Henry Baum | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Good Reasons to Kill by Chris Rhyss Edwards

★★★★½ Good Reasons to Kill

Good Reasons to Kill is a fascinating and important work that looks at sanctioned murder across the world. Murder is considered immoral, yet there are many instances where it is considered justified: war, the death penalty, honor killings, and many more. A thorough examination of the subject, the book covers dozens of different instances of murder worldwide and how they are justified by different cultures. Depending on one’s perspective, ending someone’s life can either land you on death row or be lauded a hero. As such, Good Reasons to Kill asks many troubling, but vital, questions about the morality […]

Henry Baum2016-03-04T03:56:50+02:00October 12th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|

Review: A Force of Nature by Dan McEwen

★★★½

A Force of Nature by Dan McEwen follows Canadian PR superstar, Claire Chandler, as she takes a long weekend in idyllic Bay Harbour. There she meets a number of mysterious and colorful characters. Most mysteriously, she’s shadowed by a ghostly white wolf and the victims of a murder, and she’ll soon solve a decades-old mystery, as well as get into a romantic tryst with enigmatic pilot and treasure-hunter, Tom Katz.

A Force of Nature is the type of book that works on a sentence by sentence level – McEwen is an interesting, eloquent writer who clearly loves his subject […]

Review: Awaiting the Doomsday by Paul Slutsky ★★★

Awaiting the Doomsday Awaiting the Doomsday is an alien invasion story with an intriguing premise: a second sun suddenly appears in the sky. Astrophysicist Alan Norton makes the discovery that the object has a trajectory unlike any planet. Norton, along with other worldwide scientific leaders from Russia and Japan, among others, is tasked with contacting the craft to understand its motives.

Obviously a civilization that could travel through space is highly advanced, and so potentially dangerous. Some just want to nuke the thing out of orbit immediately. Norton must stem the paranoia in order to save the human race from a self-created disaster.[…]

Henry Baum2020-05-06T03:47:35+02:00October 6th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Apocalyptic Fiction Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Cold Beer and a Hot Dart by Brandon Wolfe

★★★★½ Cold Beer and a Hot Dart by Brandon Wolfe

Cold Beer and a Hot Dart is the inspirational memoir by Brandon Wolfe as he travels from his comfortable home in Washington to the wilds of Australia, Polynesia and beyond, battling disease, cannibals, prostitutes, drug use, and other nefarious problems, as well as having the time of his life. A restless soul at heart, Brandon Wolfe is also a spirited storyteller, making Cold Beer at once a page turner and a moving meditation on finding your place in life.

Wolfe’s own summary of the novel is a very good indication of what you’ll find in the book:

Over a

[…]

Henry Baum2016-03-04T04:19:55+02:00October 6th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Self-Help Book Reviews|

Review: L.A.’s Lost Soul by Dominic Ryan

L.A.’s Lost Soul is the engaging and spirited story about Dominic Ryan’s stay in Los Angeles from the U.K., while he spends seven months learning the ropes at an acting school. It’s an entertaining fish-out-of-water story exploring what it’s like to land in Hollywood with relatively little money, no contacts, and without even a place to live. It’s a pretty harrowing prospect, but Ryan faces it all with cheerfulness and optimism.

First, the title is a bit of a misnomer. “Lost Soul” suggests someone forsaken and unhappy, but that’s absolutely not the case for Ryan. He had his share of […]

Henry Baum2019-02-11T09:54:59+02:00October 5th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Warning’s Wane by Jaclyn Little

Warning’s Wane by Jaclyn Little is an inventive and moving literary novel about a strange world where touching someone makes both people disappear. Paul Danniers and his wife, Colleen, move to the town of Praxia Island, off the coast of Maine, and finds the residents terrified of disappearing, and fearing each other. Warning’s Wane is a meditation on intimacy and alienation that’s at once shocking and cerebral.

Poetic and supremely well-written, this is the type of self-published book there should be more of: literary, but also with a compelling high-concept idea at its core. At times, the narrative is a […]

Henry Baum2015-10-02T08:30:30+02:00October 2nd, 2015|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Literary Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: The New Lease by John Stryder

★★★★½ The New Lease by John Stryder

The New Lease by John Stryder is a riveting conspiracy thriller following Fae Cunningham, who is being shadowed by a mysterious benefactor who rescued her many years before. Suffering from a history of mental illness, she follows her benefactor to the Middle East, only to find his control extends far beyond her own life. He has the power to bend minds at will.

Traveling from the halls of academia to the Persian Gulf, India, and other locales, this is a true globetrotting novel with enough cultural detail to give the novel increased depth and realism. Stryder seems to know […]

Henry Baum2016-03-04T04:23:03+02:00October 2nd, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Thriller Book Reviews|

Review: Insane-O-Tron by Nick Alverson

★★★★½

Insane-O-Tron by Nick Alverson is a collection of stories that lives up to its title: Insane. Here we find a universe where the most absurd television show imaginable becomes a number one hit (in which a man has affections for a bed of mashed potatoes), the most sterling haircut in history becomes sentient and leads an Indiana Jones-style treasure hunt, an earwig named Ernie, and other wildly ridiculous tales. It’s a page turner by virtue that you’ll be wondering just what Alverson comes up with next. There’s no possible way to guess what’s going to happen, you’ll just have […]