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Casper and Jasper and the Terrible Tyrant
A middle-grade fantasy about two boys who are separated from their parents during the reign of a petty despot.
In the Lands of Yonder is the town of Middlemost, where everyone is welcome. Adele and Kale Brandiwygn live there with their identical twin infants, Charles and James. They tell the kids apart by putting bracelets on them, labeled “C” and “J.” One day, Count Wilhelm Scream arrives in the Lands, declaring himself Supreme Ruler. He lives in Castle Mirkstone and dispatches a Special Police force to enslave anyone who disagrees with him. Naturally, the citizens of Middlemost try to resist the Count, and they hold secret meetings to strategize. The Brandiwygns host one such gathering; during it, the Special Police break in and haul the rebels toward wagons that will bring them to a prison on Mount Count.…
Reviews for Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café
A quirky romantic novella about a reformed ex-con and the enterprising young woman who helps him rediscover his self-worth.
In her second full-length work of fiction (Wrong Place, Wrong Time, 2013), Jacobs tells a sweet tale of love and redemption. The book opens as Emet First confides to his employer, Eden Rose, that he has asked a woman on a date for the first time in almost a decade. The reader quickly learns that nine years earlier, Emet was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence in the Massachusetts correctional system.…
In SECOND HELPINGS AT THE SERVE YOU RIGHT CAFÉ, two people are brought together by their love of morning coffee and sugary pastries but just as they start getting to know each other, their dark pasts and unexpected secrets threaten to unravel their burgeoning relationship. Set in the aptly-titled Serve You Right Café against the backdrop of Western Massachusetts, the story of these two developing lovebirds make friends with the others around them — from the owner of the cafe to its diverse range of patrons — and they share mutual support as they attempt to deal with a looming mystery.
Having picked up culinary skills while in prison, Emet finds himself working at the Serve You Right Cafe upon his release. Here he finds acceptance; no one judges him for his past. He asks out Mercedes, but is scared to tell her where he’s been the past ten years.
Mercedes is dealing with her own issues. Her mother is now living in an assisted living home. Her brother is an unemployed stoner who thinks it’s her job to take care of him. All Mercedes wants is to be free from both of them.
Reviews for Wrong Place Wrong Time
A tense debut action-thriller that hinges on a pair of related kidnappings.
At the start of Jacobs’ taut novel, Tsarina “Tsara” Abrams lives comfortably in the New England suburbs with her husband, David Adelman, and their two kids, Abbie and Josh. One day, she receives an engraved invitation from her uncle, businessman Castle Thornlocke, to attend a charity fundraiser at the palatial Thornlocke estate in Libertyville, N.H. …
IR Verdict: This is a book that manages to include fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping action, thoughtful ponderings about morality, and a witty sense of humor all in one novel, an impressive feat.
Reader's Favorite
… Wrong Place, Wrong Time is an extremely well written book with an excellent plot. It follows the story from start to finish, not just the kidnapping, but how the victims deal with life afterwards and right through to the finale of the court case. …
Review by KT Sullivan
The dialogue is very witty and everyone has great comebacks. This is a sweet love story between two shy damaged people and what it takes for them to be together.
REVIEWS FOR THE CHALK CIRCLE
Chalk Circle is a truly important book. —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize Winner and recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award
[The essayists'] amalgamated vision is educational and resonant. —nota bene, World Literature Today, July/August 2013
The book carries a variety of stark, honest, and well-rendered first person narratives. —ForeWord Reviews, June 2012
I'll be honest: anthologies are not what I head for when I enter a bookshop. My gripe is that the tales are too short, and that just as you are getting into the swing of a story, it ends. This collection of real-life snapshots, on the other hand, is different. —Kate Allison, The Displaced Nation, May 2012 (read review here)
The Chalk Circle at turns can amuse, bemuse, and challenge readers to redefine the spaces they occupy in society. —The Los Angeles Review, August 2012 (read review here)
The Chalk Circle is intelligently and thoughtfully compiled, unified by a belief in writing to further our comprehension of what can (or should) define us, as individuals and as a global culture. . . . The essays in The Chalk Circle provide polished stepping stones to the re-delineation of identity. . . . Each tells a story from a distinctly articulated perspective, rippling outward in knowledge and (hopefully) understanding. —Her Circle: A Magazine of Women's Creative Arts and Activism, April 2012 (read whole review here)
Tara L. Masih has assembled a stunning collection... The range of cultural diversity and personal complexity packed into this slim, beautiful volume is staggering and far outstrips any other collection out there. These now-American writers and travelers experience the intercultural encounter at home, overseas, within their own communities, families, and selves. The voices range from adult journalists and Peace Corps volunteers to the children of Nazis and refugees. For some, like Third Culture Kids and the children of survivors, their histories and true identities are hidden, and it is through engaging with food and spirituality, photographs and music, family stories and private letters, global and personal history, that they are able to recover and share the nuances of life in our globalizing planet. Each story is a polished, multifaceted gem of unprecedented color and clarity, which together form a glittering necklace that redefines what it is to be intercultural—that is, human—in the world today. This is a book I will be teaching and recommending to friends and strangers again and again. —Faith Adiele, editor of Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural Anthology and author of Meeting Faith: The Thai Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun