Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: The Ishtar Cup (The Bart Northcote Series #1) by Murray Lee Eiland Jr.

★★★★★

As far as private investigator novels go, there are certain expectations and traditional themes that seem to always pop up. There is usually a mysterious femme fatale, a gruff PI who marches to the beat of his own drum, and enough twists to keep a reader tearing through the pages.

In The Ishtar Cup, Book 1 of the Bart Northcote Series by Murray Lee Eiland Jr., some of these commonalities seem to appear almost instantly, but with a flavor all its own. While there is comfort in convention, this book also offers a different tone and a more […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2020-12-23T05:49:06+02:00April 4th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Crime Fiction, Detective Fiction, Noir|

Review: Once Upon a Lie by Michael French

★★★★½

In Once Upon a Lie, author Michael French takes a long, hard look at the binary universe in which we live – rich or poor, black or white, woman or man – and explores how those ideas change and grow within two young people on the cusp of adulthood. It’s a timely and powerful tale of race and love.

These two characters, Jaleel and Alex, couldn’t be more different than one another if they tried, and the early chapters paint starkly different portraits of their lives in the same overlapping bubble of a city. The marvelously detailed and […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2017-04-04T10:24:10+02:00April 4th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Literary Fiction|

Review: Fire Thief Reborn (The Edge of the Known Book 4) by Seth Mullins

★★★★★

Fire Thief Reborn is the fourth installment in Seth Mullins’ riveting Edge of the Known series. In previous installments, we’ve seen the band Edge of the Known struggle in obscurity and then shoot to stardom, told through the eyes of its artistic visionary, Brandon Chane. Brandon’s had his struggle in relationships, and with the artistic process, through it all. Success isn’t always an answer.

In Book 4, it’s seven years after the band’s rise to stardom. Brandon’s found the peace of an artist who’s said everything he needed to say, and reached a willing audience. He’s content, for perhaps […]

Henry Baum2018-02-16T11:46:10+02:00April 3rd, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Men's Fiction, Music, Seth Mullins|

Review: My Kill Play: When a Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby by Tim Patten

★★★★

Roller derby, in its modern form, has been a cult phenomenon across the world. A thrilling and dangerous sport, it has evolved from childhood pastime to a spectacular arena of courage and cunning on-wheels. My Kill Play: When A Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby is a personal account of author Tim Patten’s experiences with the sport, as childhood hobbyist to professional, and the way his life and those around him changed throughout the late 20th Century during one of the most infamous first-world medical crises of the past forty years.

My Kill Play joins Patten’s previous publication, Roller Babes: […]

James Grimsby2017-03-31T11:44:57+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: LGBTQI, Memoir, Sports|

Review: The Archbishop’s Amulet: The Windhaven Chronicles by Watson Davis

★★★★

The Nayen armies have all but won in their conquest of the free peoples of this world. An empire of hell-spawn, alien beasts and supplicants has been built on the ashes of human civilization, pushing the last clans and communes to the fringes of the empire to await starvation, or worse, capture.

Caldane is one such captive – once a member of the Onei clan as a shaman, before his home’s enslavement by Nayen monks. With the help of Aissal – an alien world-traveler who seeks to free all the realms she can – and Rucker – a young […]

James Grimsby2017-05-15T09:25:43+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy|

Review: Shredded by Charles O’Donnell

With a splash of Orwellian dystopia and a frighteningly timely plot, Shredded, the new novel from Charles O’Donnell, challenges the creature comforts we have come to love in our newly digitized world, and poses a terrifying question: What if privacy could be completely erased? In the not-so-distant future, the safety of anonymity has been eliminated, thanks to the introduction of the Worldstream, the near-perfect catalogue of every life and event available through the Internet of Things. Essentially, the Worldstream is social media, Big Brother and live-streaming all rolled into one, making anyone’s most intimate details vulnerable to invasion.

In […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2023-04-03T08:54:07+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Charles O'Donnell, Dystopian Fiction|

Review: Despair to Deliverance by Sharon DeVinney, Ph.D. & Robin Personette

Despair to Deliverance: A True Story of Triumph Over Severe Mental Illness by Sharon DeVinney, Ph.D. and Robin Personette is a fascinating book dually written by a therapist and her client. Robin – a mental health care worker herself – had a breakdown, where she considered suicide. Dr. DeVinney was considering writing a book about the case, but was concerned about breaching the doctor-patient divide, until Personette herself expressed interest in writing about her story. The result is this collaboration, which covers the path out of depression from the perspective of both doctor and patient in a way that should […]

Lysa Grant2019-02-11T09:40:04+02:00March 28th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Psychology|

Review: Skip’s Legacy by Edward “Skip” Biron

★★★★

It is the dream of most people to live a life worth writing stories about. In Skip’s Legacy, a memoir by Edward “Skip” Biron, readers are introduced to a remarkable man and his fast-paced, spontaneous and impactful life. The details that the author remembers from more than 5 decades of life make for an exceptional read, as though this were a journal, rather than a memoir. The small points of humor and philosophic musing also fill in the gaps and give readers time to reflect on a life truly well-lived.

After serving in the Navy as a radioman, […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2017-05-02T08:40:23+02:00March 23rd, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir|