Newsletter for October 2026

Featured Books

 Bad Americans Part II by Tejas Desai
Image item
 
Bad Americans: Part II is the second Part of a two-part anthology novel with stories co-titled The Great American Pandemic Novel. Part I has won  20 literary honors to date including First Place in Short Stories/Anthology in the 2025 Bestsellers World Contest.
 
It's Summer 2020 in the Hamptons outside of New York City. Following the Covid-19 lockdown, a reclusive dating app magnate selects 12 lonely and single Americans from all walks of life to his mansion complex for a 12 night retreat. During the day, they date, dine, flirt and fight. Each night, one tells the group a story. The tales differ widely in tone, style, subject, length and decorum. They affect the trajectory of the frame narrative and the lives of the characters.
 
Bad Americans: Part II is Boccaccio and Chaucer meets The Bachelor and Big Brother. It contains the last 6 stories from participants and concludes the frame narrative in dramatic fashion.
 

 
So You Want To Be An Architect by Linda Soules
Image item
 
For every young reader who builds elaborate worlds out of blocks, notices how a room feels the moment they walk in, or redraws the floor plan of their own house for fun — this beautifully illustrated introduction to the world of architecture was written for you.
But this isn't a book that pretends architecture is only about drawing pretty buildings. It reveals a surprising truth: a great building doesn't start with the building. It starts with people. Before an architect draws a single line, she listens — asking how a family really lives, what they need, what they love. Readers will discover why the skill that matters most in architecture isn't drawing at all. It's empathy.
Inside, kids ages 10–14 will explore:
 
  • What architects really do — from the first pencil sketch on a napkin to the powerful software (AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp) that builds an entire structure inside a computer
  • The real tools of the trade — sketching, physical models, 3D printing, and an architect's most underrated instrument: their own senses
  • Unforgettable true stories — the London skyscraper that melted a car, the tower with a giant swinging ball named Damper Baby, the world's thinnest house, and Gaudí's upside-down Sagrada Família
  • The trailblazers who shaped our skylines — Filippo Brunelleschi, Frank Lloyd Wright, Maya Lin, Zaha Hadid, Jørn Utzon, and Norma Merrick Sklarek
  • A "Day in the Life," a glossary of architect words, and a practical guide to what any curious kid can start doing right now
 

Along the way, readers learn how the spaces around us shape how we heal, how we learn, and how we gather — and whether they have the curiosity, patience, and eye for people that the work takes.
A perfect pick for:
 
  • Curious kids who love building, drawing, LEGO, Minecraft, and design
  • STEAM learning and career exploration at home, in homeschool, or in the classroom
  • Parents, teachers, and librarians seeking smart, inspiring middle-grade nonfiction
  • Gifts for future architects, engineers, and makers ages 8 to 14
 

Part of the So You Want To Be A… series — honest, inspiring, beautifully illustrated career guides that treat young readers as the future professionals they might become. With nearly 200 titles and growing, there's one for every dream.
Because someone has to design the room where a child learns to read, and the library that anchors a town for a hundred years. Maybe that someone is your reader.

 
So You Want To Be A Deep Sea Diver by Linda Soules
Image item
 
What does it actually take to dive to the bottom of the ocean — and do a job there? Not in a movie. Not in a cartoon. In real life, where pressure reshapes what your body can do and a single mistake has consequences the surface world cannot reach in time.

So You Want To Be A Deep Sea Diver is an illustrated nonfiction guide for young readers ages 10 to 14 who want the true, complete answer to that question. It follows the path from a kid's first fascination with the deep ocean all the way through open water certification, advanced dive training, saturation techniques, and the most extreme underwater operations on earth — welding, construction, salvage, scientific research, and marine exploration in conditions most people cannot imagine.

Inside, you will discover the real science of deep diving: how pressure works on the human body, why the wrong gas mixture at depth can be fatal, how decompression keeps divers alive, and what it means to live in a pressurized chamber for weeks while working hundreds of meters below the surface. These are not simplified facts stripped of their meaning. This is the actual physics and physiology, presented clearly and honestly for readers who deserve more than a surface-level overview.

You will also explore the world divers enter — a place of crushing cold, near-total darkness, and strange deep sea creatures and ocean animals that thrive where sunlight never reaches. You will learn about the teams of dive supervisors, saturation technicians, and support crews who make every descent possible, and the absolute calm that divers must bring to emergencies that can only be resolved in slow motion, because panic at depth costs lives.

This book does not talk down to kids. It brings them all the way in — into the training, the discipline, the wonder, and the weird and extraordinary reality of a career spent in the deepest places human beings can go. It is honest about the difficulty, specific about the science, and deeply respectful of the young reader who feels the pull toward something most people will never experience.

Most of the ocean remains unseen by human eyes. The divers who go deepest are going somewhere almost no one has ever been. Maybe one day, that diver will be you.
 
 
Part of the So You Want To Be A… series — honest, inspiring, beautifully illustrated career guides that treat young readers as the future professionals they might become. With nearly 200 titles and growing, there's one for every dream.
Because someone has to design the room where a child learns to read, and the library that anchors a town for a hundred years. Maybe that someone is your reader.

 
A Stairway to the Stars by M.W. Shryock
Image item
A thrilling space fantasy that will delight adventurers of all ages, A STAIRWAY TO THE STARS is a magical journey to a distant galaxy featuring a teen girl, her dog, a dystopian planet, and a prince in hiding.
 
When fifteen-year-old Mari Tarazona inherits an antique book and carpet from her dear, departed Nona, she can’t imagine that such mundane objects would open a wormhole to a distant planet, far from her lonely life as a newcomer and outcast in a rural mountain town. But when the portal opens, and she drags her reluctant dog Whammy along with her down a spiraling golden stair to the distant planet of Apokylon, they find themselves trapped in a world of despair.
 
An evil usurper to the throne rules the land with a golden fist, slaughtering anyone who dares oppose him. But one long-lost heir to the dead king, seventeen-year-old Kyran, has escaped the bloodbath. Along with his mother, he's been hiding in plain sight, clothed in the rags of impoverished, nomadic peasants.
 
Desperately homesick, Mari longs to return to Earth, and the only known wormhole is hidden deep within the palace of the cruel emperor. With help from freedom-fighters in hiding, she and Whammy assume new identities and embark on a dangerous journey to reach the palace, hoping to find their way home through time and space.
 
Along the journey, Mari and Kyran find each other - and an intense first love. But just as their friendship is blossoming into something deeper, their destinies are diverging. Summoned to an audience with the Oracle of Oaba, they learn that they must part - possibly forever - in order to ensure that Kyran will assume his rightful throne, and restore peace to the shattered planet.
 

Book Giveaways for October
Win a copy of Do You See What I See by Peter Swanson.  All you have to do is click on the book cover below.  It will take you to the main page.   Look for the giveaway on the left.  Follow the instructions listed.
Image item
 

Win a copy of Envy by Stacy S. Kim, PhD.  All you have to do is click on the book cover below.  It will take you to the main page.  Look for the giveaway on the right.  Follow the instructions listed.
Image item

Book Giveaway Winners for September
Winner of Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel - Winner has been notified.  We are waiting for confirmation.
Winner of Ovrcoming the Wall of Awful - LuAnn Morgan - WA
 

Get Your Book Reviewed
ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?  GET YOUR BOOK REVIEWED AT BESTSELLERSWORLD.COM.  WITH MOST OF OUR PACKAGES, YOU WILL RECEIVE ENTRY TO OUR BOOK AWARD PROGRAM AT NO ADDITIONAL COST.   (CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO REVIEW PACKAGES)
Image item

 
Reader's Choice Awards Winners - 2025
 

Reader's Choice Awards - 2026
 
The 2026 Reader's Choice Book Award nominations are now open. Click on this link for more information.  There are many package choices available.  
The digital seals are below.
Please Note:  For 2026, we have also added a Finalist category.  The number of finalists will depend on the number of entries we get for each genre.
 
Image item

Like Our Facebook Page - Click on the Facebook Icon below.  It will take you to the Facebook page.  Click on "like".
Visit our Facebook
PO Box 765
Browns Mills, NJ 08015, United States