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The Last Starbase: The Search for a Home

The Last Starbase is book 3 in the Sons of Neptune series. Shane, Sam, and company discover an ancient starship, the Praihawk, buried in the Artic and plan to use it to get help from their ancestors of long ago. The Peak, a refugee stronghold established by Shane and Sam, is attracting survivors of the alien…

Revenge of the Spiders: An Excellent Sequel
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Revenge of the Spiders: An Excellent Sequel

Revenge of the Spiders is book 2 in Rod Little’s four book series, Sons of Neptune. In book one, Earthweeds, the novel’s two protagonist brothers, Shane and Sam, return from a mountain hunting trip to find their home has been invaded by large man-eating lizards created by the Sayans, an alien race of humanoids. The young…

Apocalypse Now
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Apocalypse Now

In the science fiction fantasy, Earthweeds,Shane and Sam are brothers. Shane is in college and Sam is about to finish high school. Each summer the boys escape for a few weeks into the wilderness outside of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania to hunt and evade the hustle and bustle of the real world. This year, when the boys…

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A Spooky Story for Middle School Students

    Dear Pop, I’m a seventh grader at New Heights Preparatory School in Northridge. My English teacher recently assigned us a book report. I can choose any book I want, but the author must be a California resident. I also need to report a little bit about the writer. Please help me ASAP. The…

Summer Camp
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Summer Camp

  In just a few months your sons and daughters will be off from school for the summer. Plan ahead and think about summer camp. What is the best way to go –sleep away or day camp? And how do you pick the best camp for your child? If this is your child’s first camping…

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Pop’s 6 Favorite Books of 2018

In 2018 Pop read and reviewed 36 young adult novels. All of the books received 5 pops because they were thought provoking, imaginative, and the author’s writing style exemplary. Below you’ll find seven of his favorites plus his award-winning novel, Koolura and the Mayans. Title: Koolura and the Mayans   Author: Michael Thal Awards: 2018 eLit…

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YA Fantasy into a Medieval World

Elai Nelson and the Prophecy of the Child is book one of the Fire on the Clouds Trilogy. The novel begins when Elai’s home is broken into by two goons who kill his adoptive parents and attempt to kidnap him. But with the help of his talking toothbrush (you read that right) the sixteen-year old manages…

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Murder on the Seine

Corporate trainer and amateur sleuth, Lysi Weston is on the road again with best friend Grace Wright. This time the duo are in Paris, France where they are assigned the task of presenting a model of their management training seminar to the American Chamber of Commerce in France in hopes of educating chauvinistic Francophiles on…

The Quest of the Empty Tomb: A Supernatural Mystery
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The Quest of the Empty Tomb: A Supernatural Mystery

The Hunt for Xanadu recently received a 5 pops review from this blog. Elyse Salpeter’s second book in her Kelsey Porter Series, The Quest of the Empty Tomb, was also an exciting ride, but didn’t exactly live up to the high bar Salpeter’s first book established. In The Quest of the Empty Tomb, Salpeter brings back many…

The Hunt for Xanadu: A YA Thriller
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The Hunt for Xanadu: A YA Thriller

We’ve all heard of the mythical city of Xanadu appearing in literature and movies. It’s an exotic utopia first described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a nineteenth century English poet, in his 1816 poem, “Kubla Khan.” Author Elyse Salpeter has embraced the myth and expanded the concept of Xanadu to a higher plane in her first…