Shepherd’s “3 favorite reads in 2025” run from October 2024 to October 2025. These have such diverse settings–Mars and Earth (sci-fi), Transylvania (historical fiction), and Colorado (sheriff). My reviews:

Inverted by Craig Matthews

Sometimes you don’t find your “why” until you face a crisis.

In this spiritual thriller, Kars Dee hopes to avoid personal issues by escaping to Mars, where unbeknownst to him, a haven for displaced believers on Earth is being set up. The Domestic Religious Terrorist Act of 2045 has outlawed religious affiliations.

Interconnected conflicts with Earth and in the Heavens interrupt Kars’s mundane life on Mars. But when someone close to him is tortured, he finds the resolve to act courageously. Kars rushes through the unknown to save her, by his wits and prayers. Can he get there in time? At all?

Science fiction fans will relish this intriguing transformation tale which teems with sci-fi schemes and gadgets.

When Secrets Bloom by Patricia Furstenberg

Set in Transylvania in the 1400s, this mesmerizing novel weaves a multilayered story of Kate, a healer caught in ancient superstitions and accusations, and Moise, who contentedly worked in a printing press but knew too much.

Someone was always watching, choosing allegiances or having them imposed by tradition, lineage, religion, grievances, exclusions from power, old conflicts. Fascinating historical characters, with their eyes and ears open, wend their way through dangerous complications.

A charismatic experience.

Event Horizon by William Ablan

A welcome time off to go deer hunting with friends leads Undersheriff Will Diaz instead on a manhunt for a murderer. Not only has the hunted man killed a friend, the killer is a long-time friend and “blood brother” of Diaz himself. This terrific new novel, Event Horizon, is based on events from the author’s own career in law enforcement. I wish this series wouldn’t end!

There are also some beautiful vistas as the manhunt leads into the mountains of southern Colorado. One scene at night: “Mighty Orion had shouldered his way past the zenith and the ghostly Pleiades shivered in the night. The Moon painted the snow-covered mountains and trees with ice cold light.”

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The Shepherd website shares a chapter from each book and a link to Amazon, if you’d like more information.