May is short story month, so in honor of the short story let me introduce debut author Laura Newman. PARALLEL TO PARADISE is a collection of fourteen short stories, all stand-alone, and can be read in any order at any time. The writing is descriptive and vivid. Each character is well-crafted. It seems as if I was looking at a snapshot of each person, at times I wondered, were these actual people? I almost thought I was reading fourteen short memoirs. But, that is what we look for when introduced to new characters, as my friend and fellow writer D.L. Whitehead says, “Your characters need to walk, talk, eat, breathe and bleed.” He is a horror writer, so hence the bleed part. Ms. Newman’s characters definitely walk, talk, and breathe off the written page, and sometimes they do indeed bleed. (The Little Beast, Twentieth Century). The common thread running through each storyline is how the protagonists deal with the problems and complications of their lives, which are sometimes messy and not-so-nice. But, cope they must. We are introduced to people with addictions (Needle and Thread), some in abusive relationships, alternative lifestyles (Red Eye), and in another, a young mother copes…

T.F. Powys (20 December, 1875 – 27 November, 1953) was an English writer and poet.

Seven Mothers by Yochi Brandes is a fascinating book which turns some of the Jewish bible stories on their head by infusing new thinking from a modern woman into the stories which are much beloved. Mrs. Brandes writes about Moab’s mother, Tamar, Miriam the Prophets (Moses’ sister),the Pharaoh’s daughter, Ruth, Michal and Queen Ester.

As is my habit (and many others), I publish a lame “best of” list every year. Mind you, these are just some of the book I really enjoyed this year, but not all. Usually a waste of cyberspace on Thanksgiving but hey … why not, right? Hope you enjoy my list, maybe get a few recommendations for you and yours and have a Happy Thanksgiving. Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell &John Bruning Out­law Pla­toon raises some impor­tant ques­tions which needed to be asked (pre­pared­ness, effec­tive­ness, pro­fes­sion­al­ism) but that are dif­fi­cult to face. The book is a must-read for any­one inter­ested in the cur­rent war, com­bat or mil­i­tary life. Buy this book in paper or elec­tronic format* The Ariadne Objective: The Underground War to Rescue Crete from the Nazis by Wes Davis The Ari­adne Objec­tive reads like a first rate World War II spy novel which could only be the prod­uct of the author’s fevered imag­i­na­tion. The fact the this book is non-fiction, with all the col­or­ful char­ac­ters, humor and fan­tas­tic adven­tures makes it all the better. Buy this book in paper or elec­tronic format* The Color of Light by Helen Maryles Shankman The Color of Light by Helen Maryles Shankman is a novel which explores art, the Holo­caust, human­ity and, of course, vam­pires. The vam­pire in the story runs…

Liad Shoham is a successful Israeli author who recently had his book, Lineup, translated into English. As we all realize, being a successful author in one country does not necessarily mean you’ll be able to cross over to another countries especially if they have difference languages and cultures. Publishers don’t like to take chances and one must be an excellent author and present their case in order to even be considered. Q. What prompted you, a successful attorney, to start writing crime/mystery books? A. Well, when I started writing I was hardly a successful attorney. I was 26 years old and just graduated a master degree from the University of London. I came home to Israel and started working as a lawyer. The notion that this was the “first day of the rest of my life” depressed me. So in the evenings when I came back from work I started writing short stories based on my experiences in London. I never wrote before and discovered that I enjoyed it very much. I initially had no thought of publishing but when the pile got bigger and bigger; I decided to try my luck and sent it to a few publishers in Israel….

About: War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy is a fic­tional book first pub­lished in 1869. The work is regarded as one of the most impor­tant works of world lit­er­a­ture. The copy I read was trans­lated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. 1350 pages Pub­lisher: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, USA; New edition ISBN: 0199232768 My rating for War & Peace – 5 Great price on this book in paper or elec­tronic format More books by Leo Tolstoy Thoughts: It took me a while to read War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, not only for the obvious reason (1,024 pages) but also because I read it in spurts, between reading other books. If you didn’t read War & Peace you should, not only is it full with studies of the human condition, but also full of wisdom which is still relevant to this day. I felt that I learned a lot from reading this book, not only about history, but also about culture and human intelligence. It’s too bad that if Tolstoy would have lived today, War & Peace wouldn’t even have been published. It’s not popular, too long and too tiresome – they would say. But this is real literature, with validity and…

The dictionary definition of ”fact” is ”something known to exist or to have happened,” whereas ”faith”generally is described as ”belief not based on proof.” There are 10,000 religions worldwide, eighteen of which are major Christian religions, and among Christians there are 9,000 separate denominations. Each of those religions and denominations has its own belief system–its followers act on faith–even though, as author Jack Gage points out, ”all the adherents of these different belief systems inhabit the same world, with the same physical facts, with access to the same knowledge.” So how and why did so many religions come into existence? And how do the various religious explanations–whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, or any other–for how the world and the people in it began stack up against scientific fact? Buy this book in from Amazon.com* Q&A with Author Jack Gage: Can you tell us about the journey that led you to write your book? Although I got my first college degree in Business Administration, and the second a Juris Doctorate in law, at heart I’ve always been fascinated by science and particularly astronomy. I was raised by my parents as an Episcopalian but the things I was taught there seemed inconsistent…

I really enjoy biblical fiction, especially about the Jewish bible. I think the stories are great, interesting and, I hear, even teach a lesson or two. Most of the biblical fiction books I read were pretty good, some took many liberties, others didn’t but I have to say I enjoyed most of them (it is unfortunate that most of the ones I enjoyed were never translated into English). Many people miss the point of the bible, in my opinion – they either view it as literal history (which is a recent phenomena of about 100 years or so), or as a comic-book type superhero drama, or both. That is too bad since these wonderful stories are the base of which we built our society on (whether you believe them or not doesn’t matter), however over the centuries they have been bastardized to support one agenda or another, when actually they support none. At the time of this post, the books below were free or $0.99 – please check before downloading. Authors: If you’d like your book to be fea­tured on Tight­wad Tues­days please email me. In the Beginning (Holey Hullabaloo) by Michael Goldsberry A humorous retelling of Genesis from Eve’s pole dancing to…

Welcome to another edition of Tightwad Tuesday. While looking around for non-fiction books, I saw some really cool free ones and thought that you might like them as well. Authors: If you’d like your book to be featured on Tightwad Tuesdays please email me. For the Kindle: Thompson’s Lucky Star: The Story of a Stalag Survivor [Kindle Edition] by Tony Thompson, Brendan Gisby When Corporal George Thompson of The Buffs was walking to freedom from Stalag IVB after the camp’s liberation in April 1945, he most probably stopped for a moment, looked up at the sky and thanked his lucky star again. That star had kept him alive through five long years of war, the last eighteen brutal months of which he had spent as a prisoner-of-war. As he passed through the huge, intimidating gates of the camp for the last time, George carried with him some mementoes from his time in captivity, among them a very small, dog-eared notebook. The notebook was George’s prisoner-of-war diary, which he had begun the day after he was taken prisoner and in which he had made the final entry on the day of his liberation. Reproducing the actual diary entries and supplementing them…

Today we celebrate World Book Night (website | Twitter | Facebook) where readers around the world will celebrate their love or the written word by handing out free copies. Thousands of cities and towns around the world will be participating in the second annual World Book Night where the expected number of books to be donated reached 2.5 million. The event, first conceived by Jamie Byng, Managing Director of Canongate Books in Edinburgh, Scotland. This year though would be the first time US readers will participate along with Germany, Ireland and the UK of course. The date, April 23, was not incidental as it marks both the death of Miguel de Cervantes and the birth of William Shakespeare. The goal, in the United States, is to give out half a million books to those who ordinarily wouldn’t have bought them. Designated givers, 25,000 in the United States, will give out brand new paperback books specially printed for the event. Among the 30 titles available are The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Stand by Stephen King, A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Poisonwood…