Best of
Banned-Books

2012

Sandcastle and Other Stories


Justin Bog - 2012
    You’ll listen as an old man twisted by fate and a lost love shares his life’s journey . . . marvel at a young girl playing on the ocean shore as she becomes entangled in nets of a mercurial god . . . witness a divorced man become mired in troubles after he's coerced into taking a singles cruise . . . follow a Hollywood actor in a television drama who’s always typecast as the bad boy . . . struggle along with a child kept awake by night terrors, and, most shockingly, observe a woman who hides her secretive personality from everyone on the beach one sunny day. The genuine voices of the characters, mixed with a clear-eyed tonal directness, make this a series with mesmerizing psychological interaction. Sandcastle and Other Stories spans a broad depth of human understanding and builds a bridge between the deepest chasms of human frailty, and, by the last tale, the highest portal of redemption. Read and stand witness to unspeakable hate sitting with cozy wile, right beside unconditional love—a provocative and compelling mirror on the human condition. “Bog has a keen eye for what makes people tick, especially when their clockwork is decidedly rusty and the urges it drives are less than ideal. These stories take a microscopic view at the ordinary that, in turn, molds it into something uncanny. The underlying darkness takes different forms with each one, but never is it absent, and never does it feel anything less than utterly natural.”—Josh Black, horror novel reviews

Touchback


Don Handfield - 2012
    The next twenty years would be a study in Murphy’s Law—whatever could go wrong did. Just when things seem at their worst—he's losing his farm, his relationship with his wife is crumbling—a miracle happens: Murphy gets a chance to reboot his life.Back in his teenaged body in 1991, he realizes by changing his past, he can have the future he always wanted. Everything he lost is within his reach, even his high-school sweetheart.But what about the devoted wife he left behind? Torn between two women—two lives—he can only choose one future. Murphy must decide if getting everything he’s ever wanted is worth giving up everything he’s ever had…

Liaisons


Kristen D. Scott - 2012
    It chronicles life, loss and landscape, always coming back to a place of sensuality and love. Praise for Liaisons: Charged with eroticism, sultry poems of desire and ecstasy, like deep earth wine: Liaisons offers the grateful reader, washed ashore in foreign lands, an eternity of nights, entrancing and passionate. Helene Cardona, actress, poet (The Astonished Universe) Kristen D. Scott has written deftly and beautifully about love, death and fear in various circumstances of a modern life in which love conquers all. Fascinated by ancestral voices in the Middle East of her travels, she presents its culture, a subject of her studies, with understanding which turns superbly on its women and her own impressions. She aptly shows locale of a few countries and moods, including American, in spare and hypnotic poetry. Helene Pilbosian (At Quarter Past Reality, Writer's Digest award winner)

Who's in My Family?: All About Our Families


Robie H. Harris - 2012
    Harris continues her series for preschoolers with a look at the many kinds of families that make up our world.Join Nellie and Gus and their family — plus all manner of other families — for a day at the zoo, where they see animal families galore! To top off their day, Nellie and Gus invite friends and relatives for a fun dinner at home. Accessible, humorous, and full of charming illustrations depicting families of many configurations, this engaging story interweaves conversations between the siblings and a matter-of-fact text, making it clear to every child that whoever makes up your family, it is perfectly normal — and totally wonderful.