Bee-n-Bee Vacation

by C. M. Potter

Lil Bee wants you to know her story. She’s a hardworking little bee who lives with her mom and thousands of sisters and a few brothers too. Life isn’t easy being Lil Bee. She doesn’t know what the future holds for her and her family. Her mom told her that they are going to go on a vacation, but she doesn’t know when or where. She has also heard some of the older bees buzzing on about a swarm. Join Lil Bee through the seasons as she prepares for the exciting family vacation.

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“Such a charming and educational story about our friends, the bees. Bee-n-Bee Vacation will delight children while teaching them about the important role bees play in our lives. Whether young or old, we all need to support the preservation of this amazing creature!”  —Patricia Snow Ferris, author of A Most Curious Destiny

The Melted Pineapple

by Christopher Church

Confronted with a hidden space in the walls of his new office, Mason tracks down Astrid Luna, the architect who renovated the building, and with the help of his boyfriend, Ned, and their roommate, Peggy, soon gets inside the void—but their discovery only raises more questions. Researching the original architect, Mason asks the ever-inscrutable paranormal overseer Hanh to help him bleed through to the past, where he can ask the guy to explain what’s going on. Connecting with some old friends, including a drag queen that he doesn’t recognize without a dress on, Mason manages to figure out the purpose of the space and the mystical object within, eventually returning to the building and maybe even putting the final piece of the puzzle in place.

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“Here we go again—a terrific psychic detective novel. Church doesn’t miss in this page-turning winner.”  —David Osborn, best-selling author of Murder on Martha’s Vineyard, Love and Tresason, and others

Parent Child Excursions: ADHD, Anxiety, and Autism

by Dan Shapiro, MD

Written for parents, clinicians, and educators, Parent Child Excursions is a practical book about helping children with ADHD, anxiety, and autism. In this unique approach, Dr. Dan presents ADHD as a problem with stopping, anxiety as a problem with going, and autism as difficulty balancing these competing tendencies. From the introduction: “This book is quite simply a story of red light and green light, braking and accelerating, holding back and forging ahead.” Based on this simple formulation, management of problems with self-control depends on finding the right balance between excitation and inhibition.

These five Excursions present entirely new ways to think about caring for “different drummer” children. Readers will discover an unprecedented level of detail. Based on scientific research and years of clinical experience, Dr. Dan takes you for a deep dive into: (1) effective medication for ADHD, (2) exposure therapy for anxiety, (3) combined therapies for coexisting ADHD, anxiety, and autism, and (4) social engineering for autism. The book concludes with an in-depth discussion of (5) autism, sexuality, and gender variation, cowritten by Dr. Dan and his son Dr. Aaron Shapiro.

As with his first book, Parent Child Journey: An Individualized Approach to Raising Your Challenging Child, Dr. Dan teams up again with illustrator John Watkins-Chow. Throughout the five Excursions, they weave a fun metaphorical tale. Readers are led along by an under-inhibited dog, an over-inhibited turtle, and a well-balanced bird of a different feather.

By the end of this comprehensive and original guidebook, parents and professionals will have learned how to prepare the child for the trail and the trail for the child.

Parent Child Journey website

“For the first time, state-of-the-art and highly original methods are presented to address the issues that commonly co-occur in complicated children and teens.… Dr. Shapiro offers a remarkable combination of up-to-date scientific knowledge and extremely practical advice that will be of great benefit to pediatricians and mental health professionals, as well as to parents.”  —William Stixrud, PhD, clinical neuropsychologist and coauthor with Ned Johnson of The Self-Driven Child

Ophelia and Her Forest Friends

by David Osborn

Ophelia is a little girl who lives deep in a far-off great forest where her widowed father is a woodcutter and her home a tiny cottage with a thatched roof and flower-filled window boxes. Blessed at birth by fairies, she is friends with all the little forest animals who live around her, and with no school or other children to fill her playtimes, she is never lonely, sharing adventures with many, like Sammy Skunk, Rory Raccoon, Oscar Owl, Betsy Bunny, Patrick Porcupine, Benjamin Beaver, and others—all joining with her in keeping their forest home peaceful and safe.

David Osborn’s website

Eventide

by David Osborn

Abandoning a life she herself terms “thrown away,” Ana Masaryk, a Purple Heart Army vet of the Iraq war, begins anew in a small northern New England town, where she finds refuge with the gay illustrator of children’s books in an abandoned church he has transformed. A necessary job covering local social functions and writing obits for The Chronicle, the town’s newspaper, leads Ana into an impassioned whole new life of consuming work as the paper’s publisher and editor, and to her defiant defense of it, at the risk of losing everything, when the paper’s independence is threatened by a big-city news chain owned by a politically ambitious billionaire, who always gets whatever he wants through lies, distortions, and sowing dissension.

David Osborn’s website

“Breathless introduction to the inner workings of big business …”  —The Times Literary Supplement, reviewing Osborn’s The Glass Tower

Stalking the Scratch Man

by Chester Henry

Hired to figure out whether his client’s husband, Ray, has been sleepwalking or just faking it, Truman pulls his best friend, Celeste, into the mystery. The duo digs deep—rifling medical files, running late-night stakeouts, stalking witnesses in bars—to find there’s more to it than Ray’s secretive trips to Chinatown and his habit of macking on women. Truman tries to stay objective with his new crush, Larry, not sure how much he knows about the boss’s lowlife activities, while Celeste contends with her own man troubles in the stalwart but suspicious Alejo. Celeste uses her stealthy instincts to interview the players without showing her hand as Truman, relying on his 1930s-era detective handbook, delves into the dark side of the import business.

Join the bar-hopping, booze-swilling duo as their digging pushes things right to the edge, where Truman and Celeste have to figure out whether to do what’s easy or do what’s right.

“Truman is like that twinkie who slipped through your fingers that time—sweet and a little naive but whip-smart. And every man should have a reliable friend like Celeste. With these two booze hounds running around, the city promises to be a little wilder, and a whole lot more exciting.”  —George Bixley, author of The Window-Shade Job

The Window-Shade Job

by George Bixley

Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from his idiot cop ex-boyfriend, Conrad, and regular squeeze Andy.

Pulled in on a window-shade job to gather intel on a cheating spouse, Slater discovers there’s another observer on the case, prowling around the backyard with a camera. In the course of tracking him down, along with his target’s paramour, he soon finds out there’s more going on than run-of-the-mill infidelity. The bunco accountant sleeps with anyone he can persuade, regardless of gender, including Slater. And what is Tato really up to in his seedy little shipping store? Dark secrets come to the surface, and with help from a gallery clerk, Slater starts to put the pieces together, all the while trying to stay sober, keep one step ahead of the law, and sort out his feelings for Andy. In a bid to protect the naive European caught up in the intrigue, he comes up with an audacious plan that might just save the guy—and make Slater some serious bank.

“The Bixley books just keep getting better and better. This book is a great read. A fast page turner that is crisp in style, catchy in tone and fully engrossing.”  —Bob G.

The Psychic Vegan Cookbook

by Henrietta Flores

It has never been easier to cook vegan, and you don’t even need to be psychic to do it. This all-plant-based cookbook is a tie-in with the Mason Braithwaite paranormal mystery series and contains some of the plucky LA psychic’s favorite dishes.

The sixty recipes are straightforward and focus on everyday Southwestern cooking. Simple and whole foods are the rule, and few nonstandard ingredients are involved—and when they do appear, they’re explained in detail. You won’t need to make a special trip to esoteric grocery suppliers, however, as this book is ideal for cooks just diving into plant-based home cooking.

Whether your motivation is eating healthier or the welfare of other sentient creatures, Henrietta Flores guides you through some plant-based versions of familiar dishes as well as some that might be new. Many are sure to become household favorites.

“Thank you, Henrietta, for pulling together an amazing collection of vegan grub from Mason’s world. Bon appétit!”  —Christopher Church, author of the Mason Braithwaite Paranormal Mystery Series