the past refuses to stay buried. Blending baseball nostalgia, historical intrigue, and a touch of the impossible, this novel explores legacy, sacrifice, and the moments that define us, on and off the field. Perfect for readers who love baseball history and Wrigley Field lore, Time-travel stories grounded in realism, fiction driven by heart, memory, and tradition. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to witness baseball history firsthand, this journey is for you.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Pages/Word count: 184 / 80,000

Assassin's Mace, A Jake Palmer Novel by Ron McManus

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Author's Synopsis

Jake Palmer is weeks away from finishing a grueling two-year contract with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command’s elite Task Force Orange in Islamabad. But instead of winding down, he and his partner, Alona Green, are thrust into their most dangerous mission yet: a covert operation deep inside Russia under false identities. With MI6’s Moscow Station Chief, Sania Reed, as their only lifeline, their goal is clear—extract Russia’s top hypersonic missile engineer and deliver him safely into U.S. custody. But when the mission uncovers intelligence with world-shaking consequences, the stakes rise beyond anything they imagined. Now hunted by Russia’s Federal Security Service and its most lethal operative, assassin Nikolai Ivanov, Palmer and Green must outwit an enemy who rarely misses. The consequences of mission failure could redefine the balance of global power and cost Palmer and Green everything.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller/Crime
Pages/Word count: 363 / 89,000

Savage Remorse by Macklin Grey

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Author's Synopsis

Chase Harper knows one truth—in the Congo, nothing is what it seems.

Haunted by war, Chase Harper fights with the Détachment—a mercenary unit bound by loyalty and survival. When a massacre shocks the world, the unit is framed for the crime, and the hunters become the hunted.

Betrayed and cut off from every ally, Harper fights to expose a conspiracy that runs from the heart of the jungle to the highest levels of government—where someone will do anything to bury the truth and start a war no one can control. As comrades fall, Harper must decide how far he’ll go to make it out alive—and what part of himself he’ll have to leave behind.

Savage Remorse is a relentless thriller of betrayal and endurance, from the award–winning author of The Black Raven’s Song.

Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller/Crime
Pages/Word count: 445 / 112,000

Broken Destiny: The Story of Sergeant William M. O’Loughlin, United States Army Air Force by Mark Verwiel & Mario Acevedo

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Author's Synopsis

In this remarkable biography of Sergeant William M. O’Loughlin, the author, Mark Verwiel, portrays thrilling aerial combat over North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Italy during some of the most savage fighting of World War II. Then came the fateful day when O’Loughlin’s squadron of B25 Mitchell bombers was launched to destroy the Isoletta Dam and break the formidable Gothic Line. What happened next to O’Loughlin was lost to history.

While casually perusing a family photo album, Verwiel discovered a vintage newspaper clipping of men who had fallen in battle. “Who was this?” he asked, and his father replied, “That’s your Uncle Bill.” This was the first that Verwiel had heard that one of his relatives had served, much less that he had been killed in action. So began a quest to learn about the man behind the name, and equally important, why his story had been all but forgotten.
William Maurice O’Loughlin was a product of the Great Depression and when the stormy clouds of war darkened the horizon, he volunteered for military service. Whatever his plans might have been, they were upended when he met Betty Cummings. After a whirlwind romance, he shipped overseas to begin his combat tour as an aircrewman, and he left behind a new bride, pregnant and hopeful.

O’Loughlin’s loss broke Betty’s heart and that of a daughter he was never to meet. His tragic death rippled silently across the generations until Verwiel and his family amassed the historical record and breathed life into O’Loughlin’s wartime adventures.

When we think of World War II, what comes to mind are the sweeps of armies across continents, the grand strategies of generals and admirals. But victory was only possible by the sacrifice of the ordinary man in uniform, doing his duty, and this is such a story.

Format(s) for review: Kindle or Paper
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 286 / 54,034

Colored Pebbles by Del Staecker

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Author's Synopsis

Del Staecker is an American writer of novels, novellas, short stories, and non-fiction in a number of genres, including suspense, crime, philosophical fiction, satire, and memoir. He is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (London) and Knight of Honor, Order of St. John (Malta). He was educated at The Citadel, Wheaton College, and The University of Puget Sound.

Format(s) for review: Paper Only
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 306 / 65,000

Red One: A Platoon Leader's Memoir From the Second Combine War by Troy Gordon

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Author's Synopsis

Everyone remembers where they were when Luna was attacked. I was a cadet, months away from graduating and commissioning in the Army, and knew what those burning shipyards on Luna meant for my future.

The SOL Alliance went to war, but its virtually unchecked hunt for the extremists responsible for the attacks quickly floundered. Desperate for an expedient victory, our chancellor redirected the military to seize Lohtua, the origin system and heart of the Bothic faith, deep in Combine space.

I was there.

Written by a GWOT combat veteran, Red One is a story of leadership and survival as an unprepared military commits to an aimless war against an enemy it never understood.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Pages/Word count: 576 / 160,520

I'm Alive: A Young Fighter Pilot's Diary of the US Navy Air War in Vietnam, 1964 to 1965 by Errol F. Reilly; Kevin Callahan; Christopher P. Callahan

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Author's Synopsis
I'm Alive is the compelling diary of Lieutenant Junior Grade Errol F. Reilly, a 26-year-old US Navy fighter pilot, written aboard the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea during his first combat cruise in Vietnam. In writing that is colorful, perceptive, and at times both humorous and heartbreaking, "Rile" chronicles his daily experiences "living, playing, and fighting" within the context of the Navy's fledgling air war. Covering the period from December 1964 to October 1965, I'm Alive details an untested F-8 Crusader pilot's personal journey from "nugget" aviator to seasoned combat professional. Reilly's feelings quickly change from patriotic enthusiasm to frustrated disillusionment as he begins to experience the realities of deadly air combat over Vietnam. His keen observations provide rare insights into the evolving strategies and tactics of the US Navy. With historical context and explanatory notes provided by the editors, I'm Alive offers a bold, unfiltered narrative of the earliest stages of the air war in Vietnam, and a fascinating personal account of friendship, war, and triumph over adversity.

Format(s) for review: Kindle Only
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 209 / 66,450

2121: EXODUS: Lupus Stella by Scott D. Rodriguez

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Author's Synopsis

A veteran. A dead world. A ship full of strangers. And an arm that remembers things he never told it.

June 2121. Colonel Theo Daniel wants nothing but his Texas ranch, his coffee, and the silence the VA can't prescribe. Twenty-three years after a grenade on Mars took his arm and his best friend, the military has one more thing to ask of him.

When a resource war over the Moon's helium-3 deposits spirals into global nuclear exchange, Theo is thrust from retirement into the fight to save what's left of humanity. His sister dies sheltering children in an Austin school basement. His commanding officer stays behind so others can leave. A man he trusted turns out to be the reason the grid fell.

Now Theo commands the Odyssey — a colony ship carrying ten thousand souls through a wormhole to a planet fourteen light-years from the ashes of Earth. But Lupus Stella is not the empty paradise they were promised. The forest watches. The predators learn. An ancient civilization left a warning carved in stone — and the thing they warned about has already found the signal.

2121: EXODUS is military science fiction with literary bones. A story of sacrifice, found family, and the stubborn refusal to let the dark win — written by a veteran who knows what it costs.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Pages/Word count: 292 / 76,581

Hill 119, Defending a Reconnaissance Marines' OP, Vietnam 1969-70 by Colonel Michael O Fallon USMC (Ret)

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Author's Synopsis

A narrative account of Reconnaissance Marines in Vietnam. Small Teams launching daring deep Stingray patrols in the bush. On the Observation Post, Hill 119 defending for 600 relentless days and nights. Surrounded by the NVA with the constant challenge of determining friendly Vietnamese civilians from hard corps Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars. Their lifeline were the Marine helicopters that flew out bringing water, ammo, food, and their replacement platoon. In 1969 and 1970, Delta Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division manned the OP and ran patrols in Phu Loc Valley and Go Noi Island. This firsthand account of the Marines and Corpsmen who patrolled deep and occupied the OP describes their struggle to survive. Based on participant interviews and the detailed declassified debriefing reports compiled after each patrol returned to their rear base, at Camp Reasoner, Da Nang in the Republic of South Vietnam. This is their history!

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—History
Pages/Word count: 449 / 261,656

The Legacy of the Twins Platoon by Christy Sauro Jr

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Author's Synopsis

In early June 1967, Marine Corps recruits from Minneapolis-St. Paul and outlying Minnesota received a letter stating all those scheduled for active duty in June would go as one platoon on June 28, 1967. One hundred fifty Marine applicants would be shipped to San Diego, California, to the recruit training depot. The Minnesota Twins baseball team was sponsoring the unit.
They were sworn in on television at a pregame ceremony and were guests of the Twins at the game. By the end of the fourth inning, the recruits were hustled to buses whisking them to the Wold-Chamberlain Field Airport, and they flew to San Diego. Before dawn the next day, the Twins Platoon met their drill sergeants at the receiving barracks of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. By the end of the year, the Marines were in Vietnam sprinkled across the length and breadth of the Marine Corps operating areas of I Corps, the northernmost part of South Vietnam where they experienced some of the toughest combat of the war. Khe Sanh and Hue City were just a few of the hot spots they encountered as the 1968 TET Offensive rolled across the country. Not all members of the Twins Platoon came home in one piece. Some did not come home at all. In The Legacy of the Twins Platoon, author Christy Sauro Jr. tells their complete stories from baseball to combat and their lifelong readjustment to civilian life.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 381 / 111,022

Sheltering Angel of Belleau Wood by Louella Bryant

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Author's Synopsis
Sheltering Angel of Belleau Wood, a sequel to Louella Bryant’s novel Sheltering Angel, Based on a True Story of the Titanic, is the WWII story of a mother’s grief in losing her husband to the Titanic disaster and two sons to the battlefields of the Great War.
In 1943 Florence Cumings’ youngest son Thayer (known as Tax) has driven her from New York to her summer house in Maine. He leaves her alone for the week with a box of old letters from her sons Jack and Wells, both soldiers in France in 1918. As Florence begins reading the letters, she is visited by the ghost of her first husband Bradley who lost his life in the Titanic disaster.

When Jack’s widow Margaret, newly remarried to a U. S. Consul, and her daughter Eva arrive for a visit, Margaret asks to leave Eva with Florence for the summer as she helps her husband with his assignment to Guatemala. Ebullient Eva brings lightness to the story as she learns about her father from his letters. In the box Eva finds a diary written by her uncle Wells, a sensitive and musical young man who for pride in his country finds himself in a horrifying and deadly situation. Eva learns distressing details about fighting on the front lines against the German army and realizes life is not all glamour and parties.

When Florence and Eva return to New York, Eva meets and falls in love with a U.S. Marine just before he leaves for training in the Pacific as Japanese troops are threatening to attack. While experiencing WWII deprivations, the two women follow the progress of the war, both hoping Eva’s beau will return safely.
The novel culminates at the end of WWII when Florence takes Eva to France to find the grave of Wells who was killed in the battle of Belleau Wood when he was Eva’s age. As the women stand under a clear blue sky by the small white cross bearing Wells’s name, they realize both joy and sorrow are part of earthly existence.

The story is based on actual letters from Jack sent to his mother Florence between 1918 and the war’s end. As with Sheltering Angel, the sequel depicts a true story of real people. Through the book, readers will realize that war has been part of human history since the beginning of time, but throughout hardship and sacrifice, love and optimism have been our guiding light.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Pages/Word count: 306 / 90,500

The Organization: Operative Nova by Daniel C. Davis

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Author's Synopsis

They don't exist on paper.
They don't answer to Congress.
They were built to protect the Republic from the shadows.

Nova Dunn has spent twenty-one years carrying her father's dog tags-and the weight of unanswered questions. Jonathan Dunn died on a classified mission when she was eight years old. At least, that's what she was told.

Now recruited into The Organization, the same covert force that sent her father on his final operation, Nova is beginning to realize that some classified secrets cut deeper than others.

Operating under federal cover, Nova is thrust into three escalating missions that will test her loyalty, discipline, and survival. She must confront a corrupt official selling secrets to Russian intelligence. Hunt down a missing nineteen-year-old girl and dismantle the trafficking network that erased her. And face a Russian enforcer known only as Bull-a man who believes he cannot be stopped.

He's wrong.

Perfect for fans of Jack Reacher, Orphan X, and Atomic Blonde, The Organization: Operative Nova is a relentless, character-driven spy thriller featuring a new kind of hero-one forged by loss, driven by truth, and trained to operate where the light never reaches.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller/Crime
Pages/Word count: 200 / 50,000

Grunt 0311 Reflections of a Marine Rifleman by George P Berg

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Author's Synopsis

The author recounts his very personal combat experiences as an infantry rifleman in Vietnam. Grunt 0311 is a candid and often uncomfortably frank description of the brutal conditions Marines faced in Vietnam in 1968. The year, 1968 was the most violent of the entire war for the Marines - the operational tempo was extreme and unrelenting. The new Marine was challenged with moral decisions young men in war are often forced to make just to survive.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 202 / 68,000

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Seeker by Glenn S. Robertson

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Author's Synopsis

Seeker by Glenn S. Robertson
More than a century after a devastating disease erased ninety-five percent of humanity, the American West has fallen back into something older—and far more dangerous.

Across the harsh plains and mountains of the Rocky Mountain Free Zone, scattered towns cling to survival. Places like Casper, Wyoming, stand together against the lawless violence that stalks the land. Beyond their borders roam raiders and warbands who live by brutality, taking what they want and leaving little behind but ashes.

In this broken world, a Seeker is a rare and valuable thing—someone trained to track down lost relics of the old world, knowledge that might help the scattered remnants of humanity endure.

But this time the Seeker is not searching for an object. He is searching for a girl.

Kidnapped by a ruthless band of ravagers from the ruins of Denver, the child may possess a gift that could change the balance of power across the frontier. In the wrong hands, it could mean disaster for the fragile communities struggling to survive.

And the farther the Seeker rides into the violent lands beyond the Free Zone, the clearer one truth becomes:
Some things are worth finding. Others are worth killing to keep hidden.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Fiction—Literary Fiction
Pages/Word count: 384 / 96,385

Three Years in Tending by Nicholas D. Butler

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Author's Synopsis

Nicholas Butler's second memoir is the continuation of his account of working in the service industry as a bartender who struggled to survive the pandemic's massive closure of bars. "Three Years in Tending" seeks to build empathy with readers by connecting memories of how the author (a former Air Force officer) found his way into working in hospitality to his upbringing, sharing the details of a mid-life crisis, and providing an example of how to overcome hardships in life.

Format(s) for review: Paper Only
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 245 / 54,586

Mind of a Soldier: 34 Laws for the War After the War by Taamir Ransome

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Author's Synopsis

Mind of a Soldier: 34 Laws for the War After the War is a field manual for the battle no one trains you for — coming home.
Written by a retired U.S. Army Special Operations EOD Sergeant Major, this book confronts the hard truth that military transition is not a process. It is a war. A war fought without a mission brief, without a chain of command, and without the brotherhood that kept you alive. Most veterans lose this war not because they are weak, but because no one told them the rules had changed.
The 34 Laws inside this book are not motivational platitudes. They are operational doctrine — distilled from decades of service, loss, reinvention, and survival. Each law is a hard-won lesson on identity, purpose, mental resilience, financial discipline, relationships, and the long work of rebuilding a life on your own terms.
This is not a book about what the military took from you. It is a manual for what you can build with what it left behind.
For veterans, service members approaching separation, military spouses, families navigating this transition alongside them, civilian employers, and the policy makers who shape veteran programs — Mind of a Soldier delivers the clarity, the candor, and the mission framework that no transition assistance program ever will.

Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—How to/Business
Pages/Word count: 318 / 98,276