Month: February 2026

Book Spotlight: Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller by Brian L. Reece

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Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Brian L. Reece for his latest release, Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller.

Book: Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller
Author: Brian L. Reece
Publication Date: January 13, 2026
Publisher: Waffle Ink Press
Page Count: 472
Genres: Cold War Techno-Thriller
Available in: ebook, paperback
For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: Atmosphere: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Le Carré); Action: Damascus Station (McCloskey); Tech: The Hunt for Red October (Clancy)

“Reece’s background in military intelligence gives the novel authenticity… The action is sharp, the briefing-room politics are tense, and the heist sequences cinematic.” 
— Publishers Weekly

About the Book

The only way to protect the ultimate secret is to steal it.

1977. Deep inside the secretive Skunk Works facility, the United States is forging its biggest advantage of the Cold War: Stealth technology. Invisible to radar, it will shift the global balance of power forever. But a traitor at the highest level is about to hand the blueprints to the Soviets.

CIA Officer John Olson has seven days to stop the leak. But his agency is compromised, the FBI is hunting him, and the official protocols are a suicide pact. Out of time and out of options, Olson realizes he can’t save the program by following the rules. He has to break them.

Olson turns to the only person capable of stealing the unstealable: Gabrielle Hyde. The brilliant, elusive con artist he spent a decade hunting is now his only hope.

Together, they must launch an elaborate con against the U.S. government itself. From the dusty streets of Africa to the high-security vaults of Los Angeles, they must outwit a ruthless KGB assassin and a vengeful FBI agent to pull off the greatest heist in military history.

You can find Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller here:
Amazon | Goodreads

“A stellar series debut… sophisticated thriller that prizes psychology as much as action.” 
— BestThrillers

About The Author

Brian L. Reece

Brian L. Reece spent 26 years in Air Force special operations, flying combat missions across the Middle East and Africa. He holds master’s degrees in strategy, history, and business. An award-winning screenwriter and SAG actor, he also served as a technical advisor on films like Transformers and Terminator Salvation. His work fuses real-world experience with hard-boiled noir, exploring what happens when systems fail and professionals are forced to make terrible choices.

You can find author Reece here:
Amazon

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com

Book Review: Midtown: The Forsaken Virus of the Black Realm by Isaak Uriarte & Karsten De Bolt

Categories Dark Fantasy, noir, Science-Fiction Fantasy, Surreal FictionLeave a Comment on Book Review: Midtown: The Forsaken Virus of the Black Realm by Isaak Uriarte & Karsten De Bolt

Book Details:

Author:  Isaak Uriarte & Karsten De Bolt 
Release Date: 20 October, 2025
Series:
Genre: Science-Fiction Fantasy, Dark Fantasy
Format: E-book 
Pages: 294 pages
Publisher: –
Blurb:
Nikki Sinclair has spent years hiding her gifts, living in the shadow of her mother’s secrets and her father’s disappearance. But when a mysterious figure emerges from the Black Realm, spreading chaos and corruption through her world, Nikki discovers her powers may be the only thing standing between survival and annihilation.
Alongside her mother, a hardened Task Force commander torn between duty and family, Nikki is thrust into a battle that spans from darkened alleyways to hidden laboratories, from burning rooftops to ancient mountain temples. As allies fracture and enemies multiply, the line between protector and destroyer blurs.

But this entity is not alone. Its reach spreads across realms, and its hunger for power knows no limits. To save her realm, Nikki must embrace the truth of who she is, even if it means becoming what she fears most.
Full of heart-pounding action, shadowy villains, and a heroine torn between destiny and choice, Midtown: The Forsaken Virus of the Black Realm is the electrifying first entry in a bold new fantasy series.
Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, and Veronica Roth!

Review

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Midtown: The Forsaken Virus of the Black Realm by Isaak Uriarte & Karsten De Bolt leans into the kind of dystopian chill that hits harder than rubble and ruined skylines and gives the reader the sense that the world didn’t end so much as it was repurposed by something patient, intelligent, and hungry. The atmosphere is almost immediate: metallic air, dead silence, and that creeping certainty that the dark isn’t empty, it’s listening.

What I enjoyed most is how the book balances high-stakes speculative action with street-level tension. On one side, you have covert operations, unstable science, realm-breaches, and the ominous physics of “crystals” and portals; on the other, you have the grimy pulse of Midtown itself, the neon-and-shadow underbelly, where Nikki feels like the reader’s anchor inside the city’s daily rot. She isn’t written as a polished “chosen one” archetype; she’s written as someone surviving on instinct, impatience, and just enough conviction to keep showing up.

And then there’s the central menace, the Virus, less a simple villain and more a seductive thesis. The book consistently frames power as an offer that arrives right when grief makes you most persuadable. The writing understands a crucial truth of dark speculative fiction: monsters don’t only destroy, they recruit.

Structurally, the pacing escalates cleanly into a cinematic final act and the story commits to spectacle without abandoning character dynamics. The climax leans into destruction, pursuit, and the terrifying sense that something worse is queued up behind the current crisis. By the end, the epilogue lands exactly where a solid first volume in a larger arc should, with a sharpened objective and a visible horizon of threat. The “communication without opening” idea is a smart way to widen the cosmology while acknowledging the cost of unstable gateways, and the final reveal is the kind of line that makes you sit up, because it reframes everything as merely the opening exchange.

Readers who like dystopian sci-fi/fantasy hybrids with portal-tech mystique, morally pressured characters, and a villain whose philosophy is as dangerous as his power will love this book. If you enjoy stories where cities feel like organisms and “salvation” comes with teeth, Midtown will scratch that itch.

You can also read this review at:

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Amazon

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Book Review: Shards Of An Empire by Adam Lawless

Categories noir, Surreal Fiction, ThrillerLeave a Comment on Book Review: Shards Of An Empire by Adam Lawless

Book Details:

Author: Adam Lawless 
Release Date: December 14th, 2025
Series:
Genre: Thriller, Fiction
Format: E-book 
Pages: 378 pages
Publisher: –
Blurb:
Four lives. Four nations. One slow-burn collapse of the world order.
Drawn together by desire, betrayal, and ambition, four strangers from opposite corners of the world collide as love turns toxic and loyalty becomes lethal. As the world edges toward an Armageddon of historic proportions, one question remains: can love redeem the broken—or will the master manipulator finish what fate began?
A soldier’s blind devotion.
Brian, a Delta Force Colonel once celebrated as a patriot, is erased after reckless ambition leads to the deaths of 22 American soldiers. Court-martialed and cast out, he reinvents himself inside the power corridors of Washington. But his greatest vulnerability isn’t his past—it’s the affair he begins while still married. As scandal, blackmail, and surveillance close in, Brian must decide how much of his country he is willing to burn to feel redeemed. Heroes fall quietly. Damage does not.

A South Asian immigrant’s disappointment.
Sayeed arrives in America believing in freedom, tolerance, and the promise of a better life. A Muslim immigrant with hope in his heart, he soon finds himself torn between family, culture, and a nation that does not always practice what it preaches. As injustice and hypocrisy mount, will Sayeed cling to his ideals—or will betrayal push him toward a darker path?
The Chinese spy who loved too deeply.
Jie rises swiftly through the ranks of China’s MSS, driven by brilliance, discipline, and ambition. But her greatest weakness is the one thing she cannot control—her heart. Preyed upon by a married man, her beauty and vulnerability ignite obsession wherever she goes. In Washington, D.C., love tempts her once more.
The Arab dreamer on the edge of ruin.
Ahmed, a poor but joyful youth from Iraq, is manipulated into stealing a sacred Islamic relic from Uzbekistan—an act that destroys his life and reshapes geopolitics. Captured and imprisoned in China, he is stripped of dignity, belief, and mercy. What survives his confinement is no longer innocent. When he finally emerges, the question is no longer if he will be used—but by whom.
Shards of an Empire is a bleak, high-stakes political thriller where nations maneuver through human weakness and love is the most exploitable asset of all. As these four lives converge, the world inches toward collapse—not with a bang, but with quiet decisions made in dark rooms.
History will call it unavoidable.
The truth is far more personal.

Review

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Shards Of An Empire by Adam Lawless is a geopolitical thriller that braids together multiple POVs. The book’s biggest strength is its ambition of scope: four protagonists from radically different contexts are pulled into the same widening blast radius: Brian O’Neill, a Delta Force colonel disgraced by a catastrophic mission; Sayeed, a Muslim immigrant chasing (and testing) the American dream; Jie, a rising MSS operative whose personal life and professional life keep bleeding into each other; and Ahmed, a “happy-go-lucky” Iraqi youth manipulated into a relic-theft mission that turns into something far darker.

What I enjoyed most is how author Lawless builds parallel pressures across these lives with ambition, belonging, loyalty, and desire so the novel feels like four different angles on the same question: who gets to feel safe, forgiven, and free in a world built on unequal power? Brian’s arc carries the muscular, kinetic energy you’d expect from a military opening (the book throws you into the chaos fast), while Sayeed’s thread brings the emotional and ideological tension of assimilation, hope curdling into disillusionment when ideals don’t match reality.

Jie and Ahmed, though, are where the novel’s most haunting notes land. Jie’s chapters blend tradecraft with vulnerability, she’s positioned as capable and ascending, yet repeatedly confronted by the cost of attachment and the way obsession can masquerade as love. Ahmed’s storyline is the most classically tragic: faith, poverty, and coercion converge into a “mission” framed as devotion, complete with a stolen relic and an expanding web of handlers who keep him blind to the true game being played. Without spoiling the mechanics of how it all locks together, I will say that the novel doesn’t flinch from the brutal idea that ordinary people are often just pieces moved by someone else’s hand, and the book makes that “master manipulator” theme explicit.

Critically, the same ambition that makes this story compelling can also make it feel dense and high-velocity as you’re asked to track multiple arcs, multiple moral frameworks, and a widening conspiracy as it accelerates. If you like thrillers that feel realistic, political, and morally knotted, and where romance doesn’t soften the world but sharpens i, this will hit. And if you’re the kind of reader who loves an epilogue-style historical sting (the book frames “empire” as something that echoes across centuries), the closing “Prelude/Postlude” cements that larger thesis in a way that’s both unsettling and memorable.

Shards of an Empire is big, bold, and unapologetically intense with equal parts spy intrigue and emotional unraveling, written for readers who enjoy stories where the personal is political, and love is never just love; it’s leverage, risk, and occasionally the only remaining rebellion.

You can also read this review at:

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Amazon

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Book Spotlight: Inconclusive Volume 1 by Alexandra Devane

Categories Book SpotlightLeave a Comment on Book Spotlight: Inconclusive Volume 1 by Alexandra Devane

Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Alexandra Devane for her latest release, Inconclusive Volume 1.

Book: Inconclusive Volume 1
Author: Alexandra Devane
Series: The Shards of Sansatia Series (Book 1 of 2:)
Publication Date: 31 August 2025
Publisher: –
Page Count: 139
Genres: Fantasy, dark Romantasy
Format Available: ebook and paperback
For Readers Who Enjoyed: Fourth Wing and ACOTAR 

About the Book

Eighteen-year-old Acteo Venand is an elite striker cadet at Inoton Academy, a military institution that prepares him to battle Noxvaleres, supernatural warriors who hold sway over the three pillars of desire: memory, fantasy, and reality. With graduation just a few months out, Acteo is ready to dedicate his life to the righteous destruction of Noxvaleres and avenge the traumas that he and his family have endured—until an ill-advised prize fight entangles him with Reyna Ward, an alluring assassin and Inconclusive, meaning a human with a chance at converting into a Noxvalere. Reyna continuously challenges Acteo’s worldview, and soon, his understanding of the distinctions between human and Noxvalere, and justice and desperation, begins to fracture.
In this spicy dark Romantasy Series, you will find
– Magic, mystery, and mayhem
– Crime & Intrigue
– Sword & Sorcery with a modern twist
– A fascinating cast of characters who are as skilled at secrecy as they are at combat

You can find Inconclusive Volume 1 here:
Amazon | Goodreads | Booksprout | NetGalley | Instagram

About The Author


Alexandra Devane

Alexandra Devane is a Fantasy novelist who is partial to powerful female leads with a dark side and love octagons. Her passions include family, spicy food, and of course, the thrill of writing.

You can find author Devane here:
Goodreads | Amazon

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com

Book Review: Human Again: In the AI Age by J.D. Macpherson

Categories noir, Non-Fiction, Surreal FictionLeave a Comment on Book Review: Human Again: In the AI Age by J.D. Macpherson

Book Details:

Author: J.D. Macpherson
Release Date: December 3rd, 2025
Series:
Genre: Blend of Psychology, Philosophy, and Technology, Non-Fiction, Computer Science, AI
Format: E-book 
Pages: 221 pages
Publisher: Cairnstone Press
Blurb:
Are you using AI or is AI using you?
In a world where algorithms shape thought and automation floods the creative field, Human Again is a field-tested playbook for staying awake, original, and alive in the age of machines. Part reflection, part practical guide, it invites readers to explore identity and inspiration in real time, learning to think with AI rather than be replaced by it.
Bending cultural insight, personal experience, and practical tools, Macpherson explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, work, and identity, and how to harness it without losing yourself.

You will learn how to:

  • Ask sharper questions that create leverage, not noise
  • Build a High Signal Question Engine to think deeper and faster
  • Use the Socratic method and mindfulness to train deeper thinking
  • Recognize the “qualia,” the unspeakable textures of human experience, that no algorithm can touch
  • Protect your authenticity, taste, and voice while others sound the same
  • Learn how to compound clarity and creativity

Whether you are a professional, a creator, or simply curious about what is next, Human Again shows how to use AI better than anyone around you while keeping what no algorithm can replicate: your judgment, conscience, and imagination.
Because finding identity and inspiration in the AI age begins with remembering what it means to be human.

Review

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Human Again: In the AI Age by J.D. Macpherson reads like a candid, idea-rich notebook from someone who’s spent time living with generative AI, not just theorising about it. What makes this book work is its voice; it is curious, slightly confessional, and persuasive, with “come sit with me, let’s think this through” energy. It doesn’t treat AI as a shiny toy or an apocalyptic villain; it treats it as a force that is already in our homes, our workflows, our attention spans, and our sense of self.

Structurally, it’s clean and bingeable with four sections: Discoveries, Possibilities, Operations, and Pitfalls, that move from first-contact curiosity (the early chapters feel like the author at the kitchen table, actually trying things) to more grounded strategy. I especially liked how author Macpherson keeps returning to a central tension that AI isn’t conscious, but it is convincing, and that gap between “sounds right” and “is true” is where modern humans are about to get tested. The chapters on credibility, creativity, mindfulness, and the practical mechanics of using AI (including promptcraft as a real skill, not a gimmick) feel written for readers who want to stay agile without losing their spine.

Where the book becomes most valuable is in the Operations + Pitfalls stretch: the mindset shifts, the attention economy warnings, the “don’t outsource your thinking” reminders, and the honest naming of risks like hallucinations, dopamine loops, and the subtle emotional attachment people can form with a tool that mirrors them too well. It’s also refreshingly not preachy, but more like a friend who’s a step ahead, turning around to say, “Here’s what I wish I’d known before I got swept up.”

That said, readers looking for a richer academic, citation-heavy AI book may find Macpherson’s approach more reflective than research-dense, as this is more experience-based wisdom and philosophical framing than a technical manual or a policy treatise. So if you want a smart, readable, humane guide to staying human while becoming AI-literate, Human Again: In the AI Age is a timely and thoughtful read that leaves you more alert, intentional, and (ironically) more present.

You can also read this review at:

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Amazon

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Book Spotlight: Shards Of An Empire by Adam Lawless 

Categories Book SpotlightLeave a Comment on Book Spotlight: Shards Of An Empire by Adam Lawless 

Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Adam Lawless for his latest release, Shards of an Empire.

Book: Shards Of An Empire
Author: Adam Lawless
Publication Date: December 14th, 2025
Publisher: –
Page Count:
Genres: Fiction, Thriller
Available in: ebook, paperback, hardback
For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Other Side of Me by David Cordisco

About the Book

Four lives. Four nations. One slow-burn collapse of the world order.

Drawn together by desire, betrayal, and ambition, four strangers from opposite corners of the world collide as love turns toxic and loyalty becomes lethal. As the world edges toward an Armageddon of historic proportions, one question remains: can love redeem the broken—or will the master manipulator finish what fate began?
A soldier’s blind devotion.
Brian, a Delta Force Colonel once celebrated as a patriot, is erased after reckless ambition leads to the deaths of 22 American soldiers. Court-martialed and cast out, he reinvents himself inside the power corridors of Washington. But his greatest vulnerability isn’t his past—it’s the affair he begins while still married. As scandal, blackmail, and surveillance close in, Brian must decide how much of his country he is willing to burn to feel redeemed. Heroes fall quietly. Damage does not.
A South Asian immigrant’s disappointment.
Sayeed arrives in America believing in freedom, tolerance, and the promise of a better life. A Muslim immigrant with hope in his heart, he soon finds himself torn between family, culture, and a nation that does not always practice what it preaches. As injustice and hypocrisy mount, will Sayeed cling to his ideals—or will betrayal push him toward a darker path?
The Chinese spy who loved too deeply.
Jie rises swiftly through the ranks of China’s MSS, driven by brilliance, discipline, and ambition. But her greatest weakness is the one thing she cannot control—her heart. Preyed upon by a married man, her beauty and vulnerability ignite obsession wherever she goes. In Washington, D.C., love tempts her once more.
The Arab dreamer on the edge of ruin.
Ahmed, a poor but joyful youth from Iraq, is manipulated into stealing a sacred Islamic relic from Uzbekistan—an act that destroys his life and reshapes geopolitics. Captured and imprisoned in China, he is stripped of dignity, belief, and mercy. What survives his confinement is no longer innocent. When he finally emerges, the question is no longer if he will be used—but by whom.

Shards of an Empire is a bleak, high-stakes political thriller where nations maneuver through human weakness and love is the most exploitable asset of all. As these four lives converge, the world inches toward collapse—not with a bang, but with quiet decisions made in dark rooms.

History will call it unavoidable.
The truth is far more personal.

You can find Shards of an Empire here:
Amazon | Goodreads

About The Author

Adam Lawless

Adam Lawless is an avid student of world history, culture, philosophy, and religious thought. He loves meeting people from diverse cultures, religious backgrounds, points of view, and exchanging ideas. While he is not authoring books, he loves eating out, hanging out with friends, camping at Yellowstone National Park, sit by the fireplace and sip hot chocolate, watching thrillers, and comedy movies. Adam’s mantra for life – Life is too short to be grumpy, enjoy the tiny joys in life, be grateful for the warm sunshine, the green grass under your feet and the blue skies spread over your head. Whenever he can, he travels to other cultures to learn about their history, their civilization, their customs, and their way of life. Human beings fascinate him! His favorite thing to do is sit by the beach and watch the sun set in the orange skies.

You can find author Waddington here:
Amazon

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com

Book Review: Quiet Endurance: A Memoir by James D. Reginato

Categories memoir, noir, Surreal FictionLeave a Comment on Book Review: Quiet Endurance: A Memoir by James D. Reginato

Book Details:

Author: James D. Reginato 
Release Date: 3rd November 2025
Series:
Genre: Memoir
Format: E-book 
Pages: 141 pages
Publisher: James D. Reginato
Blurb:
Quiet Endurance is James’ debut memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, and endurance: a haunting exploration of identity, resilience, and the human need to be believed.
At aged 23, James Reginato was a law and commerce student who loved structure, precision and meaning. He found peace in order, whether through flying, study, or music. Life made sense until a trip overseas left him with a severe infection that marked the beginning of a long and confusing decline. What began as physical illness became something far more complicated when doctors could not explain his symptoms.
Quiet Endurance is a hauntingly raw recount of his journey through misdiagnosis, disbelief, and the quiet erosion of identity that comes from being treated as a problem instead of a person. It is an intimate account of how a once healthy body can become a source of fear and how the healthcare system can lose sight of the human being behind the data.

Through vivid storytelling and careful reflection, James explores the moments that broke him and the small acts of persistence that kept him alive. He writes about the hospitals that misunderstood him, the labels that trapped him, and the eventual discovery of the real conditions that he had been researching all along. Alongside the medical struggle runs a portrait of family, love, and endurance in the face of a system that could not see past its own limits.
This memoir is both personal and universal. It speaks to anyone who has been dismissed, doubted, or reduced to an explanation that does not fit. It is about what happens when you are forced to become your own advocate, when survival depends on refusing to be erased.
Quiet Endurance is not a story of miracle recovery. It is about the resilience that remains when there is nothing left to prove. It is a record of persistence, truth, and the strength that comes from still being here.
Disclaimer
This text includes detailed descriptions of medical treatments, trauma, hospitalisations, severe mental health challenges, suicidal themes, and systemic mistreatment. Reader discretion is advised. This work is based on the author’s personal experiences and medical history. Excerpts from medical correspondence and clinical records are drawn from the author’s own files and have been reproduced or paraphrased for context. Identifying details of individuals, institutions, and locations have been altered or omitted to protect privacy. These passages are presented in good faith as part of the author’s lived experience, and are not intended to criticise or make factual claims about any identifiable person or organisation.

Review

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Quiet Endurance: A Memoir by James D. Reginato is an unflinching account of what happens when a body falls apart, and the systems meant to hold you together decide your suffering is “something else.” It opens with the author’s intent to show how misunderstanding, systemic rigidity, and misplaced psychiatric assumptions can fracture care, and the patient inside it.

What makes this memoir so memorable and really mand is the voice; it is controlled, articulate, and furious in the way only the truly exhausted can be. Author Reginato writes with the discipline of someone who thinks in procedures and that contrast becomes painful (and powerful) when medicine fails to offer the same clarity. The result is a narrative that reads like a slow, relentless erosion of selfhood, until “survival” stops meaning improvement and starts meaning persistence.

The book’s emotional hinge is how plausibly it tracks a descent from “treatable” to “suspect.” We watch an origin-point illness after a Bali trip (later identified as typhoid) and the cascade that follows as weight loss, gut dysfunction, hospitalisation, escalating fear, and a homecoming that doesn’t feel like safety so much as being left alone with the consequences. When validation finally arrives in the form of a POTS diagnosis, there’s a brief, aching sense of “finally, I have a name for this,” and then the bitter aftertaste. The memoir’s strongest chapters don’t just catalogue events; they show what repeated dismissal does to the mind and how it teaches you to doubt your own sensations, your own reality.

I want to be fair about what may not work for everyone. The clinical specificity, such as the cycles of admissions, tests, discharge plans, and the repeated need to “prove” symptoms, can feel intentionally repetitive, because that’s the point: the system’s loops become the patient’s prison. Still, readers who prefer a tighter memoir arc may find portions heavy with medical process. But for the audience this book is speaking to, such as patients with complex illness, caregivers, and clinicians who want to experience texture behind the file, those details are exactly what give it authority. And the ending pages, which return to the ethics of care and the radical act of reclaiming narrative (“keep the pen firmly in your hand”), leave the reader with something rarer than inspiration, a sober, hard-earned clarity.

If you pick up Quiet Endurance, do it with appropriate care as the book explicitly warns of trauma, systemic mistreatment, and suicidal themes. But if you’re in the right headspace, this is a compelling and necessary memoir that argues, persuasively, that medicine can’t be reduced to protocols alone.

You can also read this review at:

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Amazon

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