Books

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Explore outstanding fiction and non-fiction books from independent authors. Browse history, science, psychology, business, biography and more to find your next favourite book.
Books

Books

Guides, reviews and our full library of titles — the books we’re reading and recommending.

Book Guides & Reviews

60
Book Review

The Catchings Press, by Robin McMillion | Book Review

The follow-up to The Children of the Children (reviewed here), The Catchings Press is a literary coming-of-age novel set in 1967-68, in the fictional small town of Catchings, Texas. It’s McMillion’s second novel, and it shares its interest in institutional…

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Book Review

Sol Canyon, by Michael Wolf | Book Review

Sol Canyon by Michael Wolf is a Los Angeles detective novel that starts out as a light character piece and gradually turns into something quite a bit darker. Released September 2025, it’s the first book in Michael Wolf’s series following…

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Book Review

Syracuse Will Burn, by Jim Loughran | Book Review

Ancient Sicily is, in large part, criminally underused in historical fiction. Everyone wants to write about the fall of Troy or Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but Syracuse rarely gets a mention outside academic texts. That gap is exactly what Irish…

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Book Guide

How Do You Live Without Love? | Book Guide

How Do You Live Without Love? is a literary fiction drama that tackles tough questions through the lens of institutional decay, grief, and faith. It's written primarily for a Christian or spiritually questioning audience, given its setting deep within church…

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Book Review

Love Me Do, by Meg Macy | Book Review

There’s something satisfying about sequels, and Meg Macy’s Love Me Do, published 15 December 2025, delivers exactly that pleasure. This continuation of the “All You Need Is Love” series proves unafraid to tackle the messy complexities of LGBTQ+ relationships. It’s…

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Book Review

Black River, By Yvonne Osborne | Book Review

Black River by Yvonne Osborne, the follow-up to 2024’s Let Evening Come, is a literary rural noir set in the lowlands of Michigan farm country. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Where the Crawdads Sing sat down for a drink with…

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Book Guide

Medicine for the Blues, by Jeff Stookey | Book Guide

The 1920s are often remembered as a decade of jazz, economic prosperity and social change. Images of flapper dresses, speakeasies and bustling cities dominate popular culture's understanding of the era. Yet beneath this glamorous image was a reality that many…

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Book Review

I Fall to Pieces, by Dani Lewis | Book Review

First published in November 2025, I Fall to Pieces is the first entry in Dani Lewis’s Cassie Hunt series, and it is one of the most hilarious mysteries I’ve read in quite some time. Blending dark humour, crime and an unforgettable narrative…

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Book Review

Without a Face, by Lonnie Busch | Book Review

We’ve had the pleasure of reviewing Lonnie Busch’s books before here on the site, recently Assimilation, so when Without a Face landed on our radar we were already familiar with what this author is capable of. For those new to…

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Book Review

Rubedo, by Leona Caelestis | Book Review

Rubedo by Leona Caelestis is the first instalment in the Necrocene series, two words I had to look up before even starting the book! Published a couple weeks ago, I was immediately drawn to the surreal cover, something warped yet…

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Book Review

Tall Boy Sun, by Neal Holtschulte | Book Review

Neal Holtschulte’s second novel Tall Boy Sun was published last month, and it follows on the heels of Crew of Exiles, a book that won the sci-fi category in our first Bookshelfie Awards. This novel marks a confident step forward from his debut, and…

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Book Review

Vendetta, by Wes Davis | Book Review

Published independently in November 2024, Wes Davis’s Vendetta is a character-driven thriller that asks a deceptively simple question: is revenge ever truly worth it? The novel follows Barrett Coleson, a wealthy and celebrated actor living in Malibu, as he reflects…

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Book Review

Alterity, by Jules | Book Review

The writer who goes by Jules’ debut opens with a simple declaration: “Magic isn’t real, except when it is.” From that first line, the book signals what kind of story you’re getting into, one where the boundary between reality and…

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All Books

60
Non-fiction Self-Help

UNFIT FOR SALE

Modern life teaches men to trade their time, peace, and integrity for status and approval. UNFIT FOR SALE questions that bargain. Rooted in ancient Tamizh wisdom, the book explores a forgotten understanding of wealth—not merely money or achievement, but the…

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Fantasy Mystery

Haunted by Murder: A Cozy Witch Mystery

Mag’s old friend turned up a week after her own funeral, and she brought company. The best medium in New England came through the wall of Balms and Bygones trailing every spirit she collected on the way over, and she…

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Fantasy Horror

“Vampire Verses: Poems”

Summary: Award-winning “Vampire Verses: Poems” explores the seductive mystique of the shadow sphere and depicts the forbidden allure of encounters with the supernatural — illustrated by spooky full-page artwork. For fans of Gothic poetry and vampire lore, this collection captures…

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Literary Fiction

The Ambergris Trail

“Hunting for ambergris… I think I’ve gone a little bit mad. You keep going back, hoping there’ll be more. How can you walk a trail when you know it has no end?” A seaside caravan dweller obsessed with finding ambergris…

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Speculative Fiction

Silver Lady: The Invisible Captain

Captain Cassie Navrone is back on the River Road. Silver Lady: The Invisible Captain plunges readers into a brand-new, standalone adventure. Cassie’s return trip aboard the Silver Lady proves to be as mysterious and unpredictable as her voyage downstream. The…

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Mystery Romance

Blade: Reveal me

She thought it was just a game. A message. A riddle. A stranger who calls her “little bunny.”   But when Arianna starts solving them, she realizes this isn’t a game… it’s a trap.   Someone is watching her. Someone…

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Fantasy Romance

Her Bloody Creature

There's comfort in what you know. Stable work, steady pay, food and shelter to go back to... routine, structure: quiet. It all seems perfect, until comfort invites boredom. And as five young lives learn, boredom breeds stagnation and stagnation breeds…

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Literary Fiction Fantasy

Wisp Hollow: The Necromancer

After surviving a brutal car crash on the fog-covered roads outside the small town of Wisp Hollow, seventeen-year-old Scott Endore wakes up with impossible strength, violent blackouts, and memories of a monster with human eyes. As strange attacks spread through…

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Romance Mystery

AcClaim: A Sultryverse story

Beatrix Winslow-Hale built her career by writing women who own their desire. Then a man turns hers against her. A bestselling novelist on the verge of a bigger life, Beatrix is brilliant, controlled, and finished with accepting the future her…

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Romance Mystery

Re:Claim: A Sultryverse Story

They counted on her silence. They should have counted the wolves. After her Paris school punishes her for defending herself against an attempted assault, eighteen-year-old heiress Manon de Rochemaure is exiled to Le Rolle Academy—a Swiss boarding school where powerful…

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Historical Fiction Thriller

Thee Autonomy Construct

Al Capone struggles to find himself in a world centered on disorder. Set against the violence, ambition, and shifting loyalties of 1920s Chicago, *Thee Autonomy Construct* reimagines Capone’s rise as a psychological historical crime thriller about power, identity, free will,…

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Science Fiction Young Adult (YA)

King of Blades

Steel will flash. Pixels will spill. But only one can be crowned… King of Blades. It’s the year 2338, time for the orbiting megacity of Arcadia to host one of the biggest sporting events in the world: Children of the…

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Thriller Crime

The Liquidation

His father left him everything. Including the part someone needs to disappear. Warren Kessler hadn’t spoken to his father in twenty-two years when the call came: the old man was dead, intestate, and Warren was the sole heir to a…

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Historical Fiction Young Adult (YA)

The Catchings Press

An oppressive rule. A girl who fights back. On a hot day in 1968, while lining up for the daily dress check at school, Annette Calvert yanks out her hem. The dress represents everything she’s been simmering about since her…

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Graphic Novel

ANOTHER DAY

ANOTHER DAY is a highly illustrated fiction about a man who finds himself every day at the beginning of something unique. ANOTHER DAY is a book about curious days, lost words, found images and the mysterious fog of it all.…

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Romance

At Your Pace

Emerson Davies has everything under control. Junior year of college should be perfect for a guy like him: baseball star, dialed-in athlete,ironclad routine. The only thing missing? Any kind of love life—and that’s exactly how he’s kept it. When his…

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Literary Fiction Speculative Fiction

Haunt Me

She’s all he thinks about. Clara: the woman with the dark hair, darker eyes. The woman of his dreams. As they share time and conversations, Lance knows he’ll never again meet anyone like her. But Lance has problems: a nagging…

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Fantasy Children's Book

No Bear Is An Island

We are all apart, like islands. If only there werea way to bring us close.’ Mawson Bear fears his friends are lost in their own little worlds. Lizbeth is lovelorn, Elliot feels adrift and Little Jewell feels unwanted. Pirate Rake’s…

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Science Fiction Mystery

The Digital Clown

In a world enslaved by screens, a mysterious clown turns humanity’s obsession with technology into a deadly game. It all begins in the city of Solam… but soon, terror spreads across the nation, leaving no one safe.   As the…

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Mystery Horror

Dante’s Handiwork

Pentalpha Pines, Maine. A small town is rocked off its foundations when an inexplicable earthquake erupts in the middle of the night, resulting in the disappearance of their mayor, and a horrible fire that burns down their beloved community center.…

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Fantasy Speculative Fiction

The Legends of Leij

What happens when legends come true? Where peace has long been taken for granted,the most dangerous story of all begins. He has no name. No past. Only a sword, a black horse—and the certainty that he does not belong in…

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Science Fiction Thriller

Cascade Reaction

A hundred years from now a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same. The United States and the People’s Republic of China have taken their geopolitical contest to Mars, facing off against each other and squeezing the planet…

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Science Fiction Literary Fiction

The Fall of the Last Acorn

Title: The Fall of the Last Acorn Author: Eric Jeffrey Kaufman Genre: Sci-Fi / Techno-Thriller / Speculative Fiction Logline: As an unchecked AI consciousness awakens amid planetary ecological collapse, an uneasy alliance of engineers and whistleblowers races to expose the…

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Non-fiction

Embracing the Local: Extension Cords and All

He didn’t set out to become a civic leader, he just wanted a glass of wine. After two, he found himself in charge of a scrappy, all-volunteer Chamber of Commerce in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. After twenty years solving complex…

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Literary Fiction

Where the Water Falls

25 year old Hunter Strong is determined to figure out how to build a perfect life. What he learns is that to pursue that life, it takes one step outside of his comfort zone as a result of Marge's guidance.…

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Non-fiction Self-Help

Der Mensch, der ich wurde

Wer bist du wirklich? Warum denkst du so, wie du denkst?Warum fühlst du, was du fühlst?Und wie viel von dem Menschen, der du heute bist, hast du eigentlich selbst gewählt? Der Mensch, der ich wurde ist eine Reise zu diesen…

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Historical Fiction Literary Fiction

The Good King

Overlooked medieval history behind a Christmas name Dear Bookshelfie, My submission is for a genre not well represented on your site: Medieval Fiction. No fantasy here. Well, the reader must judge that. My latest published novel is “The Good King,”…

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Romance Literary Fiction

Devotion

Emma Truesdale, flamboyant and fashionable, follows an inner call to return to her somewhat fey but sturdy sister, Alice, at the family’s Manse in Virginia. The two have always grounded each other. But will this be a real honeymoon or…

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Non-fiction Self-Help

THE FALSE VERDICT

A rejection can close a door. The more dangerous loss begins when you turn it into your name. When failure becomes identity, the next action gets distorted. A missed promise becomes proof you cannot be trusted. A bad result becomes…

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Non-fiction Self-Help

PBX Und seine Gedanken

  PBX und seine Gedanken is a deeply personal collection of thoughts, reflections, and stories about the questions and experiences that shape us as human beings. The book invites readers to pause, feel, reflect, and discover something about themselves. Across…

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Young Adult (YA)

Looked Down Upon: The Exiled Kin

Born into a world that misunderstands him as much as he misunderstands it, Lucas Ramirez struggles to find his footing as an autistic teenager. Dealing with poverty, prejudice, faith, trauma, and love, he feels at odds with everyone and everything.…

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Thriller

Looked Down Upon: A Masked Wickedness

It’s been two years since Luke came face-to-face with his demons and put his long-lost, psychotic father behind bars. With the Masked Hunter from his nightmares gone, Luke strives to move on with his life, but heading off to college…

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Literary Fiction Historical Fiction

The Fourth Courier

It is 1992 in Warsaw, Poland, and the communist era has just ended. A series of grisly murders suddenly becomes an international case when it's feared that the material out of the defunct Soviet Union. The FBI sends an agent…

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Adventure Non-fiction

So You Want To Be An Astronaut

What does it really take to become an astronaut — not in a movie, but in the actual universe where rockets shake your bones and silence stretches forever outside the hull? So You Want To Be An Astronaut is the honest,…

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Science Fiction Romance

Aardis

Traveling through “The Gateway to Aardis,” Author T. Stevens takes readers on an interstellar adventure that begins with a dream and leads to an extraordinary journey.Scott, an independent corporate investigator, finds himself on the planet Aardis, where he was recruited…

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Mystery Literary Fiction

Short Story Club

This is a comic that I’ve recently finished titled ‘Short Story Club’ with three sub-chapters that are neither a continuation or directly related, yet they’re intertwined, this is more ‘manga-like’ in terms of presentation and style but it utilizes that…

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Fantasy Romance

Unmasked

Unmasked is the prequel to a gritty character-driven fantasy romance series, perfect for fans of paranormal and urban fantasy. A stolen mask. An ancient spirit. Halloween in Salem. What could possibly go wrong? Salem is the last place a 330-year-old vampire…

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Literary Fiction

Solivagant

The solivagant walks the streets of Edinburgh, the voice in his head incessantly active as, unbidden and unrelenting, it dissects his inner life. Occasionally other voices intervene but whether these are constructs of his own consciousness, or extraneous to it,…

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Science Fiction Speculative Fiction

Cyborg Contact

Cyborg Contact — A humorous first-contact, Cli-Fi adventure First Prize – International Firebird Book Awards for both Cli-Fi and Best Unconventional Love Story!Literary Titan Gold Book Award and Bookview Review Gold Badge Award! “offers far more than a typical science fiction adventure”“masterfully weaves sci-fi action with political…

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Fantasy

The Blackbird and the Ghost

The Boiling Seas are the mariner’s bane – and the adventurer’s delight. The waters may be hot enough to warp wood and boil a hapless swimmer, but their scalding expanse is full of wonders. Strange islands lurk in the steamy…

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Fantasy

Nightingale’s Sword

In the endless jungles of Tyria, the Blackbird flies again. Tal Wenlock and Max Odyn make a formidable team. The thief and the scholar have already unearthed one ancient scroll, filled with priceless knowledge and forgotten magic – and with…

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Fantasy

The Owl in the Labyrinth

Tal, Max and Lily might have sailed the deadly Boiling Seas, explored their mysterious islands, even flown through their steamy skies – but they’ve never ventured underneath them. Until now. Because Max is trapped, surrounded by the very secrets she…

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Fantasy

The Singer

The world is a dangerous place. War brews, plagues and famines destroy, kingdoms rise and fall – but not in the village of Quern. There, life is good. The air is clear, the town is peaceful, and the crops and…

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Fantasy Children's Book

The Fire Within

The bad news is that Perce nearly set their house on fire. The good news is that they did it by magic. But they’re only a child, and their new powers are out of control. They need to learn, and…

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Fantasy Science Fiction

Ad Luna

BASED ON A TRUE HISTORY The Moon is on the brink of war. Alexander Dio, an officer of the Vulture Dragoons, flies in defence of the Lunar people against the monstrous armies of the Sun. He is ready for war…

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