Biographies and Memoirs

Mommy's Boy: How My Doggie Soulmate's Love Rescued Me

Jennifer Huston Schaeffer | Biographies and Memoirs

Jennifer Huston Schaeffer's memoir, Mommy's Boy, is a unique story of a bond between a woman and her canine son, a story of the transformative decade she spent with Benny, a rescued Westie-Maltese mix who became her “doggie soulmate.” Following heartbreaks and realizing traditional motherhood might not be her future, Jennifer adopts Benny in 2014, finding unconditional love that heals her loneliness. The narrative follows their journey from Chicago to Indianapolis, where Benny helps Jennifer pursue a romance with Brad. Together, they face Benny’s complex health battles, including pancreatitis and gallbladder surgery, treating him as their child. For how long can they keep Benny with them?...

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Most Recent Reviews

A Human Business: The People-First Model for Lasting Success

Glenn Bostock (Forbes Books)

| Reviewed by John Grossman

Glenn Bostock’s A Human Business presents a revolutionary alternative to profit-driven corporate models, articulating a “people-first” philosophy rooted in the author's four-decade journey building SnapCab. Rejecting Milton Friedman’s doctrine that business exists solely to maximize shareholder value, Bostock argues that lasting success stems from creating “communities of usefulness” where caring beats competition. The book outlines five core principles: creating a foundation of caring, understanding one’s “ruling love” (core passion)...

Making Sense of Life: Develop Your Own Theory for Happiness and Achievement

Simin Cai (Forbes Books)

| Reviewed by Brenda Baiocchi

In a world where people chase success and happiness, which are always elusive, Making Sense of Life, by physicist Simin Cai, challenges our notions of happiness and achievement and introduces the “Individual Correlationism” as a framework that redefines happiness as the alignment between our lived and desired experiences. Drawing from optical metaphors, where reality is the “object,” our perception is the “lens,” and our understanding forms the “image,” Cai argues that contentment emerges from developing a self-consistent system of beliefs...

The Prodigium

Thomas Steele (OEU Books)

| Reviewed by Matthew Novak

The Prodigium by Thomas Steele is a psychological thriller with a labyrinthine plot, structured as a therapeutic dream journal divided into fourteen cantos. The story follows an unnamed, affluent narrator who discovers a disturbing photograph, depicting what appear to be the lifeless legs of an adolescent, on his wife's digital picture frame. Convinced this image reveals a hidden truth about his mysterious, Southern-born spouse (cryptically called “Doe”), the protagonist abandons his corporate existence to trace the origins of the photograph th...

Letter to Caroline

Elizabeth Fannin (Elizabeth Fannin Press)

| Reviewed by Brenda Baiocchi

Elizabeth Fannin's Letter to Caroline is a devastating epistolary memoir in which a mother reconstructs her past for her adopted daughter, tracing a path from childhood trauma to hard-won redemption. The memoir unfolds as Elizabeth “Liza” Stark recounts her violent upbringing, her escape to San Francisco, where she meets the magnetic Haitian nurse Genevieve, and their decade-long partnership. Their love story—intense, passionate, and fragile—crumbles under brutal fertility treatments and Genevieve’s unresolved childhood trauma, leadin...

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