What, to you, is laziness? What, to you, is the prime motive for your greatest hope? What, to you, is the one thing that is most important? Reading Towers may answer all three questions, as long as the heat does not get to you, first Then there is also the question of whether a long-held hope is more important than accepting and moving on.

Employing Rachmaninov's Second Symphony as the musical basis for the story of an affair, this novel features an English professor, who represents the elegant, and a young woman, who portrays the brisk, the primary elements of the symphony. Add to the tale's allusions to the sea, which the music is meant to portray, and you have a tale that should interest many readers, even those not readily interested in classical music.

A monster snowstorm, a much different time, a much different era, people facing adversity, people learning what's important, a wide-ranging cast of characters including a young woman overcoming an inner turmoil, all of that and still more in Snowstorm, the new novel by James R. Poyner, available at amazon.com and createspace.com.

IN JUST ONE year, Jack Knob has gone from being a young man beginning to realize his dreams to one whose desperate thoughts are aimed at helping his struggling family. Max Prentice, who has had his eye on Jack for sometime, is a successful toy-maker and the owner of a toy store in Chicago. Yet, when Jack's desperate thoughts begin to turn into action, Max intervenes, shows Jack the error in his thinking, and hires Jack to be his apprentice. Indeed, all is going well, until illness confines Max to bed and results in his wife Mildred running the store. With little remorse, her first act is to fire Jack. To learn what happens to Jack, Mildred, and even Max, turn the knob and enter the shop.