Books
Beyond the Ocean’s Edge : D. Andrew McChesney
Beyond the Ocean’s Edge: A Stone Island Sea Story
The Stone Island Sea Stories combine Age of Sail/Naval Adventure, as in C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander, with a unique Science Fiction/Alternate World twist.
“No, sir! Not that, sir!” Hotchkiss was nearly beside himself in his fright, and it fast approached a full panic. Odd, that such a slight distraction could affect Pierce’s friend that way. Isaac had always been the cooler of them.
Hotchkiss continued on. “Ed! You didn’t see it?” The use of his captain’s first name on deck attested to the first lieutenant’s growing apprehension and maddening confusion.
“See what, Isaac, my old friend?” Pierce recognized his shipmate’s state of mind and did not correct his lapse of quarterdeck etiquette. Clearly, a more personal and comfortable approach was needed.
“The stars! The stars, Ed! We weren’t just looking up at ’em. We were amongst them. There was the sea, and then there wasn’t. An’ the stars were below us as well! And we were there, right among them, like we were the stars themselves, or the moon, or….”
“I’m sure you saw what you’ve described. Unfortunately, I chanced not to see it, although I have had a strange feeling of timelessness.”
In 1802 Royal Navy Lieutenant Edward Pierce is on half pay during the Peace of Amiens. He gains command of a vessel searching for a lost, legendary island. When found, Pierce and crew discover the island exists in an entirely different world. Exploring around Stone Island, HMS Island Expedition sails headlong into mistaken identities, naval battles, strange truces, dangerous liaisons, international intrigue, superstition, and ancient prophecies. Detained by the equivalent of Great Britain, Pierce struggles to free ship and crew. Despondent over surrendering and possibly never seeing Evangeline again, Pierce’s discovers new friends working to liberate him and his crew.
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Fictional Worlds : L.A. Alexander
Fictional Worlds: Traditions in Narrative and the Age of Visual Culture
“Create Your Own World!” is a motto of visionary artists.
We all enjoy escaping into, and journeying within, fictional realms.
Some aspire to create their own unique artistic worlds.
Fictional Worlds, intended for all readers who love literature and film, and especially for writers, filmmakers, and videogame designers, points at new ways of navigating, exploring, and creating entrancing fictional universes.
This book’s promise is to make its readers more confident fictional world travelers and compelling storytellers.
A holistic and evolutionary study of narrative from ancient rituals, myths and fairytales to the current day, this book blends a creative and intellectual approach to writing.
The themes of journey, the wonderworld, quest for knowledge, symbolic death-rebirth, conflict resolution, family, and community are at the core of this inquiry into the nature of narrative, its politics and poetics.
Teaching nuts and bolts of writing fiction, this book connects the “cultural” dots in the trajectory of the dramatic arc, elucidating the power of storytelling.
With Odysseus as a guide, Fictional Worlds is a journey through the landscape of narrative traditions, emerging practices and artistic debates.
The four books of this volume explore key genres such as action-adventure, drama, mystery, and comedy.
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A Just and Upright Man : R J Lynch
It is 1763. James Blakiston, overseer of Lord Ravenshead’s estate and a newcomer to the Durham parish of Ryton, is determined to solve the mystery of old Reuben Cooper’s murder – but he has no idea how to go about it.
As enclosure threatens to make the poor even poorer, Blakiston follows one misguided hunch after another. The only thing that he can really be certain of is his love for the beautiful and spirited Kate Greener – a love he is determined to resist, for Kate is the daughter of a penniless labourer and Blakiston has in any case not recovered from being thrown over by the woman he believed loved him.
The mysterious Joseph Kelly, an Irishman who is not an Irishman, falls under suspicion. But Kelly cannot be found. Then Matthew Higson flees to America, leaving his boyhood love Catherine Robinson behind in his headlong rush to be gone, and the mystery is solved. Higson was the murderer.
But when Higson is found, not fled but murdered in his turn, Blakiston’s search resumes. As he builds a picture of the history of the murderous Cooper family over three generations, a missing coat also begins to occupy his mind. How did it get from where it was to where it is? And why?
A chance remark by Lady Isabella Claverley opens the door to the murderer at last. And Blakiston rejects love. But will love let him go?
Poor Law, Book 2 in the James Blakiston series, by R J Lynch, is also on Whizbuzz Books
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Hide and Seek : H. L. Wegley
Hide and Seek
He expected security breaches, but the conspiracy she uncovers sends them running for their lives.
A computer security breach within a US defense contractor’s firewalls leads investigators, Lee Brandt and beautiful, brilliant Jennifer Akihara, onto the cyber-turf of terrorists, where they are detected and targeted for elimination.
Lee leads them on a desperate and prayer-filled flight for survival into the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Will Jennifer’s pursuit of truth about the conspiracy, and the deepest issues of life, lead her into the clutches of terrorists, into the arms of Lee Brandt, or into the arms of the God she deems untrustworthy?
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I Came, I Saw (Veni, Vidi) : Patricia O’Rourke
I Came, I Saw (Veni, Vidi) More Than a Memoir
This book is my story. It is about what I did, saw, felt, learned, loved, hated, and accomplished during my lifetime. As I review my life I think of now versus then, compared to what my parents said then, and what I believe now. I go back and forth in my lifetime in order to demonstrate or accentuate the internal feelings I had at the time or what I think about it now. I digress a few times because of what the issue or event helped me to recall.
Sometimes I am very critical, even mean as I become angry now or recall my anger then about certain events, people or issues. No apologies for that. I call it ‘Veni, Vidi’ because I came and I saw. There is no ‘Vici’ because I conquered nothing.
I state that it is ‘more than a memoir’ because I found myself attempting to do some education and stating opinions more than once, because that is the way I am.
I think about what I did and the incentives and influences I had to get me here. Where is here, anyhow? Well, it is being retired. It is being able to sit on my couch and write a book. I am so fortunate.
In the last few days at work someone asked me if I was going to work per diem. I said, “No, no. Carpe diem, not per diem.”
In preparing for retirement I created an Excel worksheet with my budget. It includes my income of three pensions, Social Security, and funds I have saved. I calculated a 20-year budget with 300% increase in the cost of living going forward. I realized “I can do this.” But, and a big but, at the age of 87 I will have to be shot by a jealous 40-year old wife (yes, 40 years old) or be hit by a beer truck. One of those Bud Ice blue beauties, I hope.
The challenges continue.
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Rush – A Taste For Freedom : Alix Cherubin
Rush – A Taste For Freedom
Reviewed by Maria Beltran for Readers’ Favorite
Based on a true story,“Rush: A Taste for Freedom” recalls the struggles and dangerous efforts of Peter who is hoping to escape from the oppression in the Soviet Union and its cruel Communist system. Facing persecution and even death, Peter has to remain courageous in order to save his own daughter, Galia, and the rest of his family. The oppressive regime continues and Galia chooses to fight by his father’s side. How can they escape from the Iron Curtain when hope has only the width of a thread from a spider’s web.
First and foremost, kudos to the author for his courage. Truly, it takes a lot of heart to write the story. Alix Cherubin Sr. traces the lives, loves, and aspirations of the main characters with deep compassion and powerful insight, making “Rush: A Taste for Freedom” a magnificently crafted story. This is an inspiring real-life account celebrating the triumph of the power of faith, family and love over a terrifying situation.
“Rush: A Taste for Freedom” is a frank, courageous and heartbreaking novel that is beautiful and illuminating. The author has successfully created a moving picture of his father-in-law and it is conveyed with admirable clarity. If you want to read a story that is thoroughly engaging, “Rush” will not disappoint.
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Gangsters of Shanghai : Gerry O’Sullivan
Gangsters of Shanghai
The severed head in the bamboo birdcage swayed above the teeming marketplace. It told Constable Mike Gallagher everything he needed to know about Shanghai.
It’s 1927. The son of a rural Irish cop, Gallagher joins the Shanghai Municipal Police. to escape an Ireland crippled by its recent bitter independence fight, and to trace the aristocratic woman whose memory still haunts him. They would venture together to China, Fiona once promised. Then the IRA torched her family estate. Everybody believes she died there. Everybody but Mike Gallagher.
Shanghai. Pearl of the East or Whore of the Orient? Depends on who you ask. It’s a cesspool of poverty, thronged with refugees, gripped by civil war. But for some it’s still a fever dream: jazz clubs and opium dens, celebrities and spies, easy money and easier women. Gallagher encounters the city’s biggest philanthropist, a man called Big Ears Lu – who is also its creepiest racketeer. He falls for a hooker who gives him sex he never imagined. But does his collusion with Lu keep her trapped in the House of Multiple Joys? Shanghai in 1927 is a city where after dark anything seems possible. A city where anyone can be crushed, and anyone corrupted. Even an innocent Irish cop.
From the wreckage of guerrilla war in Ireland to the dawn of world war in Asia, the international mystery thriller Gangsters of Shanghai seethes with 20th Century turbulence and temptation. Can Mike Gallagher escape the imploding city with his life, his self-respect – and the answer to Fiona’s fate?
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Women’s Work : Kari Aguila
Women’s Work
“So when most of the men were dead, women saw their chance to take over?” Kate searches her son’s eyes as he asks this. “Not take over,” she says. “Fix things.”
It wasn’t hard to justify what the women had done since the end of the Last War. They rebuilt their bombed-out neighborhoods as best they could and tried to establish peace and gender equality. But small groups of men roam the country, viciously indicating that the pendulum may have swung too far. When a bedraggled man shows up on Kate’s doorstep one night, will she risk everything to help him? Does he deserve her help?
Women’s Work follows Kate on her journey from fear and anger to forgiveness and hope. It is a compelling story that challenges us to question traditional gender roles and the fragility of love.
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The Mad Game : Chris Cherry
The Mad Game
The critically acclaimed new novel. A young British boy grows up with hopes and dreams of travelling, learning a trade, leading a simple life and perhaps, even falling in love. But his dreams are stopped with the advent of the Great War. This is the story of William Collins and his private battle to survive the horrors of the Western Front.
A desperate and terrible war, to end all wars, the shock of separation and the terrifying life and death existence are enough to break even the most ardent spirit. His lost love drifts ever further from him, as he descends into the Hell of the Somme battlefield.
Comrades are cruelly taken from his side, as the enemy takes away hope for the future. But his love for Odile and for her country,France, sustains him, driving him onward in a desperate struggle to survive. He is inexorably drawn into a new and mysterious world of secrecy and brutality, from which a slim and hard fought hope of victory could emerge.
This war could be different, if only the Generals would listen. Chance brings opportunity for his plans. This is William’s time, a soldier of the Great War, a player in this, the Mad Game.
This is the first novel in the Love and War Series. Coming in 2014 are The Mad Game – Odile’s War and The Mad Game – The Third Light.
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Backward Compatible : Sarah Daltry and Pete Clark
Backward Compatible
WARNING: There is no sex in this book. Your Kindle or other device will remain at a pleasant room temperature. At no point will your panties drop. Your significant other will be allowed to snore in peace as you read.
Not too long ago, in a town that, depending on your current location, is either not super far or actually quite close…
It is a time of chaotic hormones.
Two nerdy gents home for winter break have discovered a female gamer at a midnight release.
During the break, the gamer trio manages to reveal the game’s secret boss, a hidden enemy with enough power to destroy anything in its path.
Pursued by other gamers who want to be the first to beat this boss, George and Katie race to level up, and, in so doing, restore decency and sexual activity to their personal galaxy…
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