Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: The Fo’c’sle Door By Les Cribb

The Fo’c’sle Door by Les Cribb is a time-traveling mystery saga set in seafaring 18th Century/21st century Cornwall England.

The forecastle, a superstructure in the bow of a merchant ship where the crew is housed; – the spelling is intended to reflect the common pronunciation among seamen.

When unsavory character Whitt arrives from Canada for a friend’s wedding in the Cornish fishing village of Ryeport, he is met off the plane by the mysterious Sexton, a man intent on talking about voodoo and reincarnation. As Whitt struggles to understand why everything is so familiar to him, events intensify, and […]

Review: Showdown at Shinagawa by Bill Zarchy

As sardonic as it is poignant, hilarious as much as touching, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil by Bill Zarchy is a truly interesting collection of anecdotes and expositions by a man who has been there, eaten that, and even gotten the Corregidor T-shirt.

His long and illustrious career as a freelance director of photography, as well as a teacher, a writer, and occasional bowler, has taken him across both America and the world over the past 40 years. Zarchy, who can boast being a blogger before “blogger” was even a word, has kept his on-the-road

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James Grimsby2014-06-13T11:50:43+02:00February 19th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Book Reviews, Memoir Book Reviews|

Review: The Book of Supplement Secrets by Tim Mielke

The Book of Supplement Secrets: A Beginner’s Guide to Nutritional Supplements is written by Tim Mielke, a bodybuilding expert with years of first-hand nutritional supplements experience under his belt, and a body to prove they work.

Did you know your body stops producing essential amino acids under stress? How about that multivitamin pill you take every day – does it really deliver all you need? What type of weight-loss supplement truly works? What about Omega Oils? Are you sure you know what sugars are in your weight-loss shake? A lot of us sheepishly wash down a handful of various pills […]

Cate Baum2019-08-21T04:02:34+02:00January 31st, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Book Reviews, Health Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Women’s Work by Kari Aguila

Set in the future after the Last War, a bloody battle that wipes out most of the men, women decide enough is enough. Taking advantage of the situation and the fact that the majority of the male population were killed in the war, women rebuild their lives and neighborhoods. Not only that, they strip men of their power. Men aren’t allowed to take part in the government, they aren’t the heads of the households, and now they stay inside their homes and out of sight. Women’s Work by Kari Aguila is a well-written novel that will make you think long […]

T B Markinson2019-01-23T12:52:15+02:00January 29th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Dystopian Fiction Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: A Far Cry From Living by Luke Prochnow

Luke Prochnow strikes an unusual balance of darkness in his post-apocalyptic Western novella A Far Cry From Living. In a world reminiscent of others like Fallout‘s New Vegas and other “Westernpunk” works, the book is unflinching in its descriptions of the violence, murder, paranoia and slavery, but makes the right choice of situations to view, and the right levels of horror and brutality for each chapter.

Descriptions are never egregious or gratuitous, focusing on the slow, dry feel of an empty and dead desert populated by the desperate and lonely, and sorrow and regret permeate the entire book in […]

James Grimsby2014-05-06T14:04:11+02:00January 22nd, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Apocalyptic Fiction Book Reviews, Western Book Reviews|

Review: House of Mirrors by S. Israel

House of Mirrors is an erotic novel telling the tale of Linda, a young girl with no sexual knowledge who is abducted when she shares a cab with a stranger – then wakes up completely naked in a room made of mirrors after accepting a coffee laced with drugs.

In the vein of Story of O, Linda’s appetite for erotic adventure opens up as walls become transparent and she becomes the voyeur or the participant in a series of sexual vignettes with both a woman, Gloria, and two men, Dave and Joe, before they are released from the house […]

Cate Baum2019-01-22T05:39:55+02:00January 20th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Erotic Book Reviews, Romance Book Reviews|

Review: Hot Minnesota Sex Death by M. R. Nesheim

In his novel Capital, John Lanchester writes about the effects of the 2007 banking crisis from the point of view of one street in London. In Hot Minnesota Sex Death, M. R. Nesheim takes on the same subject, also from a particular place, but Nesheim’s is a much less prosaic location, and he tells his tale in a vastly different way. When the spiritual leaders of an extremely prudish town die while engaging in a prohibited sex act, the citizens of the town fall prey to both a well-meaning but mistaken new leader and an entity determined to […]

Avery Hurt2014-05-05T22:25:43+02:00January 19th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Literary Fiction Book Reviews, Satire Book Reviews|

Review: Epic Sloth – Tales of the Long Crawl by Philip Gaber

Philip Gaber’s new anthology “Epic Sloth – Tales of The Long Crawl” yet again hits the mark with post-Postmodern American writing. There isn’t much of this sort of literature around any more and this stuff needs to exist. From Kerouac to Selby to Yates to Palahniuk, Gaber pulls together the sum of these writers to pour out anew what it means to be a young disillusioned man in today’s America.

There is a sure East Coast, self-effacing vibe to this writing, but there are tales set all over the US with all kinds of people involved. Young Americans seem to […]

Cate Baum2014-05-05T21:07:07+02:00January 15th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|