“It’s only a fitting, so why am I so nervous?” Celine asked. She had been waiting for this day for a long time, but she had also been warned that due to the level of her amputation, learning to walk on a prosthetic or even getting fitted one wasn’t going to be an easy process, but Celine did not shy away from hard things, she never had and I was proud of her for that.

“You’ll be okay, whatever happens, you are going to be okay.” I assured her. “You are strong.”

“Right now, I can’t say I feel all…

“I’m scared.” Celine swallowed, the moonlight casting shadows, but it wasn’t the darkness she was afraid of, I knew that.

I placed a hand on Celine’s shoulder, my little sister needed me in a way, she never had before.

“Everything’s changed.” She sighed, as she gently squeezed my hand.

A week before, her world changed, and I had found myself driving to the hospital in a daze, an accident and it had been bad. I needed to her, I had to make decisions I was afraid Celine would make Celine resent me for the rest of my life.

Decisions had…

Everything has a

Name

Every name a

Meaning,

A concept

Not easily grasped

To a child

Who had been

Silenced

But words

Spelled in eager

Fingers

Quickly became

A game to be

Mimicked.

Until

One day,

Teacher spelled

W.A.T.E.R into eager

Fingers

And suddenly

She understood

Water was the

Cool wet stuff

Flowing through

Her fingers

And a little

Girl once silenced

Had found

Words.

It wasn’t long

Until her vocabulary

Exploded

A child once

Deemed as wild

For fits and tantrums

Was wild no more

Because she had

Found a way

To make herself

Heard.

This little girl

Would…

The Art of Running Away

by Sabrina Kleckner

Flux

Jolly Fish Press

Arts & Photography/Middle Grade

Pub Date 16 Nov 2021

Twelve year old Maisie is an artist. The world makes sense when she’s in front of her sketchbook or apprenticing at Glenna’s Portraits, the family-run art shop her grandmother started, the world makes sense. When she’s sketching she doesn’t think about Calum, her brother who mysteriously left home and cut ties with her family six years ago, or her parents’ insistence that she “broaden her horizons” and try something new — something that isn’t art.

After Glenna’s Portraits falls…

The Murderess Must Die

by Marlie Parker Wasserman

Level Best Books

Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members’ Titles

Historical Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers | True Crime

Pub Date 06 Jul 2021

I am reviewing a copy of The Murderess Must Die through Level Best Books, Independent Book Publishers association and Netgalley:

During a cold winter day in 1898 hundreds of spectators gather at a Brooklyn courthouse, scrambling for a view of the woman they label a murderess. Martha Place has been charged with throwing acid in her stepdaughter’s face, hitting her with an axe, suffocating her with a pillow…