Two Visions, One Life 

Cheryl Klein  

Flying Solo Books  

What's that, lying there in the sparkling sand? It just might be the perfect beach read! The paths of two high school sweethearts, now nearly 50 and apart for decades, cross unexpectedly in their Ohio hometown. Rosie has long since moved to Maine, Benji has remained in Cincinnati and life has dealt them very different hands of cards. Both blush at the memory of their adolescent romance, but their attempt at rekindling it goes awry. Both have been married, divorced and raised a couple of kids. This should be a no-brainer, but not when one of them is keeping a secret. Rosie consults her list of 100 things she wants in a partner, and isn't surprised when she sees how Benji scores. Rosie grows as a person and a woman as she ponders how much of her soul she is willing to sell to make the relationship work.

Skinned: A Trilogy of Pain

Carlos Perez 

Horror 13 

In Skinned, a group of actors arrives at a concrete structure in the woods, believing they are there to film a low-budget horror film. When the cast realizes they are the targets of a family of serial killers, the "alpha" of the group, Jessie Majors, leads a desperate fight for their survival. In Skinned II: Alise’s Revenge, Jessie has escaped the slaughter but is haunted by the memories of those left behind. Bound by a dark pact that keeps them alive through unimaginable pain, the serial killer family (The Skinners) - which includes their daughter, Anne - hunts to reclaim the one who got away. In Skinned III: Anne Finds Her Soulmate, The Skinner family becomes the subject of a cold-blooded clinical study. As Dr. Patel attempts to uncover the secret of their resilience, Anne finds a twisted form of love with one of the survivors of their previous rampages.

Freight 

Ryan Lowell  

Little, Brown   

As a lone semi-truck makes its snowy way to the US-Canadian border, a series of vivid characters are inexorably drawn into a desperate, comedic, and murderous scheme to steal its precious cargo. Curtis, a newly hired dispatcher with a newly pregnant wife at home, holds a scrap of paper that identifies a semi-truck trailer that shouldn’t exist. Billy Trask is a weathered and charismatic sociopath, who thinks nothing of quietly killing whomever may come in his way, and carefully guards the coordinates for a truck loaded with $10 million dollars worth of Canadian pharmaceuticals. Jimmy, Theo, and Sarah are the not-so-innocent locals poised to stand in Billy’s way, none more so than Sarah, a local party girl with the heart and will of a colossus, and who will leave her own trail of mayhem and carnage in her 75-mile-per-hour wake.

Write Yourself Home: A Creative Guide for Living Well in the Body You Have Through Embodied Writing and Movement Practice

Johanna Franzel

North Atlantic Books

A transformative guide and radical invitation to come home to your body—finding safety, joy, and connection, exactly as you are. Write Yourself Home offers accessible somatic writing practices to help you connect more deeply to your body, embracing your own unique story and creative genius. It includes movement, breath exercises, and writing practices designed to attune you to the joys, pleasures, challenges, and vibrancy of being alive. Each chapter blends evocative teachings, insights from author Johanna Franzel’s lived experience with chronic illness, and practical, gentle prompts that are designed to help you live well in the body you have. A transformative guide for creating your own vision of wholeness, Write Yourself Home offers a profound approach to understanding your body’s truth and creative genius.

How America Invented the World

Barry Somes

Heritage Publishing 

From the American Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, the book explores how the United States became a nation defined by reinvention. Barry Somes traces  America's transformation from a fragile republic in 1776 to a global leader in technology, industry, innovation and digital progress, including how each generation faced fear, disruption, opportunity, and change. From steam to silicon, the journey continues.

Girl Without A Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship

Rick Ramseyer 

Purdue University Press 

Should willingness to kill be a requirement for U.S. citizenship? "Girl Without a Country" tells the compelling story of Martha Graber―a Mennonite, registered nurse, and conscientious objector who in 1929 was twice denied citizenship because she refused to say she would take up arms to defend the United States. The denials, which came despite Martha's pledge to give her life for her adopted country, caught the attention of a diverse group of peace advocates, religious leaders, lawyers, and politicians, setting up a climactic third hearing that was covered by newspapers nationwide. Martha’s fight for citizenship features dramatic testimony, historical insights, and interesting backstories that stretch from Alsace-Lorraine in western Europe to America’s heartland. Elegantly written by Martha’s maternal grandson with never-before-published details, "Girl Without a Country" surfaces an array of topical issues–from immigration and citizenship to pacifism and patriotism–and considers what it truly means to be an American.

O Mother 

Emerson Whitney

McSweeney's 

Emerson Whitney didn’t plan to go home. After a childhood shaped by their mother’s addiction and heartbreaks, keeping their distance felt safer. They built a life far away, working constantly and ignoring the searing pain of a chronic disorder. But their body had other plans. When exhaustion finally forced them to stop, Emerson turned east at last, toward home, toward their mom. O Mother brings us back into Emerson Whitney’s generous, searching mind as they return to the rural Maine island of their childhood, of sea spray and lobster pots and ship-themed home decor. But Emerson’s return does not go as planned. When Emerson receives the devastating news of their mother’s suicide, they begin to trace her story back, unraveling the hidden forces that conspired to make her life unlivable. What follows is an exploration into disability, diagnosis, and self-acceptance.

Oyster Society: Adventures with the Shellfishly Motivated  

Virginia Shaffer 

Islandport Press  

Part culinary adventure, part personal awakening—one woman’s story of how chasing oysters across North America led her to discover an entire hidden community and her own true path. What started as a whimsical visit to an oyster farm became a life-changing journey across North America's hidden shellfish world. In Oyster Society, Virginia Shaffer (“Lady Oyster”) takes readers on an immersive dive into the gritty, passionate community of people who live and breathe oysters. From saltwater marshes to sticky mudflats, from bustling seafood parties to clamorous shucking competitions, this narrative follows one woman's quest to uncover the unsung heroes behind America's oyster renaissance. Along the way, she meets the shuckers, chefs, farmers, and aficionados who form an interconnected community determined to change the world through one simple food. OYSTER SOCIETY offers a fresh take on food memoir—one that's equal parts adventure story, industry exposé, and personal awakening.

Time Is The Substance 

Marilyn Moss Rockefeller 

Chawezi 

Time Is The Substance is a love letter to a long life lived on Bald Mountain. It’s also a celebration of what growing old with grace can feel like. The book pays close attention to the stillness and beauty of the natural world. The stories go back in time to see how we grow into ourselves and become the people we are. This is not a book of regret or nostalgia, but instead a
luminous story of hard-earned wisdom. If there’s one prevailing piece of wisdom in the book it’s
the idea of acceptance—of slowing down and experiencing grief and not surrendering.

Stone Math

Mike Bove 

Bottlecap Press 

Written during a writing residency with the National Park Service at Acadia National Park in Maine, the block form poems in Stone Math reflect the layered experience of engaging with public lands. Fluctuations between calm and chaos, peace and violence, are part of the collective human story. The history of Acadia is a history of ice and magma, of destruction and construction, of lives both human and animal. It is a history of continual change, one that must be recognized as past drifts toward future, and it is proof that one result of upheaval is staggering beauty.

The Wondermaker  

Anne Cyr 

Moon Pie Press 

"The Wondermaker is poet Anne Cyr’s first collection of poetry and it takes its reader on a life’s journey through the seasons, walks us through the natural gardens and woods of family, past and present, home and simple domestic joys; travels, and the histories and exotic lifeforms they unlock. Carried through tightly themed sections is the poet’s keen instinct for observation and an ability to translate that into plainly elegant terms on the page. It’s all there from the joys of ironing, to a seam ripper to Albert Einstein, to the bell towers and battles of historic Tuscany. “Whose path am I following?” she asks concluding one of her poems near the end of the book. The answer is many, and we are following behind." ---Craig Sipe, author of Lovely Dregs and Here It Comes and It’s Gone