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book reviews |
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Multi-volume, multi-genre author, Ed Benjamin introduces us to his short fiction story, Melanie: A tale of Wonder: “In this Flash Fiction story, a 60-year-old hitchhiker gets hit by a car in Wichita Falls, Texas in July 1995. After receiving treatment in the local hospital, he decides to enter a talent contest to help out a ten-year-old girl, Melanie, when he learns her father is dying. What happens next has the town and the media buzzing.” “If you like alternative fiction, you will enjoy this short-short story.”  This is a wonderful and heartwarming piece of flash-fiction! It will take most people less than an hour to read. You will get a fun and interesting story about an aging singer that has a talent for impersonation that goes beyond the norm. The writing is quite delightful, the author has a marvelous talent for describing his characters, they seem very real and alive. The scene-setting is very satisfactory and enhances the characters. Action and dialogue help provide this story with a pleasing texture. Vivid pictures fill my mind throughout the story. I award 4.7 Stars to “Melanie: A Tale of Wonder”.  You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Melanie-Tale-of-Wonder-Ed-Benjamin-ebook https://www.goodreads.com/-melanie https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melanie-Tale-Wonder-Ed-Benjamin https://www.books2read.com/melanie You can follow the author: https://twitter.com/colbenjamin http://edbenjaminbooks.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/edbenajmin https://www.facebook.com/EdBenjaminAuthor tags: fiction, alternate history Copyright © 2018 Mark L. Schultz except for the author's introduction
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Multi-volume author, Stewart Hoffman, introduces us to the first volume in his MG series The Bug Boys: Who would have thought that eating a peanut butter sandwich and an apple would change your life? Let alone get you mixed up with an old alien research project, and transform you into the superheroes your village never needed. For two young South Yorkshire lads, Alex Adams and Ian Harris, it was a geeky comic book dream come true, but it wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be in the real world. They discover there are many layers between good and evil, and with great power, comes an embarrassing amount of gas!  This wildly funny and wonderful story has a deceptive appearance. The colorful cover is full of insects! The Title is The Bug Boys! It made me think it was going to be about bugs, like a field guide for kids. So not true! Believe me about this. This is a middle-grade story about two pre-teen boys in a small town in England sitting atop a coal mine. How they are tormented by a local bully and what they do about it. Actually, there is a much larger cast of characters and they are all drawn out for us in a marvelous fashion. The author has captured the boys’ point of view so well, in this tale and every other character, human or not, with surprising depth. I love the scene-setting and the action is vivid! The dialogue leaves nothing to be desired and descriptions are quite rich. The information about insects and how they communicate is quite good also. This is an exciting story full of splendorous flatulation, captivating POVs, fantastic adventures! I award The Bug Boys 4.9 stars!  You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Bug-Boys-Stewart-Hoffman-ebook https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40215418-the-bug-boys https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bug-Boys-Stewart-Hoffman-ebook You can follow the author: https://twitter.com/stewartfhoffman http://www.talkiegazette.com/books https://www.facebook.com/StewartFHoffman https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15583189.Stewart_Hoffman Tags: science fiction, sci-fi, MG, insects, entomology I have reviewed the second book in this series, here is the link: https://www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/the-bug-boys-vs-professor-blake-blackhart-by-stewart-hoffman Copyright © 2018 Mark L Schultz except for the author's introduction Multi-volume, multi-genre, award-winning author, Veronica Tabares, introduces us to her sci-fi masterpiece, Time Without: Vanessa is a strong, independent woman. Or she was, until she awoke in a world strangely changed. And when her husband and father of her children is in trouble, Vanessa realizes it is up to her to figure out what went so wrong in the world. Vanessa’s journey takes her to the Department of Temporal Adjustment, the department tasked with handling all time travel, where she and her spunky kids go on a hilarious adventure through time—all while traveling incognito.  I will be quite frank. I am partial to sci-fi stories, I am very partial to stories about time travel. I loved this story so much! Such good writing, I am surprised this has not won an award! It was more fun than a barrel of monkeys! The story is full of humor and I laughed out loud multiple times. There is a great deal of dialogue. How could there not be, with four girls who are drawn out so well in the story. The characterizations are pretty well done, the action was quite good also. Do Vanessa and her daughters set the world right? You will have to read the book and find out for yourself. You won’t be disappointed. I award Time Without a score of 4.8 stars.  You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/time-without https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35966263-time-without https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/time-without-veronica-r-tabares You can follow the author: https://twitter.com/veronicatabares http://veronicatabares.com https://www.facebook.com/VeronicaRTabares https://www.pinterest.com/tabares0420 https://plus.google.com/+VeronicaRTabares/posts Here is a link to my review of the next book in the series: www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/true-story-of-the-perfect-36-by-veronica-r-tabares Tags: time travel, science fiction, adventure Copyright © 2018 Mark L Schultz except for the author's introduction Multi-volume author, Sara Allen Stewart, introduces us to her beautiful and heart-touching story Letters to Santa: Christmas is a time of happiness and celebrations for many people, but that's not the case for 9-year-old Kendall Knight. After losing his father in a car accident, at the age of seven, and struggling to adapt to his mother's new boyfriend, he is left feeling hopeless and lost. Can his best friends, James, Carlos, and Logan, help him believe in the magic of Christmas again before it's too late? Or will it take a higher power?  This story really surprised me! The writing provoked such a depth of emotion in me that the last several chapters were hard to read, because I had so many tears flowing from my eyes. I went through several tissues. No spoilers from me. But I will say the writing is brilliant, Sara captured the essence of family dynamics from so many angles perfectly, positive and negative; as well as the different points of view, kids and adults. She avoided a lot of wordiness; the writing is succinct and to the point. There is an amazing amount of dialogue and possibly, the dialogue may well have crowded out some scene setting, but I loved what there was, and action was just enough. Sara did a marvelous job of keeping the story paced and focused on the interactions. I think it would have been easy for her to add a lot more material to make a bigger book, I am grateful she resisted that potential urge. The length of this book is very satisfying. Letters to Santa gets a score of 4.9 stars.  This is Houdini. Sara was in a fire a few months ago and is still recovering. He is standing in for Sara photographically. You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Santa-Sara-Allen-Stewart-ebook https://www.goodreads.com/letters-to-santa https://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-to-Santa-Sara-Allen-Stewart You can follow Sara: https://twitter.com/winterschild11 https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14567305.Sara_Allen_Stewart https://winterchild111dotcom.wordpress.com Note: there is no sex described, some violence is described and intense emotional issues. This is not kid-lit. Tags: family dynamics, relationships, widow, single parent, extended family, fiction, contemporary fiction Copyright © 2018 Mark L Schultz except for the author's introduction |
Who am I?An avid reader, typobuster, and the Hyper-Speller. I am a husband, father, and grandfather. Archives
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