Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Banged-Up Heart: Dancing with Love and Loss by Shirley Melis

★★★★½

Business and travel writer Shirley Melis experiences love and devotion for two amazing men in her life and suffers the loss of both in her poignant memoir Banged-Up Heart: Dancing with Love and Loss.

Honesty is the hallmark of this memoir, a paean to the best of relationships beset by the inevitability of death. Two years after the sudden loss of Joe, a fellow writer, political activist, and her husband of thirty years, Melis arranges to meet an old acquaintance and recent widower for a possible new start. She is urged on by a coterie of old friends. […]

Barbara Scott2019-01-22T11:33:30+02:00June 7th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Memoir, Non-Fiction|

Review: Nannion by Andreas Androutsellis-Theotokis

Everyone loves a cat story, and Nannion by Andreas Androutsellis-Theotokis features the eponymous off-white street cat in a surprising science fiction tale of earth sciences and Greek history. Although not a story for children (Nannion, the cat’s namesake, was in fact a prostitute in Ancient Greece) there is a childlike quality to the narration that makes the cat’s relationship with Claire, a lonely and dying marine biologist working in the Aegean Sea around Athens and the island of Dioptra, cozy reading.

As the book goes on, other characters working in marine sciences come into the story. The team learns about […]

Cate Baum2019-02-11T08:52:05+02:00June 6th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: International Fiction, Science Fiction|

Review: The Will by Benjamin Laskin

★★★★

When Josh McCain’s father dies, all signs point to this young man inheriting a fortune and continuing in his irresponsible, hedonistic and self-serving lifestyle, but his father has other plans in store. In The Will, a unique new novel from Benjamin Laskin, readers are introduced to a stereotypical playboy, with a Bruce Wayne-level of cockiness and untouchability, only to see it stripped away by a clever father with a vision of what his son’s life could be.

In order to secure his inheritance, Josh’s father composed a two-year To-Do List for his son, which will require a complete […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2021-11-29T05:56:38+02:00June 6th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Benjamin Laskin, Contemporary Fiction|

Review: The Custodian Chronicles, Volume 1 by Tim Will Hunting

Seeing the world through a new pair of eyes is what reading is all about, but when turning the pages of the Custodian Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Tim Hunting, you might want to wear safety goggles. This custodian, writer, philosopher and hilarious observer of the human condition gives readers a rare peek into the world of education by walking a mile in his shoes – those of a custodian at an elementary school.

Both laugh-out-loud funny at times and worryingly serious at others, this pen-wielding janitor has a lifetime of opinions and insights into the educational system and is more […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2019-02-11T09:49:38+02:00May 26th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Education, Social Science|

Review: Maybe God Is An American by Bernie Donnelly

Following the thrilling events of Maybe God Was an Irishman, author Bernie Donnelly brings readers back to the surreal premise of a 21st century Second Coming, where there is still much work to be done, in Maybe God Is An American. With the same blend of religious philosophy and off-the-cuff humor, this new book reveals what happens after Father Sean disappears, and welcomes readers into a new adventure on the other side of the pond.

Father Sean may have disappeared in the eyes of the world, but his disciples, Linda, Miguel and Anna, know that he is very […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2020-05-28T10:12:27+02:00May 26th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Bernie Donnelly, Religious Fiction|

Review: Breaking the Fourth Wall by Michelle Sevigny

“Even with ropes, a fall in the wrong place could be fatal.” So reads the guidebook for the trail that author/adventuress Michelle Sevigny traverses.

After confronting some painful events in her middle years, most recently the loss of her beloved dog to cancer, Sevigny seeks comfort through her longtime enjoyment of hiking. Walking the Likya Yolu, the Lycian Way, with its 500+ kilometers of winding paths on the southern coastline of Turkey, seems the ideal antidote to her nagging sense of emptiness. The trail is marked…sometimes. In other places, she needs to rely on a technology that even she found […]

Barbara Scott2019-02-11T09:54:33+02:00May 24th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Travel|

Review: Among the Branded by Linda Smolkin

★★★★

Finding hidden treasures in forgotten relics of the past is a romantic notion that has played out in countless books and films, yet the thrill of the mystery never seems to lessen. In Among the Branded, a new novel by author Linda Smolkin, readers are thrown into a slowly unfurling mystery surrounding a sheaf of “Love Letters From the War.” Stephanie Britain, a bold and impulsive art director, is the narrator and focal character of the novel, as well as the person who stumbles across the love letters at a flea market.

When she shares her exciting discovery […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2017-06-30T09:50:48+02:00May 18th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Contemporary Fiction, World War II|

Review: Winchester’s Bargain (Bart Northcote #4) by Murray Lee Eiland Jr.

Taking on the world’s financial elite – and threatening the one thing they hold dearest in the world – is no small task, but Bart Northcote never backs down from a challenge. In Winchester’s Bargain, the fourth installment in this PI series by Murray Lee Eiland Jr., the stakes for Northcote and his investigative team have never been higher, and the writing itself has never been better.

A mysterious man named Winchester Lee approaches Bart Northcote with some disturbing news: the New York Stock Exchange is being controlled by a shadowy Chinese cabal with trillions of dollars at their […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2019-02-11T08:40:16+02:00May 16th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Crime Fiction, Detective Fiction|