BookTrib, a prominent book discovery platform, has released a new installment of its Bites series, showcasing four diverse titles that explore the boundaries of free will, the fragility of life, and the long shadow of personal choices. The selections, announced via (BookTrib), span literary fiction, poetry, historical adventure, and memoir, offering readers an eclectic mix of voices that interrogate what it means to be human.
Leading the list is Daniel Mack’s “Over the Hills and Far Away,” a novel that follows John Merlan, a therapist nearing retirement with an irregular heartbeat and a growing skepticism of modern life’s prescriptions. Settled in Central Florida, Merlan drives the back roads of the Lake Wales Ridge, pondering free will and its meaning while mysterious encounters blur reality. Meanwhile, a clandestine experiment half a world away investigates whether the human soul—as the source of free will—could be stripped of that freedom entirely. Described as funny, profane, and philosophical, the book combines one man’s search for meaning with a larger mystery about choice and control. It is available for purchase at https://tinyurl.com/over-the-hills-daniel-mack.
In “Dancing Through Seafoam,” poet Diane Skye Gropper draws on decades of Buddhist and Native American studies to meditate on love, loss, past lives, and the soul’s journey. The collection moves from intimate family poems into broader reflections on karma, free will, and humanity’s responsibility to the planet. The title image—life as a dance through seafoam, beautiful yet fleeting—anchors Gropper’s exploration of mortality and the connections that outlast a single lifetime. The book can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/dancing-through-seafoam.
W. Kenneth Tyler Jr.’s “Hunting the Red Fox” opens in 1942, when Perry Barnes, facing conscription or prison for stealing jewelry, chooses the Army. He lands in a special operations unit, learning espionage, sabotage, and lock picking—skills that later make him a candidate for jewel thief. After the war, Perry’s adventures range from 1950s Hollywood stunt work to professional golf alongside Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer, before he becomes entangled in the theft of the Mecklenburg Diamond from a master thief known as the Red Fox. The genre-blending novel has earned a World’s Best Magazine Award, an Independent Press Award for humor, and a NYC Big Book Award in cross-genre fiction. It is available at https://tinyurl.com/hunting-the-red-fox.
Finally, Don Schofield’s “From the Cyclops Cave: A Braided Memoir” recounts a childhood marked by abandonment and instability. Raised by a succession of adults after his father left him with strangers, Schofield carries those wounds into adulthood and eventually to Greece. From a primitive hut on the island of Kýthnos—known locally as the Cyclops Cave—he revisits the past in fragments, moving between his solitary life in the Cyclades and vivid 1950s California scenes. Written with a poet’s eye for image and place, the memoir explores resilience, identity, and the complicated work of understanding those who shaped us. It is available for purchase at https://tinyurl.com/from-the-cyclops-cave.
For readers and the publishing industry, the collection signals continued demand for narratives that blend entertainment with existential inquiry. By highlighting indie and small-press authors alongside award winners, BookTrib underscores the breadth of contemporary writing that tackles free will, memory, and redemption—themes that resonate far beyond the page.
