Becoming Hattie Mae by Carol Guthrie Heilman

Summertime 1929. Hattie Mae Sizemore lives with her family in a Kentucky holler. Her father is a coal miner and a moonshiner. Determined to shield his oldest from the influence of outsiders, he declares Hattie won’t return to school. She is distraught, not even having a single book of her own.

When she accompanies her Granny Guthrie to a charity sale, a gypsy peddler passes through their camp. He stirs a restless feeling inside Hattie to see people and places she has only imagined. At the sale, she discovers a small book and carries it home.

One evening, Hattie’s father returns from hunting. She tries to hide her book, but he grabs it. Stories and poems fly through the woods. Heartbroken, she vows to escape her father’s oppression. Then Granny Guthrie dies and Hattie loses the one person who always stood up for her.

Will Hattie find a way to leave the only home she has ever known and make a life of her own?

⭐ Review

“In lilting Kentucky-speak, Carol Heilman captures her readers with the riveting story of a coal-miner’s daughter, Hattie Mae, and her struggle to break free from a life in which she feels trapped.”—Leanna Sain, Award-Winning Southern Suspense Author

The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art by Lisa Groen

In 1877, the Paris art scene is very competitive for men but nearly impossible for thirty-three-year-old Mary Cassatt, an American woman. Bored by traditional methods of painting, she admires the work of avant-garde painters, especially Edgar Degas. So, when Edgar visits Mary's studio to view her paintings, she is exhilarated by his invitation to join him, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and other Impressionists in the collective.

Meeting the standards of the Impressionists is nerve-racking. Mary is judged not only as a painter but as a woman. She takes comfort in her close bond with her sister, Lydia, who often poses for her. But Mary's growing attraction to Edgar threatens to derail the plans Mary and Lydia have made for their future. When an opportunity arises to work side by side with Edgar, Mary begins a clandestine love affair that utterly upends her life and career.

In The Cassatt Sisters, author Lisa Groen paints a dazzling picture of Belle Époque Paris and the extraordinary life of artist Mary Cassatt during her time with the Impressionists. At the heart of this compelling historical novel is an age-old question: What must a woman sacrifice to live a life of freedom and accomplishment?

⭐ Reviews 

"Replete with emotional interactions that bring the sisters and their world to life, The Cassatt Sisters is hard to put down, intensely revealing, and a work of art itself."—Midwest Book Review

"A well-crafted portrait of two famous artists, their suffering, and their joys."—Kirkus Reviews

Dog Logic by Tom Strelich

That dystopian future they always warned us about? It turns out we're already in it.

Hertell Daggett isn't what he used to be-he'd once been married, he'd once been a physicist, and he'd once been shot in the head. The doctors got the bullet out, but a few tiny specks of copper stayed behind, floating inside his brain, connecting parts that aren't connected in the rest of us, filaments of species memory going back to the beginning of time.

He remembers the yodeling sound of dinosaurs and the rubbery smell of trilobites. He once had a future, but now he's the damaged caretaker of a failing pet cemetery where he discovers a lost civilization, well not lost so much as just misinformed-a time-capsule full of people living beneath his pet cemetery since 1963 due to some bad information they got about the end of the world.

But the world didn't end after all but had wobbled on, while that misinformed civilization stayed where it was, back in the world of 1963. Until Hertell finds them and leads the duck-and-cover civilization into our glorious, mystifying, but often dismaying world, and in the process finds a past he never quite remembered, a love he'd never quite lost, and a future he never quite imagined.

⭐ Reviews 

"I laughed my tail off right up to the very last page, which I read in a local cemetery for just the right ambience. Hats off to you Tom Strelich." —Tom McCaffrey, author of The Claire Saga

"Strelich's shaggy sense of humor is the motivating force..."—NY Times

"Strelich writes comedy that is fresh and vigorous and his language is both clever and elegant."—LA Times

"I would kill to direct a movie adaptation of this absolutely magnificent book. Bravo!" —Sam Irvin, Director of Elvira's Haunted Hills

"a brilliant premise... delightfully comic... a gloriously inventive and original book" —Rubery International Book Award

"Dog Logic...will evoke a wide range of emotions, from outright laughter to shock, indignation and everything in between..."—Readers' Favorite

Sailing Toward the Tempest by Kent M. Schwendy

In war, one decision can win a battle—or end a career.

1795. The French Revolutionary War burns across the Caribbean.

When Captain Blackwell falls just as a French convoy appears on the horizon, command of HMS Fidelity passes to Lieutenant Joseph Duncan—an able but untested officer suddenly responsible for a 24-pounder frigate and the lives of hundreds of men.

Outnumbered and facing a determined French commodore, Duncan must decide whether to disengage or risk everything in a bold attack. One daring maneuver could cripple the enemy. One miscalculation could cost him his ship.

But triumph at sea brings new dangers ashore.

The cargo taken from the French convoy attracts powerful attention in London, drawing Duncan into a world of intelligence work, political rivalry, and competing loyalties. His promotion—and his reputation—hang in the balance as he learns that the intrigues of empire can be as perilous as enemy broadsides.

⭐ Reviews 

"Ride with British Naval Captain Joseph Duncan as he sails the Atlantic in search of enemy French ships while battling treacherous waters, mercurial weather, and ever-shifting winds. Set in 1795, this nautical tale is filled with fierce sea conflicts, military intrigue, and even a bit of romance." —Katrina Thomas, reviewer