literary fiction

Third Wheel by Richard R. Becker

Third Wheel is an exhilarating coming-of-age thriller about belonging, betrayal, and breaking away. It is the story of a boy trying to find his identity without the benefit of clear role models. He takes chances on random and fragile relationships forged in the pre-boom hours of Las Vegas, 1982.

Brady Wilks is remarkable as a transformative protagonist. He must make tough decisions as his friends try to navigate a dangerous path selling cartel-supplied drugs.

Four-time award-winning author Richard R. Becker once again shares his unique insight into the human condition. Desolate and gritty, Third Wheel is a triumphant debut novel.

Abroad: A Novel of Cross-Cultural Encounters by Greyson Bryan

By Book Lovers Magazine

Abroad: A Novel of Cross-Cultural Encounters by Greyson Bryan

Come along for the ride with this “supremely readable” coming-of-age story about clashing cultures and complicated relationships. ABROAD follows Skip, Maddie, and Rex as they travel overseas and navigate romantic loves and friendships during the cultural upheaval and sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s.

Booklife praises ABROAD saying, “In this literary novel centered on travel and the lessons we can learn from crossing borders with an open heart, Bryan, author of the Big thriller series, weaves an ambitious, globe-crossing narrative of interconnected lives and loves.”

Travel to Mexico and Paris, take a steamship to Europe, crisscross Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia all in one story. Read ABROAD and bring adventure with you wherever you go.

The Oldest Word by Johnny Firic

By Book Lovers Magazine

The Oldest Word by Johnny Firic

The story opens with the discovery of a mysterious box from the distant past. Its makers are five orphaned friends who hope to help civilizational knowledge survive disruptive climate change centuries in the future: the ending of the Ice Age. The bar is continuously raised as the box traverses more than a dozen settings to the present day. Readers are tacitly encouraged to partner with the author and fill in the blanks by considering their metaphorical boxes, lessons for the future from their past.

Exchanges between cultures and generations highlight human transience. Adoption is the preeminent motif, many characters being orphaned, or having adopted, or both. Nature’s agency is felt throughout the story, with animals, plants and landscapes presented as respected partners rather than resources to be exploited. Nothing can fully reconcile human contradictions, and true equilibrium must come from a transcendent perspective. Plural identity followed by association with all humans, past, present and future, is only a good start. Can we progress beyond all life forms? The book ends on the question: what can you do but hope?

The Ring by Florence Osmund

By Book Lovers Magazine

The Ring by Florence Osmund

Paige West is a well-educated, financially stable business owner who mourns the death of her father and misses the closeness she had with him throughout her life. Jessivel Salter is a high school dropout who had a child out of wedlock at sixteen and is now a single mother on the brink of becoming homeless. She also misses her now-deceased father, but for very different reasons. When fate unites them, Paige is drawn to Jessivel from the start and wants to help her. But Jessivel doesn’t trust Paige or her intentions and rejects her many “helping hand” offers.

The two women eventually connect and when certain disturbing truths are unveiled, they discover they have something in common that is inconceivable and shocking. Their relationship soon becomes contentious and forces each woman to decide whether she wants to take the easy way out and part ways forevermore or face up to the adversity that fate has thrown at them.

And it all started with “the ring.”

They Called Me Margaret by Florence Osmund

By Book Lovers Magazine

They Called Me Margaret by Florence Osmund

Margaret Manning has spent the better part of her life conforming to the expectations of other people—first her father, then her husband. Breaking away from this ruinous tradition, she becomes a cozy mystery writer and decides to open her own bookstore—The Indie Book Nook. But when her husband mimics the behaviors of some of the more unscrupulous characters in her books, she fears that she is losing him, or even worse that she is losing her mind.

While abandonment is nothing new to Margaret—she hasn’t seen or heard from her mother since she was six years old—the fear of losing her husband is devastating. She struggles to find the strength to mend her shattered marriage while also coping with obscure health issues, her daughter’s precarious behavior, a disingenuous neighbor, and an unpredictable mother-in-law.

Who in Margaret’s life is friend and who is foe is not always apparent, and it’s up to her to figure it all out.