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

Bethany Baptiste’s “The Poisons We Drink” gives us an in-depth look at civil rights through the lens of the supernatural. In her world, witchers and humans live side by side, but all is not peaceful between the races. Humans restrict how many witchers may gather at one time, and a law to require registration for all witchers is coming up in Congress.  Many witchers want to stop this bill, and young Venus, a brewer of love potions, and her crew are drawn into the intrigue and battle surrounding the bill. There are casualties, both lives and relationships, as secrets are revealed and Venus battles her own inner demons to keep her family together.  This was an awesome book told with heart and experience. Venus is a strong yet fractured protagonist, and her allies and enemies are well drawn and multifaceted. Baptiste did her subject matter justice, and readers will leave with more than just entertainment by the end. I hope we can revisit these characters in another installment set in this

A.M. Vergara’s “Firefax” is a bit hard to find on Amazon. Search for the author’s full name: Amelia Maria Vergara. Every time I attempted to search by the title, Amazon would autocorrect to “Firefox.” The extra work to find this title is worth it, however, if you are a fan of a certain sort of retro adventure story.  The Firefaxes are assassins. Some work for the family business; some work for spy networks on both sides of the Revolutionary War. One of them knows the secret of the island where the family has been hoarding its spoils of war for centuries, and another spy wants that gold for himself. The rest of the Firefax family must follow their eldest brother to the island, both to save one of their own and to protect their fortune from potential thieves.  This reminded me a lot of the book “The Twenty-One Balloons,” as well as quite a few other novels from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: “Herland,” “The Mysterious Island,” “The Lost World.” When the earth wasn’t com