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John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

About John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

Providing exceptional writing, editing and publishing services to hundreds of international clients, ranging from nutritional copywriting and long-form ghostwriting to substantive editing, assessment/analysis of academic texts and structural/content editing for bestselling novels.

Review: The Hotel Westend by Ashley Lynch-Harris

★★★★ The Hotel Westend by Ashley Lynch-Harris

The Hotel Westend by Ashley Lynch-Harris is a classic mystery with plenty of twists.

With eccentric characters, an historic hotel with its fair share of secrets, and an innocent ingénue with a good dose of curiosity, The Hotel Westend is a slow-boiling thriller that will have you guessing until the very end. In the beloved style of Agatha Christie and other British suspense classics, this murder mystery pays homage to the genre in an impressive way.

The gradual introduction of the characters – all heading for the same destination for an unknown reason – has the same slow pacing […]

2016-08-12T11:38:35+02:00August 11th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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Review: Family Business by Colin Beckett

★★★★★ Family Business by Colin Beckett

Family Business: An Outer Banks Crime Mystery by Colin Beckett is a grim, thrilling mystery.

From this book’s cold-blooded opening, readers know that they’re in for a story told by a master of suspense. The patient, calculating and terrifying style that Colin Beckett puts on display in Family Business is unique and chilling, making it nearly impossible to put it down.

When a mysterious serial killer strikes fear in the heart of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, it will take two men to ferret him out from his horrific hole and bring him to justice. Sheriff Martin Tate and Paul […]

2016-09-06T05:20:35+02:00August 9th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |
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Find Your Voice As a Leader by Paul N. Larsen

Find Your Voice As a Leader by Paul LarsenFind Your VOICE As a Leader by Paul N. Larsen provides concise, clear and valuable leadership advice.

Without wasting a single word, Paul Larsen delivers a stellar guide to identifying and harnessing your personal skills as a leader, with wisdom that is applicable to a wide variety of power positions.  Find Your VOICE As a Leader presents the wealth of Larsen’s own experience and structures it in an easy-to-read and engaging collection of exercises, questions, and valuable instructions. The book does away with much of the typical how-to book structure, and instead moves quickly through important points that burgeoning leaders […]

2016-08-04T05:34:03+02:00August 4th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: , |
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Light at Play by Rachelle Thimote, Illustrated by Gary Wein

Light at Play by Rachelle Thimote Instilling wisdom and progressive thought at an early age is incredibly important, and this sort of profound message can come in may forms – from the most fundamental visual message to deep, meaningful advice. Within the pages of Light at Play: Foundations for positive self-image and self-esteem, Rachelle Thimote touches on the basic themes that drive creativity, mental development, alternative thought, happiness, kindness and cognitive flexibility in children.

While it is clear what she is trying to accomplish, it seems that the ideas are presented a bit too simply. While the length of the book is restricted by the […]

2016-08-04T07:36:53+02:00August 4th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: |
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Review: Rubber Match by Marcus Cootsona

★★★★ Rubber Match by Marcus Cootsona

There is a clear line between comic fiction and intelligent social satire, and Marcus Cootsona’s novel, Rubber Match, treads a careful dance between the two, providing an entertaining narrative, but never letting readers forget that they are enjoying the handily crafted prose of a witty wordsmith. Peppered with clever modern allusions and sharp rhetoric, the novel is a smart, savvy, tongue-in-cheek work of fiction. Cootsona knows his audience and plays to the crowd, moving slowly at times, but always with a feeling that things will soon get uniquely interesting.

Following a few brief, tennis-heavy chapters, Wally, an ex-tennis […]

2019-01-22T15:31:55+02:00August 4th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , , , |
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The Air Force’s Black Ceiling by Ivan Thompson

The Air Force's Black Curtain by Ivan ThompsonThe basic premise of The Air Force’s Black Ceiling is startling all by itself – that there is systemically programmed racism in the United States Air Force that keeps African-American servicemen from rising in the ranks. With this as the stated phenomenon that the author is seeking to explore, Ivan Thompson delves deeply into the history of this particular military branch, attempting to find an explanation or origin of this measurable truth present in the Air Force.

It is revealed that the clever façade of specialized African-American leadership within the Air Force often hides the fact that there is inherent […]

2016-08-01T09:47:17+02:00August 1st, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: |
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Review: The People’s House by David Pepper

★★★★ The People's House by David Pepper

The idea of corruption in government is hardly a novel thought, and it has been tackled from every imaginable angle, but in these hyper-charged modern times, a bit of escapism to an even more tangled world can be a treat. In The People’s House by David Pepper, an unlikely reporter has one final shot at a career-making scoop, and a chance to save democracy in this generation.

The familiar scene of a campaign reporter, Jack Sharpe, drinking himself silly at bars and feeling dissatisfied with the state of the political world eases readers into the tone of the story […]

2016-08-24T05:28:34+02:00August 1st, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |
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Review: Never A Choice But Always A Gift by Adam Que

★★★½ Never A Choice But Always A Gift by Adam Que

Delving into someone else’s mind can be an exhausting and exciting adventure, and in Never A Choice But Always A Gift, Adam Que artfully pulls back the curtain on the inner monologue of Max Kristoff.  Once readers move past the frantic pace of the author’s thoughts, and have a chance to settle into the stream-of-consciousness style, the story begins to take on a vague shape. Max is an early 30-something with a dead-end job and a rather cynical view of life, whose attention and thoughts seem out of control, at times, but intriguing nonetheless.

Within the busy writing and […]

2016-08-23T05:33:29+02:00July 26th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |
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