New YA Dystopian literature

 

The Way of the Cicadas

Audrey Henley

ISBN: 9798986187907
Paperback, $15.99
Ebook, $9.99
April, 2023, 358 pp, Monodon Books
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About the Book:

An amnesiac survivor proves the outside's habitability and spurs a group of bunker-borns on a gritty journey through an irradiated wasteland in this tense and poignant post-apocalyptic-perfect for fans of The 100 and Station Eleven.

Ten years after nuclear war devastated the United States, Hayden is bored of the meager rations, recycled air, and sterile light of the bunker he's called home since childhood.

But when Brita, a mysterious woman with no long-term memory, becomes the first outsider to stumble upon the bunker, she proves to the underground city that the surface isn't as hostile as those in power let on. Her arrival sets off a chain reaction that causes Hayden, Brita, and a handful of other residents to emerge.

The outside world is teeming with life, but also with danger they never anticipated. After an outside survivor betrays the group, they're imprisoned by a military faction with the key to Brita's identity. For Hayden to save his friends, he must uncover a past Brita would rather never remember-along with secrets the bunker sheltered them from all these years.

My Review:

Wonderfully imaginative and slightly too-real addition to dystopian fiction. In the near future the worst has come to pass with nuclear war across the planet. Those who planned for it ahead of time include researchers and government agencies who built underground bunkers. The less fortunate took their chances above ground. Ten years pass and one of the underground colonies is reaching the supply limit. Severe rationing doesn't sound appealing to most of the colonists, and for one brave group of teens, it's time to go out scouting...especially when an amnesiac young stranger knocks on the door, lost, proving that some life still exists out there. When the group of brave young people set off for their former home to gather anything useful, they run into a society of devastation, lies, and the depths of depravity in their strange new world. First of a planned series. Excellent world building and characters that will stay with you. Recommended for high school-age and up due to potentially frightening situations, mild sex, violence, and language. Caution for an intense murder. The author includes trigger warnings in the back of the book. Well-written and designed book.

About the Author:

Audrey Henley is an infamous hobby collector, but her favorite has always been writing. A former production assistant at a university press, she now works as a project manager and freelance copywriter and copy editor.

The Grief Support Book

 

The Grief Support Book

Lindsey Bussie
 
52 pp
9.99 print
ebook
 
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About the Book
During a time of loss, the bereaved are trying to cope with their loved one being gone, making arrangements for services, the loved one’s possessions, paperwork, and more– all while trying to do their day-to-day. Dishes, yard work, caring for animals, whatever it may be, these day-to-day tasks may seem insurmountable under the weight of grief.
We can’t stop the pain, or fill the void. But we can help out. The Grief Support Book is a practical way to help those who have lost someone. In this book you’ll
Printable lists of chores, tasks, and ways to help.
Explanations of situations that the bereaved may come across and how you can help.
Personal accounts from people who have lost someone, how they felt and what helped them out.
Checklist of paperwork that needs to be done when someone passes away.
And more…
 
My review
Excellent short guide for practical and emotional dealing with those who've experienced death of a close person; especially if you are called upon to help with estate and physically dealing with the personal arrangements. To the point, filled with quotes and advice. Printable, usable checklist.
 
About the Author
Lindsey loves people and pets, having a small collection of children, dogs, cats, chickens and one husband at home. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she spent her childhood running around the forests and fields of her childhood home. If she wasn’t outside, she was buried in a book. Her adolescent love for playing outdoors turned into a passion for natural health and sustainable living. When she’s not parenting or writing, you’ll probably find her reading, crocheting, or elbows deep in her garden.

Emotionally riveting memoir from Jennifer Flatt

 

Ungrieving, a memoir of emotional abuse, loss, and relief
Jennifer Stolpa Flatt
Memoir, 281 pp.
2024, Mission Point Press
 
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$.7.95 ebook
$16.95 print
 
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About the Book
In Ungrieving, a memoir about family dysfunction and estrangement, religious doubt, and complex relationships, Jennifer Stolpa Flatt provides others with the book she needed but couldn’t find. The insights will resonate with those who have experienced family divisions or who support those who do, and those who struggle to let go of the relationships they wanted but never had.

After a lifetime of emotional abuse, verbal attacks, and controlling behaviors, including a four-year estrangement from a man she called “Daddy,” despite not feeling the warmth the nickname implies, her father’s death left her struggling to make sense of their fractured relationship.

She felt both a sense of relief and a profound sadness: "I don’t miss him and I feel guilty admitting that. Sometimes I do miss him. And that confuses me."
 
My Review
Ungrieving is a memoir as much as a journey to healing. Told early on in past and present events that set off her father’s instability during the author’s childhood and post-funeral reminiscences as an adult, Jennifer Flatt tells her story of growing up in an abusive environment. I lost my father a couple of years ago and can’t help comparing my own journey through emotional abuse, loss, and relief, although maybe not exactly in that order. You put yourself in a peculiarly vulnerable position when you share memories, your truth as you know it. Flatt’s relationship with her sister Karen and friends who support her story make her story relevant. Flatt shares that her father had mental health issues that were mostly untreated. Her childhood memories of Dad and Mom fighting in front of and sometimes with the kids are carefully couched within her belief that he wanted to protect and nurture his children and family but couldn’t separate his inner child. Later in his adult life he did try therapy and medication, but it didn’t last. He couldn’t move past his personal feeling and accused others of being considering him a failure, or “dumb”; words he might have had ingrained from a childhood he never chose to share.
 
Jennifer and Karen grew up trying to keep peace at all costs. Particularly memorable for me is an afternoon when Jennifer is eight years old and Dad insists on having family game afternoon…but with games that are long and difficult to play in which he tends to defeat everyone. When the girls would rather play after one such game, Dad melts down with grievances about everything. While Mom and Karen take turns standing up to him and apologizing and attempting to appease, the whole thing ends in all the girls crying and Dad demanding a group hug stating that the family who fights together makes them stronger and more blessed. It’s hard not to be horrified. On the flipside Flatt shares many moments of empathy when Dad practiced as a lay minister and supported Flatt’s questioning church doctrine. She is able to express resentment when others knew her dad as a helpful and positive influence, without being aware of his damaging side. She realizes his problems were only one aspect of his personality and recognizes her father was in between a hero and a villain.
 
“One of my talents is post-conversational paranoia,” she says. As a child she developed fears of encroaching on her father’s space, fear of revealing a medical condition due to financial issues, fear for her mother’s health, fear of the future, struggling to be a better person, falling into the darkness of the soul. A diagnosis of clinical depression and treatment made a difference but it took decades. Flatt entertained wishes her mom would have taken the girls and left. Later, her mother admits the same, though the marriage was not a total failure or complete nightmare. The passing of Flatt’s father to cancer also sparked an interest in getting to know her mother in a different way.
 
Ungrieving is a great, helpful memoir especially for those who need to work through the trauma of being parented by people who tried, couldn’t help themselves, didn’t know better, were damaged themselves, and loved us even while hurting us. When Flatt finds her father’s words of relief at his own father’s death, she says, “I can’t help but think how alike we are, how similar our paths. I understand this ungrieving of a parent. He understands mine for him. My inheritance includes this understanding of grief that isn’t.” And it’s okay. Highly recommended.
 
 About the Author
Jennifer Stolpa Flatt is an educator, writer, and church singer and musician with decades of experience playing the organ, piano, and trumpet. Although baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, Jennifer has been a practicing member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) since 2004. Previously a professor of English and Spanish, Jennifer currently serves as the vice president of student services for a technical college in Wisconsin. Jennifer is also a reader, baseball fan, and mom to two boys, Anton and Edward. She lives in Marinette, Wisconsin, with her husband, Jason, in the Victorian home they are restoring.

Frank Dravis epic sci fi Dianis a world in turmoil

 

The Citadel Book three of Dianis, A World In Turmoil chronicles

Frank Dravis

Six Factors Publishing, LLC, July 31, 2024

382 pp

Paperback: $18.50

Ebook: $4.29

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About the Series: The Dianis, A World in Turmoil chronicles, follows the struggles of a forgotten colony of humans on their pre-steam world as they strive to survive in a galactic war between starfaring powers bent on stealing all that Dianis offers. The colony, and why it was founded four hundred years ago, is rediscovered and the power struggles begin, but with Humanity's survival as the outcome. Can that goal be accomplished without the colonists ground into the dust of history?

About the Book: The Citadel, a bastion on the protected planet of Dianis, is the third chronicle in the Dianis, A World In Turmoil series. Achelous, the architect and orchestrator of the planet's defense against extrasolars, has been abducted by the Paleowrights, a powerful religious order. Chained, tortured, and carried off to the Empire of Nak Drakas, Achelous's fate is unknown.

After the mayhem and outrage of Achelous's kidnapping, Marisa, his mistress and a trader princess, embarks on a mission of restitution. To rescue Achelous, she must go to the heart of her enemy, the Drakan Empire, and save him from Viscount Helprig. The Paleowright clergyman does not care what Achelous may know, just that he has blasphemed the Diunesis faith and shall be hung before the archbishop. However, the commandant of the Drakas secret service is not so quick to execute. He suspects Achelous is an Avarian, an agent of a galactic federation, the very people the Paleowrights worship as gods.

Amidst the fight against corsairs raiding the planet, attacks by Paleowright armies, and the intervention of the Avaria Federation, Marisa must rescue Achelous, and if successful, can trigger a global war on Dianis. Can one man be worth that outcome? The answer lies in what he knows.

 

My Review:

Our favorite intrepid band of heroes is back to rescue one of their own, chief inspector Archelous. Archelous, gone rogue from the federation of planets and its prime directive, the Universal Law of Unclaimed Planets, has done the unthinkable: fallen in love with a Class F (protected from outside interference of its natural development) leader, and even worse, fathered a child, a symbol of change and love for another. He’s been kidnapped by a rival faction on backwater Dianis, home to a rare mineral critical to interstellar travel, and his friends, both extraterrestrial and native, have gathered quietly to liberate him. The rival faction, The Drakan Empire, view extraterrestrials as gods, and so a great rift begins that may result in tearing apart the once stable and protected world.

An excavated mountain holdout proves Dianis was once an outpost of a galactic primordial race mysteriously vanished thousands of years earlier after seeding life on habitable planets in the galaxy. When a deep secret identity is revealed through genetic testing, any case for extraterrestrial mining rights could become moot, let alone the truth of their Nemesis. Though exonerated, Archelous has broken so many interplanetary non-interference laws that will affect Dianis, and maybe even the Federation, forever. However, his knowledge of the truth of the real enemy is worth killing—or dying—for. Will the secret of the future, given by the matriarch to the Draken lord, unite or destroy Dianis?

Dravis’s memorable characters, both humanoid and tech, face crises of every emotion with aplomb, adaptation, fury, astonishment as befitting every change and advancement. It’s a huge cast with a cast list provided, that even those who’ve read Dravis’s previous novels will need to take a little time to sort through. The story really grabbed me by the time the rescue was in planning, as well as the discoveries made inside the mountain. After fifteen hundred years, the message left there still resonates: “She said they still had hope,” Lettern says of the messenger. Fans of epic sci fi will appreciate the parallels to favorite science fiction shows, and our own society.

About the Author: Frank lives along the Mississippi River in Wisconsin and has leveraged his many life experiences to write the Dianis, A World In Turmoil chronicles. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, and spent six years in the US Navy chasing Soviet submarines. His love of the sea is reflected in chronicles, a love he has shared with his wife and two girls. He has two degrees, a Bachelor of Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration. Those degrees have been integral to his careers as a writer, software engineer, marketing executive, and chief information officer.

Mark your calendar for September 7

                             

The Oak Creek Public Library is set to hold the Meg Jones Author Fest on Saturday, September 7, 2023 from 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in the Multi-purpose Room of the Oak Creek Civic Center.

Discover “new to you” local Wisconsin authors and get a head start on your holiday shopping. Meet a variety of local authors as they showcase their work. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Available titles suit all age levels and a variety of interests.

Meg Jones was an Oak Creek resident, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reporter, published author, and public library advocate. This Author Fest is dedicated to her memory.

Check the library’s events calendar often to see a list of the authors who will be attending this event.

All ages are welcome to attend. Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult at all library programs. Registration is not required. For more information, email library@oakcreekwi.org or call (414) 766-7900.

BlindSpot thriller by Maggie Smith

 

BlindSpot
Maggie Smith
May 21, 2024
Puzzle Box Press, 320 pp
$4.99 Ebook
$18.95 Print

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About the Book:

Every move she makes, someone’s watching.

From the author of the award-winning Truth and Other Lies comes a gripping suspense novel about an ambitious prosecutor on the hunt for her sadistic stalker . . . only to be framed for murder when he turns up dead. 

Rachel Matthews is used to stress—from the cutthroat world of the district attorney’s office to her escalating clashes with her teenage daughter. So when a stranger sends a lavish bouquet with a macabre message and leaves a disturbing video on her doorstep, she’s quick to act. Teaming up with an old classmate turned private investigator, she wades through old case files, searching for someone harboring a grudge. But before she has time to pinpoint a suspect, her stalker issues a demand—he wants money, lots of it, or he’ll hurt her daughter. 

Desperate to protect her child, Rachel agrees but soon finds herself fleeing a bloody crime scene, fearful for her life. Suddenly she’s in the crosshairs of a dangerous and clever enemy, someone who’s manipulated her since Day One, someone who knows her long-buried secrets, someone who’s framing her for murder. Can she solve the puzzle of who wants to destroy her and beat them at their own game before she’s convicted of murder?

Fans of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent,  Julie Clark’s The Lies I Tell and Heather Chavez’ Before She Finds Me will embrace this taut tale of long-simmering revenge right up to its surprising and twisty climax.

A Brief Interview with the Author

What do you love about your book? It’s a solid psychological suspense which is fast-paced and has lots of twists and turns but at the same time, the central characters of the mother and her daughter have a lot in common with literary/book club fiction. The two plot lines intersect in interesting ways and I like the character arc that my protagonist goes through.

Share something you learned while writing it. I write best when I have an outline (for me, it’s the Save the Cat Method). It saves me time and seems to result in a more cohesive story. Also, that I can’t write stick figures – I always find myself digging into their psyches. I’m an ex-psychologist and I guess my training always comes to the surface. Some suspense books I read have quite wooden, almost caricatures for their “cast” but that’s just not me. Also, that interesting coincidences will occur as you write that seem to be “magic” and greatly add to the story, yet are nothing you planned out ahead of time.

What do you hope readers will talk about? I hope readers will be delighted in the ending – that they will be surprised but also satisfied when they know the whole story. And I’d like them to think about both how much women are at risk for violence and how sometimes the criminal justice system lets us down.

What are you reading now? I read a lot in this suspense genre and the husband-and-wife team of Nicci French is one of my favorites. I just finished their newest one, set in Britain, called Has Anyone Seen Caroline Salter? And I would also recommend Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister. And I’m looking forward to reading Christi Clancy’s new book out early next year called The Snow Birds.

What's next for you? I’m working on my third novel tentatively called All In The Family. It’s the story of a family torn apart when the youngest daughter and her new husband are kidnapped on their honeymoon and held for ransom and her wealthy step-mother, who’s in the midst of divorcing the girl’s father, is put in an untenable situation.

About the Author:

In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art
consulting company, Maggie Smith added novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies, a women’s fiction novel set in Chicago and released in March 2022 by Ten16 Press. It won NIEA’s Juror Grand Prize, the Star Award for Debut Fiction from Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Foreword INDIES Gold Metal for General Fiction, and was selected for the Women’s Book Association Great Group Reads. Her second novel, a psychological suspense called Blindspot, releases in May 2024.

In addition to her writing, Maggie hosts the weekly podcast Hear Us Roar (225+ episodes), blogs monthly for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and is Managing Editor for Chicago Writer’s Association Write City E-Zine.  She resides in Milwaukee WI with her husband and her aging but still adorable sheltie. Find more at: https://maggiesmithwriter.com/

Restoring Prairie by Margaret Rozga

 

Restoring Prairie

Margaret Rozga
Poetry, 94 pp
May 6, 2024, Cornerstone Press
$21.95 paper
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About the Book

"Restoring Prairie, a beautifully unified collection of new poems by Margaret Rozga,  addresses ecological and cultural history based on personal engagement with farmland being restored with prairie species. The poet’s emotional, philosophical and spiritual engagement with the place lend tremendous depth. Contemplating the pendulum of destruction and renewal, she juxtaposes poems of hope with laments for the extent of centuries of development, leaving a mere shadow of historic natural bounty. Other forms of grief are intertwined including the loss of loved ones as well as relentless warfare and the ongoing pandemic. Each adds moral complexity while heightening the impact of the collection. This book can be read as a hymn and prayer for healing, an act of conscience and a journey of the heart, calling above all for the courage to hope."

~ Dr. Christian Knoeller, Professor Emeritus of English, Purdue University Author of Reimagining Environmental History: Ecological Memory in the Wake of Landscape Change

 My Review

Former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga invites us to join her in a poignant, sensual, visceral year writing at a prairie restoration project. In celebrating the past and present, emotion, acceptance and forgiveness, she teaches us be at home in our own company. These eighty-plus poems in five sections are a plein-air experience using nature for prompts in the appearance of a yellow jacket stopping on a page, a maple wildly flinging seeds, the perfect rendition of a sandhill crane call and onomatopoetry of others, as the author walks and sits and journals on the prairie.

Mining every sense from the touch of ancient tree bark to the taste of yesterday’s coffee, with a nod to punctuation in “where on the prairie,” Rozga’s luscious comingling of words such as “then and then-ner…ephemeral then-ness” add a piquant melody to her lyricism in “English Sparrow.” Clever spacing and staccato rhythm controls the reader’s breath in poems like “Power.”

Mostly prose poetry, stories shaped through imagery, some very short form observances in the delight of the moment, Restoring Prairie is also a call to action. Rozga says in her introduction, “Restoring what was lost may start small, but start all the same. On the unfarmed old railroad bed, look carefully. Find enduring prairie grass and wildflower seeds. Gather them. Plant them. Each fall more seeds. The prairie the settlers broke begins slowly to take root again.”

Rozga’s activism shows in the second grouping of poems about protecting land, protecting memories, an ode to Robert Parris Moses, and reluctant protest not-poems; the ebb and flow of “Remembering Beauty”: a time before settlement when visitors were rare and awed by the land of prairie and river.

Hope is one the major themes woven throughout the book; hope in renewal of the blooming prairie when the rest of life was caught up in the pandemic; hope for the future, for moving on and forgiving, and listening. Hope is in the realization that one can find a comfortable place when life changes: “I am the…person speaking…as well, the one spoken to” in “You Are Not Here,” and growth in “Field Staton in April.”

Spend a year with the beauty of the prairie, reflecting on the seasons of emergence, growth, sleep, rebirth. Restoring Prairie is a magical journey through time and memory outside of ourselves using mindfulness (underrated), nostalgia, hope, and the music of the created.

About the Author

University of Wisconsin - Waukesha Professor of English Emerita Dr. Margaret Rozga creates poetry from her ongoing concern for social justice issues. She was a participant in Milwaukee’s marches for fair housing and later married civil rights leader, Father James Groppi. As part of the 50th anniversary projects honoring Milwaukee’s fair housing marches, Dr. Rozga served as editor of a poetry chapbook anthology, Where I Want to Live: Poems for Fair and Affordable Housing. Also as part of the 50th anniversary events, she convened a housing task force that supported the successful initiative to close a loophole in Milwaukee County’s fair housing law so that it now covers people with rent assistance vouchers. She writes monthly columns for the Los Angeles Art News and Milwaukee Neighborhood News. She leads poetry and journaling workshops and serves as a civil rights consultant to community organizations.