When considering a book purchase, I always check out Amazon’s sample pages to evaluate the writing. In this case, the phrase that hooked me was, “I stood in front of my wardrobe, which smelled like mothballs and old people.” As I continued reading, I realized I was in the presence of a great author.

Quicksilver is Emily Meyer’s debut novel. Self-published, it has only a handful of reviews, though it eclipses most of the junk posing as literature these days. Set in the mid-1980s, the story of...

Hang onto your hats, middle-schoolers! Peter Burns takes you on a swashbuckling adventure in The School for Thieves, a story that combines inspirations from Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas.

Tom Morgan is an orphan living by his wits in a future London, where kids struggle for survival as workhouse slaves. Those clever enough to escape child snatchers work as thieves and peddlers. If that’s not enough, a deadly epidemic is on the rampage. Tom’s fortunes change when Hezekiah von Stuppe, a...

It’s hard to review a novel about child abuse objectively. Any decent person would react with horror and disgust. What makes it even harder is the detail with which the author deals with the subject.

Katerina Theodorakis, a native of New York, is married to a Greek electrician and lives in a small village on the island of Crete. Fluent in both English and Greek, she makes a happy home for herself and her daughter Aspasia while her husband is away on a long sea voyage. Katerina’s relationships...