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Featured Reviews
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Something in the Water
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H2Glo: A Bailey Quinn
Environmental Misadventure by P.D.Abbey P.D. Abbey (ebook)
reviewed by Carolyn Davis
"That's me. Bailey Angelique Quinn. I’m an environmental lawyer by trade. I'm 29 going on 30 and still waiting for the right guy to come along."
Bailey Quinn has become the director of The Fink Environmental Foundation after the death of its founder, Ruth Fink. This e-book is an interesting mixture of romantic comedy and murder mystery. The author makes everything work, even as scenes switch among dinner time flirting, kidnapping, and a girls' night in. ... (read more)
The Satan Among Us
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The Last Publishers: The Vision by Debi Pearl Pearl Books
reviewed by Peter M. Fitzpatrick
"It is not the Muslims that set fires and detonate explosives that are our enemies. Nor is it the local White Supremacists.... Our enemy is Satan."
The Last Publishers is a Christian missionary organization based in Tennessee. Their avowed purpose is to spread the Gospel in all languages and to all cultures that have not heard it before through a comic book version of the Bible. Their main target for conversion is the Muslim world, convinced as they are that Islam is a religion of violence and evil. Cheyenne Freeman is a young woman helping her parents, the leaders of the publishing organization, make money through selling herbal teas. Her mother has even developed a mixture of herbs and leaves... (read more)
Adventures in Turkmenistan
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Chai Budesh? Anyone for Tea? by Joan Heron PublishAmerica
reviewed by Barbara Deming
"What have you gotten yourself into this time?"
Lately it seems everyone wants to write a memoir, but few write about two years spent with the Peace Corps in a country most have never heard of. In 1995, Joan Heron, retired university faculty member, volunteered for a maternal-child project. She was sent to Turkmenistan, a male-dominated land, filled with overwhelming obstacles presented by people, the Russian language barrier, customs, climate, and snags created by the author's age. ... (read more)
The Life's Journey
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Clouds Like Horses by Stephanie Hart And Then Press
reviewed by Deborah Straw
"There is a scent of fall in the air. I don't want to break the stillness by darting into the kitchen. When I come back this mother may be gone. She will have sharp nails and eyes the color of a rained-on sky."
Is it naïve to ask if a memoir, written in our times, can delineate a content life? Apparently so, based on a glut of contemporary memoirs written by people in their 40s and older. This book is a series of short vignettes about the author's life, her parents' lives and those of her grandparents, who emigrated from Russia. ... (read more)
His Plan Revealed
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Preparing to Be a Help Meet by Debi Pearl No Greater Joy Ministries
reviewed by Priscilla Estes
"Do you believe God leads and guides people before they get saved? Maybe even guides them in who they should marry?"
Unmarried Christian women searching for a husband will find a rich resource of practical help in this Bible-based how-to for preparing and winning a help meet ("someone to share in [Jesus'] work of creation and management.") An engaging, personal, and humorous style fuel an easy and highly readable flow, even while dispensing serious advice on spiritual and lifechoices. ... (read more)
A World at Risk
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The Mullahs by David Maring iUniverse
reviewed by Peter M. Fitzpatrick
"The Society is composed of members who believe they are direct descendants of a sexual union between Lucifer, whom they refer to as the Serpent, and Eve, which produced the biblical child, Cain."
This is the second novel in a series that partly extrapolates from the current geopolitical conditions, namely, the rise of Islamic terrorism and the threat of nuclear terrorism by the enemies of America. Only it is not just the usual Axis of Evil at work. There is a secretive cult called "The Society" who are actively trying to bring about Armageddon and the return of Satan's rule over the planet. They are adept at deception and manipulation of all the usual enemies of Israel and America. And directly in their path is Professor William Weston, Head of the Department of Archaeology at Charleston University in South Carolina. He is on a mission... (read more)
Scotland in Turmoil
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Catching the Stone by David L. Andrews Black Rose Writing
reviewed by Carolyn Davis
"A Highlander's word was his bond and his family and his clan were his life."
This novel, set in eighteenth century Scotland, tracks the lives of several Highland villagers (who are described in the beginning "characters" section). Their personalities, work, and relationships unfold, as does the history of their and their ancestors’ battles to be independent of the English Parliament. ... (read more)
The Greatest Story Ever Told
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Good and Evil by Micahel Pearl No Greater Joy
reviewed by Millie Hinkle
"This story is told in an old book, THOUSANDS of years old. Every word I am about to tell you is true. Some of it will be hard to believe. But the TRUTH is often stranger than fiction."
So begins the retelling of the greatest story ever told. Many, many stories have been selected from the Bible and told in common colloquial language, along with glorious illustrations. This is in fact, a graphic novel presented in the style of comic book art. The book is based on the King James Holy Bible. The author only injects his own words as clarification in the context of the stories. The illustrations bring characters to life in exciting superhero fashion. ... (read more)
What Will It Take to Safe the World?
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Noah's Children by Huck Fairman Xlibris
reviewed by Peter M. Fitzpatrick
"We seem to be at a crossroad....one could lead us to great awareness, innovation and progress; the other to a slow descent into a dark age of shortages and contention."
Hamilton Warring is a middle-aged journalist and former biology professor at an east coast university struggling to awaken the world to the dangers of global warming. His specialized knowledge spurs him to launch a website called "Earthstudies." He hopes this will act as a kind of clearinghouse for the latest information about environmental crises. At the same time, he is struggling with loneliness and the frustration of not being able to really connect with his seventeen-year-old daughter. News of his ex-wife's remarriage to another man sends him on something of an emotional tailspin. ... (read more)
His Plan
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Created to Be His Help Meet: Discover How
God Can Make Your Marriage Glorious by Debi Pearl No Greater Joy Ministries
reviewed by Allison Whittenberg
"Is it God's will for your husband to adapt to you, or is it God's will to adapt to him? What habits in you life should you change to adapt to your husband's needs? Start today."
Bestselling author Debi Pearl seeks to reach everyone, yes, but mostly women with her new book Created to Be His Help Meet: Discover How God Can Make Your Marriage Glorious. This spiritual author desires for other women to share the happiness she has known in her life. (Pearl has been joyfully married several decades and has five children and fifteen grandchildren. ... (read more)
Redefining Your Spiritual Path
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Water Your Roots: Walking a Spiritual Path by Bernard Willemsen Quasar Books
reviewed by Marjetta Geerling
"It's normal for us to think that we are doing the best we can until someone shows us how to reach further."
Willemsen's earnest guide to learning to walk a spiritual path is the third in his series on the psyche, the spirit, and human energy. Water Your Roots is about the practical application of theories from the first two books, focusing specifically on what it means to be a student of spirituality and the best ways to pursue a path of spiritual growth. ... (read more)
The Real Heroes
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Two Gold Coins and a Prayer: The Epic Journey
of a World War II B-24 Bomber Pilot and POW by James H. Keeffe III Appell Publishing
reviewed by Dennis D. Bailey
"This didn't look good at all. The feeling of dread thickened and I felt a knot form in my stomach. The sound of our footsteps seemed far away."
Thrown by circumstance into the crucible of World War II, James A. Keeffe, Jr., an American B-24 bomber pilot shot down over Holland, tells his story, with marked aplomb, of the arresting heroism and fighting courage of those around him. As told to his son, this wartime memoir takes the reader from the heady days of American flight training, to the flaming blasts and human loss of air-to-air combat against the Luftwaffe in the European theatre, to the Dutch underground secreting downed Allied pilots to safety at great personal peril of the local citizens. No fairy tale, Keeffe writes of betrayal and eventually takes the reader inside the wire of the same German prison camp made famous in the film, The Great Escape... (read more)
A Note from the Past
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Letters to Zerky: A Father's Legacy to a Lost
Son and a Road Trip Around the World by Bill Raney and Joanne Walker Raney Nicelodeon Press
reviewed by Ken La Kier
"If you said in those days that you went to Afghanistan, well, most people didn't know what Afghanistan was. When they thought of travelling, they thought of going to Hawaii or something."
"Zerky" refers to the author's son, Eric Xerxes, who travelled with Raney and his previous wife through Europe and Asia in the Summer of Love, 1967 and 1968, as beatniks enjoying the scenery and soaking up history. Raney and his wife, Joanne, drove through Europe and decided that their son, Xerxes, was too young to remember all that he was going through and took pen to paper to allow him to appreciate their journey down the road. ... (read more)
A Deeper Understanding
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Mind, Body, & Spirit by William Pillow iUniverse
reviewed by Millie Hinkle
"I have peered into the abyss of insanity and grabbed at any toehold or handhold to keep from tumbling in."
This is a comprehensive attempt to reconcile the many aspects that attempt to answer the eternal question: What is the meaning of life? As a self-proclaimed skeptic, whose career in the medical field seemed to bind him to classical, rational thinking, Pillow clung to his belief system until it left him with too many questions about his own existence. After his retirement as a pharmacist, he moved into a deeper understanding of the essence of life.... (read more)
Terrorism and Secrets
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Three Kisses by Heath Daniels Virtualbookworm
reviewed by Glenn Bagley
"Israel is perceived as being anti-Islam. Israel is anti anyone who it feels like bullying."
Detail is the name of the game as Heath Daniels goes right to the core of the deception. The size of a man's privates and the state of his foreskin play a certain important role in this suspenseful work. Major Frank Reynolds, a gay "crotch gazer," discovers there is an infiltrator among them seeking to steal US military secrets for terrorist use. Terrorism has developed and evolved using methods used by major intelligence agencies. Frank Reynolds has a choice to make that involves a great many factors including his own sexuality. ... (read more)