Buyer’s Guides

That’s How It Was: Operation Finders Keepers by Hazel Pacheco

That’s How It Was: Operation Finders Keepers comes under “interesting children’s fiction” category. This is a unique children’s book because it is primarily done in letter format. Set in the late 1960s, the letters are to Randy Ray’s future family. His ten-year-old self shares his perspective on people, animals, and faith as he contemplates whimsical and not-so-whimsical career choices. Who would have guessed that a class assignment would lead to captured moments in time waiting to be discovered by his daughters thirty-seven years later! His letters allow his daughters, Sarah and Melissa, to get to know the boy who became their father, and understand the essence of what it means to grow up country.

A Span of Moments by Robert Beech

By Book Lovers Magazine

A Span of Moments by Robert Beech

A profound story of coming home to an old Florida island and struggling to save its way of life and native beauty: Midsummer 1994,a disillusioned Jake Crawford quits a prominent scientific career and retreats to the island home of his youth, longing for its old Florida way of life. Within hours of his arrival, he becomes entangled in a deadly series of events involving a billionaire real estate developer and a reclusive bridgetender with a long-hidden past. Jake’s struggle to navigate those events will determine whether Marcosta Island preserves its culture and native beauty or succumbs to the same overpopulation and environmental harm that has befallen the rest of southwest Florida.

Wheels of Injustice by Susan Louise Gabriel

By Book Lovers Magazine

Wheels of Injustice by Susan Louise Gabriel

It began with one woman’s fight to save her child and ended in a national movement—
Six weeks into a blissful honeymoon, life turns into a nightmare when Susan’s 9-year-old daughter is taken away and her husband is falsely accused of child sexual abuse.
A simple misunderstanding is reshaped by the powerful, out-of-control child protection machine of the 1980s into something sinister, and Susan is dragged under its churning wheels. She is given the choice to cooperate in prosecuting her innocent husband or lose her daughter.
It’s the decade of unfounded abuse accusations, hysterical claims of orgies at daycare centers, families controlled by courts, and a child protection system that has become the very thing it was created to eradicate.
No one wants to hear the facts.
No one wants to know the truth.
When the couple doesn’t cave to the pressure, Susan loses custody of her daughter, and her husband is charged with a felony that carries a 16-year prison sentence.
Wheels of Injustice is a curtains-pulled-back, true account of the child protection system of the ’80s and its victims, who risked everything to expose its egregiously unjust acts and reform it.
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This memoir is a tribute to God’s faithfulness and a message of hope and inspiration to others who struggle to overcome adversity, fight injustice, or turn an upended life the right way around again.

Hostile Witness by Rebecca Forster

By Book Lovers Magazine

Hostile Witness by Rebecca Forster

A prominent judge is dead. Hannah Sheraton, a troubled sixteen year-old-girl, is accused. When the legal community turns its back, and the judiciary decides to make an example of her and try her as an adult, only Josie Bates will defend her. Flawed and brilliant, Josie is committed to saving the girl, but the deeper she digs the more she realizes that politics and family history are a combustible and dangerous combination. When the truth is uncovered, it will either save Hannah or destroy them both.

50 States by Richard R. Becker

By Book Lovers Magazine

50 States by Richard R. Becker

An Idaho farmer who aches for absolution after a tragedy is given one more chance at redemption. Two runaways cross paths in a Tennessee bus station with only one ticket between them. A family sees looters racing toward their home as they escape an Oregon wildfire. A young couple takes a reckless turn off a state highway in Utah and find themselves in a nightmarish government biohazard area.

These and 46 more shorts make up an anthology that will surprise readers with each new thought-provoking story as they skip effortlessly across different genres, moods, and states of mind. Together, they provide a character-driven sampling of the American experience over the last 60 years — the kind and the cruel, the heroic and criminal — in unpredictable and exciting ways.

50 States is a debut collection of short stories that captures the human condition and reveals how perception shapes destiny. The book spans several literary genres with each short story set in a different state across America. It is soon to be released as an audiobook, narrated by a 5-time Emmy winner.