Reviewed by Michelle Stanley for Readers' Favorite

"All that glitters is not gold." Would you make the ultimate sacrifice to live a wealthier lifestyle for a few years? The Red Ledger from the Never Alone Series is a Christian thriller by Doug Dorsey. Tyler Donovan, Director of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, leads an investigation into the suspicious death of Henry Blank, a wealthy digital money investor. Although it appears to be a suicide, money from the deceased's account mysteriously disappears and it puzzles Tyler. He and his team travel overseas to review the cases of other digital money investors who have died. They are impeded by law enforcement controlled by Antonis Diavolo, an ungodly man who enjoys manipulating people's lives. Unique gold coins found at the crime scenes only stump the investigators more as they head further into danger. It will take strong faith and prayers to defeat this enemy.

Doug Dorsey has written a wonderful, reflective Christian thriller. The Red Ledger, Book 4 from the Never Alone Series is a story about greed, corruption and man's weakness for material things. It also demonstrates how a person's faith can be tested when facing difficulties, while separating the strong-willed from the weak and non-believers. The plot is not predictable, and I found some parts contemplative and rather touching, according to situations on hand. This is an inspirational novel that is deep in meaning, very well written, and interesting to read. Never Alone is an appropriate title for this series. This author has caught my attention with his writing style.

Reviewed by Marta Tandori for Readers' Favorite

JD Ward is a former farm boy and a former army combat tracker who has some very unique talents. It’s those talents, and a raw determination fueled by the death of his father when he was eleven, that give him the impetus to uproot his wife, Lucy, and their two young children, Karley and Jaxon, in order to move to St. Jude, Ohio, a rough inner city within the city of Cincinnati proper. As a new recruit to the St. Jude Police Force, JD is already making a name for himself and is the apple of his chief’s eye – so much so that Chief Rush promotes him to the lofty heights of detective after JD’s apprehension of a local gang member. However, the course of his life changes dramatically several nights later when JD comes upon two biker gang members attacking a young woman during a sweep of the inner city streets during his midnight shift. High on PCP-laced meth, the two savages attack JD and he is forced to use every ounce of his combat training and strength to kill his attackers before they kill him and the young woman.

Unfortunately, it isn’t until his chief is called in that JD learns the identities of his two assailants; one is Chuck Wholf and the other is his cousin, Lee Maddox. Both are the youngest offspring of the Wholf and Maddox clans, the founding fathers of The Dixie Wholfpack, a brutal motorcycle gang that is the enforcement arm of a nasty organization dealing in drugs, prostitution and guns. Knowing that retaliation by the gang would be both imminent and brutal, JD’s chief and the older colleague on the scene come up with the idea to dress the crime scene with the mark of “the White Wolf”, a lone vigilante, which will hopefully keep the victim, JD, and both of their families safe.

Becoming the Wolf by R.H. Neil is one of those vigilante justice thrillers that makes you want to strap on your Glock and go and hunt down the bad guys! Intense, emotional and passionate, there’s much to like about Becoming the Wolf. Neil has a good grasp of the story line and manages to keep it on track, all the while making it a compelling read. The violence is necessary to the story line, but it’s not so over the top that it alienates its readers. The use of Cincinnati’s long-forgotten underground was also a nice touch, as were the historical references to the speakeasies from the days of Prohibition. A reader cannot help but root for JD as he systematically takes out his enemies. The fact that one of them happens to use a vicious cougar called Freya to finish off his adversaries while another thinks nothing of cold-bloodedly wielding his Louisville Slugger to kill an enemy just serves to underscore Neil’s imagination and determination to make his story stand head and shoulders above others in the vigilante thriller genre.

Reviewed by Chris Fischer for Readers' Favorite

Wow! Just, wow! That's exactly what I thought when I finished reading the debut book by author Gretchen Jeannette, The Devil Take Tomorrow. This book is a roller coaster ride of a read, full of action, adventure, historical intrigue, and yes, even a bit of romance! Following protagonist Ethan Matlock, a Revolutionary spy bent on helping the cause of the fledgling United States as he infiltrates the highest levels of the British military presence, this story will grab readers by the throat from the very start and won't let them go. Full of excitement, espionage, and the complication of the burgeoning romance between Ethan and the lovely Miss Maddie Graves, readers will find themselves obsessively turning the pages from the start all the way through until the very end.

I loved The Devil Take Tomorrow. Loved. It. How's that for a review? Well, it's definitely how I felt about this gem of a book. As a person who does a great deal of reading in the historical fiction genre, I found the plot believable, authentic, and mired in historical truths. Author Gretchen Jeannette must have truly done her homework in the writing of this novel, and it really shows. Readers of historical fiction should certainly take note of this book, but any others just looking for an excellent story should also pick it up. It is easy for me to give this book my highest recommendation, and I look forward to reading more in this excellent new series as soon as possible!

Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite

“Forget your homes. Forget your families. You will never see them again. You belong to the Night Guild now.” Child of the Night Guild (Queen of Thieves, Book 1) by Andy Peloquin centers on young Viola, a child sold to pay her father's debts. Viola becomes Seven, training years for the Night Guild as a skilled thief under the harsh tutelage of Master Velvet. She eventually earns the name Ilanna and a place in the House Hawk. Yet her challenges never cease, as the cutthroat ways of the guild and the outside world await her.

The premise has some immediate familiarity as I’ve read fantasy stories regarding thieves’ guilds several times before. On the other hand, it’s structured differently so the story and the plot have an originality to them. Characterization as a whole has enough depth. Initially, Ilanna was not easy to root for. I expected her to be a bit more mature, personality wise, given her hard life in the Night Guild in order to become a worthy member. She can be somewhat impatient and easy to give in to her anger when things don’t go her way.

However, she has proven her worth and survives many obstacles. I like Werrin and Willem, Ilanna’s fellow Hawks, as they bring some wittiness to a harsh and dangerous life. The prose is clear-cut, which contributes to the flow of the plot. Although I personally didn’t like some of the events that happened to the female lead as she had been through so much, Child of the Night Guild is a good read.

Reviewed by Michelle Stanley for Readers' Favorite

When the Jaguar Sleeps: A Jungle Adventure is an exciting story by J.A. Kalis. Didier and Florent are the only survivors of a plane crash in a remote section of the Amazon jungle known for its hostile tribes. After giving up hope of being rescued, the injured men, frustrated by the sweltering heat, venture into the mosquito-infested jungle, looking for villagers to assist them. They come across a few murdered Indians and a gold artifact that Florent takes. The men eventually find shelter in an ancient Inca ruin rumored to contain Emperor Atahualpa’s treasure, interrupting the digging of a gang of ruthless looters.

When the Jaguar Sleeps is an engaging book by J.A. Kalis. He wrote an exciting treasure-hunting tale that I enjoyed immensely. The main characters, Didier and Florent, are interesting and very different in personality. Didier is more levelheaded and has survival skills while Florent constantly complains and makes rash decisions. The other characters are also convincing. I like the general pace of the story, which has terrific action in a nice jungle setting, and surprising twists in other settings with good visuals. When the Jaguar Sleeps: A Jungle Adventure is realistic and very well developed by the author, and it has a great beginning. The appealing cover illustration represents the story nicely as well. This book comes highly recommended.

Reviewed by Stephanie Dagg for Readers' Favorite

"Tides of Avarice" by John Dahlgren is a quirky, swashbuckling, original combination of pirates, treasure maps and lemmings. Sylvester Lemmington is our hero: a timid, serious lemming who works as a translator for the head archivist at the library. The love interest is Viola, a pretty, feisty lemmingess who merrily leads Sylvester into trouble, along with his treasure map. Add a missing father, Jasper, who took part in the last great lemming Exodus, from which mysteriously none returned many years ago, a whole host more slightly off-the-wall characters, plus of course an original plot, and you have a very entertaining, enjoyable book in your hands. There is plenty of skulduggery going on, and not just from the pirates. The lemmings and other animals share all our human characteristics, including the less wholesome ones so that there is a layer of social commentary buried in the humour.

I read this with my ten year old - neither of us quite in the intended YA audience - but it is hard to say which of us enjoyed it more. I could pick up some of the humorous subtleties of the writing that he missed but he could clearly imagine every single scene going on in his own head. We were both hooked. Dahlgren, a Scandinavian by birth, has an incredible mastery of language and is a very, very clever, creative writer. The story twists and turns, with enough of the extreme and ridiculous to keep youngsters engrossed and adults chuckling. It is refreshing and ingenious – it’s brilliant!

Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite

I had the great privilege to review Theodore Jerome Cohen’s Book 2 of The Road Less Taken, and I mentioned there the primary descriptive word for his great skill at short story writing: Gripping. Actually, I may have said: Utterly Gripping. Having the honor then to read Book 1 of this duo, I noticed something quite subtle about Dr. Cohen’s skills, which are nothing short of wonderful. The subtlety lies in his ability to create a fascinating story within the folds of what appears to be another mundane story about everyday life, but which turns out to be just as fascinating as the first. Maybe more so, in a very … subtle … way.

Take the second story in The Road Less Taken, for example. Requiem for Solly begins with two elderly people, a husband and his lifetime love and wife, as it turns out, having themselves a normal if surprisingly affectionate chat about his retirement. This leads to a fascinating remembrance about playing the violin to please his father. But what I noticed halfway through this tale was how perfectly Theodore Cohen was telling the story of the husband and the wife, simply through the image of him engaged in reminiscing - including a little banter between the two - with a thoroughly curious and devoted woman egging him on with such genuine interest after all these years. My point is this: the reader becomes just as engaged by the couple’s life story as revealed subtly through their smallest words and gestures as one does by the more dramatic story told by the husband. That, my friends, is writing skill in a nutshell.

Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite

One perfect word quickly comes to mind when trying to distill the effect of Theodore Jerome Cohen’s collection of short (truly short) stories in The Road Less Taken. The word is: Gripping. And I do not use that word lightly. I mean, utterly, sometimes devastatingly, gripping. Almost in the literal sense that these narratives – some more like vignettes - reach out to grasp your attention and your mind and threaten to pull your body deep inside their imaginative but all too physical reality. The brief nature of each story works to its advantage, as if one is given a tantalizing but gripping – there’s that inevitable adjective again – glimpse into a moment so intense and so fraught with consequence and pregnant with meaning, usually historical, one wants (but also fears) to hang around just to see the future outcome.

In The Road Less Taken, Theodore Jerome Cohen gives fair warning that truth and fiction are woven together closely, too closely for one to pick apart. Although this in large part explains the potency of these momentary glimpses into the past, it is Dr. Cohen’s impeccable writing skills that give to them such a ... you know the word by now ... quality. One might be sharing an old friend’s revelation of meeting secretly at night, on a ship, with the three allied leaders of WWII where the presumably well-known friend startlingly turns out to offer the sole solution to the travesties caused by German U-boats, or one might be witnessing purely through a diary’s late-to-come translation the dissolution of a young girl’s mind. The feeling throughout this profound book is one of extremely personal secrets, with major historical importance much too long withheld, suddenly exposed. Reading Dr. Cohen’s stories is a heady experience. And utterly, you know, gripping.

Reviewed by Ray Simmons for Readers' Favorite

In the final analysis, let’s face it, nothing sells as much as family. Whether it’s non-fiction books about creating better family relationships or history books venturing struggles between powerful families for control of entire nations, family drama is always selling somewhere. The Taste of Air by Gail Cleare is family drama on a scale a little smaller than kings and queens or great houses, but is just as interesting as the dramatic lives of the Tudors, the houses of York and Lancaster. I like tales about families, and I prefer they be multi-generational so we can get a glimpse of and compare the different generations. In The Taste of Air, we get to compare the two families now. It’s hard to imagine being in this situation, although it is fun to imagine, but maybe it's not so much fun in reality.

I liked the plot and characters in The Taste of Air, more than other elements like the setting, though it is always interesting to read about places I have lived and worked. I liked Nell Williams. I think she is a good daughter and she took me deeper and deeper into the story emotionally and literally. I also found myself liking Mary and Bridgett too. Again, Gail Cleare does character and plot very well, especially female characters. The plot is built around family secrets and it works very well indeed. I liked the story. I liked the characters. Gail Cleare is a writer to watch out for. All she needs is a breakout novel. This just might be it.

Reviewed by Sefina Hawke for Readers' Favorite

The Legend of Oescienne - The Finding by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson is a fictional audio book that would appeal most to a mixed audience of children and young adults who enjoy the genre of action adventure and fantasy. Humans have been extinct for generations, ever since a curse forced them to live out their lives as dragons. Knowing this, dragon Jaax is astounded when a baby human girl is found in the province of Oescienne, yet he quickly takes responsibility for the young baby. Jahrra spends her time avoiding bullies and seeking adventure without worrying about the secrets her dragon mentor might be concealing from her, yet those secrets are very much a part of her as Jahrra quickly discovers as she fights to earn her place in the world.

The Legend of Oescienne - The Finding by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson has a very detailed cover that intrigued me and offered insight into what some of the characters and settings looked like. The book has a very interesting plot that pulled me in right from the moment Jaax was introduced. The author did a wonderful job of developing both Jaax and Jahrra, but I felt that some of the other characters could have benefited from being developed further. That, however, did not in any way detract from my enjoyment of the adventure that Jahrra found herself partaking in. The narrator of this audio book was Michael Ferraiuolo. Michael Ferraiuolo might be new to the voice acting scene, but you would not know it from his performance in this audio book. I really liked his voice when he was Jaax as it truly allowed me to get into the character’s mind and to understand Jaax as a character.