March 2014 Review Issue
Table Of
Contents
Biography
& Autobiography
American
Sky
Fred Tribuzzo
Koehler Books
9781938467912 $16.95 www.koehlerbooks.com
American Sky: Good Landings and Other Flying Adventures is a recommendation for any who enjoy stories of flight, documents the author's aviation encounters, and blends a memoir of flying with a chronicle of how he moved from being an antiwar protestor in the late 1960s to becoming a corporate jet pilot. But most of all, it's a story of how Fred Tribuzzo came to realize his dream (of flying planes), and packs in exciting moments.
American Sky opens with the bang of an emergency: My first flight emergency happened shortly after takeoff in a Cessna 152, a small two-seat trainer. There was no warning, no seat-of-the-pants magic alerting me to engine failure. “Nail the airspeed—we’re hardly climbing,” I said without urgency, seeing my student in a shallow climb. “We need altitude.” A moment later the engine rolled back to idle. It was summer, late afternoon, the cockpit full of sunshine and very quiet, except for the wind rushing by. I barked “I’ve got it” and grabbed the control wheel and knocked his hand off the throttle making sure it was shoved all the way forward. My heart pounded as I lowered the nose transitioning to my best glide speed.
From this moment onward readers are 'hooked' as they experience flight and action from the cockpit of pilot Tribuzzo, who juxtaposes adventure and experience with flying insights: Full flaps allowed for a steeper descent without increasing airspeed needed to clear obstacles and land as slow as possible near the beginning of the field. We flew over a stand of trees and a barn. When my touchdown point advanced farther down the field, I lowered the nose and steepened the descent.
While aviation students will be the most likely fans of this nonfiction memoir, it's also a pick for those who enjoy true-live adventure stories, coming-of-age stories, and dramatic accounts of how careers are forged and achieved. Chapters are jam-packed with aviation incidents that juxtapose technical details in such a way that even casual armchair readers will find the result engrossing, entertaining, and educational.
American Sky isn't just Fred Tribuzzo's memoir, however: it weaves in accounts from other pilots and includes a healthy dose of humor in the process: Alan reminded his dad what he had told him years ago about emergency landings at night. Frank smiled and said that you got the ship configured: airspeed, flaps, controlled descent, lined up like there’s a runway in front of you, and then, at a hundred feet above the ground you turn on the landing light. Frank paused, allowing the bleakness of the situation to sink in, even though we all knew the punch-line. “If you don’t like what you see, turn off your landing light!”
Political change, social change, and their effects upon the aviation world are all charted in chapters that shift, change, and capture the ups and downs and takeoffs and landings of a career pilot. The result is a chronicle that deftly captures the nuances of flying in a lively read recommended for any interested in philosophy, friendships and flight: Alan and I knew there’s great satisfaction in a good landing: a moment of happiness born of patience. Too much or too little power or leveling off too soon can ruin the last few seconds of a wonderful flight.
Hot link to above review:
Fred Tribuzzo
Koehler Books
9781938467912 $16.95 www.koehlerbooks.com
American Sky: Good Landings and Other Flying Adventures is a recommendation for any who enjoy stories of flight, documents the author's aviation encounters, and blends a memoir of flying with a chronicle of how he moved from being an antiwar protestor in the late 1960s to becoming a corporate jet pilot. But most of all, it's a story of how Fred Tribuzzo came to realize his dream (of flying planes), and packs in exciting moments.
American Sky opens with the bang of an emergency: My first flight emergency happened shortly after takeoff in a Cessna 152, a small two-seat trainer. There was no warning, no seat-of-the-pants magic alerting me to engine failure. “Nail the airspeed—we’re hardly climbing,” I said without urgency, seeing my student in a shallow climb. “We need altitude.” A moment later the engine rolled back to idle. It was summer, late afternoon, the cockpit full of sunshine and very quiet, except for the wind rushing by. I barked “I’ve got it” and grabbed the control wheel and knocked his hand off the throttle making sure it was shoved all the way forward. My heart pounded as I lowered the nose transitioning to my best glide speed.
From this moment onward readers are 'hooked' as they experience flight and action from the cockpit of pilot Tribuzzo, who juxtaposes adventure and experience with flying insights: Full flaps allowed for a steeper descent without increasing airspeed needed to clear obstacles and land as slow as possible near the beginning of the field. We flew over a stand of trees and a barn. When my touchdown point advanced farther down the field, I lowered the nose and steepened the descent.
While aviation students will be the most likely fans of this nonfiction memoir, it's also a pick for those who enjoy true-live adventure stories, coming-of-age stories, and dramatic accounts of how careers are forged and achieved. Chapters are jam-packed with aviation incidents that juxtapose technical details in such a way that even casual armchair readers will find the result engrossing, entertaining, and educational.
American Sky isn't just Fred Tribuzzo's memoir, however: it weaves in accounts from other pilots and includes a healthy dose of humor in the process: Alan reminded his dad what he had told him years ago about emergency landings at night. Frank smiled and said that you got the ship configured: airspeed, flaps, controlled descent, lined up like there’s a runway in front of you, and then, at a hundred feet above the ground you turn on the landing light. Frank paused, allowing the bleakness of the situation to sink in, even though we all knew the punch-line. “If you don’t like what you see, turn off your landing light!”
Political change, social change, and their effects upon the aviation world are all charted in chapters that shift, change, and capture the ups and downs and takeoffs and landings of a career pilot. The result is a chronicle that deftly captures the nuances of flying in a lively read recommended for any interested in philosophy, friendships and flight: Alan and I knew there’s great satisfaction in a good landing: a moment of happiness born of patience. Too much or too little power or leveling off too soon can ruin the last few seconds of a wonderful flight.
Hot link to above review:
Go Deep & Take Plenty of Root
Erik Fraser Storlie
CreateSpace
ISBN-13: 978-1482695984 $2.99
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Take-Plenty-Root-Prairie-Norwegian-ebook/dp/B00GRLEHJQ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid
Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root: A Prairie-Norwegian Father, Rebellion in Minneapolis, Basement Zen, Growing Up, Growing Tender is memoir writing at its best, and embraces the author's process of self-discovery and change. It's a series of memories, reconstructions of conversations and experiences over a thirty-year time frame, and a reflection of life: "From those years I don’t have a single memory of my father. For me, he didn’t yet exist. Then my brother Duncan was born. I was almost five. Through the wooden bars of a little bed that sat right in the corner of
my parents’ bedroom, I stared with loathing at a pink, chubby invasion. Now my mother was preoccupied. I had to face my father, and he was beyond my knowing. He felt like silent, cold darkness."
From his prairie-Norwegian roots to his discovery of a beatnik underground in Minnesota and his family relationships, Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root compliments Erik Fraser Storlie's previous memoir Nothing on My Mind (not seen by this writer), which focused on his counterculture social and spiritual experiences in Berkeley during the 1960s and documented the wellspring of his life's early influences.
As readers follow his first-person memories and journey from childhood to adulthood, one striking theme running through these experiences is his evolving relationship with a distant father. As Erik Storlie grows, so do his impressions of his father evolve to an understanding of the man and his motivations; and so do his observations of changing Minneapolis during a time when urbanization was relentlessly changing the face of the city's last wild areas.
Don't expect smooth sailing in this memoir: Storlie doesn't gloss over either the details of his growth or the concurrent evolution of self-destructive behavior patterns and a relationship with difficult but ultimately supportive and loyal father. Surprisingly, it's this relationship that will provide the real catalyst for change in Storlie's adult years - that, and a Minneapolis background that opens his eyes to personal strength and new experiences far outside his comfort zone.
Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root involves readers in Storlie's life and times, retaining the optimism and excitement of youth as it captures these poignant moments of his world: "I’d never had so much fun before in my whole life — at least not since days when Karl and I were kids and ran, over and over again, full tilt toward the lip of the Bluff to send ourselves flying into thin air, tumbling in clouds of fine sand. At last, I had a life. I was encircled with good buddies. I made love to a beautiful woman. I was a man. All this, and I was only seventeen."
Even while he acknowledges the challenges of his life, Storlie's never far from the past.
Readers become immersed in a storm of thoughts, reflections and emotions that ultimately coalesce to reveal the patterns of growth, self-discovery and new experiences that make up life itself.
The result is a warm, first-person memoir that is especially recommended for prior readers who want further insights into Storlie's influences and origins.
Hot link to above review:
Erik Fraser Storlie
CreateSpace
ISBN-13: 978-1482695984 $2.99
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Take-Plenty-Root-Prairie-Norwegian-ebook/dp/B00GRLEHJQ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid
Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root: A Prairie-Norwegian Father, Rebellion in Minneapolis, Basement Zen, Growing Up, Growing Tender is memoir writing at its best, and embraces the author's process of self-discovery and change. It's a series of memories, reconstructions of conversations and experiences over a thirty-year time frame, and a reflection of life: "From those years I don’t have a single memory of my father. For me, he didn’t yet exist. Then my brother Duncan was born. I was almost five. Through the wooden bars of a little bed that sat right in the corner of
my parents’ bedroom, I stared with loathing at a pink, chubby invasion. Now my mother was preoccupied. I had to face my father, and he was beyond my knowing. He felt like silent, cold darkness."
From his prairie-Norwegian roots to his discovery of a beatnik underground in Minnesota and his family relationships, Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root compliments Erik Fraser Storlie's previous memoir Nothing on My Mind (not seen by this writer), which focused on his counterculture social and spiritual experiences in Berkeley during the 1960s and documented the wellspring of his life's early influences.
As readers follow his first-person memories and journey from childhood to adulthood, one striking theme running through these experiences is his evolving relationship with a distant father. As Erik Storlie grows, so do his impressions of his father evolve to an understanding of the man and his motivations; and so do his observations of changing Minneapolis during a time when urbanization was relentlessly changing the face of the city's last wild areas.
Don't expect smooth sailing in this memoir: Storlie doesn't gloss over either the details of his growth or the concurrent evolution of self-destructive behavior patterns and a relationship with difficult but ultimately supportive and loyal father. Surprisingly, it's this relationship that will provide the real catalyst for change in Storlie's adult years - that, and a Minneapolis background that opens his eyes to personal strength and new experiences far outside his comfort zone.
Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root involves readers in Storlie's life and times, retaining the optimism and excitement of youth as it captures these poignant moments of his world: "I’d never had so much fun before in my whole life — at least not since days when Karl and I were kids and ran, over and over again, full tilt toward the lip of the Bluff to send ourselves flying into thin air, tumbling in clouds of fine sand. At last, I had a life. I was encircled with good buddies. I made love to a beautiful woman. I was a man. All this, and I was only seventeen."
Even while he acknowledges the challenges of his life, Storlie's never far from the past.
Readers become immersed in a storm of thoughts, reflections and emotions that ultimately coalesce to reveal the patterns of growth, self-discovery and new experiences that make up life itself.
The result is a warm, first-person memoir that is especially recommended for prior readers who want further insights into Storlie's influences and origins.
Hot link to above review:
Business
Revolutionary
Conversations: The Tools You Need for the
Success You Want
Mark H. Fowler, Noal McDonald and Barbara Gaughen-Muller
Revolutionary Conversations LLC
ASIN: B00HNUE3IA $9.95
http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Conversations-Tools-Need-Success-ebook/dp/B00HNUE3IA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1391355393&sr=1-1&keywords=revolutionary+conversations
Revolutionary Conversations: The Tools You Need for the Success You Want introduces not just a concept but a new way of communicating: the S.H.A.R.E.™ Tools. This is no fly-by-night or quick program, but has been 25 years in the making, developed by business re-engineering specialist Mark Fowler in conjunction with human resources professional Noal McDonald and public relations expert and NGO leader Barbara Gaughen-Muller. With this team on board for the program's development and deployment, Revolutionary Conversations™ features just the level of expertise needed to assure readers of the program's validity and real-world applications.
There are plenty examples of such throughout the book, demonstrating how these Tools can fit into and change virtually any conversation, from business to personal.
Revolutionary Conversations™ opens with a preface explaining the program's origins and its applications. An important detail to note: unlike other change-promoting programs that make use of stiff routines and non-intuitive wording, the Tools focus on incorporating its power into everyday language and interactions. This means a more natural flow of language, thought and communication that doesn't stop its participants dead with canned or contrived 'buzzwords'.
Another 'plus' to note: the purpose here is to create boundaries for a win-win conversation that promotes and supports all involved. But how are complicated situations addressed using the S.H.A.R.E. Tools? S.H.A.R.E. stands for Stop-Help-Ask-Risk-Explore; and that's what this program-in-a-book is all about.
It's unusual to have a book open with three different prefaces by all three collaborators, and this is just one early indication that readers are in for something special. Each author provides insights on their experiences with the program and their vision for its use, and each of these different insights lends to a greater idea of the applications and power of the S.H.A.R.E. agenda.
Each section concludes with a handy link back to the Table of Contents, a feature that lends to quick and effortless browsing, cross-referencing, and an easier flow of ideas with an ability to move back and forth between concepts.
So what is a Revolutionary Conversations™? It "….happens when we take the time - whether in a minute or an hour - to make sure we're all on the same page. When we do this, we create an environment of learning, not just knowing." The benefits of taking this extra time are evident in higher productivity and morale, less stress on the job, and better client relationships - for a start.
As each piece of a Revolutionary Conversations™ is dissected and analyzed, readers absorb the program's basic tenants, its goals, and how to reach them through modifying approaches, attitudes, and most of all, language.
The focus is on a genuine, meaningful attitude and how to shift engrained patterns towards a better, positive result. It all sounds ideal and it all sounds desirable: the meat lies in the 'how' involved in the process itself, and here the book is quite clear, offering specifics and no hazy 'fluff', and reinforcing these approaches with plenty of familiar, real-world examples.
From avoiding patterns of blame and "my idea/your idea" to creating a collaborative environment, Revolutionary Conversations™ is all about identifying the greater good, involving individuals in the types of patterns that lead to success for everyone, and changing the defeating, petty approaches that traditional business environments often foster through competition and struggle.
Gone is the notion that such struggle is 'good' for winning: here everybody wins or nobody wins, and the crux of the matter is the kinds of approaches and conversations one cultivates in business. Lest any believe this book is directed to managers alone, let it be mentioned that all of the tools can also be used by employees in dealings with bosses and co-workers, as in the case of Mary, who found a way to STOP her boss and not only protected herself from his anger, but changed their relationship dynamic to a more positive path that resulted in her becoming a more valued part of her company.
It's all about identifying what is beneficial and assessing how to get there through changing engrained or destructive patterns - and the process of using the tools identified in Revolutionary Conversations™ will create a powerful dynamic that will change not just corporations or small businesses, but lives.
From a sample weeks-long schedule of integrating this program into one's life to what to expect on changes, Revolutionary Conversations™ serves up a powerful set of tools recommended not just for business leaders and readers, but for any who would empower themselves to create better patterns of conversations to change their lives.
Hot link to above review:
Mark H. Fowler, Noal McDonald and Barbara Gaughen-Muller
Revolutionary Conversations LLC
ASIN: B00HNUE3IA $9.95
http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Conversations-Tools-Need-Success-ebook/dp/B00HNUE3IA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1391355393&sr=1-1&keywords=revolutionary+conversations
Revolutionary Conversations: The Tools You Need for the Success You Want introduces not just a concept but a new way of communicating: the S.H.A.R.E.™ Tools. This is no fly-by-night or quick program, but has been 25 years in the making, developed by business re-engineering specialist Mark Fowler in conjunction with human resources professional Noal McDonald and public relations expert and NGO leader Barbara Gaughen-Muller. With this team on board for the program's development and deployment, Revolutionary Conversations™ features just the level of expertise needed to assure readers of the program's validity and real-world applications.
There are plenty examples of such throughout the book, demonstrating how these Tools can fit into and change virtually any conversation, from business to personal.
Revolutionary Conversations™ opens with a preface explaining the program's origins and its applications. An important detail to note: unlike other change-promoting programs that make use of stiff routines and non-intuitive wording, the Tools focus on incorporating its power into everyday language and interactions. This means a more natural flow of language, thought and communication that doesn't stop its participants dead with canned or contrived 'buzzwords'.
Another 'plus' to note: the purpose here is to create boundaries for a win-win conversation that promotes and supports all involved. But how are complicated situations addressed using the S.H.A.R.E. Tools? S.H.A.R.E. stands for Stop-Help-Ask-Risk-Explore; and that's what this program-in-a-book is all about.
It's unusual to have a book open with three different prefaces by all three collaborators, and this is just one early indication that readers are in for something special. Each author provides insights on their experiences with the program and their vision for its use, and each of these different insights lends to a greater idea of the applications and power of the S.H.A.R.E. agenda.
Each section concludes with a handy link back to the Table of Contents, a feature that lends to quick and effortless browsing, cross-referencing, and an easier flow of ideas with an ability to move back and forth between concepts.
So what is a Revolutionary Conversations™? It "….happens when we take the time - whether in a minute or an hour - to make sure we're all on the same page. When we do this, we create an environment of learning, not just knowing." The benefits of taking this extra time are evident in higher productivity and morale, less stress on the job, and better client relationships - for a start.
As each piece of a Revolutionary Conversations™ is dissected and analyzed, readers absorb the program's basic tenants, its goals, and how to reach them through modifying approaches, attitudes, and most of all, language.
The focus is on a genuine, meaningful attitude and how to shift engrained patterns towards a better, positive result. It all sounds ideal and it all sounds desirable: the meat lies in the 'how' involved in the process itself, and here the book is quite clear, offering specifics and no hazy 'fluff', and reinforcing these approaches with plenty of familiar, real-world examples.
From avoiding patterns of blame and "my idea/your idea" to creating a collaborative environment, Revolutionary Conversations™ is all about identifying the greater good, involving individuals in the types of patterns that lead to success for everyone, and changing the defeating, petty approaches that traditional business environments often foster through competition and struggle.
Gone is the notion that such struggle is 'good' for winning: here everybody wins or nobody wins, and the crux of the matter is the kinds of approaches and conversations one cultivates in business. Lest any believe this book is directed to managers alone, let it be mentioned that all of the tools can also be used by employees in dealings with bosses and co-workers, as in the case of Mary, who found a way to STOP her boss and not only protected herself from his anger, but changed their relationship dynamic to a more positive path that resulted in her becoming a more valued part of her company.
It's all about identifying what is beneficial and assessing how to get there through changing engrained or destructive patterns - and the process of using the tools identified in Revolutionary Conversations™ will create a powerful dynamic that will change not just corporations or small businesses, but lives.
From a sample weeks-long schedule of integrating this program into one's life to what to expect on changes, Revolutionary Conversations™ serves up a powerful set of tools recommended not just for business leaders and readers, but for any who would empower themselves to create better patterns of conversations to change their lives.
Hot link to above review:
Short Stories
In the American Night
Christopher Bernard
A Press of Rabble; A Caveat Lector Book
ASIN: B00HQT3OJW $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/American-Night-Christopher-Bernard-ebook/dp/B00HQT3OJW/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389213081&sr=1-2&keywords=in+the+american+night+bernard
In the American Night is a collection of short stories by Christopher Bernard: and even if you've never read him before, it's easy to see he's mastered the form and its subtler nuances.
So many short story collections revolve set up approaches which, over the range of the collection, become predictable and dull. Not so In the American Night, whose diverse characters, settings and plots assume constantly-surprising, surreal landscapes. One wouldn't expect, for example, to have a fairy tale setting entwined with a realistic story, or (in the same book) an account of addiction mixed into a story of insanity.
That all these diverse elements work together to create a collection stronger than each of its parts is a tribute to Christopher Bernard's ability to surprise his audience; and that technique will especially delight readers looking for new, refreshingly different scenarios.
Take the opening act, 'Wallenda Descending'. It takes a few paragraphs of lovely description before readers come to see that this is about a high-wire artist performing over a street to a public audience.
His act is all about magic: the magic of confidence, of public disbelief and awe, of the elements involved in the sway of the high wire, and a life lived as a performer, with the backdrop of the crowd and travel cementing rituals and beliefs. Bernard's descriptions immerse readers in the aerialist's world: "The man eases forward, balanced like gossamer over the abyss, toes backward, then actually runs a few feet ahead, skipping lightly, and suddenly jumps, touching the trembling wire like a waterskate on a drop of water, takes out a short rope from a mysterious back pocket and begins to skip rope on the high black wire as it quivers and trembles and shakes and the crowd roars and the cymbals crash."
The artist's passion for performing increasingly dangerous high wire acts without the usual safety devices leads to a tragic moment in time - and his transition from the circus world and the family connections that have led to this moment are deftly transmitted to readers who become immersed in the experience.
Now move to a short story about 'artaholic' 'AA', which opens with a man down on his luck entering a life on the streets. This all began, surprisingly, with an appreciation for art: "At first art was an occasional thing, something special that gave me the feeling of a different world, a more beautiful, exciting, meaningful place than the reality I knew every day. I could let myself go in the sheer pleasure of it, enjoying it with family and friends. It seemed to do all of us good, seemed wholesome, even ennobling. So I started indulging in art now and again, felt satisfied and grateful for the generosity and hard work of those talented men and women who offered this look at a grander world. And I would return, refreshed, to the real world I lived in."
In this case the protagonist's fascination with art began subtly, during his teen years, and evolved from a curiosity to a passion: "…like most people. I’d slip into an art galley after school, dream about the pictures by Chagall or Picasso or Dubuffet, take a snort of the smell of dry oil paint, then go home, a crazy smile on my face."
The 'art bug' takes over his life as an adult, bringing him to the point where he becomes an addict ("…this is my story. The story of how I got the art bug, how it took over my life until it nearly destroyed everything I cared about and drove out of my life everyone who loved me, and how it was only after hitting bottom and facing the misery I had made of my life and admitting I was on a one-way track to my personal doom that I pulled myself finally back from the despair caused by the hell of art addiction.")
Poetry and problems with love, goals and jobs: all this is wound tightly into a story of self-discovery, years of living in denial, and the revelations of being homeless. What does all this have to do with a passion for art? Read it and find out.
In the American Night is a unique collection that celebrates individual lives, choices, courage, and failures and achievement. Each protagonist has a distinctive perspective on life, and each short story uses a combination of metaphor, psychological insight and specific, diverse experience to explore both human nature and obsession.
Readers looking for literary, poetic and evocative stories marked by their diversity and injected with emotional fervor will find In the American Night a distinctive, compelling collection.
Hot link to above review:
Christopher Bernard
A Press of Rabble; A Caveat Lector Book
ASIN: B00HQT3OJW $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/American-Night-Christopher-Bernard-ebook/dp/B00HQT3OJW/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389213081&sr=1-2&keywords=in+the+american+night+bernard
In the American Night is a collection of short stories by Christopher Bernard: and even if you've never read him before, it's easy to see he's mastered the form and its subtler nuances.
So many short story collections revolve set up approaches which, over the range of the collection, become predictable and dull. Not so In the American Night, whose diverse characters, settings and plots assume constantly-surprising, surreal landscapes. One wouldn't expect, for example, to have a fairy tale setting entwined with a realistic story, or (in the same book) an account of addiction mixed into a story of insanity.
That all these diverse elements work together to create a collection stronger than each of its parts is a tribute to Christopher Bernard's ability to surprise his audience; and that technique will especially delight readers looking for new, refreshingly different scenarios.
Take the opening act, 'Wallenda Descending'. It takes a few paragraphs of lovely description before readers come to see that this is about a high-wire artist performing over a street to a public audience.
His act is all about magic: the magic of confidence, of public disbelief and awe, of the elements involved in the sway of the high wire, and a life lived as a performer, with the backdrop of the crowd and travel cementing rituals and beliefs. Bernard's descriptions immerse readers in the aerialist's world: "The man eases forward, balanced like gossamer over the abyss, toes backward, then actually runs a few feet ahead, skipping lightly, and suddenly jumps, touching the trembling wire like a waterskate on a drop of water, takes out a short rope from a mysterious back pocket and begins to skip rope on the high black wire as it quivers and trembles and shakes and the crowd roars and the cymbals crash."
The artist's passion for performing increasingly dangerous high wire acts without the usual safety devices leads to a tragic moment in time - and his transition from the circus world and the family connections that have led to this moment are deftly transmitted to readers who become immersed in the experience.
Now move to a short story about 'artaholic' 'AA', which opens with a man down on his luck entering a life on the streets. This all began, surprisingly, with an appreciation for art: "At first art was an occasional thing, something special that gave me the feeling of a different world, a more beautiful, exciting, meaningful place than the reality I knew every day. I could let myself go in the sheer pleasure of it, enjoying it with family and friends. It seemed to do all of us good, seemed wholesome, even ennobling. So I started indulging in art now and again, felt satisfied and grateful for the generosity and hard work of those talented men and women who offered this look at a grander world. And I would return, refreshed, to the real world I lived in."
In this case the protagonist's fascination with art began subtly, during his teen years, and evolved from a curiosity to a passion: "…like most people. I’d slip into an art galley after school, dream about the pictures by Chagall or Picasso or Dubuffet, take a snort of the smell of dry oil paint, then go home, a crazy smile on my face."
The 'art bug' takes over his life as an adult, bringing him to the point where he becomes an addict ("…this is my story. The story of how I got the art bug, how it took over my life until it nearly destroyed everything I cared about and drove out of my life everyone who loved me, and how it was only after hitting bottom and facing the misery I had made of my life and admitting I was on a one-way track to my personal doom that I pulled myself finally back from the despair caused by the hell of art addiction.")
Poetry and problems with love, goals and jobs: all this is wound tightly into a story of self-discovery, years of living in denial, and the revelations of being homeless. What does all this have to do with a passion for art? Read it and find out.
In the American Night is a unique collection that celebrates individual lives, choices, courage, and failures and achievement. Each protagonist has a distinctive perspective on life, and each short story uses a combination of metaphor, psychological insight and specific, diverse experience to explore both human nature and obsession.
Readers looking for literary, poetic and evocative stories marked by their diversity and injected with emotional fervor will find In the American Night a distinctive, compelling collection.
Hot link to above review:
Childrens
Magical Animals
Ian White, illustrated by Gaston Hauviller
Laredo
9781564924063 $14.95
www.magicalanimalschildrensbook.com
Magical Animals pairs a rollicking rhyme about a bored young boy with vivid color drawings by Gaston Hauviller, and is a recommendation for either parental read-aloud or for young picturebook readers who have an introductory command of language and an appreciation for animals, fantasy and rhyme.
Leo is bored: his mother reinforces the idea that magic is not real, so he's facing the prospect of growing up in a world devoid of wonder when - flash, bang! - a wizard with a silver beard and red cape appears to refute this notion and to introduce the idea that "It's a magical world if you know where to go."
One would expect the wizard to - flash, bang! - transport Leo to an alternate universe, or something filled with elves, gnomes, and fantasy. Instead the wizard is intent on showing Leo the magic of nature, and gorgeous color drawings accompany discoveries of hummingbirds, turtles, mountain goats and more.
All this is presented in a fun rhyming story: "“Mountain goats prance on a hillside so sheer./ Just the mere sight of it fills me with fear./ How can they run in so steep a location?/
Magical hooves are the sole explanation!”
True magic is 'hard to explain' and it's everywhere, right outside Leo's window. All it takes is a dedicated wizard, a bit of belief, and a desire to explore the world to bring these natural wonders to life.
This is truly a different take on the natural history picturebook theme. By injecting a sense of magic and discovery and using a fictional format to explore nature, young readers will be far more interested in embarking on their own discoveries of the great outdoors and nature's wonders.
The bright, involving drawings by Gaston Hauviller are both realistic and fantastic, often juxtaposing the wizard and Leo in lively, impossible observational interactions with a real-looking bit of nature - as in their observation of spiders, where the spider is presented large-sized on its web while tiny-sized Leo and the wizard float outside the web on colorful parachutes.
The concluding message pairs magic with the real world and will provide picturebook readers with a warm feeling of discovery and magic of their own, making this a fine and inspirational recommendation for young leisure readers who love magical stories.
Hot link to above review:
Ian White, illustrated by Gaston Hauviller
Laredo
9781564924063 $14.95
www.magicalanimalschildrensbook.com
Magical Animals pairs a rollicking rhyme about a bored young boy with vivid color drawings by Gaston Hauviller, and is a recommendation for either parental read-aloud or for young picturebook readers who have an introductory command of language and an appreciation for animals, fantasy and rhyme.
Leo is bored: his mother reinforces the idea that magic is not real, so he's facing the prospect of growing up in a world devoid of wonder when - flash, bang! - a wizard with a silver beard and red cape appears to refute this notion and to introduce the idea that "It's a magical world if you know where to go."
One would expect the wizard to - flash, bang! - transport Leo to an alternate universe, or something filled with elves, gnomes, and fantasy. Instead the wizard is intent on showing Leo the magic of nature, and gorgeous color drawings accompany discoveries of hummingbirds, turtles, mountain goats and more.
All this is presented in a fun rhyming story: "“Mountain goats prance on a hillside so sheer./ Just the mere sight of it fills me with fear./ How can they run in so steep a location?/
Magical hooves are the sole explanation!”
True magic is 'hard to explain' and it's everywhere, right outside Leo's window. All it takes is a dedicated wizard, a bit of belief, and a desire to explore the world to bring these natural wonders to life.
This is truly a different take on the natural history picturebook theme. By injecting a sense of magic and discovery and using a fictional format to explore nature, young readers will be far more interested in embarking on their own discoveries of the great outdoors and nature's wonders.
The bright, involving drawings by Gaston Hauviller are both realistic and fantastic, often juxtaposing the wizard and Leo in lively, impossible observational interactions with a real-looking bit of nature - as in their observation of spiders, where the spider is presented large-sized on its web while tiny-sized Leo and the wizard float outside the web on colorful parachutes.
The concluding message pairs magic with the real world and will provide picturebook readers with a warm feeling of discovery and magic of their own, making this a fine and inspirational recommendation for young leisure readers who love magical stories.
Hot link to above review:
Mystery
& Thrillers
Cabin
Fever
James M Jackson
Barking Rain Press
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-935460-90-9 Price: $13.95
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-935460-91-6 Price: $5.95
http://www.barkingrainpress.org/dd-product/cabin-fever/
Cabin Fever is a recommended pick both for crime and mystery readers who enjoyed the prior Seamus McCree story in Bad Policy and for newcomers such as this reviewer, who encounter Seamus here for the first time. No prior introduction is needed for this stand-alone story, which opens with Seamus anticipating a relaxing retreat at a family cabin after his probe of financial crimes in a prior story.
There's no rest for the weary, however - and especially not for a savvy crime investigator whose skills could be tapped at any time - even in the relative isolation of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Not everybody is unfortunate enough to discover a naked woman on their porch during a blizzard; and not everyone could readily identify the rope burns on her ankles and wrists as indicators that she's been imprisoned.
Seamus faces a medical emergency as he is snowbound, has few resources, and must struggle with a woman suffering from frostbite, fever and amnesia - but this is only the opening salvo of a story that is highly charged and packed with twists and turns challenging his investigative skills.
When the police finally arrive, it's only to pinpoint Seamus as the chief suspect in a string of local crimes that involve a series of murders and disappearances. As he confronts the law and a domestic paramilitary group, Seamus finds his best defense is not a strong offense but his talent for conducting investigations, which holds wider ramifications than the mystery surrounding one female prisoner.
What sets Cabin Fever apart from your usual mystery is a wry sense of humor that pops up from time to time at unusual moments. Take, for example, Seamus' initial discovery of the woman on his porch. At first he believes a practical joke is in the making - a theory quickly disproven; but not before a hearty laugh: "Turning from the door, I caught a flash of two bare legs dangling below the chair hammock attached to a porch rafter. I laughed so hard my sides ached and my lungs hurt from the frozen air. In a place where winter lasts half the year, jokes and jokers get odd. The jerks must have stepped a blow-up doll onto my porch to make the footprints and posed it in the swinging chair. They had concealed their tracks well. In this dark, I couldn’t figure out how they did it, but I’d find the evidence in daylight. Fine. Like pink flamingos mysteriously congregating in front lawns of townies about to return from vacation, this babe was definitely going to show up in someone’s sauna in the near future. Might as well drag it to the house so it'll be close at hand for future revenge. I grabbed the plastic legs to haul the thing from the chair. The legs were real."
As Seamus' son Paddy becomes involved in events that draw Seamus ever deeper into danger, chapters alternate between the first-person perspective of Seamus and a third-person observational perspective, offering a satisfying combination of introspective and investigative analysis and creating an easy flow of dialogue, plot and perspective that readers will find engrossing.
Don't expect your usual focus on police procedures, either: there's more depth to Cabin Fever's investigative process, fostered by a protagonist who operates outside the usual avenues of inquiry. This serves to create a story line that's complex and unpredictable. In a probe that will lay bare the inner workings, politics and interactions of county and state police and FBI systems alike, Cabin Fever offers a satisfying saga that ultimately revolves around freedom, justifications for violence and killing, and a thwarted effort to take back the nation through citizen action.
In the end it's all about fresh starts for everyone involved. With its combination of social consciousness, political action, intrigue, and family relationships, Cabin Fever will satisfy any mystery or thriller reader.
Hot link to above review:
James M Jackson
Barking Rain Press
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-935460-90-9 Price: $13.95
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-935460-91-6 Price: $5.95
http://www.barkingrainpress.org/dd-product/cabin-fever/
Cabin Fever is a recommended pick both for crime and mystery readers who enjoyed the prior Seamus McCree story in Bad Policy and for newcomers such as this reviewer, who encounter Seamus here for the first time. No prior introduction is needed for this stand-alone story, which opens with Seamus anticipating a relaxing retreat at a family cabin after his probe of financial crimes in a prior story.
There's no rest for the weary, however - and especially not for a savvy crime investigator whose skills could be tapped at any time - even in the relative isolation of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Not everybody is unfortunate enough to discover a naked woman on their porch during a blizzard; and not everyone could readily identify the rope burns on her ankles and wrists as indicators that she's been imprisoned.
Seamus faces a medical emergency as he is snowbound, has few resources, and must struggle with a woman suffering from frostbite, fever and amnesia - but this is only the opening salvo of a story that is highly charged and packed with twists and turns challenging his investigative skills.
When the police finally arrive, it's only to pinpoint Seamus as the chief suspect in a string of local crimes that involve a series of murders and disappearances. As he confronts the law and a domestic paramilitary group, Seamus finds his best defense is not a strong offense but his talent for conducting investigations, which holds wider ramifications than the mystery surrounding one female prisoner.
What sets Cabin Fever apart from your usual mystery is a wry sense of humor that pops up from time to time at unusual moments. Take, for example, Seamus' initial discovery of the woman on his porch. At first he believes a practical joke is in the making - a theory quickly disproven; but not before a hearty laugh: "Turning from the door, I caught a flash of two bare legs dangling below the chair hammock attached to a porch rafter. I laughed so hard my sides ached and my lungs hurt from the frozen air. In a place where winter lasts half the year, jokes and jokers get odd. The jerks must have stepped a blow-up doll onto my porch to make the footprints and posed it in the swinging chair. They had concealed their tracks well. In this dark, I couldn’t figure out how they did it, but I’d find the evidence in daylight. Fine. Like pink flamingos mysteriously congregating in front lawns of townies about to return from vacation, this babe was definitely going to show up in someone’s sauna in the near future. Might as well drag it to the house so it'll be close at hand for future revenge. I grabbed the plastic legs to haul the thing from the chair. The legs were real."
As Seamus' son Paddy becomes involved in events that draw Seamus ever deeper into danger, chapters alternate between the first-person perspective of Seamus and a third-person observational perspective, offering a satisfying combination of introspective and investigative analysis and creating an easy flow of dialogue, plot and perspective that readers will find engrossing.
Don't expect your usual focus on police procedures, either: there's more depth to Cabin Fever's investigative process, fostered by a protagonist who operates outside the usual avenues of inquiry. This serves to create a story line that's complex and unpredictable. In a probe that will lay bare the inner workings, politics and interactions of county and state police and FBI systems alike, Cabin Fever offers a satisfying saga that ultimately revolves around freedom, justifications for violence and killing, and a thwarted effort to take back the nation through citizen action.
In the end it's all about fresh starts for everyone involved. With its combination of social consciousness, political action, intrigue, and family relationships, Cabin Fever will satisfy any mystery or thriller reader.
Hot link to above review:
The Fregoli Delusion
Michael J. McCann
The Plaid Raccoon Press
9780987708755 (e-book)
9780987708748 (trade paperback)
$3.99 (e-book) $16.99 (trade paperback)
www.mjmccann.com
http://www.amazon.com/Fregoli-Delusion-Donaghue-Stainer-Crime-ebook/dp/B00A4HDF7E/
The Fregoli Delusion provides another Donaghue and Stainer crime novel and is recommended for both prior fans of the dynamic duo and newcomers who need no prior introduction to the other three stories to appreciate the scenarios here.
A billionaire is shot to death in a public park and the only eyewitness appears to have been in the perfect place for observing everything. There's only one problem: he appears to be psychotic, and his testimony won't hold up in court or help the investigation.
Or will it?
Lieutenant Hank Donaghue and Detective Karen Stainer find their usual routines disrupted as their focus becomes a probe not of the usual underworld, but the top levels of society where a killer apparently lies in wait: possibly in plain sight.
As for the eyewitness: is he really delusional, or is his perspective more valid than any other eyewitness's could be?
The Fregoli Delusion is all about delusion, reality, and a very real syndrome that affects a crime investigation and teaches the two investigators a thing or two about psychology: "“Fregoli syndrome is actually quite rare,” Caldwell said. “It’s a form of delusional misidentification syndrome, or DMS, where the patient believes they’re being persecuted by someone who disguises himself as other people. It’s named after Leopoldo Fregoli, an Italian actor who was famous a hundred years ago for being a quickchange artist.”"
It's actually based on a real (albeit rare) condition that has been referred to as the 'delusion of doubles', and is an intriguing reality that author Michael J. McCann deftly uses to his advantage to create a further twist on the traditional crime story.
The first thing to note: characterization is not just solid, it's actually compelling. Michael J. McCann's ability to make this a stand-alone novel that ties in well with the past but doesn't keep newcomers guessing for a moment is just one strength in a story packed with insights on psychological motivations, interpersonal relationships, and meaning.
After all - it's meaning and connection that drive any good mystery and keep readers involved in the overall 'whodunnit'; and in this The Fregoli Delusion excels.
Psychological insights drive a hard-hitting story line filled with satisfying twists based on an evolving reader understanding of not just criminal motivation, but the emotions of investigators trained to narrow their focus to the smallest details: "“Some of it involves what Freud called isolation of affect,” he said. “A defense mechanism where
you respond to unpleasantness or horror by putting your emotions in a box and cutting them off from the rest of your thought processes. I do that. Every cop does, if they want to survive. Compartmentalize your emotional responses to the things you see and keep the lid on very tightly.”…“The problems come, though, when you do that for too long and you lose touch with your emotions altogether.” He watched the ship inch down the river. “You lose all your highs and lows, and end up in the middle where there’s little or no emotion at all. Or, just as bad, you have inappropriate emotional responses to normal things.”"
It's all about interpersonal interactions: as The Fregoli Delusion evolves, so does reader knowledge about the approaches (and ultimate costs) of crime detective work.
The result is an intriguing story line that rides waves of deception to a triumphant, unpredictable conclusion. In the end everyone is educated not only about the Fregoli syndrome, but the ultimate emotional effects of murder on all involved.
Wrap insight in a cloak of relentless action and intrigue and you have a hard-driving story perfect for crime novel readers looking for something with a little more depth and meat to its plot.
Hot link to above review:
Michael J. McCann
The Plaid Raccoon Press
9780987708755 (e-book)
9780987708748 (trade paperback)
$3.99 (e-book) $16.99 (trade paperback)
www.mjmccann.com
http://www.amazon.com/Fregoli-Delusion-Donaghue-Stainer-Crime-ebook/dp/B00A4HDF7E/
The Fregoli Delusion provides another Donaghue and Stainer crime novel and is recommended for both prior fans of the dynamic duo and newcomers who need no prior introduction to the other three stories to appreciate the scenarios here.
A billionaire is shot to death in a public park and the only eyewitness appears to have been in the perfect place for observing everything. There's only one problem: he appears to be psychotic, and his testimony won't hold up in court or help the investigation.
Or will it?
Lieutenant Hank Donaghue and Detective Karen Stainer find their usual routines disrupted as their focus becomes a probe not of the usual underworld, but the top levels of society where a killer apparently lies in wait: possibly in plain sight.
As for the eyewitness: is he really delusional, or is his perspective more valid than any other eyewitness's could be?
The Fregoli Delusion is all about delusion, reality, and a very real syndrome that affects a crime investigation and teaches the two investigators a thing or two about psychology: "“Fregoli syndrome is actually quite rare,” Caldwell said. “It’s a form of delusional misidentification syndrome, or DMS, where the patient believes they’re being persecuted by someone who disguises himself as other people. It’s named after Leopoldo Fregoli, an Italian actor who was famous a hundred years ago for being a quickchange artist.”"
It's actually based on a real (albeit rare) condition that has been referred to as the 'delusion of doubles', and is an intriguing reality that author Michael J. McCann deftly uses to his advantage to create a further twist on the traditional crime story.
The first thing to note: characterization is not just solid, it's actually compelling. Michael J. McCann's ability to make this a stand-alone novel that ties in well with the past but doesn't keep newcomers guessing for a moment is just one strength in a story packed with insights on psychological motivations, interpersonal relationships, and meaning.
After all - it's meaning and connection that drive any good mystery and keep readers involved in the overall 'whodunnit'; and in this The Fregoli Delusion excels.
Psychological insights drive a hard-hitting story line filled with satisfying twists based on an evolving reader understanding of not just criminal motivation, but the emotions of investigators trained to narrow their focus to the smallest details: "“Some of it involves what Freud called isolation of affect,” he said. “A defense mechanism where
you respond to unpleasantness or horror by putting your emotions in a box and cutting them off from the rest of your thought processes. I do that. Every cop does, if they want to survive. Compartmentalize your emotional responses to the things you see and keep the lid on very tightly.”…“The problems come, though, when you do that for too long and you lose touch with your emotions altogether.” He watched the ship inch down the river. “You lose all your highs and lows, and end up in the middle where there’s little or no emotion at all. Or, just as bad, you have inappropriate emotional responses to normal things.”"
It's all about interpersonal interactions: as The Fregoli Delusion evolves, so does reader knowledge about the approaches (and ultimate costs) of crime detective work.
The result is an intriguing story line that rides waves of deception to a triumphant, unpredictable conclusion. In the end everyone is educated not only about the Fregoli syndrome, but the ultimate emotional effects of murder on all involved.
Wrap insight in a cloak of relentless action and intrigue and you have a hard-driving story perfect for crime novel readers looking for something with a little more depth and meat to its plot.
Hot link to above review:
The Fourth Season
Dorothy Johnston
Wakefield Press
9781743052525 AU$9.94
http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1146
The Fourth Season, a Sandra Mahoney mystery, represents the fourth book in Dorothy Johnston's mystery quartet, beginning with The Trojan Dog, then The White Tower and Eden. (The other books have not been seen by this reviewer).
It opens with a compelling first-person reflection: "The story I’m about to tell begins and ends by water….(sic) Over time, the two deaths ran together in my mind and I came to think of them as the water murders. The name conjures up an image of fluidity; but could as well suggest stagnation; or the leaching away of what is held to be precious by those most in need of it. I don’t mean life itself – that absolute division – or not only that. I mean that which gives each individual life its meaning."
Through this introduction readers receive fair warning that this mystery is anything but formula writing: it blends in philosophy and life associations and thus its plot incorporates far deeper significance than your usual 'whodunnit' focus on methods and perps alone.
Sandra Mahoney is a private investigator (of course) who finds personal meaning in the discovery of a floating body: a body which was once her partner's lover, making Ivan an immediate suspect, with no alibi.
To complicate matters further, she's investigating a second murder AND juggling the needs of two children also affected by Laila's death: a six-year-old and an adolescent. There's a lot of emotional reaction on all sides; and all this overshadows and complicates what is already a challenging investigation, blending personal into professional concerns and creating more than a series of conundrums for Sandra.
Dorothy Johnston should be commended, first of all, for using the first person as a vehicle for presenting all these emotions. It brings out inner feelings without the distance of using the third person and it adds fire and passion to her story: "What does it mean to be told too little? What does this particular lack mean to an adolescent boy, or to his mother, who happens to be a person endeavouring to make her living by collecting information? It was an endeavour that, for years up until that moment, had sustained, if only just, both my life and that of my children – sustained in a thousand practical, easily overlooked ways."
Dorothy Johnston is equally powerful at displaying her investigator protagonist's emotions throughout the course of events: another strength that separates The Fourth Season from your typical murder mystery: "I wanted to come face to face with that killer now. What man or woman, known to me perhaps, had that degree of nerve? Was it possible to deduce this from the outside? My experience told me no, of course it wasn’t. Did other people look at me and ask themselves: could she? Would she? I asked myself then: what are you capable of, if sufficiently pushed? I didn’t know the answer. I hoped it wasn’t murder. I hoped I knew myself well enough for that."
As events unfold and add layers of complexity to Sandra Mahoney's life, they successfully engross readers in not just a singular murder investigation, but a unified survey of everyone emotionally shaken by death. It's this approach that makes The Fourth Season a powerfully different story, highly recommended for any who seek more complexity in their murder reading.
Oh, and if you think you need previous background from the other books in the quartet, be advised: this stands well on its own. Also be advised: once you read The Fourth Season you most likely WILL want to pick up the others to see what you missed!
Hot link to above review:
Dorothy Johnston
Wakefield Press
9781743052525 AU$9.94
http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1146
The Fourth Season, a Sandra Mahoney mystery, represents the fourth book in Dorothy Johnston's mystery quartet, beginning with The Trojan Dog, then The White Tower and Eden. (The other books have not been seen by this reviewer).
It opens with a compelling first-person reflection: "The story I’m about to tell begins and ends by water….(sic) Over time, the two deaths ran together in my mind and I came to think of them as the water murders. The name conjures up an image of fluidity; but could as well suggest stagnation; or the leaching away of what is held to be precious by those most in need of it. I don’t mean life itself – that absolute division – or not only that. I mean that which gives each individual life its meaning."
Through this introduction readers receive fair warning that this mystery is anything but formula writing: it blends in philosophy and life associations and thus its plot incorporates far deeper significance than your usual 'whodunnit' focus on methods and perps alone.
Sandra Mahoney is a private investigator (of course) who finds personal meaning in the discovery of a floating body: a body which was once her partner's lover, making Ivan an immediate suspect, with no alibi.
To complicate matters further, she's investigating a second murder AND juggling the needs of two children also affected by Laila's death: a six-year-old and an adolescent. There's a lot of emotional reaction on all sides; and all this overshadows and complicates what is already a challenging investigation, blending personal into professional concerns and creating more than a series of conundrums for Sandra.
Dorothy Johnston should be commended, first of all, for using the first person as a vehicle for presenting all these emotions. It brings out inner feelings without the distance of using the third person and it adds fire and passion to her story: "What does it mean to be told too little? What does this particular lack mean to an adolescent boy, or to his mother, who happens to be a person endeavouring to make her living by collecting information? It was an endeavour that, for years up until that moment, had sustained, if only just, both my life and that of my children – sustained in a thousand practical, easily overlooked ways."
Dorothy Johnston is equally powerful at displaying her investigator protagonist's emotions throughout the course of events: another strength that separates The Fourth Season from your typical murder mystery: "I wanted to come face to face with that killer now. What man or woman, known to me perhaps, had that degree of nerve? Was it possible to deduce this from the outside? My experience told me no, of course it wasn’t. Did other people look at me and ask themselves: could she? Would she? I asked myself then: what are you capable of, if sufficiently pushed? I didn’t know the answer. I hoped it wasn’t murder. I hoped I knew myself well enough for that."
As events unfold and add layers of complexity to Sandra Mahoney's life, they successfully engross readers in not just a singular murder investigation, but a unified survey of everyone emotionally shaken by death. It's this approach that makes The Fourth Season a powerfully different story, highly recommended for any who seek more complexity in their murder reading.
Oh, and if you think you need previous background from the other books in the quartet, be advised: this stands well on its own. Also be advised: once you read The Fourth Season you most likely WILL want to pick up the others to see what you missed!
Hot link to above review:
Silent Fear: A Medical Mystery
Barbara Ebel
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9911589-1-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9911589-0-4
http://barbaraebel.weebly.com/
Silent Fear is billed as a medical mystery and holds an important characteristic separating it from many competitors in the genre: its author is a physician herself, so the medical facts, setting and background are not only believable but are solidly grounded in reality.
This pragmatic feel is repeatedly reflected in chapters packed with not just action, but medical challenges that center around a nationwide meningitis outbreak and brain surgeon Dr. Danny Tilson, whose expertise places him at the heart of investigations into the rapidly-spreading infection.
For decades the modern world has lived with the specter of a world-wide, deadly pandemic. Silent Fear charts the course of such an event, using the character of Danny to follow its progression, mystery, and challenges through the medical community and population at large.
While Silent Fear is about a catastrophic world-wide event, it's also about Danny's turbulent life outside his job and how it's affected and changed by the epidemic. As the pandemic looms, so do the crises in Danny's own life - and the feel that certain disaster is about to change everything he knows.
Silent Fear's medical procedures and descriptions are precise, reflecting real-world actions and experiences all backed by the author's own experiences in the medical community: "He snapped the film onto the view box behind them and evaluated the hematoma showing a concavity towards the brain." While this precision could be deemed a no-brainer for a medical mystery/thriller, it's interesting to note that too many other "medical novels" either fail to reflect medical realities or fall short of logical sequences of events in diagnostic and treatment proceedings.
As disease and panic spreads, Danny finds himself not only at the center of a whirlwind, but seemingly immune to the very conditions laying waste to his colleagues and friends.
Why?
This only adds to the mystery and creates further questions as Danny's personal life spins as relentlessly towards crisis as his professional life: "For the first time in months after meeting Rachel and Julia once in Knoxville, he was getting to see his baby girl, and now it would be one big scramble to sort out this new development. Rachel sure knew how to dump on him. He felt pressure inside his head like one of his own patients with high intracranial pressure."
A court battle, personal challenge and medical mystery weave complex paths of disputes and resolution: patterns that permeate Silent Fear. Even seasoned medical thriller readers won't know exactly where the plot is heading: and in mystery/thriller genre reading, that's an unexpected 'plus'.
It would have been all too easy to make Silent Fear ALL about the pandemic. The inclusion of one man's personal whirlwind of emotional change adds depth to the story line and more accurately reflects the realities of life: that even in the face of disaster and death, subplots of personal issues retain their ability to redirect attention.
In the end, to call Silent Fear a medical mystery alone would be to simplify its content and message. Yes, it's medical mystery/thriller writing at its best - but it's also about life-changing actions, responsibilities, family ties, romance, and survival. All these elements combine in a hard-hitting, realistic story sure to attract a wide audience.
Hot link to above review:
Barbara Ebel
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9911589-1-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9911589-0-4
http://barbaraebel.weebly.com/
Silent Fear is billed as a medical mystery and holds an important characteristic separating it from many competitors in the genre: its author is a physician herself, so the medical facts, setting and background are not only believable but are solidly grounded in reality.
This pragmatic feel is repeatedly reflected in chapters packed with not just action, but medical challenges that center around a nationwide meningitis outbreak and brain surgeon Dr. Danny Tilson, whose expertise places him at the heart of investigations into the rapidly-spreading infection.
For decades the modern world has lived with the specter of a world-wide, deadly pandemic. Silent Fear charts the course of such an event, using the character of Danny to follow its progression, mystery, and challenges through the medical community and population at large.
While Silent Fear is about a catastrophic world-wide event, it's also about Danny's turbulent life outside his job and how it's affected and changed by the epidemic. As the pandemic looms, so do the crises in Danny's own life - and the feel that certain disaster is about to change everything he knows.
Silent Fear's medical procedures and descriptions are precise, reflecting real-world actions and experiences all backed by the author's own experiences in the medical community: "He snapped the film onto the view box behind them and evaluated the hematoma showing a concavity towards the brain." While this precision could be deemed a no-brainer for a medical mystery/thriller, it's interesting to note that too many other "medical novels" either fail to reflect medical realities or fall short of logical sequences of events in diagnostic and treatment proceedings.
As disease and panic spreads, Danny finds himself not only at the center of a whirlwind, but seemingly immune to the very conditions laying waste to his colleagues and friends.
Why?
This only adds to the mystery and creates further questions as Danny's personal life spins as relentlessly towards crisis as his professional life: "For the first time in months after meeting Rachel and Julia once in Knoxville, he was getting to see his baby girl, and now it would be one big scramble to sort out this new development. Rachel sure knew how to dump on him. He felt pressure inside his head like one of his own patients with high intracranial pressure."
A court battle, personal challenge and medical mystery weave complex paths of disputes and resolution: patterns that permeate Silent Fear. Even seasoned medical thriller readers won't know exactly where the plot is heading: and in mystery/thriller genre reading, that's an unexpected 'plus'.
It would have been all too easy to make Silent Fear ALL about the pandemic. The inclusion of one man's personal whirlwind of emotional change adds depth to the story line and more accurately reflects the realities of life: that even in the face of disaster and death, subplots of personal issues retain their ability to redirect attention.
In the end, to call Silent Fear a medical mystery alone would be to simplify its content and message. Yes, it's medical mystery/thriller writing at its best - but it's also about life-changing actions, responsibilities, family ties, romance, and survival. All these elements combine in a hard-hitting, realistic story sure to attract a wide audience.
Hot link to above review:
Spirituality
An Upraised Chalice
Gene O'Neil
ASEMC Press
978-0-9912635-0-9 $15.95
www.UpraisedChalice.com
When bad things happen to good people, there's usually no logic to explaining spiritual purpose. A lot must be attributed to faith, intuition, and inherent belief systems: but what if the Divine were expressively involved in this process of understanding? What if a near-death experience resulted not just in a glimpse of the other side, but an actual close encounter?
That's what happened to author Gene O'Neil, who details his chronicle of spiritual exploration stemming from such an event in An Upraised Chalice, where the author was killed then 'sent back'.
One note: the author is both a life-long spiritual seeker and a practical, family man as well as a flight instructor and builder. His autobiography is no self-centered spiritual self-examination, but a chronicle of a life course changed by an auto accident which wasn't just near-fatal, but fatal. And lest there be any misunderstanding of the story's underlying purpose and presentation, its full title is An Upraised Chalice: Adventures and Near-Death Encounters in my Search for the Brotherhood of Light and What It Can Mean for You. It's this dual focus on life change, a spiritual quest, and encounters with the Brotherhood of Light which are the meat of his autobiography, so if spiritual introspection is not for you, look elsewhere.
Any reader interested in spiritual stories of the Divine will find one of its strengths lies in its bigger picture, using personal experience as a guidepost to spiritual revelation. There's focus on karmic paths, life journeys, and a wide-ranging spiritual paradigm that embraces Jesus and other spiritual traditions equally - which is why traditionalists will likely not be open to An Upraised Chalice's premise. And that's a shame. It's packed with details on a course of life embarked upon by not a new age seeker, but a practical man who is a homesteader, is well versed in physical science, and who became dedicated to 'awakening humanity' through an awakening process detailed here.
There's no better place to begin, for true spiritual revelation, than with one's own personal experience; and so An Upraised Chalice sets the tone for any ready for their own 'journey of discovery'.
Begin with a fascinating prologue by David Tame, who first met the author at the end of 1999, when the two were to meet up to go to a spiritual retreat. Tame's life held many unusual parallel encounters to O'Neil's - and provides many candid testimonies to O'Neil's competence: "Gene isn’t an air-headed visionary, he doesn’t make up stories or even embellish them. So when he relates, for instance, that Archangel Michael spoke to him and saved his life, it’s the solid truth."
With this pithy introduction in mind, readers embark on an exploration of an extraordinary journey that all began with premonitions of disaster, a head-on collision, and the intervention of Archangel Michael, who decreed that the author return to Earth on a mission. What brought about this intercession forms the meat of the journey as O'Neil searches for answers on why he's remained alive.
In this case it's all about a bigger picture which moves from personal and spiritual reflection to the lives of humans on Earth and the paths and forces that drive them. O'Neil's search in a way can be identified as the modern dilemma of 'everyman': "There is a growing sense among many that something major is missing in our civilization—a lack of moral compass, a lack of direction. Many are looking for answers."
And the crux of living lies in these questions: "The years turn into decades and sooner or later, (hopefully later) sickness or accidents happen and all are again confronted with the big questions: Why? What’s next? What has this life that I’ve lived been about? As one begins to consider their own eventual departure: What have I been able to do to make things a little better? What have I passed along to make others’ lives more beautiful?"
An alternative history of man on Earth is provided in the course of a journey that outlines purpose, meaning, and evolutionary processes. Accounts of various civilizations, the evolution of Great Laws, the purpose of individual incarnations over various lives, and how karmic patterns unfold and are worked on make for lively chapters blending O'Neill's experiences with answers he has found in the course of his quest.
Be forewarned: the author is on a mission, reflected here. And that mission includes spreading understanding "…it’s both a humbling and an empowering experience—humbling in the sense that the sacred action invoked is so very beautiful, so vast, and all-inclusive in scope, conveying such hope and promise of a glorious freedom only dreamt of—empowering in the sense that as one accelerates in this sacred decree, the majesty of one’s own Presence giving this decree is truly experienced more and more—thus the decree becomes even more powerful."
Those who would drink from O'Neill's chalice of understanding will find its contents full and complex. Near death encounters, a travelogue to the world's spiritual places and their impact on his life and understanding make for a fascinating blend of self-inspection, pilgrimage, and revelation that holds many possible truths that will resonate for any who mindful of their own spirituality and who are open to a wide-ranging approach linking such diverse elements as Edgar Cayce, Jesus, Eastern religions and much more.
Hot link to above review:
Gene O'Neil
ASEMC Press
978-0-9912635-0-9 $15.95
www.UpraisedChalice.com
When bad things happen to good people, there's usually no logic to explaining spiritual purpose. A lot must be attributed to faith, intuition, and inherent belief systems: but what if the Divine were expressively involved in this process of understanding? What if a near-death experience resulted not just in a glimpse of the other side, but an actual close encounter?
That's what happened to author Gene O'Neil, who details his chronicle of spiritual exploration stemming from such an event in An Upraised Chalice, where the author was killed then 'sent back'.
One note: the author is both a life-long spiritual seeker and a practical, family man as well as a flight instructor and builder. His autobiography is no self-centered spiritual self-examination, but a chronicle of a life course changed by an auto accident which wasn't just near-fatal, but fatal. And lest there be any misunderstanding of the story's underlying purpose and presentation, its full title is An Upraised Chalice: Adventures and Near-Death Encounters in my Search for the Brotherhood of Light and What It Can Mean for You. It's this dual focus on life change, a spiritual quest, and encounters with the Brotherhood of Light which are the meat of his autobiography, so if spiritual introspection is not for you, look elsewhere.
Any reader interested in spiritual stories of the Divine will find one of its strengths lies in its bigger picture, using personal experience as a guidepost to spiritual revelation. There's focus on karmic paths, life journeys, and a wide-ranging spiritual paradigm that embraces Jesus and other spiritual traditions equally - which is why traditionalists will likely not be open to An Upraised Chalice's premise. And that's a shame. It's packed with details on a course of life embarked upon by not a new age seeker, but a practical man who is a homesteader, is well versed in physical science, and who became dedicated to 'awakening humanity' through an awakening process detailed here.
There's no better place to begin, for true spiritual revelation, than with one's own personal experience; and so An Upraised Chalice sets the tone for any ready for their own 'journey of discovery'.
Begin with a fascinating prologue by David Tame, who first met the author at the end of 1999, when the two were to meet up to go to a spiritual retreat. Tame's life held many unusual parallel encounters to O'Neil's - and provides many candid testimonies to O'Neil's competence: "Gene isn’t an air-headed visionary, he doesn’t make up stories or even embellish them. So when he relates, for instance, that Archangel Michael spoke to him and saved his life, it’s the solid truth."
With this pithy introduction in mind, readers embark on an exploration of an extraordinary journey that all began with premonitions of disaster, a head-on collision, and the intervention of Archangel Michael, who decreed that the author return to Earth on a mission. What brought about this intercession forms the meat of the journey as O'Neil searches for answers on why he's remained alive.
In this case it's all about a bigger picture which moves from personal and spiritual reflection to the lives of humans on Earth and the paths and forces that drive them. O'Neil's search in a way can be identified as the modern dilemma of 'everyman': "There is a growing sense among many that something major is missing in our civilization—a lack of moral compass, a lack of direction. Many are looking for answers."
And the crux of living lies in these questions: "The years turn into decades and sooner or later, (hopefully later) sickness or accidents happen and all are again confronted with the big questions: Why? What’s next? What has this life that I’ve lived been about? As one begins to consider their own eventual departure: What have I been able to do to make things a little better? What have I passed along to make others’ lives more beautiful?"
An alternative history of man on Earth is provided in the course of a journey that outlines purpose, meaning, and evolutionary processes. Accounts of various civilizations, the evolution of Great Laws, the purpose of individual incarnations over various lives, and how karmic patterns unfold and are worked on make for lively chapters blending O'Neill's experiences with answers he has found in the course of his quest.
Be forewarned: the author is on a mission, reflected here. And that mission includes spreading understanding "…it’s both a humbling and an empowering experience—humbling in the sense that the sacred action invoked is so very beautiful, so vast, and all-inclusive in scope, conveying such hope and promise of a glorious freedom only dreamt of—empowering in the sense that as one accelerates in this sacred decree, the majesty of one’s own Presence giving this decree is truly experienced more and more—thus the decree becomes even more powerful."
Those who would drink from O'Neill's chalice of understanding will find its contents full and complex. Near death encounters, a travelogue to the world's spiritual places and their impact on his life and understanding make for a fascinating blend of self-inspection, pilgrimage, and revelation that holds many possible truths that will resonate for any who mindful of their own spirituality and who are open to a wide-ranging approach linking such diverse elements as Edgar Cayce, Jesus, Eastern religions and much more.
Hot link to above review:
Divine Order: Book of Peace & Happiness
La Resa Edwards
BS Splitter & The Principles of Peace
978-0983847847 $999.99 (free on Twitter @BSSplitter)
www.BSSplitter.com
You've heard of channeling and spirit guides? These usually contain words of wisdom passed through the 'other side' and translated/presented by human oracles, if you will. Well, 'BS Splitter & The Principles of Peace' is something different: it's Volume Zero in the series Divine Order: Book of Peace & Happiness, it is "dictated by God", and whether or not you believe in its foundations, it offers many a startling, revealing revelation for any open to considering a different kind of 'word of God' than the traditional Bible of yore.
The title is no happy accident: divine order is the focus of a saga that began with the author's enlightenment in 2001. Before that, she was a 30-something 'lost soul'. And if you anticipate a pious set of insights, be prepared for an eye-popping introduction firmly rooted in the real world with language that is quite less than Godly: "After his 3rd or 4th trip, Miss Thang began trippin. Like Clockwork. Some Guy's phone would ring. Being a typical guy, Some Guy "didn't wanna Hear that Female shit." (…about his weekend disappearances.)
The process of her discoveries involves readers in an extraordinary journey: but be prepared for a lot of capitalization of words throughout every paragraph. The author's use of capitalization as emphasis is just one of the facets that set Divine Order apart from anything else.
Another is its focus on a different viewpoint of something the author calls 'The Timespace Splitter' - a zone that precludes ever returning to 'Blueprint Earth'. There's a warning about the life (and soul) changing effects of embarking on this journey, which involves entering a Considered Time Zone where one's original body will be physically Timeplaced in the First Dimension to allow the mind to travel back and forth from beginning to end - resulting in a slowed aging process (among many other things.)
New age and spirituality heavily blend in the course of this eye-opening journey, so its ideal reader should be open to both. Quite frankly, those unprepared to consider extraordinary experiences, places and spiritual ideas won't even read past the first chapter.
Those who do (which is those who harbor a blend of open- mindnessness and the ability to take ongoing capitalization as emphasis) will find here a series of lessons on God's divine plan.
Now, be cautioned: Divine Order is anything but light reading or light food for thought. As the author says, "…there is no easy Way to Reveal God's whereabouts." For that matter, there's no simpler way to transmit the weighty concepts of Divine Order. In other words: don't expect to skim this treatise, don't expect its wisdom to result in an instantaneous 'I see!' epiphony, and don't treat it as a novel. It's laborious reading simply because its concepts are challenging, involved, and life-changing despite the author's inclusion of many examples, case histories, and human-centered insights.
So what's in it for the reader? Those appreciative of contemplative spiritual treatises will find its promise clearly stated: "If you Choose Divine Order, welcome to The Peace of Life….What have You brought into Today's World That You cannot disown?...(sic) Don't worry if Your Work, thus far, has been Selfish or of little to no Value. As long as You Are not Adverse, God has not Forgotten You."
From psychology to prayer, politics to adversity, suffering and illness to where to go for Spiritual Nourishment: it's all here, in a complex blueprint that comes not just from the author's heart, but from somewhere else entirely.
It's a positive message in a bottle for a waning worldview: one that is recommended especially for new age spirituality readers seeking very specific insights into a wide-ranging set of social and spiritual ailments. The payoff for undertaking this journey? Newfound possibilities for understanding the roots of human angst and the promise of peace and understanding which comes not just from God, but from another dimension entirely, translated here by a very special messenger.
It doesn't take long before readers come to realize that the author is much more than an oracle. Without giving away more, suffice it to say that Divine Order comes from unusual origins, provides a program for spiritual enlightenment and change, and represents the ticket to a lifelong journey that, like a ripple, holds the potential to change the reader and his/her world.
Hot link to above review:
La Resa Edwards
BS Splitter & The Principles of Peace
978-0983847847 $999.99 (free on Twitter @BSSplitter)
www.BSSplitter.com
You've heard of channeling and spirit guides? These usually contain words of wisdom passed through the 'other side' and translated/presented by human oracles, if you will. Well, 'BS Splitter & The Principles of Peace' is something different: it's Volume Zero in the series Divine Order: Book of Peace & Happiness, it is "dictated by God", and whether or not you believe in its foundations, it offers many a startling, revealing revelation for any open to considering a different kind of 'word of God' than the traditional Bible of yore.
The title is no happy accident: divine order is the focus of a saga that began with the author's enlightenment in 2001. Before that, she was a 30-something 'lost soul'. And if you anticipate a pious set of insights, be prepared for an eye-popping introduction firmly rooted in the real world with language that is quite less than Godly: "After his 3rd or 4th trip, Miss Thang began trippin. Like Clockwork. Some Guy's phone would ring. Being a typical guy, Some Guy "didn't wanna Hear that Female shit." (…about his weekend disappearances.)
The process of her discoveries involves readers in an extraordinary journey: but be prepared for a lot of capitalization of words throughout every paragraph. The author's use of capitalization as emphasis is just one of the facets that set Divine Order apart from anything else.
Another is its focus on a different viewpoint of something the author calls 'The Timespace Splitter' - a zone that precludes ever returning to 'Blueprint Earth'. There's a warning about the life (and soul) changing effects of embarking on this journey, which involves entering a Considered Time Zone where one's original body will be physically Timeplaced in the First Dimension to allow the mind to travel back and forth from beginning to end - resulting in a slowed aging process (among many other things.)
New age and spirituality heavily blend in the course of this eye-opening journey, so its ideal reader should be open to both. Quite frankly, those unprepared to consider extraordinary experiences, places and spiritual ideas won't even read past the first chapter.
Those who do (which is those who harbor a blend of open- mindnessness and the ability to take ongoing capitalization as emphasis) will find here a series of lessons on God's divine plan.
Now, be cautioned: Divine Order is anything but light reading or light food for thought. As the author says, "…there is no easy Way to Reveal God's whereabouts." For that matter, there's no simpler way to transmit the weighty concepts of Divine Order. In other words: don't expect to skim this treatise, don't expect its wisdom to result in an instantaneous 'I see!' epiphony, and don't treat it as a novel. It's laborious reading simply because its concepts are challenging, involved, and life-changing despite the author's inclusion of many examples, case histories, and human-centered insights.
So what's in it for the reader? Those appreciative of contemplative spiritual treatises will find its promise clearly stated: "If you Choose Divine Order, welcome to The Peace of Life….What have You brought into Today's World That You cannot disown?...(sic) Don't worry if Your Work, thus far, has been Selfish or of little to no Value. As long as You Are not Adverse, God has not Forgotten You."
From psychology to prayer, politics to adversity, suffering and illness to where to go for Spiritual Nourishment: it's all here, in a complex blueprint that comes not just from the author's heart, but from somewhere else entirely.
It's a positive message in a bottle for a waning worldview: one that is recommended especially for new age spirituality readers seeking very specific insights into a wide-ranging set of social and spiritual ailments. The payoff for undertaking this journey? Newfound possibilities for understanding the roots of human angst and the promise of peace and understanding which comes not just from God, but from another dimension entirely, translated here by a very special messenger.
It doesn't take long before readers come to realize that the author is much more than an oracle. Without giving away more, suffice it to say that Divine Order comes from unusual origins, provides a program for spiritual enlightenment and change, and represents the ticket to a lifelong journey that, like a ripple, holds the potential to change the reader and his/her world.
Hot link to above review:
Spirit Tales Spirit Tale One: The Wheelwork: Don't
You Know You're Not Alone!
Rabbi Sipporah Joseph
CreateSpace
978-1494748494 $9.99 Kindle $20.10 Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Tales-Tale-One-Wheelwork/dp/1494748495/ref=la_B00HFSZ48S_1_4/181-5991282-1226007?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391172144&sr=1-4
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spirit-tales-spirit-tale-one-rabbi-sipporah-joseph/1117802425?ean=9781494748494
http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781494748494-1
https://www.createspace.com/4581588
http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Spirit-Tales-Tale-One/Rabbi-Sipporah-Joseph/9781494748494?id=5911721508110
Spirit Tales Spirit Tale One: The Wheelwork is a recommendation for students of Messianic Jewish studies, and provides the first in the 'Spirit Tales' series of stories: this opener centering around what influences identity.
First, an introduction: its author, Messianic Rabbi (MRav) Sipporah Joseph, is a born Jew and a Jewish religious storyteller with not just a heritage to claim, but a personal faith deeply rooted in Messianic Judaism. Her stories thus center around and explore elements of Messianic Judaism using the storyteller mode as a user-friendly way of accessing deeper spiritual understanding, and are "…based on truth and truth and inspired by His writings. Inspired by Him whose residence is far above earth."
The Wheelwork opens this dialogue with a story most definitely not a fairytale but a 'spirit tale' which reflects a dialogue with God, and begins with a prologue that sets Grandma Sasson as a family storyteller with a message for all: "“The ruach blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but cannot tell from where it comes or where it goes. God is He, He is Ruach (Spirit) and Ruach is speaking to our ruach (spirit) revealing great mysteries, knowledge, wisdom, understanding and joy. Just like the wind blows He is whispering to us, can you hear it? When you’re quiet on the inside you might here His gentle whispering, the still small voice. Adam and Chava (or Eve) knew the sound of His voice and Presence. We need to learn again to know and recognize the Voice, Ruach, EL Dio and let Him inspire us in our daily lives.”
The opening story in the series, The Wheelwork, is set in a faraway fictional country where a big city holds citizens actively engaged in competitions, fights, and other self-serving activities. It centers upon young adult Danit, daughter of Lot and Zillah, and it happens on a typical day for a student expected to attain a university law degree. Despite her success and path on the fast track for further societal success, Danit "… felt an emptiness inside herself, but couldn’t find words to describe it."
When her parents seem to abandon her, Danit finds herself within a whirlwind of personal and spiritual revelation, transported to a strange new world somewhere between living and dying, where all things are possible: "“What is happening to me?!” Danit cried out. But at the same time she felt a peace that surpassed all understanding. She was inside the whirlwind and was taken to a place she had never known before."
Her journey to uncover a previously-elusive understanding masked by the patterns of her goal-oriented world will change not only her life, but the lives around her; for The Wheelwork is all about the process involved in setting these forces in motion, and provides the rudiments of a healing encounter that will set the winds of spiritual change in motion for Danit - and for readers.
Understanding, faith and love are facets of life that Danit has never before realized, and they sweep her away in a tide of newfound self-examination and, ultimately, understanding.
It's rare to find a religious treatise based on Jewish Biblical teachings that hold the potential to reach out to a non-devout audience; but the storyteller form holds within it a greater power than plainer writing. All this is reinforced by a concluding section of 'questions' by Grandma Sasson's young listeners which further clarify points presented in the story.
The result is a powerful vision of redemption, recovery, and spiritual awakening filled with moral, ethical and religious insights especially recommended for Jewish readers looking for Messianic parables that are both different and highly accessible. It's deserving of five stars for its unique focus and insights, highly recommended for any who enjoy parables with Jewish roots.
Hot link to above review:
Rabbi Sipporah Joseph
CreateSpace
978-1494748494 $9.99 Kindle $20.10 Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Tales-Tale-One-Wheelwork/dp/1494748495/ref=la_B00HFSZ48S_1_4/181-5991282-1226007?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391172144&sr=1-4
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spirit-tales-spirit-tale-one-rabbi-sipporah-joseph/1117802425?ean=9781494748494
http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781494748494-1
https://www.createspace.com/4581588
http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Spirit-Tales-Tale-One/Rabbi-Sipporah-Joseph/9781494748494?id=5911721508110
Spirit Tales Spirit Tale One: The Wheelwork is a recommendation for students of Messianic Jewish studies, and provides the first in the 'Spirit Tales' series of stories: this opener centering around what influences identity.
First, an introduction: its author, Messianic Rabbi (MRav) Sipporah Joseph, is a born Jew and a Jewish religious storyteller with not just a heritage to claim, but a personal faith deeply rooted in Messianic Judaism. Her stories thus center around and explore elements of Messianic Judaism using the storyteller mode as a user-friendly way of accessing deeper spiritual understanding, and are "…based on truth and truth and inspired by His writings. Inspired by Him whose residence is far above earth."
The Wheelwork opens this dialogue with a story most definitely not a fairytale but a 'spirit tale' which reflects a dialogue with God, and begins with a prologue that sets Grandma Sasson as a family storyteller with a message for all: "“The ruach blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but cannot tell from where it comes or where it goes. God is He, He is Ruach (Spirit) and Ruach is speaking to our ruach (spirit) revealing great mysteries, knowledge, wisdom, understanding and joy. Just like the wind blows He is whispering to us, can you hear it? When you’re quiet on the inside you might here His gentle whispering, the still small voice. Adam and Chava (or Eve) knew the sound of His voice and Presence. We need to learn again to know and recognize the Voice, Ruach, EL Dio and let Him inspire us in our daily lives.”
The opening story in the series, The Wheelwork, is set in a faraway fictional country where a big city holds citizens actively engaged in competitions, fights, and other self-serving activities. It centers upon young adult Danit, daughter of Lot and Zillah, and it happens on a typical day for a student expected to attain a university law degree. Despite her success and path on the fast track for further societal success, Danit "… felt an emptiness inside herself, but couldn’t find words to describe it."
When her parents seem to abandon her, Danit finds herself within a whirlwind of personal and spiritual revelation, transported to a strange new world somewhere between living and dying, where all things are possible: "“What is happening to me?!” Danit cried out. But at the same time she felt a peace that surpassed all understanding. She was inside the whirlwind and was taken to a place she had never known before."
Her journey to uncover a previously-elusive understanding masked by the patterns of her goal-oriented world will change not only her life, but the lives around her; for The Wheelwork is all about the process involved in setting these forces in motion, and provides the rudiments of a healing encounter that will set the winds of spiritual change in motion for Danit - and for readers.
Understanding, faith and love are facets of life that Danit has never before realized, and they sweep her away in a tide of newfound self-examination and, ultimately, understanding.
It's rare to find a religious treatise based on Jewish Biblical teachings that hold the potential to reach out to a non-devout audience; but the storyteller form holds within it a greater power than plainer writing. All this is reinforced by a concluding section of 'questions' by Grandma Sasson's young listeners which further clarify points presented in the story.
The result is a powerful vision of redemption, recovery, and spiritual awakening filled with moral, ethical and religious insights especially recommended for Jewish readers looking for Messianic parables that are both different and highly accessible. It's deserving of five stars for its unique focus and insights, highly recommended for any who enjoy parables with Jewish roots.
Hot link to above review:
Where is Heaven?
Phil Bowie
Proud Eagle Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1494847371 AISN BOOHRV V78E
Kindle Edition: $4.99 Paperback: $13.18
http://www.amazon.com/Phil-Bowie/e/B001JOWGSA
Where Is Heaven? A Handbook for the Skeptical Believer questions everything about religion, from where it came from and the good and evil it does to the origins and purposes of heaven and hell to how prayer works. A near-death experience began the author's investigation into all these questions, and unlike most books which center on this experience, it focuses on the questions the experience fostered which prompted the author's overall investigation into the meaning of religion.
So if you're looking for another near-death probe, don't look here: you won't find it. The book's title says it all: in questioning (and I do mean questioning) the literal fact and nature of heaven, it offers a critical assessment of spiritual thinking from the nature and purpose of holy books themselves to man's interpretation.
Lest readers believe Where Is Heaven? comes from an atheist, the author says in the very first chapter that "I am a staunch believer in God." His belief in how that is interpreted is far more complex; considering the role God had in his own survival, why he has major issues with organized religion, and why believers should question where religion came from and how it is interpreted.
At each step of the way readers are involved in translations, interpretations, and critical assessments of how organized religion perceives, changes, and spreads the word and concepts of God and religion. From the evolution of symbols and rituals to how religions have historically given birth to fanatics, chapters strive to point out differences between human purpose and motivation and traditional belief systems.
While it may seem, at times, as though Phil Bowie is using thinly veiled belief as a method for bashing tradition, in fact his insights are actually supportive of belief. Just not the kinds of blind belief that organized religions tend to advocate.
He uses historical precedent to examine the changing beliefs that "God is on our side" in world struggles, he documents the evolution of belief systems around the world over centuries of human experience, and he condemns the failures of religious organizations to identify and reject the radical elements within their own groups: "And, as with the larger body of Muslims, I don’t see the majority of Christians and Jews loudly condemning the several radical factions their own religions have spawned."
Sure, this approach will offend many who find it easier to identify the failings of religions other than their own: but it will intrigue believers who consider self-examination to be more than the prerogative of priests and other religious entities, and it provides an opportunity for dialogue between wide audiences of believers, scientists, historians, religious leaders, and everyday people.
From Phil Bowie's own eye-opening experiences with health challenges and minor miracles to how he came to perceive the power of God at work in everyday events, Where Is Heaven? is a journey that blends introspection with analysis and invites readers to do the same: "Throughout this particular long and complex miracle I can clearly see the power of God at work, because life and consciousness and self-awareness and perception and freedom and willpower and reasoning and curiosity have flowed to all of us through a wonderful eons-long questing adventure and the exquisite mechanisms of evolution, all of which were certainly instituted and perhaps often guided by God. In many respects mankind has done exceptionally well with those gifts. Including the performance of true miracles for the likes of me. And I believe that’s how it works. Thank God, but thanks at least equally to the most complex of His organic creations we know of. Us."
As Bowie comes, through his own philosophical and spiritual reflections, to reject the killing and destruction presented in Revelation, so he invites his readers to journey along on a different interpretation of religion: one that maintains faith in a benign, good force.
Any who would undertake their own spiritual examination will find Where Is Heaven? A Handbook for the Skeptical Believer a good starting place, offering a blend of autobiography, spiritual reflection, and enough historical precedent to consider the good, the evil, and the God present in modern belief systems. Thought-provoking and likely to be controversial, it's a pick not for the traditional believer, but for those who would inspect more closely the nature and possibilities of God.
Hot link to above review:
Phil Bowie
Proud Eagle Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1494847371 AISN BOOHRV V78E
Kindle Edition: $4.99 Paperback: $13.18
http://www.amazon.com/Phil-Bowie/e/B001JOWGSA
Where Is Heaven? A Handbook for the Skeptical Believer questions everything about religion, from where it came from and the good and evil it does to the origins and purposes of heaven and hell to how prayer works. A near-death experience began the author's investigation into all these questions, and unlike most books which center on this experience, it focuses on the questions the experience fostered which prompted the author's overall investigation into the meaning of religion.
So if you're looking for another near-death probe, don't look here: you won't find it. The book's title says it all: in questioning (and I do mean questioning) the literal fact and nature of heaven, it offers a critical assessment of spiritual thinking from the nature and purpose of holy books themselves to man's interpretation.
Lest readers believe Where Is Heaven? comes from an atheist, the author says in the very first chapter that "I am a staunch believer in God." His belief in how that is interpreted is far more complex; considering the role God had in his own survival, why he has major issues with organized religion, and why believers should question where religion came from and how it is interpreted.
At each step of the way readers are involved in translations, interpretations, and critical assessments of how organized religion perceives, changes, and spreads the word and concepts of God and religion. From the evolution of symbols and rituals to how religions have historically given birth to fanatics, chapters strive to point out differences between human purpose and motivation and traditional belief systems.
While it may seem, at times, as though Phil Bowie is using thinly veiled belief as a method for bashing tradition, in fact his insights are actually supportive of belief. Just not the kinds of blind belief that organized religions tend to advocate.
He uses historical precedent to examine the changing beliefs that "God is on our side" in world struggles, he documents the evolution of belief systems around the world over centuries of human experience, and he condemns the failures of religious organizations to identify and reject the radical elements within their own groups: "And, as with the larger body of Muslims, I don’t see the majority of Christians and Jews loudly condemning the several radical factions their own religions have spawned."
Sure, this approach will offend many who find it easier to identify the failings of religions other than their own: but it will intrigue believers who consider self-examination to be more than the prerogative of priests and other religious entities, and it provides an opportunity for dialogue between wide audiences of believers, scientists, historians, religious leaders, and everyday people.
From Phil Bowie's own eye-opening experiences with health challenges and minor miracles to how he came to perceive the power of God at work in everyday events, Where Is Heaven? is a journey that blends introspection with analysis and invites readers to do the same: "Throughout this particular long and complex miracle I can clearly see the power of God at work, because life and consciousness and self-awareness and perception and freedom and willpower and reasoning and curiosity have flowed to all of us through a wonderful eons-long questing adventure and the exquisite mechanisms of evolution, all of which were certainly instituted and perhaps often guided by God. In many respects mankind has done exceptionally well with those gifts. Including the performance of true miracles for the likes of me. And I believe that’s how it works. Thank God, but thanks at least equally to the most complex of His organic creations we know of. Us."
As Bowie comes, through his own philosophical and spiritual reflections, to reject the killing and destruction presented in Revelation, so he invites his readers to journey along on a different interpretation of religion: one that maintains faith in a benign, good force.
Any who would undertake their own spiritual examination will find Where Is Heaven? A Handbook for the Skeptical Believer a good starting place, offering a blend of autobiography, spiritual reflection, and enough historical precedent to consider the good, the evil, and the God present in modern belief systems. Thought-provoking and likely to be controversial, it's a pick not for the traditional believer, but for those who would inspect more closely the nature and possibilities of God.
Hot link to above review:
Novels
13:24
- A Story of
Faith and Obsession
M. Dolon Hickmon
Rehoboam Press
ISBN (Print): 978-0-9911066-0-8
ISBN (eBook): 970-0-9911066-2-2
Retail Price: $18.99USD ($16.99 on Amazon.com)
eBook Price: $6.99USD
http://1324book.com/
13:24 - A Story of Faith and Obsession is truly a complex and multi-faceted novel. To call it a crime story would be simplistic: woven within the plot are insights on obsessive behavior patterns, how music can provide subliminal impulses toward destructive actions, and how even religion can provoke a turn to the dark side of death and destruction. The characters are varied, with plausible motivations, often deeply rooted in their pasts. Through their actions, reactions and decisions, an absorbing Biblical mythology comes to life within a modern underworld of human trafficking.
The story opens with a teenager named Chris, who has a deadly premeditated violence in mind for his mother's boyfriend—and who winds up shooting the man dead in a very deliberate manner. Chris' mother is also found murdered in a grisly fashion, and other than Chris’s infatuation with a rock star's demonic stage act, Detective William Hursel finds few clues as to 'why'. With Chris vanished and now a fugitive, it is up to Hursel to piece together prior events. What he discovers opens his eyes to another world.
Moving between Chris' life and band leader Josh's affluent existence, Hursel uncovers dark and complex links between the two and their experiences. Faced with the evidence of those connections, Josh decides to clear his name by joining the probe into what really happened. Hard truths emerge, lending insights into Josh’s motivations not only for creating the kind of image that lures young fans to his brand of music, but for building a lifestyle that defies any kind of faith at all. Throughout, flashbacks of degrading childhood mistreatment drive an evolving darkness that sends ripples into the present.
Also at stake are beliefs and interactions between secular psychologists, their patients, and lives changed by death, faith, and abuse. It is a story about lifetimes of fear, plots of revenge, and reactions to messages begun in early years; but it is also about choices made along the way: "Chris took his time, relating to each. He identified most strongly with those punishers who, with jaws set and eyes alight, broadcast the cold satisfaction of exacting revenge."
With lyrics that express themes of spiritual longing, thwarted parenting, and perversion and its translation, Josh's music becomes intrinsic to the story, driving Chris and others while also mirroring the circumstances of their lives: "Josh's hostile rasping gave way to a mind-bending guitar solo. Bristling with high-octane fuzz, the instrumental sagged and wobbled as Mike waved the whammy bar and pulled aggressively on his strings. His wild discordance sent the crowd into an apoplectic frenzy."
As the plot slinks through a world of violence, readers witness the lasting impacts of poisoned faith and childhood violence on the human psyche. The tortured protagonists experience wickedness differently and take two different courses, one struggling against the downward spiral of his history, while the other follows a path that ends in brutality and inhumanity.
For some readers, this account of obsession, abuse, and redemption could strike too close to home; but those who want a hard-hitting, emotionally charged crime story should place this near the top of their reading list. 13:24's emotional impact is solid and compelling, dark though it is, and it will keep readers guessing about all the connections and results right up to the blistering conclusion.
Hot link to above review:
M. Dolon Hickmon
Rehoboam Press
ISBN (Print): 978-0-9911066-0-8
ISBN (eBook): 970-0-9911066-2-2
Retail Price: $18.99USD ($16.99 on Amazon.com)
eBook Price: $6.99USD
http://1324book.com/
13:24 - A Story of Faith and Obsession is truly a complex and multi-faceted novel. To call it a crime story would be simplistic: woven within the plot are insights on obsessive behavior patterns, how music can provide subliminal impulses toward destructive actions, and how even religion can provoke a turn to the dark side of death and destruction. The characters are varied, with plausible motivations, often deeply rooted in their pasts. Through their actions, reactions and decisions, an absorbing Biblical mythology comes to life within a modern underworld of human trafficking.
The story opens with a teenager named Chris, who has a deadly premeditated violence in mind for his mother's boyfriend—and who winds up shooting the man dead in a very deliberate manner. Chris' mother is also found murdered in a grisly fashion, and other than Chris’s infatuation with a rock star's demonic stage act, Detective William Hursel finds few clues as to 'why'. With Chris vanished and now a fugitive, it is up to Hursel to piece together prior events. What he discovers opens his eyes to another world.
Moving between Chris' life and band leader Josh's affluent existence, Hursel uncovers dark and complex links between the two and their experiences. Faced with the evidence of those connections, Josh decides to clear his name by joining the probe into what really happened. Hard truths emerge, lending insights into Josh’s motivations not only for creating the kind of image that lures young fans to his brand of music, but for building a lifestyle that defies any kind of faith at all. Throughout, flashbacks of degrading childhood mistreatment drive an evolving darkness that sends ripples into the present.
Also at stake are beliefs and interactions between secular psychologists, their patients, and lives changed by death, faith, and abuse. It is a story about lifetimes of fear, plots of revenge, and reactions to messages begun in early years; but it is also about choices made along the way: "Chris took his time, relating to each. He identified most strongly with those punishers who, with jaws set and eyes alight, broadcast the cold satisfaction of exacting revenge."
With lyrics that express themes of spiritual longing, thwarted parenting, and perversion and its translation, Josh's music becomes intrinsic to the story, driving Chris and others while also mirroring the circumstances of their lives: "Josh's hostile rasping gave way to a mind-bending guitar solo. Bristling with high-octane fuzz, the instrumental sagged and wobbled as Mike waved the whammy bar and pulled aggressively on his strings. His wild discordance sent the crowd into an apoplectic frenzy."
As the plot slinks through a world of violence, readers witness the lasting impacts of poisoned faith and childhood violence on the human psyche. The tortured protagonists experience wickedness differently and take two different courses, one struggling against the downward spiral of his history, while the other follows a path that ends in brutality and inhumanity.
For some readers, this account of obsession, abuse, and redemption could strike too close to home; but those who want a hard-hitting, emotionally charged crime story should place this near the top of their reading list. 13:24's emotional impact is solid and compelling, dark though it is, and it will keep readers guessing about all the connections and results right up to the blistering conclusion.
Hot link to above review:
Blinded
The MANagement
978-0-615-95447-9 $2.99
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IGJR2LC
Blinded opens with one Vic Phillips, a star poker player who seems to have it all: fame, women, and the respect of a tough gambling community. Vic is the most successful of his group called the Unit (four players who have taken Vegas by storm), and his brash, charismatic ways support his seemingly effortless ability to ace every poker tournament he's involved in.
So what's his secret - and what's in the cards for Vic's future in Vegas? That's what Blinded is all about: a cat-and-mouse game that opens with a winner and proceeds to examine strategy, motivation, achievement and, ultimately, the costs of being an unbeatable superman.
When Vic eschews ongoing success, he opens up a bucket of worms. As poker plays and strategy dominate even his personal relationships, he comes to find more is simmering under the surface of business and personal interactions than he had believed: "“It’s just these new guys coming in. They don’t care about the game. Every one of them has some gimmick, some lucky charm, some weird schtick they think will propel them to victory. The essence of the game is gone. It’s no longer about the cards, it's about some bullshit prop show.”"
Vegas is a strange world. It revolves around gambling, showmanship, manipulation and strategy and sports a cold front that wafts from every casino. As readers enter the realistic streets of this world, they learn about its atmosphere and how it permeates everything it touches, and they also learn about Vic's dreams, addictions, and a way of life that infects nearly everything he touches.
It's all about poker faces and plays, action and reaction, and corporate manipulation. As Vic comes to identify his blind sides and failings both as a professional player and as an individual, so he comes to see that he could lose everything - including his love - if he continues to pursue a self-destructive path.
Blinded is about self-revelation most of all: about selling out and hiding, about change, and about moving beyond a world centered upon high-stakes strategy and gaming.
As Vic evolves to realize his romance is stronger than his game, so readers become part of an explosive, violent world centered around casino politics and underhanded manipulation. It all boils down to a final table and a confrontation that will challenge not only Vic's reputation, but his path in life.
Can love win over wealth, and can romance become a gamble?
Read Blinded and find out.
Hot link to above review:
The MANagement
978-0-615-95447-9 $2.99
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IGJR2LC
Blinded opens with one Vic Phillips, a star poker player who seems to have it all: fame, women, and the respect of a tough gambling community. Vic is the most successful of his group called the Unit (four players who have taken Vegas by storm), and his brash, charismatic ways support his seemingly effortless ability to ace every poker tournament he's involved in.
So what's his secret - and what's in the cards for Vic's future in Vegas? That's what Blinded is all about: a cat-and-mouse game that opens with a winner and proceeds to examine strategy, motivation, achievement and, ultimately, the costs of being an unbeatable superman.
When Vic eschews ongoing success, he opens up a bucket of worms. As poker plays and strategy dominate even his personal relationships, he comes to find more is simmering under the surface of business and personal interactions than he had believed: "“It’s just these new guys coming in. They don’t care about the game. Every one of them has some gimmick, some lucky charm, some weird schtick they think will propel them to victory. The essence of the game is gone. It’s no longer about the cards, it's about some bullshit prop show.”"
Vegas is a strange world. It revolves around gambling, showmanship, manipulation and strategy and sports a cold front that wafts from every casino. As readers enter the realistic streets of this world, they learn about its atmosphere and how it permeates everything it touches, and they also learn about Vic's dreams, addictions, and a way of life that infects nearly everything he touches.
It's all about poker faces and plays, action and reaction, and corporate manipulation. As Vic comes to identify his blind sides and failings both as a professional player and as an individual, so he comes to see that he could lose everything - including his love - if he continues to pursue a self-destructive path.
Blinded is about self-revelation most of all: about selling out and hiding, about change, and about moving beyond a world centered upon high-stakes strategy and gaming.
As Vic evolves to realize his romance is stronger than his game, so readers become part of an explosive, violent world centered around casino politics and underhanded manipulation. It all boils down to a final table and a confrontation that will challenge not only Vic's reputation, but his path in life.
Can love win over wealth, and can romance become a gamble?
Read Blinded and find out.
Hot link to above review:
The Gondola Maker
Laura Morelli
Publisher: Laura Morelli
Hardcover: ISBN 978-0989367127 $24.95
Trade paperback: ISBN 978-0989367103 $12.49
Ebook: ISBN 978-0989367110 $5.49
www.lauramorelli.com
The Gondola Maker is historical fiction at its best, and is a strong recommendation for any who are interested in 1500s European settings and powerful protagonists.
It opens with a bang: "I chew my lower lip while I wait to see my father’s gondola catch fire." And thus, readers are hooked from the first line as they wonder why the protagonist (a 1581 Venetian gondola maker whose family has made them for generations) would stand by and observe a gondola's destruction. And while readers are quickly given information that a crime has been committed in the gondola, they are still left to wonder about the involvement of son Luca Vianello, who has yet to leave his mark on the world.
As boatmen gather to witness the gondola's destruction as a symbol of justice being carried out, Luca finds this is only the first event in a journey that will ultimately carry him away from his own heritage and destiny as a gondola maker, leading him to the edge of insanity when his mother dies in childbirth and a destructive argument with his father results in the obliteration of the family business.
Despite his flight and actions, the gondola trade continues to haunt Luca: his new job (as a private gondolier to a busy, successful artist) results in the discovery of a neglected antique gondola which Luca feels compelled to restore with the thought of using it as a lure to impress an attractive young woman.
Part of what makes The Gondola Maker so compelling is the setting and spirit of Venice, which are captured through Luca's eyes and which spice the tale with images that foster the feel of 1500s Venice and its waterways: "In Venice, things are not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar."
Many historical novels simply tell a story: The Gondola Maker is steeped in the story from start to finish, deftly capturing and displaying Venice's culture and boating traditions. It's this immersion (too rarely seen in historical novels) that brings history to life. Laura Morelli's story is 'show and tell' at its best: while Luca experiences his life changes, readers are plunged into a bygone world packed with sensory experiences, observations and Venetian culture. One can almost touch, feel and taste the atmosphere: it's that thick.
Another compelling difference in The Gondola Maker: it blends a boy's coming of age with the very adult world that surrounds him. When he works on the antique boat, his family's legacy comes to life; and as he comes to realize the motives of his newfound love he discovers his own past is impossible to completely reject: "I run my fingertips over the maple leaf. The finish has darkened it into a pleasingly crackled patina that reveals the veins of the rounded leaves. I cannot find it within myself to sand it away."
Extensive research into Venice's history in general and gondola makers and their culture in particular is reflected in the efforts of an art historian in the perfect position to bring the era to life.
In the end the boy becomes a man, newfound friendships offer fresh opportunities for growth and trade, and the gondolas which are the heart of both Luca's life and early Venetian culture will prove the pivotal force for rejoining families and shattered worlds.
Any reader who wants to be steeped in history - not just told about it - will relish the fire and life in every page of The Gondola Maker.
Hot link to above review:
Laura Morelli
Publisher: Laura Morelli
Hardcover: ISBN 978-0989367127 $24.95
Trade paperback: ISBN 978-0989367103 $12.49
Ebook: ISBN 978-0989367110 $5.49
www.lauramorelli.com
The Gondola Maker is historical fiction at its best, and is a strong recommendation for any who are interested in 1500s European settings and powerful protagonists.
It opens with a bang: "I chew my lower lip while I wait to see my father’s gondola catch fire." And thus, readers are hooked from the first line as they wonder why the protagonist (a 1581 Venetian gondola maker whose family has made them for generations) would stand by and observe a gondola's destruction. And while readers are quickly given information that a crime has been committed in the gondola, they are still left to wonder about the involvement of son Luca Vianello, who has yet to leave his mark on the world.
As boatmen gather to witness the gondola's destruction as a symbol of justice being carried out, Luca finds this is only the first event in a journey that will ultimately carry him away from his own heritage and destiny as a gondola maker, leading him to the edge of insanity when his mother dies in childbirth and a destructive argument with his father results in the obliteration of the family business.
Despite his flight and actions, the gondola trade continues to haunt Luca: his new job (as a private gondolier to a busy, successful artist) results in the discovery of a neglected antique gondola which Luca feels compelled to restore with the thought of using it as a lure to impress an attractive young woman.
Part of what makes The Gondola Maker so compelling is the setting and spirit of Venice, which are captured through Luca's eyes and which spice the tale with images that foster the feel of 1500s Venice and its waterways: "In Venice, things are not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar."
Many historical novels simply tell a story: The Gondola Maker is steeped in the story from start to finish, deftly capturing and displaying Venice's culture and boating traditions. It's this immersion (too rarely seen in historical novels) that brings history to life. Laura Morelli's story is 'show and tell' at its best: while Luca experiences his life changes, readers are plunged into a bygone world packed with sensory experiences, observations and Venetian culture. One can almost touch, feel and taste the atmosphere: it's that thick.
Another compelling difference in The Gondola Maker: it blends a boy's coming of age with the very adult world that surrounds him. When he works on the antique boat, his family's legacy comes to life; and as he comes to realize the motives of his newfound love he discovers his own past is impossible to completely reject: "I run my fingertips over the maple leaf. The finish has darkened it into a pleasingly crackled patina that reveals the veins of the rounded leaves. I cannot find it within myself to sand it away."
Extensive research into Venice's history in general and gondola makers and their culture in particular is reflected in the efforts of an art historian in the perfect position to bring the era to life.
In the end the boy becomes a man, newfound friendships offer fresh opportunities for growth and trade, and the gondolas which are the heart of both Luca's life and early Venetian culture will prove the pivotal force for rejoining families and shattered worlds.
Any reader who wants to be steeped in history - not just told about it - will relish the fire and life in every page of The Gondola Maker.
Hot link to above review:
In the Comfort of Shadows
Laurel Bragstad
Orange Hat Publishing
9781937165635 $12.99 paperback; $3.99 ebook
www.laurelbragstad.com
In the Comfort of Shadows tells of one Ann Olson, who is on a treasure hunt to reveal the hidden secrets of her family and childhood - with little to go on but the memories of an estranged hermit cousin who lives by himself on a run-down farm in rural Wisconsin. Ann thinks she's prepared for almost anything - but what she discovers in Emmett's house, past, and present will reveal the truth not only about her own heritage and why she was adopted, but the ultimate places her search will lead her.
Many adoptees wind up wanting to know the entire story behind their adoption at some point in their lives. Like Ann, many have relatively little to go on, and must piece together circumstances from family stories and rumors.
Ann has an advantage, however, in the presence of a distant relative, now elderly, who knows the truth of her heritage: and so her journey to meet this man results in discoveries of his diaries and truths about his background as well as hers. Even as her sister turns away from further investigation, happy with the way things are, Ann perseveres in her quest.
In the Comfort of Shadows is about much more than family secrets, politics, adoptee struggles, or even self-discovery: ultimately it's about love past and present, the forces that shape it, and the results of its decisions. It's also about facing the unexpected and understanding the depths of friendship, connections and family. As Ann comes to discover the complexity revolving around these links, she also comes to feel more than she thought about not only past events, but possibilities of romance in her future.
Only when Ann absorbs the truth about her past and the diaries that hold keys to understanding love and loss can she move beyond her quest to embrace what lies ahead in her own future.
The diary entries are poignant, filled with mystery, promise, affection and hope during a time of war. Ann's review of them leads to discoveries about love's perseverance: "Viewed in retrospect, the events of the past few months have had a profound effect on my philosophy of life in general."
As the story moves from wartime Germany, France, love lost to another, separations due to 'circumstance of war or heart', and poetry and diary entries, Ann slowly comes to know a truth that gets Emmet to talk about his life and help Ann understand about her own heritage.
As Ann learns more, she slowly comes to believe Emmett's story makes sense - even if it is an explanation she never could have imagined or anticipated.
In the Comfort of Shadows is all about uncovering family connections and how past affects present. It's a fine story of biological connections, sacrifice, and how the presence and ramifications of close-held secrets become recurring themes in the lives of all involved. Like ripples in a pond, Ann's search and revelations affect all around her - including a love who has some secrets of his own.
Poignant, engrossing and unpredictable, In the Comfort of Shadows is a moving story of past, present, and future all wound tightly into an adoptee's quest for the truth.
Hot link to above review:
Laurel Bragstad
Orange Hat Publishing
9781937165635 $12.99 paperback; $3.99 ebook
www.laurelbragstad.com
In the Comfort of Shadows tells of one Ann Olson, who is on a treasure hunt to reveal the hidden secrets of her family and childhood - with little to go on but the memories of an estranged hermit cousin who lives by himself on a run-down farm in rural Wisconsin. Ann thinks she's prepared for almost anything - but what she discovers in Emmett's house, past, and present will reveal the truth not only about her own heritage and why she was adopted, but the ultimate places her search will lead her.
Many adoptees wind up wanting to know the entire story behind their adoption at some point in their lives. Like Ann, many have relatively little to go on, and must piece together circumstances from family stories and rumors.
Ann has an advantage, however, in the presence of a distant relative, now elderly, who knows the truth of her heritage: and so her journey to meet this man results in discoveries of his diaries and truths about his background as well as hers. Even as her sister turns away from further investigation, happy with the way things are, Ann perseveres in her quest.
In the Comfort of Shadows is about much more than family secrets, politics, adoptee struggles, or even self-discovery: ultimately it's about love past and present, the forces that shape it, and the results of its decisions. It's also about facing the unexpected and understanding the depths of friendship, connections and family. As Ann comes to discover the complexity revolving around these links, she also comes to feel more than she thought about not only past events, but possibilities of romance in her future.
Only when Ann absorbs the truth about her past and the diaries that hold keys to understanding love and loss can she move beyond her quest to embrace what lies ahead in her own future.
The diary entries are poignant, filled with mystery, promise, affection and hope during a time of war. Ann's review of them leads to discoveries about love's perseverance: "Viewed in retrospect, the events of the past few months have had a profound effect on my philosophy of life in general."
As the story moves from wartime Germany, France, love lost to another, separations due to 'circumstance of war or heart', and poetry and diary entries, Ann slowly comes to know a truth that gets Emmet to talk about his life and help Ann understand about her own heritage.
As Ann learns more, she slowly comes to believe Emmett's story makes sense - even if it is an explanation she never could have imagined or anticipated.
In the Comfort of Shadows is all about uncovering family connections and how past affects present. It's a fine story of biological connections, sacrifice, and how the presence and ramifications of close-held secrets become recurring themes in the lives of all involved. Like ripples in a pond, Ann's search and revelations affect all around her - including a love who has some secrets of his own.
Poignant, engrossing and unpredictable, In the Comfort of Shadows is a moving story of past, present, and future all wound tightly into an adoptee's quest for the truth.
Hot link to above review:
Malinalli of the Fifth Sun; The Slave Girl Who
Changed the Fate of Mexico and Spain
Helen Heightsman Gordon
iUniverse
978-1-4620-6493-9 Hardcover: $32.95 ebook: $3.95
http://www.amazon.com/Malinalli-Fifth-Sun-Changed-Mexico/dp/1462064930/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391706951&sr=8-1&keywords=9781462064939
Malinalli of the Fifth Sun; The Slave Girl Who Changed the Fate of Mexico and Spain chronicles the life of Malinalli (aka Dona Marina and later "La Malinche"), one of twenty slaves chosen for Conquistador Hernán Cortés after he defeats the natives of Tabasco, and assumes a kind of Cinderella overtone as a wicked stepfather changes her life. Malinalli comes to be valued by Cortés for her trilingual language abilities, she stands at his side as his interpreter even though she's a slave, and she eventually helps him change and win worlds.
Malinalli of the Fifth Sun is historical fiction at its best: a rich, history-based story packed with detail makes for realistic reading, capturing the scenes and politics of these early times and using the protagonist of a young slave girl as a vehicle for greater understanding of various cultures and encounters between very different peoples.
As Malinalli evolves from being a lowly slave girl to a highly respected, highly regarded consort, readers learn much about the history, customs, and interactions between tribes of the times, and tells a vivid, real and little-known story of a real slave girl who changed her world.
Her story is revealed through several, contrasting viewpoints: while this juxtaposition could easily become confusing, Helen Heightsman Gordon deftly circumvents any potential uncertainty by providing clear transition points and separations between eyewitnesses, carrying readers effortlessly through protagonist changes and encounters.
While the entire story centers on only a brief, sixteen-year period of events, it's just perfect for Malinalli of the Fifth Sun: anything more could easily have become weighty and cumbersome. As it is, historical fiction readers should expect to absorb a great deal of information based on facts: for this is no flighty romance, no casual focus on a singular life, but an epic portrayal of world-changing events and, most of all, encounters between very different (and evolved) civilizations and peoples.
It would have been all too easy to portray Malinalli as simply a slave girl lover of Cortés, but the expanded focus on how their private lives changed and challenged their very different worlds and the decisions made in full acknowledgment of the politics and dangers of their times (for example, Cortés allows her to marry a hidalgo lover to keep her safe) makes for a richer read than would have been possible with a lighter approach to history.
That the circle of life and love prevails over all hardships is one recurring theme of a novel packed with passion, introspection, and encounters that constantly challenge both protagonists to rise above not only their own interests, but each other's worlds.
The fictional form allows for greater understanding of personal motivation, political desire, and most of all, of Mexican history and culture: "Cortés had seen the effects of such avarice before, in the West Indies, and he was determined to prevent the extermination of the Mexicans. He hoped to instill in the Spanish settlers at least a philosophy of noblesse oblige, a paternal attitude toward the natives whose labor constituted the most genuine and permanent wealth of the country."
There are costs and connections beyond either their personal or political relationship, but there are also poignant and romantic moments that clearly explain the deep connections between the two: "The main reason I love Hernán is that he treats me like a person, even though he could sell me or give me away like a piece of property. Even if I were free to choose, I’d choose him.”
If it's more than a light historical novel that is desired: one filled instead with historical precedent, solid research, strong characterization and complexity (all this grounded by romance and passion) than look no further than Malinalli of the Fifth Sun. Its compelling saga engrosses from beginning to end!
Hot link to above review:
Helen Heightsman Gordon
iUniverse
978-1-4620-6493-9 Hardcover: $32.95 ebook: $3.95
http://www.amazon.com/Malinalli-Fifth-Sun-Changed-Mexico/dp/1462064930/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391706951&sr=8-1&keywords=9781462064939
Malinalli of the Fifth Sun; The Slave Girl Who Changed the Fate of Mexico and Spain chronicles the life of Malinalli (aka Dona Marina and later "La Malinche"), one of twenty slaves chosen for Conquistador Hernán Cortés after he defeats the natives of Tabasco, and assumes a kind of Cinderella overtone as a wicked stepfather changes her life. Malinalli comes to be valued by Cortés for her trilingual language abilities, she stands at his side as his interpreter even though she's a slave, and she eventually helps him change and win worlds.
Malinalli of the Fifth Sun is historical fiction at its best: a rich, history-based story packed with detail makes for realistic reading, capturing the scenes and politics of these early times and using the protagonist of a young slave girl as a vehicle for greater understanding of various cultures and encounters between very different peoples.
As Malinalli evolves from being a lowly slave girl to a highly respected, highly regarded consort, readers learn much about the history, customs, and interactions between tribes of the times, and tells a vivid, real and little-known story of a real slave girl who changed her world.
Her story is revealed through several, contrasting viewpoints: while this juxtaposition could easily become confusing, Helen Heightsman Gordon deftly circumvents any potential uncertainty by providing clear transition points and separations between eyewitnesses, carrying readers effortlessly through protagonist changes and encounters.
While the entire story centers on only a brief, sixteen-year period of events, it's just perfect for Malinalli of the Fifth Sun: anything more could easily have become weighty and cumbersome. As it is, historical fiction readers should expect to absorb a great deal of information based on facts: for this is no flighty romance, no casual focus on a singular life, but an epic portrayal of world-changing events and, most of all, encounters between very different (and evolved) civilizations and peoples.
It would have been all too easy to portray Malinalli as simply a slave girl lover of Cortés, but the expanded focus on how their private lives changed and challenged their very different worlds and the decisions made in full acknowledgment of the politics and dangers of their times (for example, Cortés allows her to marry a hidalgo lover to keep her safe) makes for a richer read than would have been possible with a lighter approach to history.
That the circle of life and love prevails over all hardships is one recurring theme of a novel packed with passion, introspection, and encounters that constantly challenge both protagonists to rise above not only their own interests, but each other's worlds.
The fictional form allows for greater understanding of personal motivation, political desire, and most of all, of Mexican history and culture: "Cortés had seen the effects of such avarice before, in the West Indies, and he was determined to prevent the extermination of the Mexicans. He hoped to instill in the Spanish settlers at least a philosophy of noblesse oblige, a paternal attitude toward the natives whose labor constituted the most genuine and permanent wealth of the country."
There are costs and connections beyond either their personal or political relationship, but there are also poignant and romantic moments that clearly explain the deep connections between the two: "The main reason I love Hernán is that he treats me like a person, even though he could sell me or give me away like a piece of property. Even if I were free to choose, I’d choose him.”
If it's more than a light historical novel that is desired: one filled instead with historical precedent, solid research, strong characterization and complexity (all this grounded by romance and passion) than look no further than Malinalli of the Fifth Sun. Its compelling saga engrosses from beginning to end!
Hot link to above review:
Michael's Messengers
Lewis Lambert
AuthorHouse
ISBN-10: 1418409324 ISBN-13: 978-1418409326
Paperback $7.95
ASIN: B00ESZOEGE Kindle $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/Michaels-Messengers-Lewis-Allen-Lambert-ebook/dp/B00ESZOEGE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390059978&sr=8-1&keywords=B00ESZOEGE
Michael's Messengers is historical fiction at its best and most complex, and is recommended for readers of World War II history interested in not a light, quick read, but a work of art packed with depth and historical references.
It all starts in 1931, when 11-year-old Jacob Grunfeld, Polish by birth, and his father, a German escape Poland on the eve of Hitler's rise to journey to America to live safe and prosperous lives even as they continue to hide their Jewish roots, uncertain of growing anti-Semitic sentiments around the world.
A prologue sets the stage for a story based on the life and times of one Jack Meadows, nee Jacob Grunfeld, who began his real autobiography in 1940 only to provide, decades later, a historical fiction piece that could be the saga of 'everyman' living his times. As Meadows says, "I cheated death and now I can tell you a story that's hard to believe. I'm the sum total of every survivor of every battle and every holocaust. My story is their story."
The difference is; this story sees the light of day in a format that offers insight and vivid reflection for anyone interested in the circumstances and underlying messages of World War II and beyond, as represented in Michael's Messengers.
Lewis Allen Lambert is a retired military officer and no stranger to battle and 20th century military history. His interest in bringing events to life through the eyes of those who lived it results in a powerful first-person story that melds historical events with personal perspectives to impart a rare 'you are there' feel to the entire era and its participants.
Now, the use of the first person isn't circumstance. Alan Marks, the author of Jack's story writes in the first person as Jack dictated it to him, and Jack provided notes of conversations he'd had which were also included in the book.
Jacob and his father understand and get along well with everyone, from Polish to German to American cultures. Jacob's mother "wasn't very religious" and didn't even keep a kosher house, and his busy physician father is largely absent - until Jack’s mother dies in childbirth.
When the Nazis loom, it's Jacob's father who recognizes the threat (far more than many around him) and determines to move them far away to safety; first to Baltimore , Maryland , then to Kansas City , Missouri, where his father changes their names (from Dr. Herschel Grunfeld to Dr. Harold Meadows, and Jacob's name to Jack Meadows.)
Perhaps more than anything else, it's this move that sets the tone for the rest of Jack's life. It's when he learns to hide his Jewish roots in the face of a culture that, unlike Baltimore, is not comprised of mixed races but is largely white.
The course of his life continues; to college, to his training as a teenage pilot, and to his father’s surprising invitation to "do something for Poland and the Jewish people" by joining the Polish Air Force in 1939 (Jack is still too young - not yet 21 - to join the American Army Air Force). And here is where the real story begins, as Jack journeys back to Poland; this time not as a child, but as an adult prepared to fight for not only his country, but his people and a Jewish heritage he never fully embraced.
Now, military accounts often tend to become bogged down in numbers, strategies, statistics and tactical details. While I'm not saying that Michael's Messengers doesn't include all these facets, what is evident throughout are minutiae often missing from military fiction and historical novels: i.e., the underlying political maneuvering, the protagonist's own search for personal meaning and connections in the face of war, and the overall motivations of all sides that either foster or deflect the realities of struggle.
Jack constantly tries to understand, and his struggles become the reader's opportunity for further insights: "I wanted to understand why Jews had been the targets of oppression for thousands of years. Was it really religious persecution or were Jews viewed as being different as a people? Or was it because Jews didn't assimilate and survived regardless of what was going on around them in history?...History doesn't really answer these questions. The psychology of it all is not in the history books."
As these questions of identity and history become keys to Jack's growth, they also permeate decisions about battle and strategy on a deeper level and involve readers in an attempt to comprehend the truth of an entire race's evolution and persecution.
It's unusual to find a focus on understanding set against the backdrop of war even as the protagonist involves himself in confrontation and battle.
Jack eventually fails in his mission to prevent the rise of Nazism in Poland and he joins the RAF in England, where he becomes an ace fighter pilot and a decorated hero. In true keeping with a multifaceted story, he falls in love several times, finds he also fails at romance, but pursues his dreams (and his studies of the Jewish condition and psyche) against all odds.
It's these revelations which are the 'meat' of Michael's Messengers, adding much food for thought and reflection and rounding out the protagonist's motivations and insights: "…Jews are a class of people within most nations that remain separate, distinct, and in many cases successful…I've concluded that non-Jews are envious that these non-indigenous people live among them and thrive, despite being outcasts in their mother country. It's not the religion that separates us from them, but our ability to survive and thrive as a people in every country, regardless of the culture, political structure, and societal norms we find ourselves in."
Any who anticipate a singular focus on military history may be disappointed: Michael's Messengers is so much more! It's about Jewish history and culture, military service, expectations and experiences, one man's perseverance against a host of disappointments, his personal quest for meaning, and more. Jack's choices don't make for easy alliances either: Jack's decision to support his adopted country, Great Britain, his confrontations with Luftwaffe fighter pilots at least as skilled as he, and his ongoing connections to his German roots provides a powerful story of one survivor's encounters with expectation, confrontation, abandonment, pain and, ultimately, love and sacrifice.
Don't expect an easy read. DO expect a historical novel replete with rich details: one that juxtaposes personal revelation with action and social change with individual challenge. Without spoiling the surprise ending, Jack ultimately realizes the wellspring of his true love - one of three loves of his life, and the one which he ultimately refuses to abandon.
Hot link to above review:
Lewis Lambert
AuthorHouse
ISBN-10: 1418409324 ISBN-13: 978-1418409326
Paperback $7.95
ASIN: B00ESZOEGE Kindle $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/Michaels-Messengers-Lewis-Allen-Lambert-ebook/dp/B00ESZOEGE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390059978&sr=8-1&keywords=B00ESZOEGE
Michael's Messengers is historical fiction at its best and most complex, and is recommended for readers of World War II history interested in not a light, quick read, but a work of art packed with depth and historical references.
It all starts in 1931, when 11-year-old Jacob Grunfeld, Polish by birth, and his father, a German escape Poland on the eve of Hitler's rise to journey to America to live safe and prosperous lives even as they continue to hide their Jewish roots, uncertain of growing anti-Semitic sentiments around the world.
A prologue sets the stage for a story based on the life and times of one Jack Meadows, nee Jacob Grunfeld, who began his real autobiography in 1940 only to provide, decades later, a historical fiction piece that could be the saga of 'everyman' living his times. As Meadows says, "I cheated death and now I can tell you a story that's hard to believe. I'm the sum total of every survivor of every battle and every holocaust. My story is their story."
The difference is; this story sees the light of day in a format that offers insight and vivid reflection for anyone interested in the circumstances and underlying messages of World War II and beyond, as represented in Michael's Messengers.
Lewis Allen Lambert is a retired military officer and no stranger to battle and 20th century military history. His interest in bringing events to life through the eyes of those who lived it results in a powerful first-person story that melds historical events with personal perspectives to impart a rare 'you are there' feel to the entire era and its participants.
Now, the use of the first person isn't circumstance. Alan Marks, the author of Jack's story writes in the first person as Jack dictated it to him, and Jack provided notes of conversations he'd had which were also included in the book.
Jacob and his father understand and get along well with everyone, from Polish to German to American cultures. Jacob's mother "wasn't very religious" and didn't even keep a kosher house, and his busy physician father is largely absent - until Jack’s mother dies in childbirth.
When the Nazis loom, it's Jacob's father who recognizes the threat (far more than many around him) and determines to move them far away to safety; first to Baltimore , Maryland , then to Kansas City , Missouri, where his father changes their names (from Dr. Herschel Grunfeld to Dr. Harold Meadows, and Jacob's name to Jack Meadows.)
Perhaps more than anything else, it's this move that sets the tone for the rest of Jack's life. It's when he learns to hide his Jewish roots in the face of a culture that, unlike Baltimore, is not comprised of mixed races but is largely white.
The course of his life continues; to college, to his training as a teenage pilot, and to his father’s surprising invitation to "do something for Poland and the Jewish people" by joining the Polish Air Force in 1939 (Jack is still too young - not yet 21 - to join the American Army Air Force). And here is where the real story begins, as Jack journeys back to Poland; this time not as a child, but as an adult prepared to fight for not only his country, but his people and a Jewish heritage he never fully embraced.
Now, military accounts often tend to become bogged down in numbers, strategies, statistics and tactical details. While I'm not saying that Michael's Messengers doesn't include all these facets, what is evident throughout are minutiae often missing from military fiction and historical novels: i.e., the underlying political maneuvering, the protagonist's own search for personal meaning and connections in the face of war, and the overall motivations of all sides that either foster or deflect the realities of struggle.
Jack constantly tries to understand, and his struggles become the reader's opportunity for further insights: "I wanted to understand why Jews had been the targets of oppression for thousands of years. Was it really religious persecution or were Jews viewed as being different as a people? Or was it because Jews didn't assimilate and survived regardless of what was going on around them in history?...History doesn't really answer these questions. The psychology of it all is not in the history books."
As these questions of identity and history become keys to Jack's growth, they also permeate decisions about battle and strategy on a deeper level and involve readers in an attempt to comprehend the truth of an entire race's evolution and persecution.
It's unusual to find a focus on understanding set against the backdrop of war even as the protagonist involves himself in confrontation and battle.
Jack eventually fails in his mission to prevent the rise of Nazism in Poland and he joins the RAF in England, where he becomes an ace fighter pilot and a decorated hero. In true keeping with a multifaceted story, he falls in love several times, finds he also fails at romance, but pursues his dreams (and his studies of the Jewish condition and psyche) against all odds.
It's these revelations which are the 'meat' of Michael's Messengers, adding much food for thought and reflection and rounding out the protagonist's motivations and insights: "…Jews are a class of people within most nations that remain separate, distinct, and in many cases successful…I've concluded that non-Jews are envious that these non-indigenous people live among them and thrive, despite being outcasts in their mother country. It's not the religion that separates us from them, but our ability to survive and thrive as a people in every country, regardless of the culture, political structure, and societal norms we find ourselves in."
Any who anticipate a singular focus on military history may be disappointed: Michael's Messengers is so much more! It's about Jewish history and culture, military service, expectations and experiences, one man's perseverance against a host of disappointments, his personal quest for meaning, and more. Jack's choices don't make for easy alliances either: Jack's decision to support his adopted country, Great Britain, his confrontations with Luftwaffe fighter pilots at least as skilled as he, and his ongoing connections to his German roots provides a powerful story of one survivor's encounters with expectation, confrontation, abandonment, pain and, ultimately, love and sacrifice.
Don't expect an easy read. DO expect a historical novel replete with rich details: one that juxtaposes personal revelation with action and social change with individual challenge. Without spoiling the surprise ending, Jack ultimately realizes the wellspring of his true love - one of three loves of his life, and the one which he ultimately refuses to abandon.
Hot link to above review:
Miracle Man
William R. Leibowitz
Manifesto Media Group
978-0-9898662-1-7
Paperback: $12.95 E-book: $4.99
http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Man-William-R-Leibowitz-ebook/dp/B00HVPQDNA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391274165&sr=8-1&keywords=Miracle+Man+William+R.+Leibowitz
Miracle Man opens on a rainy day with a sad scenario: a baby is abandoned in a dumpster by people too young to be burned with a child and too involved with drugs to care about a tiny life. Fast forward four years: Bobby is being raised by loving foster parents and has a good life despite his near-death experience as a baby; but something is still wrong - which is why they have taken him to a child psychologist for evaluation.
Bobby is developing patterns of behavior that are odd (trances, disturbing nightmares, broken sleep); but what the psychologist discovers is even more disturbing. Far from being a victim of childhood trauma, Bobby is actually a genius operating on a level far removed from anything intelligence tests have measured before.
Bobby's abilities are superhuman and his early interest in the medical field leads to a fascination with curing diseases; something that diverts from the purposes of the military group controlling his advanced education.
To call this novel a 'medical thriller' or a 'political story' would be to do it an injustice. Miracle Man is about miracles, motivations, ethics and morals, and the influence of special interests in the work of genius minds. It's about one 'super' boy's devotion to solving some of medicine's greatest mysteries against forces that would divert these great talents to something darker; and it's ultimately about the ability to withstand moral and ethical temptations against all odds.
Readers are treated to a plot with many twists and turns: it holds intrigue, describes compulsions and diversions, shows how a genius battles dark forces within and outside of himself, and generally paints a powerful picture of a search for privacy as much as meaning: "Every time he received an award or made a discovery, it became an impetus to the press to dredge him up as the subject of a story or special report. The snooping began anew. He hated to admit it, but in retrospect, he was grateful to Orin Varneys for having taken possession of all records relating to his childhood and sealing them under the protection of the OSSIS. Bobby shuddered to think about the field day the media would have if they had been able to discover his past."
A dash of romance would seem impossible under such conditions but even this emerges, even as Bobby's work threatens to separate him from anything resembling a normal life - including love…."But as the weeks went by, Susan began to notice a difference in him. He was becoming increasingly detached from present reality. Even when he wasn’t in one of his frequent trances, he didn’t seem present. Reclusive and paranoid, he sequestered himself in his office with the door locked—or worked from the guest house for days on end."
Is Bobby a savior or a destroyer? A miracle man or a tortured genius with the power to annihilate himself and the world?
Miracle Man pinpoints the true wellspring of Bobby's genius and what amounts to an ultimate illness defying everything he's worked for and believes in. And so a gripping novel of psychological tension becomes much more than your usual 'medical thriller', and is a pick for any who want high octane action and emotionally-charged reading right up to an unexpected, gripping conclusion.
Hot link to above review:
William R. Leibowitz
Manifesto Media Group
978-0-9898662-1-7
Paperback: $12.95 E-book: $4.99
http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Man-William-R-Leibowitz-ebook/dp/B00HVPQDNA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391274165&sr=8-1&keywords=Miracle+Man+William+R.+Leibowitz
Miracle Man opens on a rainy day with a sad scenario: a baby is abandoned in a dumpster by people too young to be burned with a child and too involved with drugs to care about a tiny life. Fast forward four years: Bobby is being raised by loving foster parents and has a good life despite his near-death experience as a baby; but something is still wrong - which is why they have taken him to a child psychologist for evaluation.
Bobby is developing patterns of behavior that are odd (trances, disturbing nightmares, broken sleep); but what the psychologist discovers is even more disturbing. Far from being a victim of childhood trauma, Bobby is actually a genius operating on a level far removed from anything intelligence tests have measured before.
Bobby's abilities are superhuman and his early interest in the medical field leads to a fascination with curing diseases; something that diverts from the purposes of the military group controlling his advanced education.
To call this novel a 'medical thriller' or a 'political story' would be to do it an injustice. Miracle Man is about miracles, motivations, ethics and morals, and the influence of special interests in the work of genius minds. It's about one 'super' boy's devotion to solving some of medicine's greatest mysteries against forces that would divert these great talents to something darker; and it's ultimately about the ability to withstand moral and ethical temptations against all odds.
Readers are treated to a plot with many twists and turns: it holds intrigue, describes compulsions and diversions, shows how a genius battles dark forces within and outside of himself, and generally paints a powerful picture of a search for privacy as much as meaning: "Every time he received an award or made a discovery, it became an impetus to the press to dredge him up as the subject of a story or special report. The snooping began anew. He hated to admit it, but in retrospect, he was grateful to Orin Varneys for having taken possession of all records relating to his childhood and sealing them under the protection of the OSSIS. Bobby shuddered to think about the field day the media would have if they had been able to discover his past."
A dash of romance would seem impossible under such conditions but even this emerges, even as Bobby's work threatens to separate him from anything resembling a normal life - including love…."But as the weeks went by, Susan began to notice a difference in him. He was becoming increasingly detached from present reality. Even when he wasn’t in one of his frequent trances, he didn’t seem present. Reclusive and paranoid, he sequestered himself in his office with the door locked—or worked from the guest house for days on end."
Is Bobby a savior or a destroyer? A miracle man or a tortured genius with the power to annihilate himself and the world?
Miracle Man pinpoints the true wellspring of Bobby's genius and what amounts to an ultimate illness defying everything he's worked for and believes in. And so a gripping novel of psychological tension becomes much more than your usual 'medical thriller', and is a pick for any who want high octane action and emotionally-charged reading right up to an unexpected, gripping conclusion.
Hot link to above review:
Once Upon the Rhine: A Love Story
Annette Williamson
Electra Press
No ISBN, price, website
Once Upon the Rhine: A Love Story is a recommendation for romance readers looking for steamy passages, and tells of one Alexis Cole, a model who is looking for success, but manages to come off as a bimbo despite her best intentions: "She could be the coolest agent around, but would bust your balls if you were a flake because there was just too much money at stake. I was shaking in my high-heeled boots because I blew the most important casting in town and missed the strict deadline for the other."
But what begins as a terrible shoot filled with mishaps largely generated by her too-free tongue turns into success as she wins the shoot largely because of her flamboyant manner and finds herself on a dream journey to an overseas job involving a castle on the Rhine. And she isn't just modeling gowns - she's been picked as 'the face' for the world's biggest wine company! Is Alexis lucky or what?
The story could have become one-dimensional at this point - but it's not. The plucky protagonist that is Alexis drives the plot with her first-person observations, chutzpah, and a manner that elevates 'bimbo' to 'outrageous', with a healthy dose of humor thrown in for good measure: "AWESOME! I was going to represent wine, better not tell them I never drank before! OMG this is like the best day of my life! I was so stunned that of all the puppets on the planet, I was the one plucked out of obscurity and was about to be recognized in every corner of the guzzling world."
Another big surprise: Alexis is a romantic virgin, saving herself for "the one" - and constantly being disappointed (and, again, the biting humor is woven into observation and experience - a lovely touch indeed): "I’m still a virgin, still waiting for my knight in shining armor.” I sighed, looking down. “He’ll come,” said Grant, “but these days you’re lucky if you even get the horse.” That night I felt a loneliness I hadn’t felt in years because I actually thought maybe Wilhelm was the one, but now he was gone, and there wasn’t even a horse, just a bunch of mean, green ugly birds."
As she shoots photos, makes new friends, and explores new worlds filled with scenic beauty and puzzling cultures, Alexis finds herself newly opening up to the possibilities of love. The descriptions of these worlds are deftly penned, providing readers with a smooth transition between the protagonist's emotions and her impressions of her new world, and imparting a staunch 'you are there' feel to the novel: "Zurich was a beautiful city, and the first thing I noticed was how clean and crisp the air smelled perhaps because of the majestic snow-capped mountains in the distance. The city had such a luxurious feel, making me wonder if the streets were paved in gold especially near the banking area surrounding Paradeplatz. There were other weaving cobblestone roads, with all kinds of charming shops and cafes that all had an old-world feeling. It amazed me how many people were carrying loads of expensive shopping bags, and it made me wonder how so many people could be so filthy rich."
As unexpected romance evolves, Alexis discovers new appreciation for both love and the underlying meaning that it will truly be 'forever'. Only when she's faced with losing that newfound feeling does she realize what love truly entails - and finds within her the courage to accept its promises and confront its challenges.
Once Upon the Rhine: A Love Story is romance fiction at its best: it builds a sassy, outspoken protagonist who shows real flare and character underneath a seemingly shallow model's persona, it focuses on an evolving love relationship with all its complexity and challenges, and it offers no easy outs. The ending is predictable but satisfying and serves to reinforce the opening feel: that Alexis is a kind of Cinderella just beginning to open up to the possibilities of real romance in her life against the backdrop of circumstance and coincidences that turn close-held dreams into reality.
Hot link to above review:
Annette Williamson
Electra Press
No ISBN, price, website
Once Upon the Rhine: A Love Story is a recommendation for romance readers looking for steamy passages, and tells of one Alexis Cole, a model who is looking for success, but manages to come off as a bimbo despite her best intentions: "She could be the coolest agent around, but would bust your balls if you were a flake because there was just too much money at stake. I was shaking in my high-heeled boots because I blew the most important casting in town and missed the strict deadline for the other."
But what begins as a terrible shoot filled with mishaps largely generated by her too-free tongue turns into success as she wins the shoot largely because of her flamboyant manner and finds herself on a dream journey to an overseas job involving a castle on the Rhine. And she isn't just modeling gowns - she's been picked as 'the face' for the world's biggest wine company! Is Alexis lucky or what?
The story could have become one-dimensional at this point - but it's not. The plucky protagonist that is Alexis drives the plot with her first-person observations, chutzpah, and a manner that elevates 'bimbo' to 'outrageous', with a healthy dose of humor thrown in for good measure: "AWESOME! I was going to represent wine, better not tell them I never drank before! OMG this is like the best day of my life! I was so stunned that of all the puppets on the planet, I was the one plucked out of obscurity and was about to be recognized in every corner of the guzzling world."
Another big surprise: Alexis is a romantic virgin, saving herself for "the one" - and constantly being disappointed (and, again, the biting humor is woven into observation and experience - a lovely touch indeed): "I’m still a virgin, still waiting for my knight in shining armor.” I sighed, looking down. “He’ll come,” said Grant, “but these days you’re lucky if you even get the horse.” That night I felt a loneliness I hadn’t felt in years because I actually thought maybe Wilhelm was the one, but now he was gone, and there wasn’t even a horse, just a bunch of mean, green ugly birds."
As she shoots photos, makes new friends, and explores new worlds filled with scenic beauty and puzzling cultures, Alexis finds herself newly opening up to the possibilities of love. The descriptions of these worlds are deftly penned, providing readers with a smooth transition between the protagonist's emotions and her impressions of her new world, and imparting a staunch 'you are there' feel to the novel: "Zurich was a beautiful city, and the first thing I noticed was how clean and crisp the air smelled perhaps because of the majestic snow-capped mountains in the distance. The city had such a luxurious feel, making me wonder if the streets were paved in gold especially near the banking area surrounding Paradeplatz. There were other weaving cobblestone roads, with all kinds of charming shops and cafes that all had an old-world feeling. It amazed me how many people were carrying loads of expensive shopping bags, and it made me wonder how so many people could be so filthy rich."
As unexpected romance evolves, Alexis discovers new appreciation for both love and the underlying meaning that it will truly be 'forever'. Only when she's faced with losing that newfound feeling does she realize what love truly entails - and finds within her the courage to accept its promises and confront its challenges.
Once Upon the Rhine: A Love Story is romance fiction at its best: it builds a sassy, outspoken protagonist who shows real flare and character underneath a seemingly shallow model's persona, it focuses on an evolving love relationship with all its complexity and challenges, and it offers no easy outs. The ending is predictable but satisfying and serves to reinforce the opening feel: that Alexis is a kind of Cinderella just beginning to open up to the possibilities of real romance in her life against the backdrop of circumstance and coincidences that turn close-held dreams into reality.
Hot link to above review:
The Perfect Game
Stephen Paul
Telemachus Press
978-1-940745-54-1
http://www.telemachuspress.com
http://www.stephenpaulbooks.com
Kyle Vine is a professor with a problem: he's overstepped boundaries in a liaison with a young student and he's in over his head … but don't expect a novel revolving around romance, here. The Perfect Game is supernatural thriller writing at its best, and starts with a familiar story that soon weaves its way into the realm of the impossible.
When Kyle's object of affection suddenly collapses on a New York street with a brain hemorrhage, it seems like nothing but a natural tragedy, however rare. That's one thing; but when he discovers that this is no unique occurrence lately, Kyle finds himself involved in something far beyond his expertise.
Can it be that someone is behind these deaths and, if so, why is he striking, how, and where will he strike again? Kyle pairs with Allie Shelton's uncle (who is equally determined to find out the truth behind what happened) and he finds not only more unanswered questions, but a complex maze of criminal intent and a clever force with the ability to hide from anything.
One strength of The Perfect Game is that we don't just receive the perspective of the investigator, but the dark - and unusual - thoughts of the perp himself, who makes some puzzling mental associations during the ritual of committing his murders: "He knelt down next to the young man and cradled his head in one arm, pushed the other one against his chest and, just like with the girl, twisted and snapped his neck like a toothpick, making sure it remained in the awkward position. Then he stuffed it all into that deepest corner of his mind, never to be visited again. Just like Dale Carnegie said to do."
And Kyle isn't just a professor-turned-investigator: he's a man with a history of broken love, simultaneously confronting both murder and the reasons behind love gone wrong: "“You did what you did,” he said. “I was okay with sacrificing intimacy for comfort. You weren’t. I didn’t do enough to realize it, and you didn’t do enough to make me aware of it. And this is where we are. It happens.”
It's this complexity of characters and an attention to exploring their full lives and motivations that adds meat and depth to the supernatural thriller piece, immersing readers in a quagmire of emotions and cat-and-mouse moves as well as exploring the rationales behind playing such games.
Desires for love, health, harmony and peace motivate each character to change and to make decisions that are life-changing, life-threatening, and possibly deadly. And the reader is caught up in these characters, their lives, and their experiences while the story succeeds in adding more and more elements of intrigue into a murder mystery that is far more than a singular investigative piece.
In the end it's all about friendships, forgiveness, and finding odd friends in dangerous places under strange circumstances: something Kyle seems to excel at.
Anyone looking for a supernatural thriller that is unpredictable and engrossing will find The Perfect Game a satisfyingly complex read.
Hot link to above review:
Stephen Paul
Telemachus Press
978-1-940745-54-1
http://www.telemachuspress.com
http://www.stephenpaulbooks.com
Kyle Vine is a professor with a problem: he's overstepped boundaries in a liaison with a young student and he's in over his head … but don't expect a novel revolving around romance, here. The Perfect Game is supernatural thriller writing at its best, and starts with a familiar story that soon weaves its way into the realm of the impossible.
When Kyle's object of affection suddenly collapses on a New York street with a brain hemorrhage, it seems like nothing but a natural tragedy, however rare. That's one thing; but when he discovers that this is no unique occurrence lately, Kyle finds himself involved in something far beyond his expertise.
Can it be that someone is behind these deaths and, if so, why is he striking, how, and where will he strike again? Kyle pairs with Allie Shelton's uncle (who is equally determined to find out the truth behind what happened) and he finds not only more unanswered questions, but a complex maze of criminal intent and a clever force with the ability to hide from anything.
One strength of The Perfect Game is that we don't just receive the perspective of the investigator, but the dark - and unusual - thoughts of the perp himself, who makes some puzzling mental associations during the ritual of committing his murders: "He knelt down next to the young man and cradled his head in one arm, pushed the other one against his chest and, just like with the girl, twisted and snapped his neck like a toothpick, making sure it remained in the awkward position. Then he stuffed it all into that deepest corner of his mind, never to be visited again. Just like Dale Carnegie said to do."
And Kyle isn't just a professor-turned-investigator: he's a man with a history of broken love, simultaneously confronting both murder and the reasons behind love gone wrong: "“You did what you did,” he said. “I was okay with sacrificing intimacy for comfort. You weren’t. I didn’t do enough to realize it, and you didn’t do enough to make me aware of it. And this is where we are. It happens.”
It's this complexity of characters and an attention to exploring their full lives and motivations that adds meat and depth to the supernatural thriller piece, immersing readers in a quagmire of emotions and cat-and-mouse moves as well as exploring the rationales behind playing such games.
Desires for love, health, harmony and peace motivate each character to change and to make decisions that are life-changing, life-threatening, and possibly deadly. And the reader is caught up in these characters, their lives, and their experiences while the story succeeds in adding more and more elements of intrigue into a murder mystery that is far more than a singular investigative piece.
In the end it's all about friendships, forgiveness, and finding odd friends in dangerous places under strange circumstances: something Kyle seems to excel at.
Anyone looking for a supernatural thriller that is unpredictable and engrossing will find The Perfect Game a satisfyingly complex read.
Hot link to above review:
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide
Andrew Armacost
Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC
No ISBN, Price, Website
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is about life on a downward spiral and centers around Wesley Weimer, a prison guard nearing middle age with little to show for his life… no romance, no future, no meaning. As Christmas approaches, that feeling of hopelessness crowds in: his relationships with family are unfulfilling and painful, his free time is spent tending his crippled mother, and even his relationships with his children are estranged and center around child support payments.
Even statistics support his decision: "DIVORCED, non-custodial fathers maintain a much higher tendency to bump themselves off, or so the Internet tells me. I can see that. It’s not surprising, really. I’m thirty-three… two kids, two moms...already bald… and twice-divorced."
There's only one thing he can take control of in his life: ending it. And so he contrives to have a prisoner strangle him in exchange for ten thousand dollars so he can leave a life insurance legacy to his family. The only problem is: he doesn't have ten thousand dollars, and must focus his energy on a last ditch effort to raise the money for his own murder.
As usual, life gets in the way of man's best-laid plans; here in the form of a cop friend who lands in jail and inadvertently leads Wesley on a path back to redemption and meaning in life.
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is set in the Midwest and is steeped in Midwestern culture, where the protagonist and his mother are more than used to weather extremes and resigned to living there until they die: "Poor Mom. She’s stuck in the Midwest forever, looks like. She abhors cold weather but won’t start complaining until the holidays have finally passed. Then she’ll really start in. ‘Wesley,’ she’ll say, ‘When are we moving to Florida?’ And I’ll say, ‘Whenever you want, Ma.’ But nothing will ever change. We’ll both end up dying here…"
Prison culture is a big part of The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide: a cast of characters steadily interact with Wesley and support the noir-type, dark atmosphere of individuals who have their own reasons for living (or slowly dying): "He won’t do anything. He’s never cheated. Never will. He’s had plenty of opportunities. But he just bleeds these women for information and maybe a little self-validation…then he goes home to his wife…raring to go, I’d imagine."
Slowly readers come to realize that there are a host of characters not far from Wesley's state of despair - and a few that exude hope against all odds: "I think when bad things happen to him, they’re always filtered through a prism that spits out rainbows. Bad things are reduced and neatly fitted into this world of his that ain’t so bad. He’ll be okay. He’ll always be okay. Some people are just like that."
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is, ultimately, about the process of finding that key to life, accepting it, and using it. The novel charts Wesley's progress through his prison guard role and world and provides a combination of dark observation, dark humor, dark experience, and (in due course) the kinds of experiences that could lead to choosing a better life over death.
Don't anticipate a light read, here. The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is true grit at its best, and Wesley's interactions are often stark, bloody, and filled with confrontation: "When the bouncers arrived, I was on top of Justin, steadily choking him. It felt so good, so damned good to unleash all those barbaric juices. You figure, in such situations, the drunkest guy will usually lose. I happened to be a tad more sober, that’s all. I still think that somewhere in my drunken brain, I knew better than to punch his face in, which I had no desire to do in the first place. I was only subduing him, preserving my safety and maybe a little pride."
It's all about forming connections that encourage survival, relearning how to take pleasure in life's small joys and experiences, and forging a path in the world that includes lowered expectations, leading to greater satisfaction and happiness.
Readers follow Wesley's journey towards the light, in the process absorbing much about Midwest and prison culture and the efforts of one man to find meaning in his life or die trying. In the end Wesley finds his prison charges teach him much about life and how to live it - and how he processes and eventually uses this information makes for a powerful read that will satisfy any who like dark, gritty noir writing with the promise of a positive resolution: "Convicted felons, for the most part, are locked up because they are creatures of habit, because they kept going back to the same well, which eventually dried up on them. If a deer keeps going back to the same stream at the same time every day, after a while, the poor bastard gets a 306-round in its neck. Or it’s stomach. Creatures of habit die."
Hot link to above review:
Andrew Armacost
Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC
No ISBN, Price, Website
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is about life on a downward spiral and centers around Wesley Weimer, a prison guard nearing middle age with little to show for his life… no romance, no future, no meaning. As Christmas approaches, that feeling of hopelessness crowds in: his relationships with family are unfulfilling and painful, his free time is spent tending his crippled mother, and even his relationships with his children are estranged and center around child support payments.
Even statistics support his decision: "DIVORCED, non-custodial fathers maintain a much higher tendency to bump themselves off, or so the Internet tells me. I can see that. It’s not surprising, really. I’m thirty-three… two kids, two moms...already bald… and twice-divorced."
There's only one thing he can take control of in his life: ending it. And so he contrives to have a prisoner strangle him in exchange for ten thousand dollars so he can leave a life insurance legacy to his family. The only problem is: he doesn't have ten thousand dollars, and must focus his energy on a last ditch effort to raise the money for his own murder.
As usual, life gets in the way of man's best-laid plans; here in the form of a cop friend who lands in jail and inadvertently leads Wesley on a path back to redemption and meaning in life.
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is set in the Midwest and is steeped in Midwestern culture, where the protagonist and his mother are more than used to weather extremes and resigned to living there until they die: "Poor Mom. She’s stuck in the Midwest forever, looks like. She abhors cold weather but won’t start complaining until the holidays have finally passed. Then she’ll really start in. ‘Wesley,’ she’ll say, ‘When are we moving to Florida?’ And I’ll say, ‘Whenever you want, Ma.’ But nothing will ever change. We’ll both end up dying here…"
Prison culture is a big part of The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide: a cast of characters steadily interact with Wesley and support the noir-type, dark atmosphere of individuals who have their own reasons for living (or slowly dying): "He won’t do anything. He’s never cheated. Never will. He’s had plenty of opportunities. But he just bleeds these women for information and maybe a little self-validation…then he goes home to his wife…raring to go, I’d imagine."
Slowly readers come to realize that there are a host of characters not far from Wesley's state of despair - and a few that exude hope against all odds: "I think when bad things happen to him, they’re always filtered through a prism that spits out rainbows. Bad things are reduced and neatly fitted into this world of his that ain’t so bad. He’ll be okay. He’ll always be okay. Some people are just like that."
The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is, ultimately, about the process of finding that key to life, accepting it, and using it. The novel charts Wesley's progress through his prison guard role and world and provides a combination of dark observation, dark humor, dark experience, and (in due course) the kinds of experiences that could lead to choosing a better life over death.
Don't anticipate a light read, here. The Poor Man's Guide To Suicide is true grit at its best, and Wesley's interactions are often stark, bloody, and filled with confrontation: "When the bouncers arrived, I was on top of Justin, steadily choking him. It felt so good, so damned good to unleash all those barbaric juices. You figure, in such situations, the drunkest guy will usually lose. I happened to be a tad more sober, that’s all. I still think that somewhere in my drunken brain, I knew better than to punch his face in, which I had no desire to do in the first place. I was only subduing him, preserving my safety and maybe a little pride."
It's all about forming connections that encourage survival, relearning how to take pleasure in life's small joys and experiences, and forging a path in the world that includes lowered expectations, leading to greater satisfaction and happiness.
Readers follow Wesley's journey towards the light, in the process absorbing much about Midwest and prison culture and the efforts of one man to find meaning in his life or die trying. In the end Wesley finds his prison charges teach him much about life and how to live it - and how he processes and eventually uses this information makes for a powerful read that will satisfy any who like dark, gritty noir writing with the promise of a positive resolution: "Convicted felons, for the most part, are locked up because they are creatures of habit, because they kept going back to the same well, which eventually dried up on them. If a deer keeps going back to the same stream at the same time every day, after a while, the poor bastard gets a 306-round in its neck. Or it’s stomach. Creatures of habit die."
Hot link to above review:
Saving the Innocents
Randall Kenneth Drake
Silver Dragon Press LLC
ISBN: 0-9747161-0-3 $5.99
www.rkdrake.com
Saving the Innocents is all about courage, strength, and personal effort; and as it chronicles the life and efforts of one Mary Jane Chevalier (an 'everywoman' who feels powerless but in fact is powerful), it also reflects modern society's milieu - and thus will resonate with readers looking for positive stories about courage and determination in the face of impossible odds.
But Saving the Innocents isn't a story without violence: indeed, the first paragraph has Mary Jane facing death with little more than the snap of her gum as a response: "She thought it funny . . . what went through her mind while waiting for the bullet. Time slowed down in that moment. Several thoughts and feelings flashed - alternating waves. Her body felt relaxed at first, as though relief had finally come. Freedom. And she welcomed it."
The first striking thing to note about Saving the Innocents is its attention to detail and description, which capture powerful images with a pen finely honed by the moment: "The sound was like a bumblebee as it split the smoke-filled air. She swung her body around with a gathering force, and brought the cue from behind her like a broadsword - the way a Viking marauder would in the long ago of Scotland. The wooden blade made a thunderous crack into the side of the big man’s knee, the cue splitting apart…"
Mary's passion for finding her father is only equaled by her determination to save the weak who, much like herself, have limited choices when facing violence. And so her very nature inevitably becomes linked to two very special people who enter her life on the run and who create a double mystery for her to pursue. True to her helpful nature, Mary Jane feels compelled to assist; and that action in turn will transform her own life as she becomes absorbed in a deadly manhunt, determined to save the innocents she's stumbled upon and, ultimately, herself.
Mary Jane feels like an unknown: while she makes efforts in life, she largely feels her achievements are too little … or so her conscious says. Her decision to search out an absent father who changed her life through his actions is what results in the unexpected: the discovery of a man and a little girl hiding out because they have seen too much.
Now, some notes on this novel's unusual roots: they were inspired by the author's infatuation with movies and with the songs of Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow. Parts of this story actually came to him in a series of flashback-like scenes which he dutifully penned as they came; but it was McLachlan's music that prompted a flood of inspiration prompted by a realization that each line of one of her songs described one of the scenes Randall Kenneth Drake was already writing.
And it was Morisette's song 'Mary Jane' and 'You Learn' combined with Crow's lyrics in 'Am I Getting Through' which both contributed to the character of Mary Jane Chevalier. Listen to this music for further insights into that protagonist and her origins - at the risk of gaining advance insights into where the plot is going. In fact - listening to the music of all three as background to reading provides a kind of multimedia experience that any singular song, artist or the book alone couldn't impart.
The scenes originated with a story Drake stumbled upon in a bar, of an abandoned child left by her mother in front of the 'best house she would like to live in'. And so psychological and physical abandonment are one element in a novel that weaves a complicated story line powered by a woman who is strong, but believes herself to be weak. It's unusual to find a strong female heroine in a novel but Mary Jane IS that heroine, fighting for the weak and making a difference not just in her world, but in the worlds of others.
To add a dose of complexity, the protagonists all hold names indicative of their underlying roles in the story line: thus Delphia acts as an oracle and seer, Chevalier is actually a knight in disguise, and Mary Jane (much to the reader's surprise) embodies ALL these qualities, exhibited during the course of her quest.
It's all about a quest involving 'finding an angel', fantasies designed to cope with soul-threatening encounters, issues of death and values in life, and an epic quest disguised as a search for meaning. In this case not only does Mary Jane find her cause and meaning from life, but events come full circle in posing an angelic presence for Sera, the little girl who needs rescuing.
Saving the Innocents is also about preparing for battle, caring for self and strangers alike, and what motivates the deepest of emotions: "All her life she had wanted to be noticed - to love and be loved - to be someone’s champion. The answers had come from the most unexpected sources. Nick, Delphia, Jack, and Sera. An ex-fireman, a crippled, blind woman . . . an odd, devoted, loyal man - and a little girl."
As protagonists join the story and begin their dance of interaction and influence, readers are treated to much more than a mystery or crime story: it's a story of courage, survival against all odds, and revelations that change everyone involved. The heart and soul of Saving the Innocents lies in Mary Jane's choices and determination which create a true heroine's journey in which Mary Jane's emotions and observations act as a driving force behind an epic quest for salvation that spills from the personal to (ultimately) an entire circle of characters.
Any looking for a novel that wraps its reader in a cloak of complexity and warmth will find Saving the Innocents filled with satisfying twists, turns, and protagonist interactions that create scenarios of understanding, connection and, ultimately, redemption.
Hot link to above review:
Randall Kenneth Drake
Silver Dragon Press LLC
ISBN: 0-9747161-0-3 $5.99
www.rkdrake.com
Saving the Innocents is all about courage, strength, and personal effort; and as it chronicles the life and efforts of one Mary Jane Chevalier (an 'everywoman' who feels powerless but in fact is powerful), it also reflects modern society's milieu - and thus will resonate with readers looking for positive stories about courage and determination in the face of impossible odds.
But Saving the Innocents isn't a story without violence: indeed, the first paragraph has Mary Jane facing death with little more than the snap of her gum as a response: "She thought it funny . . . what went through her mind while waiting for the bullet. Time slowed down in that moment. Several thoughts and feelings flashed - alternating waves. Her body felt relaxed at first, as though relief had finally come. Freedom. And she welcomed it."
The first striking thing to note about Saving the Innocents is its attention to detail and description, which capture powerful images with a pen finely honed by the moment: "The sound was like a bumblebee as it split the smoke-filled air. She swung her body around with a gathering force, and brought the cue from behind her like a broadsword - the way a Viking marauder would in the long ago of Scotland. The wooden blade made a thunderous crack into the side of the big man’s knee, the cue splitting apart…"
Mary's passion for finding her father is only equaled by her determination to save the weak who, much like herself, have limited choices when facing violence. And so her very nature inevitably becomes linked to two very special people who enter her life on the run and who create a double mystery for her to pursue. True to her helpful nature, Mary Jane feels compelled to assist; and that action in turn will transform her own life as she becomes absorbed in a deadly manhunt, determined to save the innocents she's stumbled upon and, ultimately, herself.
Mary Jane feels like an unknown: while she makes efforts in life, she largely feels her achievements are too little … or so her conscious says. Her decision to search out an absent father who changed her life through his actions is what results in the unexpected: the discovery of a man and a little girl hiding out because they have seen too much.
Now, some notes on this novel's unusual roots: they were inspired by the author's infatuation with movies and with the songs of Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow. Parts of this story actually came to him in a series of flashback-like scenes which he dutifully penned as they came; but it was McLachlan's music that prompted a flood of inspiration prompted by a realization that each line of one of her songs described one of the scenes Randall Kenneth Drake was already writing.
And it was Morisette's song 'Mary Jane' and 'You Learn' combined with Crow's lyrics in 'Am I Getting Through' which both contributed to the character of Mary Jane Chevalier. Listen to this music for further insights into that protagonist and her origins - at the risk of gaining advance insights into where the plot is going. In fact - listening to the music of all three as background to reading provides a kind of multimedia experience that any singular song, artist or the book alone couldn't impart.
The scenes originated with a story Drake stumbled upon in a bar, of an abandoned child left by her mother in front of the 'best house she would like to live in'. And so psychological and physical abandonment are one element in a novel that weaves a complicated story line powered by a woman who is strong, but believes herself to be weak. It's unusual to find a strong female heroine in a novel but Mary Jane IS that heroine, fighting for the weak and making a difference not just in her world, but in the worlds of others.
To add a dose of complexity, the protagonists all hold names indicative of their underlying roles in the story line: thus Delphia acts as an oracle and seer, Chevalier is actually a knight in disguise, and Mary Jane (much to the reader's surprise) embodies ALL these qualities, exhibited during the course of her quest.
It's all about a quest involving 'finding an angel', fantasies designed to cope with soul-threatening encounters, issues of death and values in life, and an epic quest disguised as a search for meaning. In this case not only does Mary Jane find her cause and meaning from life, but events come full circle in posing an angelic presence for Sera, the little girl who needs rescuing.
Saving the Innocents is also about preparing for battle, caring for self and strangers alike, and what motivates the deepest of emotions: "All her life she had wanted to be noticed - to love and be loved - to be someone’s champion. The answers had come from the most unexpected sources. Nick, Delphia, Jack, and Sera. An ex-fireman, a crippled, blind woman . . . an odd, devoted, loyal man - and a little girl."
As protagonists join the story and begin their dance of interaction and influence, readers are treated to much more than a mystery or crime story: it's a story of courage, survival against all odds, and revelations that change everyone involved. The heart and soul of Saving the Innocents lies in Mary Jane's choices and determination which create a true heroine's journey in which Mary Jane's emotions and observations act as a driving force behind an epic quest for salvation that spills from the personal to (ultimately) an entire circle of characters.
Any looking for a novel that wraps its reader in a cloak of complexity and warmth will find Saving the Innocents filled with satisfying twists, turns, and protagonist interactions that create scenarios of understanding, connection and, ultimately, redemption.
Hot link to above review:
A Son's Odyssey
Lewis Lambert
AuthorHouse
ISBN-10: 1463445997 ISBN-13: 978-1463445997
Paperback $14.21
ASIN: B0060LEYRI Kindle $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/Sons-Odyssey-Lewis-Allen-Lambert-ebook/dp/B0060LEYRI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391104610&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Son%27s+Odyssey+lambert
A Son's Odyssey provides the third and final book in the trilogy covering the life of Jack Meadows, the youngest flag officer in the RAF during World War II, and picks up where Uncommon Warrior left off when Jack disappeared from the radar and was presumed dead.
While the first two books focused on Jack's life and experiences, A Son's Odyssey details the ongoing search for Jack conducted by Alan Marks, Jack's best friend, who refused to believe Jack was truly dead.
Once again, it's highly recommended that readers enjoy the first books in the trilogy, Michael's Messengers and Uncommon Warrior, before undertaking this concluding volume. For one thing, they provide the depth, detail and background to set the stage for a thorough appreciation of A Son's Odyssey, creating the foundations for understanding an uncommon friendship between an army officer and a pilot 25 years his junior. Readers will readily appreciate why a powerful conviction of Jack's survival proved a tie that would bind generations together nearly thirty years after Jack's disappearance, and will have a better basis for an appreciation of A Son's Odyssey.
What really sparked the creation of A Son's Odyssey was the absence of closure that the certainty of death would have provided. Without this certainty, a "…hole is left in the heart of everyone who knew him" - in particular, a father and comrade who finds it nearly impossible to accept the loss of his young friend only three days before the Germans surrendered. Perhaps part of this difficulty lies in Jack's previous (almost supernatural) ability to survive crashes and even death itself.
As the friend embarks on an odyssey to fill in the gaps in Jack's life, his interviews with others who knew Jack reveals the depths of Jack's influence on them at a very young age, the gaps left by his disappearance, and the real possibility that Jack could have survived against all odds. All this prompts a journey of discovery to learn more about Jack's life and leads to an investigation of post-war chaos and the fates of battle survivors.
Assumptions on what could have happened and scenarios that could have led to survival make for an odyssey that reveals records of concentration camps and possible scenarios that could have led Jack to not resurface. Fueling it all is a friend’s feeling that he couldn't complete Jack's story without knowing what really happened to him: a mission that led him to tell Jack’s father "…if it took him the rest of his life, he would pursue the search for Jack."
Charged with the task and legacy of his friend that "If he failed to find Jack before he died, then he wanted me to continue his search. He told me not to publish the book until he passed on because he wanted to leave this world with the everlasting belief that Jack may have survived the war."), his son Aaron Marks’ life becomes immersed in his father's legacy: a seemingly-impossible quest for the truth.
With the prior books in this trilogy providing all the background, readers become engrossed in a new drama: this one revolving around not only Jack's ultimate fate, but how a search for truth transforms several generations. The twisting maze of clues leads in unexpected directions; from romance to connections between all the people who knew Jack and were affected by his courage and life.
In the end it's all about these connections forged in the course of war: links that survive even beyond death. Expect a stunning conclusion to the trilogy; one which finally, definitively, leads to a resolution fueled by determination and love.
Hot link to above review:
Lewis Lambert
AuthorHouse
ISBN-10: 1463445997 ISBN-13: 978-1463445997
Paperback $14.21
ASIN: B0060LEYRI Kindle $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/Sons-Odyssey-Lewis-Allen-Lambert-ebook/dp/B0060LEYRI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391104610&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Son%27s+Odyssey+lambert
A Son's Odyssey provides the third and final book in the trilogy covering the life of Jack Meadows, the youngest flag officer in the RAF during World War II, and picks up where Uncommon Warrior left off when Jack disappeared from the radar and was presumed dead.
While the first two books focused on Jack's life and experiences, A Son's Odyssey details the ongoing search for Jack conducted by Alan Marks, Jack's best friend, who refused to believe Jack was truly dead.
Once again, it's highly recommended that readers enjoy the first books in the trilogy, Michael's Messengers and Uncommon Warrior, before undertaking this concluding volume. For one thing, they provide the depth, detail and background to set the stage for a thorough appreciation of A Son's Odyssey, creating the foundations for understanding an uncommon friendship between an army officer and a pilot 25 years his junior. Readers will readily appreciate why a powerful conviction of Jack's survival proved a tie that would bind generations together nearly thirty years after Jack's disappearance, and will have a better basis for an appreciation of A Son's Odyssey.
What really sparked the creation of A Son's Odyssey was the absence of closure that the certainty of death would have provided. Without this certainty, a "…hole is left in the heart of everyone who knew him" - in particular, a father and comrade who finds it nearly impossible to accept the loss of his young friend only three days before the Germans surrendered. Perhaps part of this difficulty lies in Jack's previous (almost supernatural) ability to survive crashes and even death itself.
As the friend embarks on an odyssey to fill in the gaps in Jack's life, his interviews with others who knew Jack reveals the depths of Jack's influence on them at a very young age, the gaps left by his disappearance, and the real possibility that Jack could have survived against all odds. All this prompts a journey of discovery to learn more about Jack's life and leads to an investigation of post-war chaos and the fates of battle survivors.
Assumptions on what could have happened and scenarios that could have led to survival make for an odyssey that reveals records of concentration camps and possible scenarios that could have led Jack to not resurface. Fueling it all is a friend’s feeling that he couldn't complete Jack's story without knowing what really happened to him: a mission that led him to tell Jack’s father "…if it took him the rest of his life, he would pursue the search for Jack."
Charged with the task and legacy of his friend that "If he failed to find Jack before he died, then he wanted me to continue his search. He told me not to publish the book until he passed on because he wanted to leave this world with the everlasting belief that Jack may have survived the war."), his son Aaron Marks’ life becomes immersed in his father's legacy: a seemingly-impossible quest for the truth.
With the prior books in this trilogy providing all the background, readers become engrossed in a new drama: this one revolving around not only Jack's ultimate fate, but how a search for truth transforms several generations. The twisting maze of clues leads in unexpected directions; from romance to connections between all the people who knew Jack and were affected by his courage and life.
In the end it's all about these connections forged in the course of war: links that survive even beyond death. Expect a stunning conclusion to the trilogy; one which finally, definitively, leads to a resolution fueled by determination and love.
Hot link to above review:
3 Auditions
Colin Juvonen
Colin Juvonen, Publisher
978-0-9892218-0-1 $2.99
http://colinjuvonen.com/
http://www.amazon.com/3-auditions-Colin-Juvonen-ebook/dp/B00C3VDPBU
3 Auditions is a novella set in near future America and tells of the screenwriter Emory Mann, affected when a coup establishes a new political order in the country, causing his daughter to be placed on a 'Most Wanted' list after she vanishes.
Emory's efforts to help her result in his own confrontations with the new order: encounters that will transform his life and reflect the dark changes taking hold in the US.
As Emory moves from lonely widower to a traveler in a strange new world, his perspectives undergo radical transformation. Used to a life where he was not politically engaged, Emory reluctantly enters the realm of observation, commentary, and finally active involvement; all fueled by the prospect of helping his daughter Martha, who has gone underground and been missing for some two years.
One powerful attribute of 3 Auditions is that Emory's world starts off sounding familiar (much like our own world today) and slowly incorporates disparate elements that show how much America has been transformed. That some of these elements are conceivable in present-day, post-911 America only serves to make events more accessible, more emotionally charged, and disturbingly familiar and realistic: "My Fast Pass transponder was gone from the side netting; instead there was a similarly sized, but gun metal colored object probably twice as heavy…They either wanted me to know they had been in the car or could care less if I knew. I turned the new transponder around in my hand, imagining the features. Tossing it wouldn’t be a good idea and I headed out."
As events evolve and Emory's journey becomes more challenging, readers are treated to a host of subtle commentaries on how freedoms have been compromised, ideals limited, and how Americans have come to accept such changes as necessary. How can repression be promoted as caution, challenges to freedom repackaged as attempts to preserve social structure, and one man's quest become a symbol for navigating the maze of such a changed landscape?
For a man relatively uninvolved in politics, Emory finds himself at the center of a vortex of change, with his screenwriting abilities and his connections to a long-vanished daughter (now considered a 'terrorist' by the new order) placing him on the line between old and new American values.
The New Republic has permeated into the psyches of its citizens, creeping into their very temperament, as Emory observes when describing a dog's shooting: "“I was shocked by their passivity, almost as shocked as I was by the shooter. The crowd was much more cowed than I would have thought. They were submissive and that was a shock, especially here in Texas.”"
Emory's search for his daughter and for truth will reveal far more than he anticipated about this new world and leads to his newfound role as a pawn in a larger political arena where autocrats rule without constraint.
It's a too-real possibility, and 3 Auditions deftly carries out its promise of immersing readers in how such a world could come to pass. Any who enjoy stories of possible future societies in general and America's changes in particular will find this a compelling read, using the character of 'everyman' Emory as a charming, but troubled tour-guide.
Hot link to above review:
Colin Juvonen
Colin Juvonen, Publisher
978-0-9892218-0-1 $2.99
http://colinjuvonen.com/
http://www.amazon.com/3-auditions-Colin-Juvonen-ebook/dp/B00C3VDPBU
3 Auditions is a novella set in near future America and tells of the screenwriter Emory Mann, affected when a coup establishes a new political order in the country, causing his daughter to be placed on a 'Most Wanted' list after she vanishes.
Emory's efforts to help her result in his own confrontations with the new order: encounters that will transform his life and reflect the dark changes taking hold in the US.
As Emory moves from lonely widower to a traveler in a strange new world, his perspectives undergo radical transformation. Used to a life where he was not politically engaged, Emory reluctantly enters the realm of observation, commentary, and finally active involvement; all fueled by the prospect of helping his daughter Martha, who has gone underground and been missing for some two years.
One powerful attribute of 3 Auditions is that Emory's world starts off sounding familiar (much like our own world today) and slowly incorporates disparate elements that show how much America has been transformed. That some of these elements are conceivable in present-day, post-911 America only serves to make events more accessible, more emotionally charged, and disturbingly familiar and realistic: "My Fast Pass transponder was gone from the side netting; instead there was a similarly sized, but gun metal colored object probably twice as heavy…They either wanted me to know they had been in the car or could care less if I knew. I turned the new transponder around in my hand, imagining the features. Tossing it wouldn’t be a good idea and I headed out."
As events evolve and Emory's journey becomes more challenging, readers are treated to a host of subtle commentaries on how freedoms have been compromised, ideals limited, and how Americans have come to accept such changes as necessary. How can repression be promoted as caution, challenges to freedom repackaged as attempts to preserve social structure, and one man's quest become a symbol for navigating the maze of such a changed landscape?
For a man relatively uninvolved in politics, Emory finds himself at the center of a vortex of change, with his screenwriting abilities and his connections to a long-vanished daughter (now considered a 'terrorist' by the new order) placing him on the line between old and new American values.
The New Republic has permeated into the psyches of its citizens, creeping into their very temperament, as Emory observes when describing a dog's shooting: "“I was shocked by their passivity, almost as shocked as I was by the shooter. The crowd was much more cowed than I would have thought. They were submissive and that was a shock, especially here in Texas.”"
Emory's search for his daughter and for truth will reveal far more than he anticipated about this new world and leads to his newfound role as a pawn in a larger political arena where autocrats rule without constraint.
It's a too-real possibility, and 3 Auditions deftly carries out its promise of immersing readers in how such a world could come to pass. Any who enjoy stories of possible future societies in general and America's changes in particular will find this a compelling read, using the character of 'everyman' Emory as a charming, but troubled tour-guide.
Hot link to above review:
Thump
Avraham Azrieli
CreateSpace
ISBN: 1494281759 $12.00
http://www.amazon.com/Thump-Avraham-Azrieli/dp/1494281759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390405283&sr=8-1&keywords=1494281759
"Thump" is actually T.M. Jefferson, an African-American man who's a successful junior associate in an investment firm. The problem? This success has largely stemmed from his relationship with one of the firm's partners, who rewards him with promotions and bonuses as a result. When he falls in love with someone outside the firm, an ugly scene erupts that threatens everything he's worked for.
That's the plot of Thump in a nutshell. Now for the nitty-gritty: the story opens with the flirtatious Thump moving between two women: nurse Tiffany (who is his love) and boss Henrietta Kingman. It's a deft dance and it's evident that Thump has been dancing it for quite some time. He's also more than adept in the courtroom (as a quick court encounter proves.) It's all about hedging the risks, personally and professionally - and the heat is about to get turned up.
As the story progresses, Thump's delicate game is challenged. He's used to landing big fish in his business, but his personal and business life just got a little more complicated, and special interests abound. There's also a healthy dose of insight on racism affecting African-Americans - even a professional such as Thump. In fact, prejudice and racism increasingly permeate an engrossing account that pinpoints many underlying currents in racist behavior patterns: "Thump pounded on his chest. “I’ve lived with these insults. Do you know how humiliating it is when white people give me that look, that quick appraising glance just before they decide how wide a circle they should take around me, as if I'm going to hit them or pull a gun out and rob them?"
These subplots add to an overall tale that follows Thump's encounters within and outside his firm, increasing in tension as the predicable happens (Thump is fired by Henrietta, the entire mess winds up in court, and a sexual harassment case follows.)
The dual focus on Thump's personal and business relationships and how they entwine, presenting waxing and waning levels of complexity, is just one of the attractions Thump.
As the story line evolves to examine these racial and social differences (why whites are afraid of blacks, and the roots of prejudice), a now-wheelchair-bound Thump is forced to confront his deepest experiences with society; especially the origins of a life that seems to be leading towards his getting a "bad rap" despite his efforts.
Courtroom proceedings reinforce Thump's efforts to gain justice and tackle issues of prejudice at the same time, but they also challenge Thump's perspective on life, fairness, and the paths he's chosen on the way to a world now shattered all around him.
Readers come to realize that Thump's saga (his encounters with racism and his sexual harassment case) provides vehicles for deeper understanding. While courtroom proceedings and sexual harassment issues are fictional here, they're supported by the author's research into other cases that hold similar facts.
Thump's courtroom victory or failure will set the tone for the rest of his life - and also sets the tone for an exploration of office politics, sexual harassment and racism that comes alive in novel format in a way nonfiction could never achieve.
Any reader interested in realistic courtroom dramas fueled by social issues and civil rights concerns will find Thump engrossing.
Hot link to above review:
Avraham Azrieli
CreateSpace
ISBN: 1494281759 $12.00
http://www.amazon.com/Thump-Avraham-Azrieli/dp/1494281759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390405283&sr=8-1&keywords=1494281759
"Thump" is actually T.M. Jefferson, an African-American man who's a successful junior associate in an investment firm. The problem? This success has largely stemmed from his relationship with one of the firm's partners, who rewards him with promotions and bonuses as a result. When he falls in love with someone outside the firm, an ugly scene erupts that threatens everything he's worked for.
That's the plot of Thump in a nutshell. Now for the nitty-gritty: the story opens with the flirtatious Thump moving between two women: nurse Tiffany (who is his love) and boss Henrietta Kingman. It's a deft dance and it's evident that Thump has been dancing it for quite some time. He's also more than adept in the courtroom (as a quick court encounter proves.) It's all about hedging the risks, personally and professionally - and the heat is about to get turned up.
As the story progresses, Thump's delicate game is challenged. He's used to landing big fish in his business, but his personal and business life just got a little more complicated, and special interests abound. There's also a healthy dose of insight on racism affecting African-Americans - even a professional such as Thump. In fact, prejudice and racism increasingly permeate an engrossing account that pinpoints many underlying currents in racist behavior patterns: "Thump pounded on his chest. “I’ve lived with these insults. Do you know how humiliating it is when white people give me that look, that quick appraising glance just before they decide how wide a circle they should take around me, as if I'm going to hit them or pull a gun out and rob them?"
These subplots add to an overall tale that follows Thump's encounters within and outside his firm, increasing in tension as the predicable happens (Thump is fired by Henrietta, the entire mess winds up in court, and a sexual harassment case follows.)
The dual focus on Thump's personal and business relationships and how they entwine, presenting waxing and waning levels of complexity, is just one of the attractions Thump.
As the story line evolves to examine these racial and social differences (why whites are afraid of blacks, and the roots of prejudice), a now-wheelchair-bound Thump is forced to confront his deepest experiences with society; especially the origins of a life that seems to be leading towards his getting a "bad rap" despite his efforts.
Courtroom proceedings reinforce Thump's efforts to gain justice and tackle issues of prejudice at the same time, but they also challenge Thump's perspective on life, fairness, and the paths he's chosen on the way to a world now shattered all around him.
Readers come to realize that Thump's saga (his encounters with racism and his sexual harassment case) provides vehicles for deeper understanding. While courtroom proceedings and sexual harassment issues are fictional here, they're supported by the author's research into other cases that hold similar facts.
Thump's courtroom victory or failure will set the tone for the rest of his life - and also sets the tone for an exploration of office politics, sexual harassment and racism that comes alive in novel format in a way nonfiction could never achieve.
Any reader interested in realistic courtroom dramas fueled by social issues and civil rights concerns will find Thump engrossing.
Hot link to above review:
Timelapse
Lorrie Farrelly
9781469953502
Amazon Digital Services (ebook, $3.99)
CreateSpace (paperback, $11.69)
ACX (audiobook, price varies)
http://www.amazon.com/Lorrie-Farrelly/e/B008P3LJ0O
https://sites.google.com/site/yourbestreads
Timelapse is timeslip thriller writing at its best and opens with Alex's grief over the accidental death of his wife. Now, most accounts would either end there or explore this grief process, but Timelapse posits an intriguing 'what if'. What if a colleague of Alex's has found a way to go back in time, changing the course of Alex's life? What if a way can be found to reverse the past? What if Alex stumbles into a terrible world where not only his wife but a young son are also torn from him? And even if it threatens the world - would he still grasp the chance to change everything?
At the same time Jessica, an inhabitant of that strange new world, is facing her own nightmare challenges when Alex rescues her from a grim confrontation. And despite her belief that Alex is not quite sane, she finds herself attracted to his determination and courage.
Romance, time-travel and thrilling twists and turns under one cover? Read on: there's nothing predictable about the events in Timelapse and as the main protagonists become more entwined in their dangerous new world (and each other) there are further questions about who really is controlling time travel and events in an alternate universe where everything is threatened.
Timelapse holds several notable strengths that differentiate it from other time-travel and alternate history novels. For one thing, its characters hold more depth and personality, involving readers in two separate world concerns that unite the protagonists. Both are lost in a place where freedom and the Constitution are non-existent, and where a scheming megalomaniac builds the potential for even greater disaster.
Secondly, the action is fast-paced and unrelenting, opening with a bang and never letting up: "The world ended in a blaze of light, shattering into fractured shards of impossible color. Alex Morgan lay senseless, flat on his back on the floor, arms outflung, a steady trickle of blood seeping from a small, bruised gash behind his right ear. His last conscious thought had been: Oh my God! An attack!"
Most time-travel books would make the main protagonist a scientist with a background in time travel: by having casting Alex as an educated professor who just happens to stumble on a time travel device, a whole new dimension is introduced that sets aside any presumptions of knowledge, technical expertise, or scientific savvy - and this removes the 'edge' from events, making two protagonists from very different worlds equals in their explorations.
As Alex comes to identify an even greater threat than his own personal losses, he finds himself rise above his suffering to fight in the name of freedom for both worlds. And who better to fight by his side than already-seasoned freedom fighter Jessica, who ultimately wants the same thing?
Now, when you travel in time, dates become understandably mixed up. And you better have them straight when you contemplate being in a particular place at a particular time in order to change destiny.
Without giving away the events that move inevitably to a final confrontation, suffice it to say that romance and danger are always at the helm of a time-travel saga that weaves politics, plots, and love together in a solid, action-packed saga.
Those who want their alternate history and timeslip stories laced with believable, winning protagonists should look no further than Timelapse: it provides a gripping, involving read from start to finish, and stands out from the crowd.
Hot link to above review:
Lorrie Farrelly
9781469953502
Amazon Digital Services (ebook, $3.99)
CreateSpace (paperback, $11.69)
ACX (audiobook, price varies)
http://www.amazon.com/Lorrie-Farrelly/e/B008P3LJ0O
https://sites.google.com/site/yourbestreads
Timelapse is timeslip thriller writing at its best and opens with Alex's grief over the accidental death of his wife. Now, most accounts would either end there or explore this grief process, but Timelapse posits an intriguing 'what if'. What if a colleague of Alex's has found a way to go back in time, changing the course of Alex's life? What if a way can be found to reverse the past? What if Alex stumbles into a terrible world where not only his wife but a young son are also torn from him? And even if it threatens the world - would he still grasp the chance to change everything?
At the same time Jessica, an inhabitant of that strange new world, is facing her own nightmare challenges when Alex rescues her from a grim confrontation. And despite her belief that Alex is not quite sane, she finds herself attracted to his determination and courage.
Romance, time-travel and thrilling twists and turns under one cover? Read on: there's nothing predictable about the events in Timelapse and as the main protagonists become more entwined in their dangerous new world (and each other) there are further questions about who really is controlling time travel and events in an alternate universe where everything is threatened.
Timelapse holds several notable strengths that differentiate it from other time-travel and alternate history novels. For one thing, its characters hold more depth and personality, involving readers in two separate world concerns that unite the protagonists. Both are lost in a place where freedom and the Constitution are non-existent, and where a scheming megalomaniac builds the potential for even greater disaster.
Secondly, the action is fast-paced and unrelenting, opening with a bang and never letting up: "The world ended in a blaze of light, shattering into fractured shards of impossible color. Alex Morgan lay senseless, flat on his back on the floor, arms outflung, a steady trickle of blood seeping from a small, bruised gash behind his right ear. His last conscious thought had been: Oh my God! An attack!"
Most time-travel books would make the main protagonist a scientist with a background in time travel: by having casting Alex as an educated professor who just happens to stumble on a time travel device, a whole new dimension is introduced that sets aside any presumptions of knowledge, technical expertise, or scientific savvy - and this removes the 'edge' from events, making two protagonists from very different worlds equals in their explorations.
As Alex comes to identify an even greater threat than his own personal losses, he finds himself rise above his suffering to fight in the name of freedom for both worlds. And who better to fight by his side than already-seasoned freedom fighter Jessica, who ultimately wants the same thing?
Now, when you travel in time, dates become understandably mixed up. And you better have them straight when you contemplate being in a particular place at a particular time in order to change destiny.
Without giving away the events that move inevitably to a final confrontation, suffice it to say that romance and danger are always at the helm of a time-travel saga that weaves politics, plots, and love together in a solid, action-packed saga.
Those who want their alternate history and timeslip stories laced with believable, winning protagonists should look no further than Timelapse: it provides a gripping, involving read from start to finish, and stands out from the crowd.
Hot link to above review:
Uncommon Warrior
Lewis Lambert
AuthorHouse
ISBN-10: 1438962886 ISBN-13: 978-1438962887
Paperback $26.54
ASIN: B007COSY0K Kindle $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Warrior-Lewis-Allen-Lambert-ebook/dp/B007COSY0K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391102253&sr=8-1&keywords=uncommon+warrior+lambert
Uncommon Warrior is Book Two of Lambert's trilogy, and continues the saga of Jack Meadows, a Polish-born naturalized American who trained as a fighter pilot in America and returned to Poland at a young age to fly with the Polish Air Force in 1939.
While his ability to take risks and emerge on the other end of conflict as a victor serves him well in battle, it didn't translate to his personal life, which saw a succession of failed romances.
Now, Michael's Messengers provided background history and at its conclusion Jack appears to have overcome barriers in his life, achieving greatness and facing the prospect of a wider success than he's previously known. The novel was a dense yet an involving read and those who appreciate its setting and message are in the perfect position to also understand Jack's evolving life in Uncommon Warrior.
Engaged to be married and anticipating both the end of war and the promise of a new political career, Jack seems set to begin a new life filled with promise; but life has a way of injecting challenge and change into even the best-laid plans; and so Jack's course in life is once again transformed by the events laid out in Uncommon Warrior.
While an introduction reviews the main characters of the story and provides a synopsis of past events, it's highly recommended that readers begin with Michael's Messengers to appreciate the depth of experience, description and influences on Jack's evolving life before venturing into the ongoing saga in Uncommon Warrior. Those with such a background will be able to more readily appreciate Jack's past and its ongoing influence on his present-day world and future.
The costs of war, victory, defeat and (most of all) the cost of being a survivor are outlined in an account of one man's immersion in hell and madness and his struggles to find a way out of conflict. For four long years combat pilot Jack has maintained an edge because of his skills; but the field is about to change, leading him away from familiar tactics and into unknown territory.
As Jack looks forward to a new relationship and what it might mean to lead a life not dominated by war and conflict, he also faces some new, tough decisions that involve changed priorities and the acknowledgement that "The war can't last forever" - and that when it's over, life for Jack will be vastly different.
Before that can happen, Jack assumes an important, a new more dangerous role in the RAF, stumbles upon an opportunity to help Jewish people in hiding by flying them out of Denmark to safety in England, and struggles with new confrontations with the Luftwaffe in the course of combat operations around enemy lines.
That author Lewis Lambert is a retired military officer is evident in a novel that is packed with military processes, realistic scenes and encounters, and laced with a thorough knowledge of military history, combat operations, and World War II events. All this is presented in the first person, which helps readers gain a personal perspective through the eyes of one Jack Meadows, whose life not only revolves around the war but is recreated by its changing demands.
From justifications for actions to Jack's experiences of amazing sights, people, and circumstances, World War II comes to life through personal experience, creating vivid observations that immerse readers in a 'you are there' series of events: "As we flew toward the coastline I saw the most amazing sight. As far as I could see from port to starboard, about 25 kilometers or more along the horizon, there was nothing but ships. As we descended I saw the wake of hundreds, of landing craft plying their way toward the beaches. I could see thousands of tracers in both directions."
It's these observational moments, paired with Jack's ongoing growth as both a fighter pilot and a human being, that make Uncommon Warrior a power-packed novel of morale under impossible conditions. Any military fiction reader will appreciate the close attention to historical detail, the exacting probes of Jack's personality and his combat operations, and the unusually well-rounded presentation of personal, political and military perspectives as seen through the eyes of a man who lived in extraordinary times.
Jack's story would seem to conclude in Book Two, with an epilogue written by Alan Marks as a tribute to his friend. But wait - there's more….
Hot link to above review:
Lewis Lambert
AuthorHouse
ISBN-10: 1438962886 ISBN-13: 978-1438962887
Paperback $26.54
ASIN: B007COSY0K Kindle $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Warrior-Lewis-Allen-Lambert-ebook/dp/B007COSY0K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391102253&sr=8-1&keywords=uncommon+warrior+lambert
Uncommon Warrior is Book Two of Lambert's trilogy, and continues the saga of Jack Meadows, a Polish-born naturalized American who trained as a fighter pilot in America and returned to Poland at a young age to fly with the Polish Air Force in 1939.
While his ability to take risks and emerge on the other end of conflict as a victor serves him well in battle, it didn't translate to his personal life, which saw a succession of failed romances.
Now, Michael's Messengers provided background history and at its conclusion Jack appears to have overcome barriers in his life, achieving greatness and facing the prospect of a wider success than he's previously known. The novel was a dense yet an involving read and those who appreciate its setting and message are in the perfect position to also understand Jack's evolving life in Uncommon Warrior.
Engaged to be married and anticipating both the end of war and the promise of a new political career, Jack seems set to begin a new life filled with promise; but life has a way of injecting challenge and change into even the best-laid plans; and so Jack's course in life is once again transformed by the events laid out in Uncommon Warrior.
While an introduction reviews the main characters of the story and provides a synopsis of past events, it's highly recommended that readers begin with Michael's Messengers to appreciate the depth of experience, description and influences on Jack's evolving life before venturing into the ongoing saga in Uncommon Warrior. Those with such a background will be able to more readily appreciate Jack's past and its ongoing influence on his present-day world and future.
The costs of war, victory, defeat and (most of all) the cost of being a survivor are outlined in an account of one man's immersion in hell and madness and his struggles to find a way out of conflict. For four long years combat pilot Jack has maintained an edge because of his skills; but the field is about to change, leading him away from familiar tactics and into unknown territory.
As Jack looks forward to a new relationship and what it might mean to lead a life not dominated by war and conflict, he also faces some new, tough decisions that involve changed priorities and the acknowledgement that "The war can't last forever" - and that when it's over, life for Jack will be vastly different.
Before that can happen, Jack assumes an important, a new more dangerous role in the RAF, stumbles upon an opportunity to help Jewish people in hiding by flying them out of Denmark to safety in England, and struggles with new confrontations with the Luftwaffe in the course of combat operations around enemy lines.
That author Lewis Lambert is a retired military officer is evident in a novel that is packed with military processes, realistic scenes and encounters, and laced with a thorough knowledge of military history, combat operations, and World War II events. All this is presented in the first person, which helps readers gain a personal perspective through the eyes of one Jack Meadows, whose life not only revolves around the war but is recreated by its changing demands.
From justifications for actions to Jack's experiences of amazing sights, people, and circumstances, World War II comes to life through personal experience, creating vivid observations that immerse readers in a 'you are there' series of events: "As we flew toward the coastline I saw the most amazing sight. As far as I could see from port to starboard, about 25 kilometers or more along the horizon, there was nothing but ships. As we descended I saw the wake of hundreds, of landing craft plying their way toward the beaches. I could see thousands of tracers in both directions."
It's these observational moments, paired with Jack's ongoing growth as both a fighter pilot and a human being, that make Uncommon Warrior a power-packed novel of morale under impossible conditions. Any military fiction reader will appreciate the close attention to historical detail, the exacting probes of Jack's personality and his combat operations, and the unusually well-rounded presentation of personal, political and military perspectives as seen through the eyes of a man who lived in extraordinary times.
Jack's story would seem to conclude in Book Two, with an epilogue written by Alan Marks as a tribute to his friend. But wait - there's more….
Hot link to above review:
The Vanished Ones
N.V. Sumner
N.V. Sumner, Publisher
Mobi version: 978-0-9911347-0-0; Epub version: 978-0-9911347-1-7; Print version: 978-0991134731
$2.99 ebook $10.99 Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/The-Vanished-Ones-N-V-Sumner-ebook/dp/B00HQOED9W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389383818&sr=8-1&keywords=the+vanished+ones
http://www.natashasumner.com
Li Chen is an investigator of missing children in San Francisco and her latest case involves a successful architect and her young child who have both vanished. There are only two clues: a set of the mother's fingerprints at a crime scene some ninety miles away and a disturbed woman who claims the two have been kidnapped by a sadistic cult leader.
Not much to go on; but then, Li Chen's job doesn't usually hold many clues, and her special challenge is to piece together tendrils of truth. Usually she finds it part of a day's work to distance herself from her cases, but this one holds some unusual parallels to her own life; and so Li embarks on a journey to uncover a truth that could have a devastating personal impact.
The Vanished Ones moves deftly from a child's kidnapping to an investigator's own family issues, creating connections and insights that tie both together. It pairs mystery with psychology and creates moments and scenes that join past and present together; from memories of Yulin (her vanished sister) to searches which all too often result in evidence of murder: "Li couldn’t keep her eyes away from the decomposing bodies that were once two vibrant girls who, only weeks before, had had their whole lives ahead of them. She ran up the stairs unable to breathe in the dungeon, gasping for breath as she reached the top. She collapsed on the lawn, desperately searching for air to fill her lungs. In the back of her mind, she wondered if that’s what had happened to Yulin."
Everything keeps coming back to Yulin. As Li finds increasing puzzles in her desperate search for Matti and Kendall, she comes to realize that she is running out of time… that they are all running out of time. But finding the missing isn't her only challenge in The Vanished Ones: when Li uncovers a physical issue that could threaten her life, her epiphany also revolves around what she can and can't control: "…there were some things in life over which she had no control and some things she just couldn’t fix."
As hope quickly follows upon the heels of despair, Li finds her latest case will challenge not only her values in life and her acceptance of past events, but the hope and fears she holds for her future.
The Vanished Ones is actually about many different types of disappearances, and about perseverance in the absence of all hope. It's also about how much the past can dictate present and future - and most of all, it's about tenaciousness and rediscovery.
All this, wrapped in the cloak of a satisfying mystery and thriller, makes The Vanished Ones a special recommendation for readers who want more psychological depth than casual investigative probes usually offer.
Hot link to above review:
N.V. Sumner
N.V. Sumner, Publisher
Mobi version: 978-0-9911347-0-0; Epub version: 978-0-9911347-1-7; Print version: 978-0991134731
$2.99 ebook $10.99 Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/The-Vanished-Ones-N-V-Sumner-ebook/dp/B00HQOED9W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389383818&sr=8-1&keywords=the+vanished+ones
http://www.natashasumner.com
Li Chen is an investigator of missing children in San Francisco and her latest case involves a successful architect and her young child who have both vanished. There are only two clues: a set of the mother's fingerprints at a crime scene some ninety miles away and a disturbed woman who claims the two have been kidnapped by a sadistic cult leader.
Not much to go on; but then, Li Chen's job doesn't usually hold many clues, and her special challenge is to piece together tendrils of truth. Usually she finds it part of a day's work to distance herself from her cases, but this one holds some unusual parallels to her own life; and so Li embarks on a journey to uncover a truth that could have a devastating personal impact.
The Vanished Ones moves deftly from a child's kidnapping to an investigator's own family issues, creating connections and insights that tie both together. It pairs mystery with psychology and creates moments and scenes that join past and present together; from memories of Yulin (her vanished sister) to searches which all too often result in evidence of murder: "Li couldn’t keep her eyes away from the decomposing bodies that were once two vibrant girls who, only weeks before, had had their whole lives ahead of them. She ran up the stairs unable to breathe in the dungeon, gasping for breath as she reached the top. She collapsed on the lawn, desperately searching for air to fill her lungs. In the back of her mind, she wondered if that’s what had happened to Yulin."
Everything keeps coming back to Yulin. As Li finds increasing puzzles in her desperate search for Matti and Kendall, she comes to realize that she is running out of time… that they are all running out of time. But finding the missing isn't her only challenge in The Vanished Ones: when Li uncovers a physical issue that could threaten her life, her epiphany also revolves around what she can and can't control: "…there were some things in life over which she had no control and some things she just couldn’t fix."
As hope quickly follows upon the heels of despair, Li finds her latest case will challenge not only her values in life and her acceptance of past events, but the hope and fears she holds for her future.
The Vanished Ones is actually about many different types of disappearances, and about perseverance in the absence of all hope. It's also about how much the past can dictate present and future - and most of all, it's about tenaciousness and rediscovery.
All this, wrapped in the cloak of a satisfying mystery and thriller, makes The Vanished Ones a special recommendation for readers who want more psychological depth than casual investigative probes usually offer.
Hot link to above review:
Young Adult
Sweet Tea
Wendy Lynn Decker
Serendipity Media Group, LLC
ASIN: B00HZ6CD16 Ebook $9.99
ISBN: 978-0615958484 Paperback $14.99, 350 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Tea-Wendy-Lynn-Decker-ebook/dp/B00HZ6CD16/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
www.wendylynndeckerauthor.com
Sweet Tea is a fine young adult story presented in the first person and revolving around the responsibilities of sixteen-year-old Olivia, who first learns that her mother may be mentally ill from a TV talk show on the subject. The question is: what to do now?
Her mother's always been 'eccentric', but Sweet Tea's opening sentence quickly pinpoints the truth: "Mama was different from other mothers, only I didn’t realize how different, until the day she buried our Thanksgiving turkey in the front yard. At the time, Mama believed the sacrificial act would save our sinful souls. In actuality, it challenged me to sacrifice my own."
As a 'child', Olivia surely can't force her mother into treatment; yet as a young adult she faces the prospect of being alone with a more-than-eccentric woman as her older sister prepares to move away in search of fame and fortune, leaving Olivia alone to cope with her mother. There's no help from her younger brother Luke, either: he's more than buried himself in a fascination for taking things apart and putting them back together. Only he tackle his home life in this manner, so he ignores it.
Even after Olivia's suspicions are confirmed, life doesn't get any easier: there's no relative to tap for help, no support system to engage Olivia in a consideration of the choices a parent's mental illness can bring, and Olivia has to muster courage and resourcefulness to bring about positive results all on her own. There is only the kindness of two strangers to rely on…but can she trust them? And can she overcome her own fears to move out into the world with no support system behind her?
Therein lies the meat of Sweet Tea (actually more bittersweet than sweet): Olivia's struggle to cope with her mother's condition while retaining her own sense of independence and growth.
Olivia may be young, fearful, and inexperienced, but her determination to build a life regardless of its special challenges is notable and uplifting, and carries readers along a dual path of appreciation for Olivia's home life and more mundane teen challenges of boyfriends and decisions made in life outside her home.
So many titles on mental illness narrow the focus to coping and neglect the overall bigger picture of how a home life with mental illness can interact with a wider world outside home's front door. Not so Sweet Tea, which provides a more realistic portrait from a teen's viewpoint that embraces so much more than a singular concern.
Yes, her mother's condition threatens to dominate her life - but that's not her only world. As Olivia's worlds coalesce, one of her biggest challenges is learning to trust in the efforts of others: "I guess my initial thoughts about Westin were wrong. Even if I hadn’t changed my mind, he was right. I had no choice but to have faith at that moment."
And as Olivia makes decisions about her future, from her mother's fate to her career possibilities as a journalist, she finds life offers her far more than a limited or dangerous future with a mentally ill parent.
In the end Sweet Tea is about many life-changing moments: survival, coping strategies, faith, trust - and personal evolution.
Life, death, and everything in between: Sweet Tea offers a bittersweet taste of what life's all about, and will immerse young adult and adult readers alike in a life well lived.
Hot link to above review:
Wendy Lynn Decker
Serendipity Media Group, LLC
ASIN: B00HZ6CD16 Ebook $9.99
ISBN: 978-0615958484 Paperback $14.99, 350 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Tea-Wendy-Lynn-Decker-ebook/dp/B00HZ6CD16/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
www.wendylynndeckerauthor.com
Sweet Tea is a fine young adult story presented in the first person and revolving around the responsibilities of sixteen-year-old Olivia, who first learns that her mother may be mentally ill from a TV talk show on the subject. The question is: what to do now?
Her mother's always been 'eccentric', but Sweet Tea's opening sentence quickly pinpoints the truth: "Mama was different from other mothers, only I didn’t realize how different, until the day she buried our Thanksgiving turkey in the front yard. At the time, Mama believed the sacrificial act would save our sinful souls. In actuality, it challenged me to sacrifice my own."
As a 'child', Olivia surely can't force her mother into treatment; yet as a young adult she faces the prospect of being alone with a more-than-eccentric woman as her older sister prepares to move away in search of fame and fortune, leaving Olivia alone to cope with her mother. There's no help from her younger brother Luke, either: he's more than buried himself in a fascination for taking things apart and putting them back together. Only he tackle his home life in this manner, so he ignores it.
Even after Olivia's suspicions are confirmed, life doesn't get any easier: there's no relative to tap for help, no support system to engage Olivia in a consideration of the choices a parent's mental illness can bring, and Olivia has to muster courage and resourcefulness to bring about positive results all on her own. There is only the kindness of two strangers to rely on…but can she trust them? And can she overcome her own fears to move out into the world with no support system behind her?
Therein lies the meat of Sweet Tea (actually more bittersweet than sweet): Olivia's struggle to cope with her mother's condition while retaining her own sense of independence and growth.
Olivia may be young, fearful, and inexperienced, but her determination to build a life regardless of its special challenges is notable and uplifting, and carries readers along a dual path of appreciation for Olivia's home life and more mundane teen challenges of boyfriends and decisions made in life outside her home.
So many titles on mental illness narrow the focus to coping and neglect the overall bigger picture of how a home life with mental illness can interact with a wider world outside home's front door. Not so Sweet Tea, which provides a more realistic portrait from a teen's viewpoint that embraces so much more than a singular concern.
Yes, her mother's condition threatens to dominate her life - but that's not her only world. As Olivia's worlds coalesce, one of her biggest challenges is learning to trust in the efforts of others: "I guess my initial thoughts about Westin were wrong. Even if I hadn’t changed my mind, he was right. I had no choice but to have faith at that moment."
And as Olivia makes decisions about her future, from her mother's fate to her career possibilities as a journalist, she finds life offers her far more than a limited or dangerous future with a mentally ill parent.
In the end Sweet Tea is about many life-changing moments: survival, coping strategies, faith, trust - and personal evolution.
Life, death, and everything in between: Sweet Tea offers a bittersweet taste of what life's all about, and will immerse young adult and adult readers alike in a life well lived.
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