Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: The Sovereign Order of Monte Cristo By Holy Ghost Writer

Sherlock Holmes is smoking pot with Watson, as they discuss his friend Arthur Conan Doyle. And then Holmes retells the story of The Count Of Monte Cristo.

If this isn’t confusing enough, this classic tale is then ” retold” for a good 30% of the book, with small changes here and there. It isn’t written in any particular Dumas or Doyle style, although it tries to do both at certain points. It seems to be an intentional dumbing-down of a public domain novel many modern-day readers would have lazily skipped over as it’s so “long and boring”, to garner kudos […]

Cate Baum2017-03-24T04:52:02+02:00September 18th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Mystery Book Reviews|

Review: No Man’s Land: The Beginning (Book One of the Hyde’s Corner Trilogy) by J. B. Bergstad

J. B. Bergstad’s first novel, No Man’s Land, begins in 1947 with Tom Burks, grandson of Selmer Burks, leaving his hometown of Hyde’s Corner, Oklahoma to join the army. Then the story goes back to 1877 and takes up the tale of the settling of a wilderness known as “No Man’s Land,” the founding of the town of Hyde’s Corner, and the trials and tribulations of Selmer Burks—trials and tribulations that lead, inexorably and quite horribly, to the situation in Hyde’s corner in 1947.

Selmer Burks is born to a ranching family recently settled in what was then the […]

Avery Hurt2019-01-22T17:47:06+02:00September 13th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Historical Fiction Book Reviews, Men's Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Border Field Blues By Corey Lynn Fayman

The second book in the Rolly Waters Mystery series, this detective novel by Corey Lynn Fayman sees the detective hired to track down the perpetrators of damage to the protected preserve of least terns at the Mexican border with San Diego, at a time when Border Field State Park separated Mexico from the US with a chain, just by the Tijuana bullring instead of the fortified double wall that now exists.

A thoroughly-researched work, this story pops with the sort of detail only garnered through living it (the old adage “you couldn’t write it” stands true) and gathering information of […]

Cate Baum2019-01-22T17:47:37+02:00September 13th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Detective Fiction Book Reviews, Men's Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Solar System Blues by Andrew J. Patrick

Solar System Blues by Andrew J. Patrick is an exhilarating read. As Burton and his teenage assistant hurtle through space in search of a habitable planet, the reader is taken along for the ride. The opening pages do not offer many answers or reasons as to why Burton is in space. In fact, the beginning is so ambiguous that some readers may wonder why they should continue with the story. But that’s the point to the beginning. The author is using this vagueness to draw you into the story and to make you ask: what and why. And to get […]

T B Markinson2013-09-10T13:52:46+02:00September 10th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Between Eden And The Open Road By Philip Gaber

An unusual train of poetry and prose, this stimulating and raw work from Philip Gaber is compelling and almost dangerous to read – dangerous because it touches so many nerves in the reader that it becomes both painful and addictive to carry on.

This is not quite a collection of shorts and not quite a poetry book – more a slice of modern psychology into the lonely hearts of those around us. Set on subways, in homeless shelters, whorehouses, streets, the cloying sense of being alive and flailing in doing so is steeped in these words throughout as we travel […]

Cate Baum2014-05-05T21:42:53+02:00September 10th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Book Reviews, Poetry Book Reviews, Short Stories Book Reviews|

Review : The Art of Forgetting by Peter Palmieri

The Art of Forgetting by Peter Palmieri primarily follows the story of Lloyd Copeland, a charismatic assistant professor spending his days chasing high-class med student flings when he’s not blowing students away in his rare case of successful ‘cool teacher’ lectures.

To outsiders he has everything to look forward to and nothing to regret, but beneath his veneer of success and boyish charms, his “feigned nonchalance” hides a desperate hidden struggle against something that threatens to swallow his life as it has his family generations before him: a struggle against a memory loss and dementia which runs in his family, […]

James Grimsby2014-06-19T12:19:03+02:00September 3rd, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Literary Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Roan – The Tales of Conor Archer by E. R. Barr

Many years ago, the Tinkers went into exile. Hailing from Ireland, the men had dalliances with the shape-shifting Roan. These sea-wives appeared as seals with their pups. As soon as the pups touched the land, they changed into human children. The Tinkers called these offspring the ‘dark ones’ and took on the duty of raising them. Once they arrived in the New World, they settled where two rivers converged and steeped in mythology. For 150 years the Tinkers hid the ‘dark ones’ and their town never divulged their secrets.

In present-day Chicago, Conor Archer is experiencing one of the weirdest […]

T B Markinson2013-08-19T05:13:46+02:00August 19th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Book Reviews, Fantasy Book Reviews|

Review: One Short Year by Diane Dunning

In an oft riffed on passage, Blaise Pascal—probably himself riffing on Pliny the Younger— wrote, “I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.” Diane Dunning, the author of the novella The River Secrets, took the time to write a small collection of very short fiction (the selection “The Sun Always Wins” is only 128 words). This is much harder than it looks, and Dunning has pulled it off with style. In the introduction she explains that these stories are popular posts from her blog, selections she describes as “entertaining reading for […]