book blog by Heena Rathore-Pardeshi | Of Whiskers And Words
Author: Heena R. Pardeshi
Heena is the author of the award-winning novel Deceived. She works as the novel critic and the chief editor at a local publishing house in Pune, India. She is an animal lover as well as an animal activist.
She loves books, music and wine. Travelling and learning about new cultures is an integral part of her life.
She is presently learning Piano and French language.
She lives in Pune, India with her beloved husband and 6 cats.
Author:Clark Gillian Van Herrewege Release Date: 4 May 2026 Series: Genre: Thriller, Mystery Format: E-book Pages: 210 pages Publisher: Brave New Books Blurb: One billionaire. One Euro. One secret that could kill. When eccentric billionaire Johan Paepe is found dead in his Brussels mansion, the reading of his will turns into a high-stakes psychological game. Notary Benjamin De Walters is tasked with a bizarre addendum: a billion-euro fortune has been hidden for a decade, and the murderous secret heir is sitting right in his office amongst Johan’s other next of kin. As Detective Van Der smet deploys cutting-edge AI facial recognition to hunt for a motive among the family members, Ben must rely on his father’s old-world lessons in observation and human nature. In a climate of digital surveillance and political tension, can a notary’s intuition outpace a police algorithm? A contemporary tribute to the Golden Age of detective fiction, ‘Who Wants To Be A Billionaire’ explores the thin line between the logic of technology and the chaotic mess of family ties.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? by Clark Gillian Van Herrewege is a wonderfully unusual mystery novel built around inheritance, suspicion, family resentment, AI-assisted policing, and one very observant Brussels notary named KarelBenjamin De Walters. The premise is instantly intriguing: billionaire author Johan Paepe dies under suspicious circumstances just after changing his will, and his possible heirs are gathered together to discover that one among them may already have secretly inherited his fortune years ago. What follows is part locked-room mystery, part family drama, part satire of wealth, and part philosophical meditation on truth, storytelling, and individual and social actions.
What I enjoyed most is the narrative voice as Benjamin De Walters is not a typical detective figure; he is formal, digressive, cultured, legally precise, and frequently distracted by cinema, memory, grief, and moral reflection. His long meditations on Hitchcock, Belgian law, inheritance structures, and social conduct give the book a distinct personality. At times, these digressions slow the plot, but they also make the novel feel unlike a standard commercial mystery. The book is less interested in rushing toward a revelation and more interested in observing how people reveal themselves under pressure.
The central mystery is deliciously theatrical. The Paepe family members are trapped not only by the possibility of murder, but by money itself: the inheritance becomes a moral test, a psychological trap, and a mirror held up to every old grievance in the room. Pieter, Jochen, Cรฉline, Kenny, Joyabel, Layla, Jean-Baptiste, Nele, and Brenda each bring their own history of need, bitterness, injury, or secrecy, and the AI surveillance system adds a sharp contemporary edge to the proceedings.
That said, this is not a lean mystery. The prose is intentionally expansive, and readers who prefer tight, fast-paced thrillers may find the digressions excessive. The Hitchcock commentary, historical asides, and legal-financial explanations are interesting, but they sometimes compete with the immediacy of the investigation. The novel also moves into increasingly strange and metaphysical territory later on, which may divide readers depending on how much they enjoy genre-blending.
Still, Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? is memorable because it refuses to be ordinary. It is witty, eccentric, dramatic, and unexpectedly tender, especially in the epilogue, where the story closes not with spectacle but with companionship, grief, and the image of Brenda, Benjamin, and Ariadne walking through the purple sea of Hallerbos.
Author:John Burt Release Date: 19 January 2026 Series: Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 332 pages Publisher: Press Americana Blurb: A Moment’s Surrenderย follows freshman writing instructor Paul Bishop in the aftermath of the murder of his former best friend, the renowned poet Tom Corbin. Haunted by guilt and bound by a devastating secret, Paul takes it upon himself to care for Tom’s terminally ill widow, Susan. But the truth he withholds โ that Tom had planned to leave Susan for another woman, Paul’s own long-ago lover Rachel Lake โ draws Paul into a painful triangle of loyalty, betrayal, and unresolved desire. Caught between the two women, Paul must navigate a web of grief and deception that threatens to undo them all.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
A Momentโs Surrender by John Burt is a literary novel of grief, guilt, desire, betrayal, and the strange moral afterlife of love. The story follows Paul Bishop, a freshman writing instructor whose former best friend, celebrated poet Tom Corbin, is murdered shortly after visiting him in Reno. But the murder is only the event that cracks the surface. Beneath it lies a far more intimate and devastating web: Tom had planned to leave his terminally ill wife Susan for Rachel Lake, Paulโs former lover, and Paul becomes the keeper of this secret even as he grows increasingly bound to Susan and her young son, Jack.
What makes this novel so compelling is its psychological precision. Author Burt is not writing a conventional murder mystery, though the book does contain a murder, an investigation, and the consequences of a violent death. The real mystery here is emotional: what do we owe the dead, what do we owe the living, and how much truth can love bear before it collapses under its own weight? Paul is a fascinatingly flawed protagonist who is passive, guilt-ridden, evasive, intellectually sharp but morally hesitant. His instinct is often to protect people through concealment, yet every concealment draws him deeper into the very harm he wants to avoid.
The strongest parts of the novel are its character dynamics. Susan is beautifully rendered: grieving, exhausted, morally serious, vulnerable without being weak, and heroic in the way she continues to care for Jack while facing her own illness and loss. Rachel brings a darker, more volatile energy into the book and Tom, though dead early in the novel, dominates the narrative like a gravitational force.
Author Burtโs prose is dense, reflective, and literary. The novel is full of meditations on poetry, faith, moral failure, academia, desire, and mortality and readers who enjoy literary fiction that thinks deeply about relationships will find the book richly rewarding.
What I admired most is that A Momentโs Surrender refuses easy moral categories. Nobody here is simply good or bad, betrayed or betrayer, coward or victim. Love is shown as something that can wound, distort, redeem, and trap people all at once. The novel understands that grief does not purify the dead, guilt does not necessarily make us truthful, and compassion is often tangled with selfishness.
Overall, A Momentโs Surrender is a thoughtful, emotionally intricate, and intellectually serious debut. It is not a light read, but it is a rewarding one; especially for readers drawn to literary fiction about grief, moral ambiguity, failed love, and the difficult grace of continuing after irreparable damage.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Knut-Erland Berglundfor his latest release, CSR History and Practice: A Study on Swedish Large-Scale Entrepreneurship at the Company Level.
Book: CSR History and Practice: A study of Swedish Large Scale Entrepreneurship at the Company Level Circa 1940 – 2010 Author: Knut-Erland Berglund Publication Date: 02.06.25 Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand Pages: 243 Genre: Non-fiction, Business studies Available Formats: eBook, Paperback
About the Book
CSR History and Practice: A Study of Swedish Large-Sclae Entrepreneurship at the Company Level Circa 1940 – 2010.
Social scientist with project management experience and a strong interest in GIS. Used to being involved in, running projects and organizing my work. Specialized in social innovation, corporate responsibility (CSR & Sustainability) and sustainable development. Several experiences as a lecturer and presenter of research at international conferences.
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
Author:Travis Peterson Release Date: 31 March 2026 Series: Genre: Dystopian, Post-Aplocalypse, Sci-Fi Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 120 pages Publisher: – Blurb: A rogue planet is coming. Humanityโs last city has a plan. You wonโt like it. Pete wakes in POD 217 with blood on his face and no memory of yesterday. The Last Great City is clean, pleasurable, and perfectly controlled โ as long as its citizens follow the cycle. Reset. Comply. Repeat. Pete keeps failing the reset. Somewhere in the city, a woman named Marla is looking for him. Somewhere in the past, two scientists just watched something enormous pass in front of Betelgeuse. And somewhere at the edge of a dying wasteland, a cybernaut older than civilization is sitting under a cherry tree, watching the feral descendants of humanity dance under a dying star.
Salvation Reignedย moves across fractured time and colliding perspectives โ the scientists who saw it coming, the city that chose control over truth, the lovers whose bond survives every attempt to erase it, and the machine left behind to witness what persists when everything else is gone. Raw. Nonlinear. Uncompromising. This is not a story about heroes. It is a story about what love, memory, and consciousness do when a system tries to delete them. Adult content: extreme language and graphic violence. For fans of Philip K. Dick, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jeff VanderMeer.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Salvation Reigned by Travis James Peterson is a strange, abrasive, darkly comic work of dystopian science fiction that reads like the end of the world filtered through panic, intoxication, political theatre, body horror, and cosmic absurdity. The novel begins with Pete, a scientist working on a singularity weapon to stop Nyx, a rogue planet on a collision course with Earth, but very quickly expands into something much wilder: a collapsing civilisation, performative leadership, feral evolution, cybernauts, strongholds, memory cycles, and the unsettling question of whether โsaving humanityโ means anything if humanity has already lost itself.
What immediately stands out is the bookโs voice. It is raw, fragmented, profane, hallucinatory, and deliberately excessive. Author Peterson writes in short bursts that feel part fever dream, part stand-up routine, and part apocalypse sermon. This style will not be for everyone, but it gives the novel a distinctive pulse. The political satire is especially sharp in the early sections, where the President, his cabinet, and the media apparatus respond to planetary extinction with ego, spectacle, branding, and grotesque public performance. The discovery of Nyx by Gilbert and Lewis, followed by the governmentโs attempt to control the narrative, sets the tone beautifully: this is a world too stupid, vain, and overstimulated to face its own ending with dignity.
Thematically, the novel is surprisingly rich beneath its chaotic surface. It is deeply concerned with survival, control, memory, bodily autonomy, propaganda, technological salvation, and our recurring instinct to turn even catastrophe into hierarchy. That said, Salvation Reigned is not a smooth or conventionally polished read. Its intensity can become overwhelming, and the constant barrage of profanity, sexual imagery, violence, and surreal humour may exhaust some readers. The prose is intentionally jagged, but there are moments where that jaggedness blurs clarity. Readers looking for traditional pacing, clean exposition, or restrained dystopian storytelling may struggle with it. However, readers who enjoy experimental speculative fiction, satirical apocalypse narratives, and fiction that is willing to be ugly, funny, clever, and uncomfortable all at once may find this book fascinating.
Overall, Salvation Reigned is bold, chaotic, and extremely strange in a way that feels entirely intentional. It is not simply about stopping the apocalypse; it is about what people do when extinction becomes a certainty, and how every system (political, technological, spiritual, and biological) tries to claim the right to define survival. It is messy, provocative, and often grotesque, but it also has flashes of real beauty, especially in its final meditation on memory, destruction, and the life that continues after us.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Charleston Lim for their latest release, 1521: The Defiance.
Book: 1521: The Defiance Author: Charleston Lim Publication Date: April 15, 2026 Publisher: – Pages: 243 Genre: Historical Fiction Available Formats: eBook, Paperback, Hardbound For Readers who Enjoyed: Historical Fiction stories
About the Book
History remembers the fall of Ferdinand Magellan, but it forgets the lives caught in his death’s shadow.
1521: The Defianceย is not merely a retelling of the Battle of Mactan. It is a reckoning with how history is written, who is remembered, and whose stories endure.
Drawing from Antonio Pigafettaโs chronicle, the only surviving firsthand account of Magellanโs final expedition, and grounded in precolonial Visayan culture, this novel explores the lives, fears, and convictions of those who stood on both sides of this historic encounter between islanders and empire.
Written by a Filipino author rooted in the land where these events unfolded, 1521: The Defiance reimagines the human stories behind the clash, filling the silences between recorded facts with narrative, emotion, and cultural memory. It offers a perspective rarely centered in colonial histories, one that restores agency, dignity, and complexity to those long reduced to footnotes.
This is a story of belief and resistance, of men who sought to change the world, and of those who refused to let it be taken from them.
โTell me, Antonio. What will your pages call him if we cannot make him bend?โ The Venetian hesitated, then gave a thin smile. โA rebel, perhaps. Or a heathen. Orโฆโ He glanced at his parchment, as if unsure. โOr a fool who defied destiny.โ
Charleston Lim is a Filipino author known for his multi-genre work, including science fiction and historical fiction novels. Based on the island of Cebu in the Philippines, he identifies as a science fiction nerd and draws inspiration from complex themes like quantum physics, artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and history.
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
Author:Peter Mattson Release Date: 20 February 2026 Series: Genre: Political Dystopian, Sci-Fi, Thriller Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 288 pages Publisher: – Blurb: In the dystopian nation of Harkiem, no one questions the systemโuntil journalist Jones Torren investigates the death of thirteen-year-old Jack Ovens and uncovers a conspiracy that could cost him his life. Jack Ovens has always been labeled a troublemaker. After a series of mistakes, he is sent to the Refinement Centreโa government-run program promising discipline, reform, and job training. What Jack encounters is a system that favors some boys while quietly keeping others down.
Months later, journalist Jones Torren is assigned to cover Jackโs death. What begins as a routine human-interest story quickly unravels into something far more disturbing. Records are missing. Testimonies donโt align. And more families are coming forward with the same quiet, devastating truth: their sons never came home. As Jones digs deeper, he uncovers a hidden extension of the program, The Ranch. What happens there isnโt reform. Itโs something worse. Exposing The Ranch could topple a nation. It could also get Jones killed. The Ranch is a gripping dystopian novel that asks the question: What if the system meant to save society is quietly destroying its children? The Ranch explores what happens when authority goes unquestioned, and government policies operate in the shadows, revealing a chilling world where the perfect society comes at a devastating human cost.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Ranch: For The Betterment of Humanity by Peter Mattson is a dystopian novel that begins with a deceptively familiar problem of a troubled schoolboy, a worried mother, and a system that claims it can โfixโ difficult children, before expanding into a much darker examination of state control, institutional discipline, social engineering, and the terrifying ease with which cruelty can be repackaged as reform. The story moves between Jack Ovensโs past, as he is pulled deeper into the Refinement Centre and later the Ranch, and a present-day investigation into what really happened to him.
What works best in the novel is its central idea. Mattson builds a society where children who are deemed disruptive, unproductive, or dangerous are processed through systems designed to make them useful. The Refinement Centre and the Ranch are chilling because they are not presented as openly villainous at first; they are wrapped in the language of discipline, productivity, safety, and โbetterment.โ This is where the bookโs strongest dystopian force lies: in showing how authoritarian systems often survive by convincing ordinary people that suffering is necessary for order.
Jack is an effective emotional anchor because he is not written as a perfect victim. He is impulsive, angry, flawed, and often difficult, which makes the systemโs response to him even more unsettling. That said, The Ranch is also a very idea-driven novel, and at times the themes can overtake the characters. Some sections lean heavily into explanation, policy, and institutional mechanics, which may slow the pace for readers looking for a tighter thriller-like dystopian narrative. The novel is strongest when it dramatises its ideas through Jackโs fear, resistance, isolation, and the brutal logic of the Ranch; it is slightly less effective when it pauses to explain the system too directly. A firmer editorial hand could have sharpened some transitions and given the emotional beats more room to breathe.
Still, the bookโs ambition is clear and admirable. This is not a dystopia built only for spectacle; it is built around a moral argument. Author Mattson is interested in how societies justify sacrifice, governments hide violence behind policy, and how easily children can become raw material for ideological experiments. The titleโs promise of โbettermentโ becomes darker with every chapter, because the reader understands that the real question is not whether the system works, but what kind of people it is trying to create.
Overall, The Ranch is a thoughtful, unsettling dystopian novel with strong social commentary and a disturbing institutional core. It may be uneven in pacing, but its premise, moral urgency, and critique of forced reform make it a compelling read for readers who enjoy dystopian fiction rooted in ethical questions rather than pure action.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Wendy Swift for her latest release, A Dream Life.
Book: A Dream Life Author: Wendy Swift Publication Date: 12 May 2026 Publisher: Vine Leaves Press Pages: 296 Genre: Memoir Available Formats: e-book & Paperback For Readers who Enjoyed:The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, The End of Normal by Stephanie Madoff Mack, & A Beautiful, Terrible Thing by Jen Waite
About the Book
When Wendy Swift discovers a letter demanding nearly two million dollars in restitution from her attorney husband, she realizes that her life as a suburban stay-at-home mother has been built on illusion. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, she believed the quintessential dream life she shared with her husband and three daughters was secure and enduring.ย A Dream Lifeย traces Swiftโs search for validation through marriage, motherhood, and social mobility, and the unraveling that follows.
After her husband begins his incarceration in the 1990s, Swift becomes solely responsible for supporting her three young daughters as they navigate loss, shame, and uncertainty. Her path forward is uneven and hard-won, revealing resilience, reflection, and growth, as well as the perils of blind materialism.
This powerful memoir illuminates the complex challenges families face when confronted with addiction, mental illness, and incarceration. Swift blends unflinching truth-telling with wry self-reflection, awakening readers to the consequences of denial and the restorative power of self-possession.ย A Dream Lifeย ultimately affirms that anyone can unknowingly fall prey to false beliefs, but once the truth is revealed and the fear of dislocation and upheaval is faced, renewal and strength can emerge.
Wendy Swift is the author of a memoir,ย A Dream Life, as well as essays published in HuffPost, Memoir Magazine, Grub Street Literary Magazine, Barely South Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Brevity Blog and Lonesome Press. Inย 2006, Swift earned the Press Club of Long Island Award for her essay โRitterโs Pond,โ and in 2022, she earned Honorable Mention from the Connecticut Press Club for โThe Sentencing.โ In addition, Swift is a mentor with We Are Not Numbers, a writing platform for Palestinian writers. Swift serves as a fiction reader for Mud Season Review. Sheย livesย in Connecticut and when she is not writing or thinking about writing, she is walking wooded trails with her hound, Lulu.
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
Author:Cody Burke Release Date: 24 March 2026 Series: Genre: Memoir Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 274 pages Publisher: Eternal Lotus Publishing Blurb: The Father, the Dog and the Conspiracy Theorist is Cody Burke’s unfiltered story of breaking down and breaking free. In this raw and darkly funny memoir, the author battles his ego and demons as he navigates the absurdity of 2020 as a “conspiracy theorist”. His father is dying, but his family is more concerned about social distancing. He attempts to destroy the government narrative to save his family and to save the worldโฆ or is he just stroking his own ego? Through psychological spirals, absurd humour, and uncomfortable honesty, the author strives to “question everything”. This memoir pulls you inside to not only the chaos of mental collapse, but to the chaos of evolution. You will find humour in the madness, hope in the heartbreak, and perhaps even you will begin to question everything. Just don’t lose your headโฆ
Review
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Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
The Father, the Dog and the Conspiracy Theorist by Cody Burke is a raw and candid memoir about mental health, family, masculinity, fear, spiritual awakening, political disillusionment, and grief. Beginning with author Burkeโs sense that part of him โdiedโ at twenty-seven, the book moves through childhood in the west of Scotland, anxiety, insecurity, marijuana dependence, self-diagnosis, lockdown, conspiracy thinking, his intense bond with his father, and finally the arrival of Tuco (the little Jack Russell) who becomes the emotional and spiritual centre of the memoir.
What makes the book compelling is its voice. Author Burke writes with rough-edged honesty, lacing profanity, humour, wounds, and self-awareness in an often brutally unfiltered way. The prose is not polished in a conventional literary sense, but it has a strong confessional force. The early chapters are especially effective because they reveal the emotional foundation beneath everything that follows. The sections on lockdown and conspiracy thinking are likely to be the bookโs most polarising. Still the book is most interesting when read less as a manifesto and more as a portrait of a mind under pressure.
If I had one reservation, it is that the book can sometimes feel overextended. There are moments where the digressions into politics, online rabbit holes, and ideological analysis could have been tightened to give the memoir a sharper emotional through-line. However, the sprawl also feels inseparable from the bookโs identity. This is not a neat memoir about healing. It is a messy, searching, sometimes uncomfortable account of a man trying to understand how fear enters the body, love keeps people tethered, and grief can split reality into a before and after.
Overall, The Father, the Dog and the Conspiracy Theorist is a fiercely personal memoir with a great deal of heart beneath its anger and chaos. Its most powerful achievement is its portrait of love: love between father and son, love for a dog who becomes family, and love as the fragile force that keeps a person from disappearing into fear completely.
A rogue planet is coming. Humanity’s last city has a plan. You won’t like it.
Pete wakes in POD 217 with blood on his face and no memory of yesterday. The Last Great City is clean, pleasurable, and perfectly controlled โ as long as its citizens follow the cycle. Reset. Comply. Repeat.
Pete keeps failing the reset.
Somewhere in the city, a woman named Marla is looking for him. Somewhere in the past, two scientists just watched something enormous pass in front of Betelgeuse. And somewhere at the edge of a dying wasteland, a cybernaut older than civilization is sitting under a cherry tree, watching the feral descendants of humanity dance under a dying star.
Salvation Reigned moves across fractured time and colliding perspectives โ the scientists who saw it coming, the city that chose control over truth, the lovers whose bond survives every attempt to erase it, and the machine left behind to witness what persists when everything else is gone.
Raw. Nonlinear. Uncompromising.
This is not a story about heroes. It is a story about what love, memory, and consciousness do when a system tries to delete them.
Adult content: extreme language and graphic violence.
For fans of Philip K. Dick, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jeff VanderMeer.
Travis James Peterson is a former Marine. He has spent much of his life analyzing the world through geospatial data. Reading patterns. Looking for truth in the noise by shaping chaos into something meaningful.
The story came the way most truths do. Slowly, like water undercutting a riverbank. Then all at once. Like a mass waste event dumping earth into a violent flow. For years it lived in fragments. Flashes of light, neon flames crawling across a dark sky. Images without a frame. It wasn’t until sleep was contingent on writing a few good words that the story started taking shape. Then dreamscapes fueled his race with the morning sun to capture a story that flashed behind closed eyes.
Travis writes dark, philosophical science fiction. Short, punchy, and unafraid of hard questions.
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
Author:Stefanos Sampanis Release Date: 19 January 2026 Series: The Journey of the Wish (Book 1 of 2) Genre: Fantasy Format: E-book Pages: 435 pages Publisher: – Blurb: I perceived the world and acknowledged all of its colours. There was truth; the kind you cannot simply speak of. A tale suits the cause better. It is a disguise that anyone can enjoy and if intrigued, look behind it. This is my testament. A fantasy saga exploring the most human reality. A Journey that lies ahead and matures with each page turned.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Grey Winter of the Enslaved by Stefanos Sampanis, the first book in The Journey of the Wish series, is an ambitious epic fantasy that opens with myth, grief, and exile rather than easy adventure. At the centre of the story is Glimm, a young Elf-Fairy child whose life is violently severed from Spring after his mother is killed by Orcs and he is forced into Winter, where survival comes at a devastating cost: blindness, loss of touch, a hail-covered body, and enslavement under King Semela in the Mount of Billows. The novelโs mythology is dense and distinctive, built around Seven Gods, seasonal laws, Slumber, curses, Clarity, and the uneasy moral structure of the Enslaved.
What immediately stands out is the originality of the worldbuilding. Author Sampanis does not offer a conventional elves-and-orcs fantasy; instead, he constructs a world governed by seasons, divine attraction, ritual labour, and ecological duty. The Enslaved are not merely prisoners; they are cursed servants of Winter, responsible for gathering the remnants of Spring and helping the season function. This gives the novel one of its strongest ideas: that punishment, purpose, survival, and servitude can become frighteningly entangled. Glimmโs Clarity, his ability to perceive the world in grey, three-dimensional impressions after losing his sight, is also a fascinating narrative device, and it shapes the prose in unusual ways.
Emotionally, the novel is strongest when it focuses on Glimmโs grief and his complicated relationships. His bond with Than, the silent stone Giant, is one of the bookโs most tender elements; without conventional dialogue, their friendship develops through loyalty, protection, humour, and repeated acts of trust. Ephiren, the old Elf, gives the story philosophical depth and helps Glimm understand pain, memory, and purpose. Setierphiane, the water Wisp, introduces hope, longing, and the possibility of return, not only to Spring, but to feeling, desire, and choice. Through these relationships, Glimm becomes more than a cursed child; he becomes someone slowly learning the difference between survival and living.
That said, this is not an easy or fast read. The prose is heavy, sometimes overextended, and the worldbuilding can feel overwhelming, especially in the long mythological passages and repeated explanations of divine systems. The translation also gives the language a slightly formal, sometimes uneven quality; while this occasionally adds to the mythic atmosphere, it can also make certain sentences feel stiff or densely packed. Readers who prefer clean, swift fantasy plotting may struggle with the bookโs pace and philosophical weight. But readers who enjoy slow, immersive, lore-rich fantasy, especially stories that feel closer to myth than modern commercial fantasy, will likely find a great deal to admire here.
Overall, The Grey Winter of the Enslaved is a dark, unusual, and deeply imaginative opening to The Journey of the Wish. It is impressive in scope, sincerity, and conceptual ambition. Its greatest strength lies in the way it turns fantasy suffering into a meditation on purpose: what it means to lose oneโs world, to be remade against oneโs will, and still search for a wish powerful enough to lead one back toward life.
Author:Scott Martinย andย Coryanne Hicksย Release Date: 9 June 2026 Series: Genre: Soccer Biography Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 227 pages Publisher: Library Tales Publishing Blurb: When rising college soccer coach Scott Martin was struck down by a rare, flesh-eating infection that took both hands and parts of his feet, doctors told him he was lucky just to survive. But survival wasnโt enough. Overnight, the man who lived for the game had to relearn how to move, teach, and live without the very tools that defined him. From hospital beds and courtroom battles to the touchline of a dusty youth-league field, Martinโs twenty-year odyssey is one of heartbreak and rebirth. He rebuilt his body, lostโand foundโhis purpose, married the doctor who saved him, adopted five children from around the world, and, when everything seemed over again, rediscovered his passion by leading a ragtag team of twelve-year-olds to an undefeated state championship. Told with unflinching honesty and humor,ย Play From Your Heartย is a memoir about endurance, grace, and the power of sport to heal what medicine cannot. For anyone whoโs ever faced the unthinkable, and still chosen to stand back up, this is a story that proves the human spirit is undefeated. Fans ofย Wild,ย Crying in H Mart, andย Good for a Girlย will find themselves cheering, weeping, and ultimately believing again in the beautiful game, and in the resilience of the human heart.
Review
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Rating: 5 out of 5.
Play From Your Heart by Scott Martin and Coryanne Hicks is a memoir about survival, disability, grief, family, and soccer, but more than anything, it is a book about identity: what happens when the life you built, the body you trusted, and the future you assumed were yours are violently interrupted. The book begins with Martin at the height of his physical and professional confidence, driving toward a Nike regional soccer camp in 1993, convinced his coaching career is moving exactly where it should. Within days, that momentum collapses into a medical catastrophe: toxic shock syndrome, necrotizing fasciitis, a month-long coma, multiple organ failure, and the amputation of both hands and parts of both feet.
What makes the memoir so compelling is its refusal to make resilience look neat. Martinโs recovery is not presented as a glossy motivational arc where determination magically solves everything. Instead, the book gives us the brutal daily mechanics of rebuilding a life: learning to sit up, stand, walk, use prosthetic hooks and later myoelectric hands, feed himself, drive again, coach again, and endure the emotional fog that follows trauma. Some of the strongest sections are not the most dramatic medical moments, but the quieter ones; the frustration of eating spaghetti with hooks, the humiliation of being stared at, the panic attacks, the guilt of watching family suffer, and the slow recognition that physical disability can become an emotional one when grief is left unprocessed.
The heart of the book, however, lies in its relationships. Martinโs mother is unforgettable: fierce, unsentimental, and almost mythic in her refusal to let him surrender. His friends, teammates, medical team, and later his young soccer players all become part of the larger story of how a person is held together by community when willpower alone is not enough. I especially appreciated how the memoir keeps returning to soccer not merely as a profession, but as a language of life. The โbeautiful gameโ becomes Martinโs way of understanding discipline, improvisation, dignity, loss, teaching, and joy. By the end, when he tells young players that they do not need expensive cleats or constant instruction, only โa ball and a wall,โ the title lands with real emotional force: to play from your heart is not a slogan here; it is a philosophy earned through pain.
Overall, Play From Your Heart is a moving and candid memoir about catastrophic illness, disability, adaptation, coaching, and the stubborn work of reclaiming joy. It is painful in places, but never self-pitying; inspiring, but never simplistic. Most importantly, it understands that resilience is not the absence of grief, it is the process of learning how to live alongside it.
Author:Alexandra Devane Release Date: 31 August 2025 Series: The Shards of Sansatia Series (Book 1 of 2) Genre: Fantasy, Dark Romantasy Format: E-book Pages: 139 pages Publisher: – Blurb: 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 enduredโuntil 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 Acteoโs 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 โ Magic, mystery, and mayhem โ Crime & Intrigue โ Sword & Sorcery with a modern twist โ A fascinating cast of characters who are as skilled at secrecy as they are at combat.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Inconclusive Volume 1 by Alexandra Devane, the first book in The Shards of Sansatia Series, is a dark, dense, high-stakes fantasy that throws the reader into a world already heavy with war, trauma, magical threat, military hierarchy, criminal networks, and moral ambiguity. From the opening chapters, the book establishes a brutal conflict between Andrivalians and Noxvaleres, while centring its emotional tension around cadets like Acteo Venand, Inferi Ward, Kayla Deyrin, and the dangerous, wounded, fascinating Reyna Ward.
What stands out most is the sheer ambition of the worldbuilding. This is not a light fantasy that eases the reader in gently. Author Devane builds an elaborate system of strikers, Inconclusives, Street Strikers, Casters, By-product, Spirit Glass, Jourvalerin weapons, and political-criminal power structures. The mythology is layered and often compelling, especially in the way the book treats โInconclusivesโ โ people at risk of converting into Noxvaleres โ not simply as magical anomalies, but as socially feared, politically controlled bodies. Reynaโs history with the Street Strikers, her connection to Tereus Orsin, and her eventual relocation into Inoton Academy give the novel its sharpest emotional and narrative charge.
The character work is where the book is most interesting. Acteo is not just a gifted soldier; he is grief-struck, guilt-ridden, morally unstable in places, and deeply shaped by the loss of General Sable. Inferi is perhaps even more intriguing because of the tension between who he appears to be at the Academy and what his past still ties him to. Kayla and Aliโs relationship adds another layer of emotional realism, especially through Kaylaโs grief, dependency, and self-sabotage. But for me, Reyna is the bookโs gravitational force: damaged, deadly, sharp-edged, and constantly negotiating survival in systems that have used, trained, and branded her. Her scenes often carry the strongest psychological intensity.
That said, this is also a demanding read. The bookโs complexity is both its strength and its weakness. There are moments when the terminology, factions, backstory, emotional subplots, and political mechanics arrive in such abundance that the pacing becomes heavy. Readers who enjoy immersive, lore-rich fantasy will likely appreciate this density, but those who prefer cleaner exposition and faster narrative movement may find the opening stretch especially challenging. The prose is emotionally charged and often vivid, though occasionally the intensity of the writing makes the narrative feel overpacked.
Still, Inconclusive Volume 1 has a distinct identity. It blends military fantasy, dark academia, crime syndicate intrigue, trauma psychology, and morally grey romance-adjacent tension into something ambitious and unusual. By the end, with Reyna entering the guarded world of Inoton Academy and Volume 2 clearly positioned to deepen the conflict, the book feels like the opening movement of a much larger, darker saga.
Author:Tamar Anolicย Release Date: 1 March, 2026 Series: The Fayetteville Series (Book 2) Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 214 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Chloe Weaver is the oldest daughter in a conservative Christian family of Fayetteville, Arkansas who lives biblically: long skirts for the women, home-schooling for the children, weekly church attendance and old-fashioned courting rules that lead to marriage. As she turns thirty and remains unmarried, however, Chloe begins to wonder if sheโll ever have the happy marriage and many kids that she has been led to believe constitutes the perfect life. When her parents allow her to court Barnabas Anderson, Chloe knows she should be ecstatic. Instead, she is uncomfortable with the twelve-year age gap between her and Barnabas. Besides, Barnabas has always been a littleโฆ weird.
When Barnabasโ brother visits the Weavers, bringing tales of Barnabasโ previous wife and her untimely death, Chloe realizes how little she knows about Barnabas. As she prepares for a prayer assembly in San Francisco, where Barnabas used to live, Chloe decides to investigate his past and his wifeโs death. With the help of Detective Logan Cartwright of the San Francisco Police Department, Chloe steps out of her comfort zone to find the truth- and find hope for her future.
The Abnormal Gumshoe is the sequel to the award-winning novel Two Sisters of Fayetteville.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Abnormal Gumshoe by Tamar Anolic is an unusual and engaging mystery that begins with a woman slowly realising that the life built around her may not be the life she wants. The novel follows Chloe Weaver, the thirty-year-old eldest daughter in a deeply conservative Christian family in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Still unmarried, still living at home, and still carrying much of the householdโs invisible labour, Chloe is already questioning her place in the world when her parents approve a courtship with Barnabas Anderson, an older man from their church whose awkwardness has always unsettled her.
What begins as a courtship drama gradually turns into a murder investigation, when Barnabasโs brother reveals that Barnabas had once been married in San Francisco, and that his first wife, Clara, died under circumstances officially ruled a suicide. Chloeโs decision to look into Claraโs death gives the novel its detective spine, but what makes the story compelling is not only the mystery itself, it is the way the investigation becomes Chloeโs first real act of self-direction.
The novelโs strongest element is Chloeโs voice. She is observant, anxious, funny in small flashes, and shaped by religious obedience without being reduced to it. Author Anolic does a good job of showing how Chloeโs world has trained her to second-guess herself. This makes the mystery more emotionally layered than expected, because Chloe is not only investigating Barnabas, she is also investigating the boundaries of her own life. The book does not mock Chloeโs religious background, which I appreciated. Instead, it examines the cost of a system where women are taught to wait, obey, serve, and call that fulfilment.
That said, the novel is not without its rough edges. The pacing is gentler than readers might expect from a mystery, especially in the early chapters where domestic details and internal reflection take up considerable space. Some scenes could have been tightened, and certain investigative developments arrive rather conveniently.
Overall, The Abnormal Gumshoe is a thoughtful, character-led mystery with a distinctive protagonist and a strong emotional core. It is less a hardboiled detective novel and more a story of awakening wrapped around a cold case. Chloeโs transformation from overlooked daughter to determined investigator gives the book its real satisfaction, and by the end, the mystery matters not only because justice is needed for Clara, but because Chloe herself deserves a future chosen by her own hands.
Welcome to TRB Lounge. Today, Iโd like to welcome Luanne Castle, author of Scrap: Salvaging a Family, for an author interview with The Reading Bud.
About The Author
Luanne Castle
Luanne Castleโs hybrid flash memoir, Scrap: Salvaging a Family, with a starred Kirkus review, is available from ELJ Editions. Her story, โGarden Seasons,โ was selected for Best Microfiction 2026. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, River Teeth, Your Impossible Voice, JMWW, Grist, Fourteen Hills, Verse Daily, Disappointed Housewife, Lunch Ticket, Saranac Review, Pleiades, Cleaver, Moon City, Moon Park, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, BULL, The Mackinaw, The Ekphrastic Review, Phoebe, MacQueenโs Quinterly, Gone Lawn, Burningword, Superstition Review, One Art, Roi Fainรฉant, Dribble Drabble, Flash Boulevard, O:JA&L, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble, Antigonish Review, Longridge, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Gooseberry Pie, Switch, and Ginosko. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Her ekphrastic flash and poetry collection Hunting the Cosmos is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in fall 2026. Her mixed-media art has been showcased at Rogue Agent, Ink in Thirds, Watershed Review, Wildscape, Mad Swirl, Raw Lit, and Thimble. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University (Certificate). Luanne lives with her husband and three cats in Arizona along a wash that wildlife use as a thoroughfare.
Welcome to TRB! Beyond the formal details in your Author Bio, could you share a more personal glimpse into who you are with our readers?
I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I earned an MFA, then moved to California with my husband and two young children to study for my PhD in English. After that I taught at a university half-time and worked in my husbandโs dental marketing business. When I took early retirement for medical reasons, we moved to Arizona, and I began to write my memoir. Thatโs when I got a certificate in creative nonfiction/memoir from Stanford Universityโs online program.
My kids are both married and live near my husband and me. We have a two-year-old grandson. During Covid I started art journaling which led to mixed media collaging. My collages have been featured in a number of magazines. Iโm a dedicated animal lover and currently have three cats.
Beyond the blurb, could you delve into some unique aspects or pivotal moments from your book?
A pivotal time was when I was getting ready for ballet and, as usual, had picked up a book to read. My father stopped by to see if I was ready yet, and without thinking I asked the question Iโd never thought of before: where is your father? My fatherโs response shut down our communication on the subject for fifty years.
What drove you to explore this specific theme in your book? Is there a central message or insight you aim to convey to your readers?
When I started writing Scrap: Salvaging a Family I didnโt know of any message. I just wanted to share my experiences and, through writing about them, learn from them. But my story began to shape itself by the real-life events that occurred, and after my father passed away, I realized that I was writing about forgivenessโthe human desire to forgive one another and ourselves.
Evey book has its roots. What served as the catalyst for this oneโa personal experience, a persistent idea, a transformative event, or something else entirely?
Most likely the catalyst was the big gap in my life. Until my father was elderly I had no idea who his father was and this felt like a big hole in my own life.
How long was the journey from conceptualizing the idea to seeing the final version of this book?
Eighteen years of writing, writing, writing. This book took many different shapes before I landed on the final structure.
As a writer, what are your future aspirations? Where do you envision yourself in the literary world five years from now?
Scrap is my fifth book, and I have a collection of ekphrastic poetry and flash fiction inspired by the art of Spanish-Mexican artist Remedios Varo called Hunting the Cosmos forthcoming from Shanti Arts later this year. I donโt feel another book in me right now, but that could change. So, for now I will continue to write flash and poems. I have no desire to write a novel, although I have three unfinished plays and a couple of other partial projects. Maybe Iโll go back to one of those. I like to support other writers through writing reviews and sharing their work with others.
Are there other topics or projects you’re currently researching or writing about?
Iโm between major projects right now, but that doesnโt mean Iโm not writing. And reading.
While your focus is on non-fiction, have you ever been tempted to venture into the realm of fiction?
I write a great deal of flash fiction. My MFA in creative writing was actually split between poetry and fiction. I studied under Stuart Dybek for fiction. My first four books are poetry.
Can you recall the moment when you realized you wanted to be a writer? Was it a path filled with challenges or a passion you seamlessly transitioned into? Our readers cherish personal author journeys!
When I was a little girl I wanted to be the three As: author, actress, and archeologist. I think of writing as having achieved all of those goals. Author is obvious, archeologist is related to the research for writing, and acting is important to me because I absolutely love writing different voices. Although I worked on my MFA when my kids were very little, after I moved and started my PhD, I had too much going on to write. I was studying, teaching, working for my husband, and taking care of the kids while my husband traveled for business. Even so, I would write like fury every few months for a month or two, just to keep my hand in it. Thatโs why when I was forced to retire from teaching (but still working for the business) I started writing: memoir and poetry. The flash fiction came a bit later.
Describe your writing process. Do you have any routines or rituals that help you stay focused and inspired?
I do love taking workshops. My husband jokingly calls me a โprofessional student.โ The constraints involved with writing to prompts assigned by someone else stimulate my imagination and keep me focused so that I donโt have too many decisions to make. The routine is to sit in front of the computer and start writing when I can find at least a half hour. Kitchen or office, it doesnโt matter, although the kitchen is easier because I can keep an eye on what else needs doing. Iโve never really had long periods of solitude to write. Maybe thatโs why I tend to write poetry and flash.
Outside of writing, do you have another profession or area of expertise?
Iโm ok with general office work. I donโt love it, but Iโve done it for so long I have more expertise than the average person. I am an excellent reader. And my favorite area of (pseudo) expertise has been being a mom and now a grandma.
Given the theme of your book, could you recommend one or two other reads that resonate with similar ideas or insights? Feel free to mention influential authors as well.)
Mary Karrโs The Liarโs Club and Bernard Cooperโs The Bill from My Father were important traditional memoirs for me because of the focus on the relationship of the writers with one or both parents. It was harder to find less traditional memoirs to read, but I was influenced by Sheila OโConnorโs Evidence of V and Helie Leeโs Still Life with Rice. Both of these books are recreations of their grandmotherโs lives. Another book that does something similar is Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. However, the only one of these books that works in hybridity is the OโConnor book.
In the vast realm of non-fiction, are there specific authors or books that have profoundly influenced your approach or thinking?
The above authors were most influential for me.
The dreaded Writerโs Blockโdoes it ever hinder your process, and if so, how do you navigate past it?
Iโve never had Writerโs Block. The closest Iโve come are periods where I am overwhelmed with too much work and stimulation. At those times I canโt calm my mind enough to write, so I have to wait it out. I do think the reason I donโt experience Writerโs Block is my reliance on prompts for writing. Focusing on a specific topic/structure/style gives me the ability to move forward with a particular story or poem.
Non-fiction often requires a balance of research and narrative. How do you strike that balance, ensuing your work is both informative and engaging?
I did research for Scrap, but the majority of it was genealogical research. I ended up not including too much of that in the book but it underpins the search for understanding my grandfather. I was an academic writer for some time, and so my experience with researching for writing probably comes in handy. When you write memoir, itโs important not to let the research overwhelm the emotions.
Writing non-fiction can sometimes mean delving into controversial or sensitive topics. How do you handle potential criticism or differing viewpoints from readers?
In memoir, the writer runs the risk of readers reading their own experience into the book, thus coloring their perspective. Additionally, some family members might not appreciate family secrets being divulged publicly. I have tried to be true to my own experience. Thatโs the best I can do.
For those looking to embark on their own non-fiction writing journey, what piece of advice would you deem invaluable?
My advice is to write in scenes without trying to publish them long enough to really get familiar with your own experience. Then write reflection pieces for each scene. In that way you discover what you have learned from the experience. All memoir is experience (memory) + reflection. You canโt have one without the other.
Thank you, authorCastle, for taking the time to answer our questions and for all your insightful answers!
About the Book
The Orichalcum Crown
Scrap: Salvaging a Familyย by Luanne Castle is a fragmented, lyrical, and emotionally precise memoir that sifts through family memory, inherited shame, childhood fear, and the difficult work of understanding a parent without excusing the harm they caused. Written as a โmemoir in flash,โ the book is built out of short, vivid pieces, named as scraps of childhood, domestic scenes, remembered violence, questions, photographs, family stories, documents, and imagined reconstructions, all stitched together into something devastating and incredibly artful. At the centre of the memoir is Castleโs father, Rudy, a man carrying the wound of being born โillegitimate,โ by the absence of his own father, and by the shame that surrounded his origins. But Castle does not simplify him into villain or victim. He is frightening, volatile, sometimes cruel but he is also resourceful, hardworking, wounded, loving in broken and bewildering ways, and capable of gestures of strange tenderness. This complexity is what gives the memoir its emotional maturity. Author Castle is not writing to settle a score; she is trying to understand the system of hurt that made her father who he was, and how that hurt passed through him into her childhood. The form of the book is one of its strongest elements. The flash structure mirrors the nature of memory itself as nonlinear, sensory, sharp-edged, and sometimes contradictory. Author Castleโs prose is beautifully controlled, often poetic without becoming ornamental. She has a remarkable ability to locate trauma in objects. The titleย Scrapย is perfect because the memoir is not only about salvage in the literal sense, but about salvaging meaning from what was damaged, hidden, discarded, or misunderstood. What I admired most is the bookโs refusal to offer easy forgiveness. It moves toward compassion, yes, but not sentimental absolution.ย Scrapย is a beautifully crafted and intelligent memoir about trauma, inheritance, girlhood, secrecy, and family wounds. It is painful, yes, but also tender in unexpected ways. It is a memoir that feels intimate, brave, and unforgettable.
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
Author:Edouard Prisseย Release Date: 25 March, 2026 Series: Genre: ย Macroeconomics, International & World Politics, Economics Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 147 pages Publisher: – Blurb: A Wake-Up Call for the West For decades, Western leaders assumed that deeper economic integration with China would produce stability, openness, and shared prosperity. Instead, those policies helped accelerate Chinaโs wealth accumulation and strategic leverage. Inย Sleeping With the Enemy: What the White House Still Misses on China, independent political observer Edouard Prisse examines the political, economic, and media assumptions that shaped Western policy toward Chinaโand the consequences of those assumptions today. This book argues that prevailing free-trade orthodoxies and elite consensus have obscured the long-term risks of economic dependence. By revisiting the decisions, predictions, and narratives that shaped public understanding, Prisse challenges readers to reconsider what the West believed about globalizationโand what those beliefs may have cost.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Sleeping With The Enemy by Edouard Prisse is a forceful, politically charged work of economic argumentation centred on the urgent claim that the West, particularly the United States, made a grave strategic error when it opened free trade with China in the early 2000s, and that this error has allowed China to grow into a far more dangerous economic and geopolitical power than Western leaders seem willing to admit. From the foreword itself, author Prisse is clear about the bookโs purpose: to identify the original mistake, explain the current consequences, and propose a corrective strategy he calls the โSix-Month Moratorium.โ
What makes the book compelling is not subtlety, but conviction. Prisse writes with the urgency of someone who believes he saw the danger long before others did, and the manuscript repeatedly returns to two formative experiences: his earlier prediction regarding economic collapse in former East Germany after reunification, and his later concern that Chinaโs low-cost production structure would create a dangerously one-sided trade relationship. Whether one agrees with all of his conclusions or not, there is no denying the clarity of his central thesis: he believes the West is not merely buying cheap goods from China, but helping finance the rise of a rival power.
The strongest sections of the book are those dealing with macroeconomic imbalance. Prisseโs argument that Chinaโs vast foreign exchange reserves and continuing trade surpluses have given Beijing extraordinary geopolitical leverage is presented with intensity and purpose. He connects trade, industrial decline, political influence, Taiwan, Europeโs weakness, and Chinaโs global ambitions into one broad strategic framework. The book is at its best when it focuses on this larger pattern rather than isolated outrage. His proposed solution of replacing free trade with โEqual Tradeโ after a carefully prepared six-month transition is ambitious, provocative, and certainly more structured than a simple call for tariffs.
That said, this is also a book that demands a critically alert reader. Its tone is sometimes sweeping and occasionally overconfident in its judgments of individuals, institutions, and nations. Some claims, particularly around a perceived Chinese โfifth columnโ influencing American thought, are presented more as inference than demonstrable fact, and readers may rightly want stronger evidence before accepting such serious assertions. The bookโs political framing, especially its praise of Donald Trumpโs instincts alongside criticism of his advisers, will also divide readers depending on their own political and economic perspectives.
Stylistically, the manuscript is direct, argumentative, and personal. It reads like an urgent intervention and that gives it energy, but also creates unevenness. There are moments when the repetition strengthens the warning, and others where the book might have benefited from tighter editorial control and a more measured rhetorical register. Still, the authorโs sincerity and sense of intellectual responsibility come through strongly.
Overall, Sleeping With The Enemy is a bold and deeply opinionated book about trade, China, Western complacency, and the future of democratic power. It is not a light read, nor a detached one, but it is intellectually provocative and designed to provoke debate. Readers interested in China, global trade, U.S. strategy, and the economic roots of geopolitical power will find much here to engage with, even when they disagree.
Author:Stephanie Vaccaro&Louise Allen Release Date: 4 April, 2024 Series: Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic Format: E-book Pages: 406 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Penny never thought sheโd have family. Penny lost family when Penny little. Penny scared when taken away from home. Penny stay quiet. Penny lost, Penny found. Now Penny have new family. Penny brave. Penny tell her story. Julietta Milardโs life had been rather mundane up until a few years ago when she found herself in the small town of Waterwealt. Though she had intended to move on to bigger and better things, a beautiful museum preserved in time had her sprouting roots rather than traversing the Wastes further. Having helped the sleepy town with its various mechanical-based problems, Julietta thought found herself in a smooth routine. That was until the universe decided to throw a curveball her way when about two cycles later a small girl shows up at her doorstep, sick, injured, and unable to speak with only a penny necklace as any identification. Nearly a cycle and a half later, the young girl, whom Julietta named Penny, has recovered but remains mute despite her best efforts. On top of taking care of little Penny, restoring the museum, and trying to find a solution for the now increasingly weakening water pressure in town, Julietta is faced with another issue. A stranger has come to town, a โdoctorโ named Charles Hawthorne, who seems to think the Arcane is real. Brushing him off, she finds herself questioning what the world is coming to. That is until the world as she knows it to come crashing down around her and vanishes in a cloud of dust.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Lucky Penny by Stephanie Vaccaro and Louise Allen is a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel with a surprisingly tender heart. Set in a dust-scarred world still recovering from the devastation of the Great War, the story begins with Julietta, a young restorer living in an abandoned museum, and Penny, the silent little girl she has taken under her care. What starts as an intimate survival story gradually expands into a larger conflict involving lost knowledge, government-controlled โgiftedโ children, dangerous facilities, buried science, and the mysterious force known as the Arcane.
The strongest part of the novel is, without question, its central found-family dynamic. Julietta is practical, guarded, intelligent, and extremely protective; Charles Hawthorne brings warmth, medical knowledge, and a gentler emotional steadiness; and Penny, with her silence, her attachment to Nelson, and her extraordinary electrical ability, becomes the emotional centre around which the whole story turns. The relationship between the three grows with real sweetness, especially as Penny slowly begins to trust them enough to reveal fragments of herself. Her transformation from a frightened rescued child into someone loved, protected, and eventually claimed as family gives the novel its most moving thread.
The worldbuilding is ambitious and often engaging. Waterwealt, the museum, the dust storms, the ruined technologies, the fragile settlements, the Apolis Academy, Rho-597, the Curied children, and the recurring tension between science and the โArcaneโ all create a layered dystopian setting. I especially liked how the museum functions almost like a character in itself. The novel is at its best when it combines restoration with discovery; when Julietta repairs machines, Charles interprets medical knowledge, and Penny instinctively understands old electronics in ways the adults cannot.
That said, the book does ask for patience. It is a long novel, and there are places where the pacing could have been tighter. Some conversations repeat emotional beats, and certain domestic scenes, while charming, occasionally slow the momentum of the larger dystopian plot. The prose is earnest and accessible rather than highly polished, and readers looking for a lean, fast-moving dystopian thriller may find the middle sections somewhat expansive. However, that same expansiveness also allows the relationships to breathe, which is clearly where the authorsโ emotional investment lies.
Overall, The Lucky Penny is a heartfelt, imaginative, and emotionally sincere dystopian adventure. It blends found family, post-apocalyptic survival, and soft science-fantasy elements into a story that is sometimes rough around the edges but very earnest in its intentions. Readers who enjoy protective family bonds, gifted-child mysteries, ruined-world settings, and hope emerging through care and repair will find much to appreciate here.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Peter Mattson for his latest release, The Ranch: For The Betterment of Hunmanity.
Book: The Ranch: Forย Theย Betterment of Humanity Author: Peter Mattson Release Date: February 20, 2026 Publisher: Mattson Publishing Genre: Political Dystopian Formats Available: e-book and Paperback For Readers Who Enjoyed: A Handmaid Tail by Margarat Atwood, 1984 by George Orwell, & Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
About the Book
In the dystopian nation of Harkiem, no one questions the systemโuntil journalist Jones Torren investigates the death of thirteen-year-old Jack Ovens and uncovers a conspiracy that could cost him his life.
Jack Ovens has always been labeled a troublemaker. After a series of mistakes, he is sent to the Refinement Centreโa government-run program promising discipline, reform, and job training. What Jack encounters is a system that favors some boys while quietly keeping others down.
Months later, journalist Jones Torren is assigned to cover Jackโs death. What begins as a routine human-interest story quickly unravels into something far more disturbing. Records are missing. Testimonies donโt align. And more families are coming forward with the same quiet, devastating truth: their sons never came home. As Jones digs deeper, he uncovers a hidden extension of the program, The Ranch. What happens there isnโt reform. Itโs something worse.
Exposing The Ranch could topple a nation. It could also get Jones killed.
The Ranch is a gripping dystopian novel that asks the question: What if the system meant to save society is quietly destroying its children? The Ranch explores what happens when authority goes unquestioned, and government policies operate in the shadows, revealing a chilling world where the perfect society comes at a devastating human cost.
Peter Mattsonย grew up in a Los Angeles suburb and now lives with his wife and children inย theย Coachella Valley. He has worked as a public high school Economics and Government teacher forย theย past 25 years.ย Theย Ranch: Forย theย Betterment of Humanityย is his debut novel, and he is currently at work on a follow-up book.
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
Author:Mir Seidel Release Date: 02 September, 2025 Series: Genre: Non-fiction, Crossovers Opera & Biography Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 126 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Tesla’s Opera: The Real, Stranger-Than-Fiction Nikola Teslaย brings the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla to life through the opera he inspired,ย Violet Fire. For its creators, only opera could encompass the extremes and surreal qualities of Tesla’s life and career: the visions he had from childhood, his inventions that helped create our wired and wireless world, even his unrealized ideas. Tesla moved in the heights of New York society, yet he never married, and gave his love to a white pigeon. With a score by minimalist composer Jon Gibson, libretto by Mir Seidel, and directed by Terry O’Reilly,ย Violet Fireย had its world premiere in Serbia, Tesla’s homeland, on the 150th anniversary of his birth.ย Tesla’s Operaย includes the full libretto, stunning photos from the performance, and haunting images from the continuous video projections, along with commentary by the opera’s librettist, director, and conductor, critic Merilyn Jackson, and author/poet Andrei Codrescu. This book offers us the Tesla we need now-stranger than fiction, worthy of remembrance, and packed with meaning for our time.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Teslaโs Opera: The Real, Stranger-than-Fiction Nikola Tesla by Mir Seidel, is a hybrid work: part artistic archive, part cultural reclamation, part libretto, part visual-performance document, and part meditation on Tesla as scientist, mystic, showman, futurist, and mythic figure. The result is a slim but densely layered volume that asks us to look past the overused name โTeslaโ and return to the actual man behind it.
The bookโs strongest sections are those in which author Seidel reflects on why Teslaโs life demanded operatic treatment. Her framing is compelling: Tesla was not merely an inventor of alternating current, radio-adjacent technologies, robotics, and wireless possibility; he was also a man of visions, contradictions, loneliness, and strange tenderness, most famously embodied in his bond with the white pigeon he loved. That image becomes the emotional and spiritual centre of Violet Fire, allowing the opera to explore not only Teslaโs achievements but his isolation, his yearning, and the mystery of a mind that seemed always half in the laboratory and half in some higher electrical dream-state.
What makes the book especially engaging is its plurality of voices. Andrei Codrescuโs opening poem is sharp, irreverent, and intentionally provocative; Seidelโs essays are lucid and thoughtful; Terry OโReillyโs account of directing the opera brings theatrical intelligence and warmth; Merilyn Jacksonโs dance-critical perspective gives the White Dove and choreography their due; and Ana Zorana Brajoviฤโs brief reflection adds a deeply felt Serbian connection to Tesla as cultural hero. Together, these pieces create a living record of an ambitious multimedia opera that moved through Philadelphia, Belgrade, and New York, shaped by music, projection, dance, history, and myth.
Visually, the book is also rewarding. The performance photographs, projection stills, score excerpts, and historical images give the reader a sense of Violet Fire as something larger than text: a stage-world of light, bodies, machinery, pigeons, towers, sparks, and shadow. The libretto itself is poetic and fragmentary in the best sense.
That said, this might not be for readers looking for a straightforward Tesla biography. It assumes some openness to experimental form, opera, performance history, and artistic reflection. At times, the structure can feel more archival than fluid, especially when moving between essays, production notes, libretto pages, and appendices. But this is also part of its purpose: the book preserves the many layers of a performance work while arguing for Teslaโs continued cultural relevance.
Overall, Teslaโs Opera is a rich, unconventional, and intellectually alive tribute to Nikola Tesla and the opera he inspired. It is best read as an artistic companion, cultural essay, and poetic act of reclamation rather than a traditional biography.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Stefanos Sampanis for their latest release, The Grey Winter of the Enslaved (The Journey of the Wish Book 1).
Book: The Grey Winter of the Enslaved Author:Stefanos Sampanis Series: The Journey of the Wish (Book #1) Publication Date: 19 January 2026 Publisher: – Genre: Fantasy Formats Available: E-book and Paperback
About the Book
I perceived the world and acknowledged all of its colours. There was truth; the kind you cannot simply speak of. A tale suits the cause better. It is a disguise that anyone can enjoy and if intrigued, look behind it. This is my testament. Aย fantasy sagaย exploring the mostย human reality. A Journey that lies ahead and matures with each page turned.
You can findย The Grey Winter of the Enslavedhere: Amazon
About The Author
Stefanos Sampanis
Stefanos Sampanis was born and raised in Greece. He graduated from the Hellenic Naval Academy and has since served as an officer in the Hellenic Navy. Although his profession and curiosity have led him to many parts of the earth, he has travelled even farther into worlds crafted on the page. His first published book was a non-fiction collection of short stories, followed by a poetry collection, both in Greek. The Journey of the Wish, an epic fantasy saga, marks his debut in international publishing.
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
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring authorsย Scott Martin andย Coryanne Hicks for their latest release, Play From Your Heart: A Journey Through Loss, Resilience, and the Beautiful Game.
Book:Play From Your Heart: A Journey Through Loss, Resilience, and the Beautiful Game Author:Scott Martin andย Coryanne Hicks Publication Date: 9 June 2026 Publisher: Library Tales Publishing Genre: Soccer Biography Formats Available: E-book and Paperback
About the Book
When rising college soccer coach Scott Martin was struck down by a rare, flesh-eating infection that took both hands and parts of his feet, doctors told him he was lucky just to survive. But survival wasnโt enough. Overnight, the man who lived for the game had to relearn how to move, teach, and live without the very tools that defined him.
From hospital beds and courtroom battles to the touchline of a dusty youth-league field, Martinโs twenty-year odyssey is one of heartbreak and rebirth. He rebuilt his body, lostโand foundโhis purpose, married the doctor who saved him, adopted five children from around the world, and, when everything seemed over again, rediscovered his passion by leading a ragtag team of twelve-year-olds to an undefeated state championship.
Told with unflinching honesty and humor,ย Play From Your Heartย is a memoir about endurance, grace, and the power of sport to heal what medicine cannot. For anyone whoโs ever faced the unthinkable, and still chosen to stand back up, this is a story that proves the human spirit is undefeated.
Fans ofย Wild,ย Crying in H Mart, andย Good for a Girlย will find themselves cheering, weeping, and ultimately believing again in the beautiful game, and in the resilience of the human heart.
You can findย Play From Your Hearthere: Amazon | Website
About The Author
Scott Martin
Scott Martin is an award-winning soccer coach, educator, and advocate for the disability community. Holding an advanced national coaching license, he has spent over 30 years coaching at the select youth, high school, and college levels, earning Coach of the Year honors four times and leading multiple teams to state championships. His expertise has connected him with top coaches in the U.S. and internationally.
Beyond the field, Martin is a dedicated educator in Wisconsin and the host of the Lifeโs a Road Trip podcast, where he highlights stories of resilience and disability advocacy. After surviving a life-threatening illness that led to the loss of his hands and feet, he became a powerful voice for amputee abilities and prosthetic advancements. His contributions to research at the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University have helped shape innovations in the field.
Recognized for his advocacy, Martin serves as a Global Advisor for Billion Strong, a worldwide disability organization. His journey has been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Positive, and he is the author of Play From Your Heart (Library Tales Publishing), a memoir that chronicles his remarkable path of perseverance, reinvention, and the unwavering spirit that has guided him forward.
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
Author:Luanne Castle Release Date: 1 January, 2026 Series: Genre: Memoir Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 172 pages Publisher: ELJ Editions Blurb: Luanne Castleโs new hybrid flash memoir, Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions 2026), is now available to purchase on Amazon and ELJ Editions.
Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his own biological fatherโs identity from his daughter for decades. Can this family be salvaged?
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Scrap: Salvaging a Family by Luanne Castle is a fragmented, lyrical, and emotionally precise memoir that sifts through family memory, inherited shame, childhood fear, and the difficult work of understanding a parent without excusing the harm they caused. Written as a โmemoir in flash,โ the book is built out of short, vivid pieces, named as scraps of childhood, domestic scenes, remembered violence, questions, photographs, family stories, documents, and imagined reconstructions, all stitched together into something devastating and incredibly artful.
At the centre of the memoir is Castleโs father, Rudy, a man carrying the wound of being born โillegitimate,โ by the absence of his own father, and by the shame that surrounded his origins. But Castle does not simplify him into villain or victim. He is frightening, volatile, sometimes cruel but he is also resourceful, hardworking, wounded, loving in broken and bewildering ways, and capable of gestures of strange tenderness. This complexity is what gives the memoir its emotional maturity. Author Castle is not writing to settle a score; she is trying to understand the system of hurt that made her father who he was, and how that hurt passed through him into her childhood.
The form of the book is one of its strongest elements. The flash structure mirrors the nature of memory itself as nonlinear, sensory, sharp-edged, and sometimes contradictory. Author Castleโs prose is beautifully controlled, often poetic without becoming ornamental. She has a remarkable ability to locate trauma in objects. The title Scrap is perfect because the memoir is not only about salvage in the literal sense, but about salvaging meaning from what was damaged, hidden, discarded, or misunderstood.
What I admired most is the bookโs refusal to offer easy forgiveness. It moves toward compassion, yes, but not sentimental absolution. Scrap is a beautifully crafted and intelligent memoir about trauma, inheritance, girlhood, secrecy, and family wounds. It is painful, yes, but also tender in unexpected ways. It is a memoir that feels intimate, brave, and unforgettable.
Author:John Westley Turnbull Release Date: 14 November, 2025 Series: Genre: SScience-Fiction, Dystopian, Alternate History Format: E-book Pages: 243 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Survival requires sacrifice. But what if the price is an entire world? Their home is cold and dying, choked by the toxins of their own progress. Now, an advanced alien species looks toward the Third PlanetโEarthโwith hope and fear. They see a fertile paradise, but one that is hostile, hot, and dominated by massive, predatory reptiles. The choice is stark: die in the heat, or remake this new world in their own image. As they descend to alter the climate and purge the planet of its prehistoric masters, they set in motion a chain of events that will echo through geological time. A Symbol of Time weaves palaeontology and astronomy into a chilling tale of survival. As the new masters of Earth terraform the planet, the question remains: does high intelligence inevitably carry the seeds of its own destruction?
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
A Symbol of Time by John Westley Turnbull is a haunting speculative fiction that begins with exhaustion, opening on a dying Homeworld, where the last surviving inhabitants of a once-thriving civilisation are forced to abandon their planet and seek refuge on the โThird World,โ a beautiful, brutal, water-rich planet teeming with monstrous life. From the very beginning, the novel positions itself as more than a survival story; it is a meditation on ecological ruin, migration, leadership, memory, and the dangerous arrogance of believing that survival justifies everything.
What I found most compelling is the moral tension at the heart of the book. Elthyris begins as a determined leader trying to save her people from extinction, but as the colony reaches the Third World, her decisions grow increasingly severe. The novel does not present colonisation as a clean heroic act. Instead, it asks difficult questions like when does adaptation become domination? When does necessity become cruelty? And how easily does a displaced civilisation carry the seeds of its old destruction into a new world? This gives the book its strongest intellectual weight, especially through the concept of โWorldshaping,โ where survival begins to blur into planetary violence.
The world-building is ambitious and often striking. Author Turnbullโs imagined species, their failing Homeworld, the Ark Dawn, the terrifying fauna of the Third World, the underground habitat, and the long generational arc all create a sense of scale that feels genuinely epic. The book is especially effective when it lingers on planetary time and the final movement is one of the most resonant parts of the novel, beautifully tying together the themes of grief, legacy, and the fragile sentient desire to be remembered.
Character-wise, Elthyris, Kithyon, Lyggra, Arrielle, Venryn, and Reuff all serve distinct thematic purposes. Kithyon and Lyggra bring emotional warmth to a narrative otherwise dominated by survival pressure and ethical compromise, while Arrielle becomes a powerful bridge between the founding generation and the long future that follows. Elthyris is perhaps the most interesting figure, not always likeable, not always morally defensible, but consistently compelling because she embodies the terrible burden of leadership under existential threat.
That said, the novel is not without issues. At times, the prose leans heavily into exposition, and some sections read more like historical chronicle than intimate drama. The sweep of the story is impressive, but the emotional immediacy occasionally gets diluted by the sheer amount of world-building, explanation, and long-range plotting. Readers who prefer fast-paced, character-centred sci-fi may find parts of the book dense. But those who enjoy philosophical, ecological, and civilisation-scale speculative fiction will likely appreciate its ambition.
A Symbol of Time is a thoughtful and morally serious science-fiction novel about survival, inheritance, and the repeating patterns of history. It is not merely about reaching a new world; it is about what a species chooses to become once it gets there. Imperfect but extremely ambitious, it leaves the reader with the uneasy sense that memory may be the only true defence against repeating the same old catastrophes. The ending captures this beautifully, reminding us that monuments, like civilizations, are both acts of remembrance and warnings against forgetting.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author John Westley Turnbull for his latest release, A Symbol of Time.
Book: A Symbol of Time Author: John Westley Turnbull Publication Date: 14 November 2025 Genre: Science Fiction Formats Available: E-book on Amazon, including Amazon Unlimited, Paperback and Hardcover. For Readers Who Enjoyed: Asimov, Harry Harrison, other science fiction well known authors of the 60โs,70โs & 80โs
About the Book
Survival requires sacrifice. But what if the price is an entire world?
Their home is cold and dying, choked by the toxins of their own progress. Now, an advanced alien species looks toward the Third PlanetโEarthโwith hope and fear. They see a fertile paradise, but one that is hostile, hot, and dominated by massive, predatory reptiles.
The choice is stark: die in the heat, or remake this new world in their own image.
As they descend to alter the climate and purge the planet of its prehistoric masters, they set in motion a chain of events that will echo through geological time. A Symbol of Time weaves palaeontology and astronomy into a chilling tale of survival. As the new masters of Earth terraform the planet, the question remains: does high intelligence inevitably carry the seeds of its own destruction?
I amย an Australian, whose fascination with science fiction began during long nights spent reading Asimov and other giants of the genre. I am a retired lawyer, husband, father and grandfather. I bring a lifetime of observation to my work, blending curiosity with a steady regard for how the world might have unfolded along other possible paths. My interests lean toward alternate histories and the points where timelines could diverge into something stranger. I continue to write with the same sense of wonder that first kept me awake long past bedtime. A Symbol of Time is my first novel.
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
Author:D Reign Release Date: 30 April, 2026 Series: Book 1 of 1: The Fabled one Genre: Fantasy Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 170 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Come on a journey as we follow Gaelin find out who she is. The Fabled One is about a young woman who learns about who she is when her parents (or those she thought were her parents) are tragically killed. Gaelin is wanted by the King and Queen who rule in another realm. Gaelin must leave all that she knows on earth and seek to find her path navigating a fated love with two people who will lay down their lives for her. Gaelin needs to master the powers that she possesses as the Fabled one to bring peace and light to the realms around her. This series is full of intrigue, connecting with the ancestors, finding yourself, and believing in who you are. This a full fiction fantasy book with some steamy scenes so hold onto your hats for this one.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Fabled One: Book One by D. Reign does not arrive quietly, it enters through rupture: through death, revelation, prophecy, flight, and the sudden collapse of everything the protagonist thought she understood about herself. From its opening catastrophe, the novel makes its intentions clear. This is a story built on destiny, pursuit, and awakening that leans unapologetically into high emotional stakes and mythic revelation.
At the center of the novel is Gaelin, and she is easily its strongest anchor. What makes her work is not polish but immediacy: she is frightened, angry, mouthy, confused, and often emotionally raw in ways that feel true to her circumstances. The book does not ask her to become composed too quickly. Instead, it lets her remain disoriented by grief and betrayal, even as pieces of her power begin to emerge. That emotional instability gives the novel much of its life. Gaelinโs voice is direct, often impulsive, sometimes funny in spite of herself, and that first-person immediacy carries the reader through some of the bookโs denser exposition.
The other narrative engine here is the growing bond between Gaelin, Lahmae, and Chameleon, and this is where the story begins to take on a more distinctive texture. What starts as rescue and protection gradually becomes something more intimate and fated, and the novel clearly wants to explore not just magical destiny but emotional convergence. There is an earnestness to these dynamics that I found compelling, even when the pace of attachment moves very quickly.
The worldbuilding itself is imaginative, if at times impressionistic. We move through Earth, palace realms, hidden portals, the Fallen planet, magical bloodlines, psychic protections, conjuring, and the increasingly important mythology of the Fabled One. The mythology is interesting, and the sense of layered agendas around Gaelinโs existence gives the book a strong forward thrust. The problem is not a lack of ideas; if anything, it is that the novel contains many ideas at once and does not always distribute them with enough control. Information sometimes arrives in bursts rather than through gradual integration, and there are moments when the reader is being told about systems, titles, histories, and motivations so quickly that the emotional throughline has to work harder to hold everything together.
That, I think, is where the novelโs main limitations lie. The prose has energy, sincerity, and momentum, but it also bears the marks of a draft that could have benefited from further refinement. At times the sentences run too long or repeat an emotional beat more than necessary; at others, the punctuation and phrasing flatten scenes that might otherwise have landed with greater force. There is a strong story here, but it occasionally feels as though it is arriving faster than the language can shape it. Similarly, certain transitions, especially around revelation, trust, and romantic escalation, can feel abrupt rather than fully earned on the page. None of this erases the bookโs strengths, but it does mean that the reading experience is sometimes uneven.
Still, I want to be fair to what the novel is doing well. The Fabled One is never cynical. It is emotionally open, mythically ambitious, and extremely invested in its heroineโs significance. it is refreshing how sincerely it embraces its own stakes. The antagonistic energy around Meridah, QuโRah, Starmall, and Serena gives the story a clear sense of danger, and the ending understands how to close on intensification rather than closure: Gaelin is changing, her power is growing, and the conflict is clearly widening rather than resolving.
The Fabled One: Book One reads as a fantasy series opener with clear emotional conviction and a strong instinct for dramatic momentum. It is imperfect, certainly, even structurally loose in places, and stylistically rough in others, but it also has heart, urgency, and a heroine whose emotional reality remains compelling even when the world around her becomes increasingly fantastical. Readers who enjoy portal fantasy, magical destiny, dangerous courts, and emotionally charged fantasy romance will likely find plenty here to invest in, especially if they enjoy first books that spend as much time igniting future conflict as resolving present one.
Author:Evan jellen Illustrator: Pineapple lavaย Release Date: 15 March, 2025 Series: Genre: Sci-Fantasy, Anime-esque, Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 431 pages Publisher: Helena St. George Blurb: A Cyber beast known as the Ouroboros, came from a higher dimension and viciously attacked the starverse. The land created by a powerful Demon god. The great Demon Lord fought the Ouroboros to a standstill. She was unable to fully vanquish the beast, so instead, she tore its body apart, sealing it across the stars. In her time of need, the great Demon Lord received aid. An interloper, the Magician, helped her create a system that produces candidates that have the potential to defeat the powerful god. After countless failures, five female warriors were born, created to finally defeat the perpetual snake god.
However, time is running out, as the great Demon Lord cannot maintain the seals for much longer. Her perpetual nemesis will soon break free. Their failure slay the snake god will bring about the end of the universe. The future depends on the success of the Divine Star warriors. This is Star Evolution, a story that fuses together a fictional sci-fantasy setting with non-fictional themes of philosophy, self-growth, and realism for a story that transcends normal writing conventions. Together, the five women chosen by fate will overcome the trials of the gods by cultivating their light that is hidden in the darkness. This is a realistic space opera with a grand mystery to unfold!
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Star Evolution, Volume 1 by Evanjellen is an ambition that announces itself from the first few pages to build an entire cosmology and ask the reader to step into it at full speed. From its blood-soaked prologue, with a crimson-armored warrior battling a monstrous silver-eyed serpent across a ruined cosmic battlefield, the novel makes its intentions clear: this is a science-fantasy universe of gods, ancient war, machine beings, sealed calamities, and unfinished destinies. It is expansive, anime-inflected, and unabashedly maximalist in its imagination.
What I found especially interesting is the bookโs dual structure. On one hand, it gives us the large mythic architecture: the Demon Lord, the Ouroboros, the realm gods, the repeated failure of prior โstar warriors,โ and the long cosmic project of finding the right champions to finally end the cycle. On the other, it narrows into more local, emotional terrain through Nameless and Divine Flash with two sisters from a harsh village in the Under Realm whose lives are shaped by loss, scarcity, violence, and a growing sense that the systems governing their world are neither just nor trustworthy. That contrast is where the novel often feels most alive.
The strongest character work, for me, lies in those sisterly dynamics. Nameless has an appealing volatility to her; she is impulsive, angry, proud, and deeply loyal, while Divine Flash offers a gentler counterweight shaped by fear, tenderness, and protective love. Their bond gives the story an emotional anchor it needs. By contrast, the realm-level material around Divi, Tony, the council of deities, and the missing Earth Goddess is conceptually rich, but it can sometimes feel more interesting as lore than as immediate drama. The ideas are compelling though the delivery occasionally feels like dense blocks of explanation rather than being revealed as fully dramatized tension.
This is, in many ways, the bookโs chief strength and chief weakness at once. Author Evanjellen clearly has a vivid imaginative grasp of this world, but because the novel carries so much worldbuilding, mythology, and terminology, the pacing can feel overloaded in places. Characters sometimes speak in exposition-heavy bursts, and the prose, while energetic and sincere, can at times become repetitive or mechanically emphatic when a gentler hand might have heightened the drama. That said, the action scenes do have momentum, and when the narrative leans fully into confrontation, it becomes much sharper and more immediate.
I also think it is worth noting that this first volume reads very much like an opening movement rather than a self-contained arc. It is setting pieces into place as it is the beginning of a longer journey.
Star Evolution, Volume 1, is a debut that may work best for readers who actively enjoy anime and RPG-adjacent storytelling with high-concept lore, dramatic confrontations, cosmic hierarchies, chosen-warrior energy, and characters whose destinies are entangled with the fate of worlds. Readers looking for polished restraint or subtle minimalism may find the novel rough around the edges. But readers willing to meet it on its own wavelength will likely find something earnest, imaginative, and promising here; a first volume with visible imperfections, yes, but also real heart and a strong sense of its own universe.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author B. Marcus Walker for his latest release, Spirit of the Plain: The Unnamed (Book #1).
Book: Spirit of the Plain: The Unnamed – Book 1 Author(s): B. Marcus Walker Publication Date: ย May 30, 2025 Publisher: Killbot Factory Page Count: 463 Genres: Dark Fantasy, Coming-of-Age
About the Book
The Forest Plain will not allow men to settle, farm, or cross with armies. Men of the west dream of breaking its curse, but doing so will destroy the way of life of the nomadic people who live there. In Grayhaven, they say, โGlory to Ahur and to the Plain,โ because it has kept them safe for five centuries and has allowed them to grow into the wealthiest nation on the continent. COLLIER TRUIT is from Grayhaven, but flees after his grandfatherโs failed political machinations led to the murder of their family. He is part Yurbo, through his father and seeks out his fatherโs clan, determined to win their help in retaking his ancestral titles. While in the plain, Collier faces mounting threats with his Yurbo hosts. One threat is the fearsome wolfmen known asย Lyken, themselves refugees from colonized homeland. This includes the drunk and shaggy ARNAK, and his friend, the troubadour MOJAG. They flee for Grayhaven but run into the Yurbo. The greater threat is from the west. There, ASHLYN, an acolyte of the order of mages known as the Bruj, heads into the Forest Plain to complete her prophesized destiny to break the Plainโs curse.
Originally from Chicagoโs south side, Brian Walker has worked twenty years in numerous industries as a web and eLearning developer, facilitator, and project manager. His true passion has been as a writer of fiction, both genre and literary. You can find his writing on Medium in publications including Thought Thinkers, ILLUMINATION, and Morning Musings, as well as short fiction in the Minetta Review. His first novel, Spirit of the Plain, is available in print and eBook.
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
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Mir Seidel for her latest release, Teslaโs Opera: The real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla.
Book Cover
Book: Teslaโs Opera: The real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla Author: Mir Seidel Publication Date: September 2, 2025 Publisher: Fomite Press Genres: Non-fiction, Crossovers Opera & Biography Available in: Paperback For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: The Prestigeย by Christopher Priest,ย The Current Warย by Adam Cline,ย The Three Ghosts of Teslaย by Richard Marazano (graphic novel)
About the Book
Teslaโs Opera: The Real, Stranger-Than-Fiction Nikola Tesla brings the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla to life through the opera he inspired, Violet Fire. For its creators, only opera could encompass the extremes and surreal qualities of Teslaโs life and career: the visions he had from childhood, his inventions that helped create our wired and wireless world, even his unrealized ideas. Tesla moved in the heights of New York society, yetย he never married, and gave his love to a white pigeon.ย With a score by minimalist composer Jon Gibson, libretto by Mir Seidel, and directed by Terry OโReilly, Violet Fire had its world premiere in Serbia, Teslaโs homeland, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Teslaโs Opera includes the full libretto, stunning photos from the performance, and haunting images from the continuous video projections, along with commentary by the operaโsย librettist, director, and conductor, critic Merilyn Jackson, and author/poet Andrei Codrescu.ย This book offers us the Tesla we need nowโstranger than fiction, worthy of remembrance, and packed with meaning for our time.ย
“In Tesla’s Opera, Mir Seidel has crafted an inspired and visually stunning tribute to one of history’s greatest minds. Through music, choreography, and imaginative staging, this colorful book celebrates Nikola Tesla’s life in a way that is both joyful and moving. To quote one of the book’s contributors, “Tesla could make you proud to be human”โand this creative homage does just that. Insightful, festive, and richly layered, Tesla’s Opera brings Tesla’s multifaceted brilliance to life with style, wit, and heart.”
โMarc J. Seifer, author ofย Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Teslaย andย Tesla: Wizard at War
“Whatever happens through the centuries about Tesla, misusing his name, copying his work, this will still never overshadow his genius and contribution to mankind.“
โMarina Abramovic, Serbian-American artist
“The book is immersive in tracking the history, mysteries and mystique of Nikola Tesla. This is a fascinating, fun book about the world of science, opera and avian love. Poet Andrei Codrescu even weighs in on the current currency of the Tesla name in his fiery intro to the book about a certain musky billionaire appropriating the Tesla name.”
โLewis Whittington, Review of Tesla’s Opera in CultureVulture
About The Author
Mir Seidel
Mir Seidelโs latest book,ย Teslaโs Opera: the real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Teslaย (Fomite Press), considers the pioneering inventor through the opera about Tesla that she wrote the libretto forโa magic-realist retelling of Teslaโs life. The opera,ย Violet Fire, was performed in Belgrade, New York, and Philadelphia. Her novel,ย The Speed of Clouds, is out from New Door Books. Her writing has also appeared in places includingย Art in America,ย The Philadelphia Inquirer,ย Calyx,ย Bourbon Penn, andย Theย New York Review of Science Fiction.
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
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring authors Stephanie Vaccaro & Louise Allen for their latest release, The Lucky Penny.
Book: The Lucky Penny Author(s): Stephanie Vaccaro and Louise Allen Publication Date: ย April 3, 2024 Publisher: – Page Count: 402 Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic Editions Available: Paperback and Ebook (Kindle) For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: Hunger Games and Divergent
About the Book
Penny never thought sheโd have family. Penny lost family when Penny little. Penny scared when taken away from home. Penny stay quiet. Penny lost, Penny found. Now Penny have new family. Penny brave. Penny tell her story.
Julietta Milardโs life had been rather mundane up until a few years ago when she found herself in the small town of Waterwealt. Though she had intended to move on to bigger and better things, a beautiful museum preserved in time had her sprouting roots rather than traversing the Wastes further.
Having helped the sleepy town with its various mechanical-based problems, Julietta thought found herself in a smooth routine. That was until the universe decided to throw a curveball her way when about two cycles later a small girl shows up at her doorstep, sick, injured, and unable to speak with only a penny necklace as any identification.
Nearly a cycle and a half later, the young girl, whom Julietta named Penny, has recovered but remains mute despite her best efforts. On top of taking care of little Penny, restoring the museum, and trying to find a solution for the now increasingly weakening water pressure in town, Julietta is faced with another issue. A stranger has come to town, a โdoctorโ named Charles Hawthorne, who seems to think the Arcane is real. Brushing him off, she finds herself questioning what the world is coming to. That is until the world as she knows it to come crashing down around her and vanishes in a cloud of dust.
It was the year 2018. Stephanie (USA) had joined a Minecraft server of an online friend. One Sunday morning she was working on her homework when she got a ping on Discord from another server member asking if anyone was around to play. Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, a woman named Louise (England) was bored and wanted to play some Minecraft, pinging the discord server of her friend asking if anyone was around. And thus the dynamic duo of Stephanie and Louise was born! Having been friends ever since Stephanie and Louise have delved into many creative endeavors, usually combining Stephanieโs programming abilities and story telling with Louiseโs writing prowess and digital artistry skills. Which is why it was not strange for them to decide to write a story together at the start of 2023. What was originally supposed to be a way for Stephanie to learn a thing or two from Louise about writing turned into a full blown story filled with what they describe as โChaos, Shenanigans, and most importantly CCCsโ.
You can findย authors Stephanie and Louise here: Stephanie | Louise
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Author:Helena St. Georgeย Release Date: 15 March, 2025 Series: Genre: Dystopian, Speculative Fiction, Psychological, Social Commentary Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 431 pages Publisher: Helena St. George Blurb: In a world where productivity is the measure of oneโs worth, who decides human value? Set in a near-future America devastated by economic collapse,ย Shattered But Not Silencedย imagines a regime that targets social service recipients, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the homeless for โreformโ under the guise of economic recovery. At the center is Maya, an autistic young woman navigating a country in turmoil while surviving forced rehabilitation inside the New Thought Center. Her sensory sensitivities, coping mechanisms, and layered internal processing are revealed through her sharp, ironic first-person voice. She is complex. She is observant. She is defiant. The novel asks difficult questions. Who defines human value? What happens to those who do not meet the definition?
ARC Reader Review:ย “I liked Maya the more I got to know her. The writing is amazing! So many well-crafted sentences and paragraphs. The language used to describe the settings and in dialogue flows. Now that the novel has ended, Iโll miss Maya. Great job tying up loose ends. Well done!”
ARC Reader Review: “Great writingโฆ You had me at the first page wanting more. Four chapters in and I canโt wait to read the next one! Honestly!!! I canโt put this book down. Maya got arrested! Wow! Didnโt expect that!”
ARC Reader Review: “You know it’s a good read if it makes you cry.”
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Shattered but Not Silenced by Helena St. George offers a very unsettling yet profound narrative that examines control, autonomy, and the fragile line between protection and oppression. At its core is Maya, a neurodivergent protagonist wading through a society that increasingly defines human worth through productivity, compliance, and conformity, a premise that feels less like fiction and more like an uncomfortable extension of reality.
What struck me most about this novel is not its dystopian machinery, but its interiority. This is not a plot-driven rebellion story in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a slow, deliberate descent into systems of control, especially economic, institutional, and psychological. The narrative begins almost deceptively grounded, but as the story progresses, the cracks widen, revealing a society tightening its grip through surveillance, propaganda, and systemic erasure.
Mayaโs perspective is the novelโs greatest strength. Her sensory processing, looping thoughts, and emotional responses are not treated as narrative devices but as intrinsic ways of being. Author Helena handles this with notable care and authenticity, ensuring that Maya’s neurodivergence is neither romanticized nor reductive. This lends the narrative a rare intimacy where the reader is not simply observing oppression, but feeling its texture through Mayaโs experience.
Thematically, the novel is relentless. It interrogates systems that claim to rehabilitate but are built to control. The progression from societal unrest to forced confinement and indoctrination is chilling precisely because it feels incremental. Structurally, the book is expansive. With a timeline that spans over a year and a half, the narrative charts Mayaโs transition from a struggling young adult to someone entangled within a system that seeks to redefine her very identity. This progression allows the author to build tension gradually, though, in my opinion, at times it also leads to a sense of narrative diffusion leading to certain stretches that could have benefited from tighter pacing and sharper scene consolidation.
Where the novel wins is in its refusal to offer easy catharsis. The ending, and especially the afterword, makes it clear that this is not a story of triumphant resilience in the conventional sense. Survival here is not heroic; it is uneven and personal. This is a bold narrative choice and that may unsettle readers expecting a more traditional arc, but it ultimately reinforces the bookโs thematic integrity. That said, the novel is not without its limitations. The density of its themes occasionally overtakes narrative momentum, and some external characters feel less fully realized compared to Mayaโs richly developed interior world. Additionally, readers seeking a faster-paced, plot-heavy dystopian thriller may find the introspective tone demanding.
But perhaps that is precisely the point as Shattered but Not Silenced does not try to entertain in the conventional sense, it simply tries to bear witness. It asks difficult questions about who gets to define value, who is deemed โfitโ for society, and what happens to those who exist outside those definitions. And more importantly, it refuses to look away from the answers.
Author: David Yarnton Release Date: 8 December, 2025 Series: Genre: Techno-Thriller, Financial Thriller, Boardroom/Corporate Thriller Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 472 pages Publisher: 8TE,ย 8 Tech Express Limited Blurb: When Isabella Lindstrรถm is drawn into the glittering world of VANTIXโข the tech startup promising to take on Nintendo she thinks sheโs backing the next big thing. But as launch parties give way to missing money, vanished allies, and whispers of criminal ties, she and her friends uncover a scheme far bigger than anyone imagined. Set across Stockholm, London, and Los Angeles, โGameTrapโ is a gripping financial thriller where ambition comes at a cost, and the truth is buried under layers of branding, buzz, and betrayal. INSPIRED BY REAL EVENTS Against the high-stakes backdrop of early 2000s tech ambition, โGameTrapโ weaves a compelling tale of deception, ambition, and fractured loyalties loosely inspired by the real-world collapse of Gizmondo. What begins as a flashy handheld-console launch spirals into a far-reaching thriller filled with questionable finance, charismatic manipulators, and a determined trio trying to uncover the truth.
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
GameTrap by David Yarnton is the kind of thriller that thrives not on bullets or body counts alone, but on performanceโon image, seduction, money, access, and the soft glamour of rooms where everybody is pretending not to calculate everybody else. Framed against the feverish optimism of the early-2000s gaming boom and loosely inspired by the real-world collapse of Gizmondo, the book enters its world with style: handheld-console ambition, startup mythology, champagne-fuelled persuasion, and the dangerous ease with which hype can be mistaken for innovation. From the outset, author Yarnton makes it clear that VANTIX is not merely a tech dream but a warning system disguised as one.
I especially liked the novel’s atmosphere of cultivated unreality. The early Uppsala and Stockholm sequences are lush with intrigue, but also just slightly overlit, as though the reader is being invited to admire the chandeliers while something darker moves beneath the floorboards. The introduction of Isabella Lindstrรถm and Isolde is written with almost operatic confidence: they arrive as forces, women whose glamour is inseparable from their danger. That heightened, almost cinematic energy becomes the bookโs signature mode. Author Yarnton clearly understands the allure of surfaces, of beautiful hotels, expensive wine, private dinners, and coded invitations, and more importantly, he understands how those surfaces can be weaponised. In that sense, GameTrap is as much about theatre as it is about finance.
The novelโs core conceit, a gaming platform and handheld device that doubles as a behavioural surveillance engine, gives the book its most interesting thematic edge. What begins as startup seduction gradually reveals itself as something far more invasive: a system designed not just to entertain, but to profile, predict, and monetise human behaviour. Author Yarnton is at his strongest when he leans into that idea. The line between game, trap, and financial instrument grows increasingly blurred, and the novel is most compelling when it exposes how naturally those worlds bleed into each other.
The character dynamics, too, carry a real current of interest. Isabella is arguably the novelโs most compelling creation: poised, intelligent, and always slightly unreadable, she moves through the narrative with the kind of controlled opacity that suits this world. Her relationship to power gives the book one of its stronger psychological undercurrents. Isolde, by contrast, brings volatility, instinct, and a more emotionally exposed energy, particularly once the novel begins threading in questions of inheritance, criminal legacy, and the revelation that her family history may be tied to the same underworld that shaped Stiegโs ascent. Erikโs thread, with Jonasโs disappearance and the gradually resurfacing truth, adds a more grounded emotional stake that helps counterbalance the novelโs glossy surfaces. There is a genuine attempt here to make the thriller machinery personal.
What I admired most, however, is the bookโs ambition. Author Yarnton is not content to write a narrow corporate thriller; he wants glamour, crime, surveillance, old money, nightlife, academic memory, organised violence, tech-world delusion, and transnational fraud all in the same ecosystem. At times, that maximalism works very well. The novel has momentum, and it knows how to build a chapter ending that makes you keep turning the pages. Its world is populated by stylish operators, dubious financiers, vanished friends, and men who reinvent criminality as entrepreneurship. The prose often leans deliberately cinematic, and in the right scenes that heightened quality gives the story exactly the sort of sleek, high-stakes pulse it wants.
That said, GameTrap is also a novel whose reach occasionally exceeds its grip. There are stretches where exposition arrives in dense waves, and where the sheer amount of backstory, intrigue, and revelation competes with emotional texture rather than deepening it. The book sometimes tells us a little more than it needs to, especially in scenes where atmosphere or implication might have served the suspense more elegantly. Likewise, because the story moves through so many tones such as seductive thriller, noir mystery, tech-conspiracy drama, and criminal legacy saga, it can at times feel slightly overextended, as though several different novels are trying to coexist under one stylish roof. Some readers will enjoy that abundance; others may wish for a firmer editorial hand, particularly where pacing and repetition are concerned.
Still, even where it sprawls, GameTrap remains interesting. It is never dull, and it is rarely without intent. Beneath its polished surfaces lies a recognisable contemporary anxiety: that in an age of branding, venture capital, and behavioural data, the most dangerous scams are the ones that arrive looking like innovation. Author Yarnton understands that well. He understands, too, that people are often seduced less by lies than by the version of themselves those lies permit them to become.
The Reading Bud 