Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Flight Into Darkness by Roger Hardy

What’s more terrifying than al-Qaeda run by Osama bin Laden? A terrorist organization that is organized, well-connected, and has resources.

Roger Hardy’s Flight Into Darkness takes place after bin Laden’s death. When a new hi-tech jet vanishes in the night over the Saudi desert not many people notice. The aircraft was touted as the safest in the world, so what happened? James Hayward is an air accident investigator for the Directorate of Aviation Security. Nothing about the crash has appeared on newscasts or on the Internet. Furthermore, no official report was filed. Who submitted an anonymous report, and more importantly, […]

T B Markinson2013-01-10T12:11:26+02:00January 10th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Thriller Book Reviews|

Review: Dark Genesis (The Darkling Trilogy) by A. D. Koboah

A. D. Koboah’s paranormal romance novel, Dark Genesis, introduces readers to Luna, a female slave living in Mississippi during the early 1800s. Koboah’s description of slave life is honest and brutal. Luna’s mother is sold when Luna is only three, leaving other slaves on the plantation to take care of the child. Mary, who is ten, steps in to help Luna through this hardship. Luna is a beautiful girl and it doesn’t take long for her white master to take notice. Even though the slaves do their best to protect Luna from his advances, they cannot keep an eye […]

T B Markinson2020-02-21T07:16:09+02:00January 9th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Paranormal Romance Book Reviews|

Review: The Whaler’s Bride by Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold

Love isn’t always perfect, but for those who have felt it, knows its power. Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold’s novel, The Whaler’s Bride, is a love story that conquers all, even death. Mary Lee and Lucas had a marriage most people would envy. When they were together all could see how much they loved each other. Once when they stayed at the Billingsgate Motel for their fifth wedding anniversary they forgot to pack up their clothes and left them. All that matter when they were together was being together. Everyday life didn’t matter. Love mattered.

After forty years of marriage, Lucas succumbs […]

T B Markinson2013-01-04T13:47:52+02:00January 4th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Romance Book Reviews|

Review: Rosetta (Jim Meade: Martian P.I.) by R. J. Johnson

Jim Meade is an underachieving private investigator who lives on a Martian mining colony. Nuclear war has rendered Earth habitable by only a horribly oppressed underclass; the more fortunate survivors dwell in orbital cities surrounding the planet. Meade has loyalties to neither of the superpowers who run the post-apocalyptic galaxy, a duo of empires reminiscent of old cold-war foes USA and USSR. Jim’s ultimate goal in life is strictly mercenary. He wants to make enough money to retire to one of those orbital cities.

In typical P.I. novel fashion, Meade, who has never left Mars and has no plans to […]

Avery Hurt2014-05-06T22:45:17+02:00January 2nd, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Mystery Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Synthesis by J. A. MacLeod

Don’t you just hate it when you’re at a subway stop and you hear someone calling for help from the tunnel? Then when you venture into the tunnel to see what’s happening, you stumble upon a hideous monster. Okay, that hasn’t happened to me. But after reading Synthesis by J. A. MacLeod, I’m now terrified of subway tunnels. And of monsters.

In MacLeod’s novel, Jack Gray can’t turn a deaf ear to someone calling for help in a Cambridge subway station. The monster that he encounters doesn’t seem to be from this world. After a terrible fight, Jack wakes up […]

T B Markinson2012-12-28T14:29:41+02:00December 28th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Grim Reaping by Anthony Lund

I’m not sure many people would volunteer for the job of Death. It’s not an easy occupation, which involves collecting all of the souls of those who have perished. The list keeps growing, no matter how hard and fast he works. But it’s a job that Grim Alfonso Reaper takes seriously.

Anthony Lund’s Grim Reaping, is a humorous tale about the Grim Reaper. Even though his job is daunting, usually everything goes according to plan for Grim. He shows up at the moment someone dies, asks them a few questions, and sends them on to their eternity either in […]

T B Markinson2012-12-27T13:43:49+02:00December 27th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Humor|

Review: Galactic Exploration by Peter Cawdron

Peter Cawdron’s Galactic Exploration contains four novellas: Serengeti, Trixie & Me, Savannah, and War. All of the stories are loosely connected and deal with the exploration of the Milky Way. Like Christopher Columbus, the intrepid explorers set out in three ships, of course they are space ships. Unlike Columbus and his crews, every crew member is a clone, or to be more exact, Homo sapiens replicas. Cawdron’s format reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. While Asimov’s short stories analyzed the limits and injustices robots had to contend with living among humans, Cawdron discusses some of the […]

T B Markinson2012-12-26T13:18:34+02:00December 26th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: The Puddingstone Well by William Westhoven

Glancing at the cover of this book we know right off the bat something is up with that well. There are too many historical writings about fountains of youth to count, not to mention the legendary island of Avalon and utopian villages such as Shangri-La. In The Puddingstone Well, the second novel from William Westhoven, variations of these myths are indeed relied upon, but with a contemporary spin. In the Prologue to Part One, the phrase “what history does not recall” lets us know this is Westhoven’s tale for the telling.