Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

Delas Heras’s “The Nine Lives of Bianca Moon” is a book perfect for any fan of hard-boiled detective novels, but who wishes those novels were populated by cats and dogs instead of gumshoes and dames. Also, the book possesses a light-hearted paranormal element that adds a new twist to the genre.  Junior Detective Morton Digby, a border collie, and his partner, a Scottish terrier, are trying to solve the murder of one journalist, Flint Lockford: an Irish Wolfhound. Bianca Moon, Flint’s cat girlfriend, is also trying to track down the killer. Cats have nine lives in this story, getting resurrected wherever they were born each time they are killed. Bianca’s investigation doesn’t go so well, and there’s a question whether she’ll get out of it alive. On the other side of the veil, recently deceased Flint Lockford is trying to adjust to life after death while finding his killer and protecting his girlfriend. I mean, “fiancée.”  This was a fun, quick listen. It follows almost all the ...

Lucy Holden’s “Woven in Darkness” is an epic fantasy with some really interesting world-building. Zaria is a slave with no memory of her childhood. One day, she and some other children simply appear mysteriously along with bags of gold that fill annually to pay for their care. Her childhood is rough, working in a brothel, but she does have caring adults and she gets to attend school to learn to read and write. When the bags of gold fail to magically fill one year, Zaria must try to keep her family together while gaining her freedom before she can be sold. Harken, the Savage King, comes to her aid but not without strings attached. As they work together to achieve both their goals, their relationship grows.  This book had a lot going for it. Some of the world-building elements were hard to get a handle on at first, but they became clearer as the narrative progressed. Because the story was told in first-person perspective, it would feel unnatural to give too much exposition as a third...