Reading the first sentence of a short story by this author is much like being thrown into the deep end of a pool when you’re not quite sure how to tread water. “The Wild White Bronco” opens: “At the age of five, when asked what... Read More

Starting off with a cliffhanger to get the reader’s attention can be a great way to open a book. This book does so in the prologue, opening in November, 1962, with two French teenagers aloft over Washington, D.C. in a restored World... Read More

For almost a half-century, beginning in 1955, Walter Mears was a reporter for the Associated Press, and since the memorable 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election he covered every presidential election until his retirement in 2001. Working for the... Read More

Parents complain about it every day: today’s kids are growing up faster than ever, with grade-school girls dressing like Britney Spears and boys joining gangs before their age hits double digits. Why is this happening, and what should... Read More

Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, this collection of stories reminds readers of the redheaded stepchild of love-longing-with its near desperation and intensity. In story after story, characters struggle to find... Read More

This book would make a wonderful movie. A true story of madness and murder aboard an American whaler in 1841, it summons such maritime classics as Mutiny on the Bounty, Billy Budd, and Moby Dick-indeed, Herman Melville himself was aboard... Read More

The author tells a harrowing story of being held in several Japanese prison camps in Java for three years and seven months during World War II. Rentz was the chief radio operator aboard a B-17 bomber when it was shot down by Japanese... Read More

It is 1973: “The Partridge Family”rules the hearts of prepubescent girls on television, and music is played on vinyl records. Danny Burke, a loner in his 5th grade class at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, longs to be accepted by the... Read More