‘Race For What?’ by JD Mass will be released March 29, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
In 2017 JD Massachieved his doctorate in Organizational Psychology and became heavily involved in white antiracism groups in Los Angeles and later in St. Louis. This work in anti-racism reflecting on what he learned throughout his journey inspired him to write “Race for What?” A wise thinker and guide, JD dares white folks to stay the course to finally correct the harm of racism and help create a humane world. (JD Mass PsyD, 2022)
JD Mass PsyD’s “Race for What? A White Man’s Journey & Guide to Healing Racism from Within” will be released on March 29, 2022. Mass tells the story of growing up in a black community and witnessing racism firsthand, as well as his successes and missteps in building powerful alliances with the community in which he was raised.
Part memoir, part how-to, and entirely real, this masterfully woven book takes readers back in time to St. Louis in the 80s and 90s, when Mass was growing up with a circle of creative friends and influences. The talent he bonded with, such as the rapper Nelly, would set the stage for a life of music, religion, culture, community development, and politics.
Of his new book, Mass says, “I have been on a lifelong journey to learn why racism was created and what we can look forward to without it. Change is happening. Will it be the superficial change that doesn’t bring forth justice, or the transformational healing that is needed? Race for What? provides a vision for the latter.”
“Race for What?” provides stories with a unique perspective from a white man’s experience and illustrates seven steps to healing. Mass encourages white people to work through the emotional and psychological obstacles in order to repair and heal the harm racism has caused.
“Race for What? A White man’s Journey & Guide to Healing Racism from Within” is available for pre-order on Amazon.
‘Treachery Times Two’ is the new mystery novel by Robert McCaw. Photo: google
Robert McCawis an author who grew up in a military family traveling the world. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, served as a U.S. Army lieutenant, and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was a partner in a major international law firm in Washington, D.C. and New York City, representing major Wall Street clients in complex civil and criminal cases. Having lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, McCaw fills his writing of the Islands with his more than 20-year love affair with this Pacific paradise. His new book “Treachery Times Two” is book four in McCaw’s Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mystery Series and follows “Death of a Messenger,” “Fire and Vengeance,” and “Off the Grid.” This new mystery novel involves secret military weapons, saboteurs, a volcanic eruption—and a probe of Chief Detective Koa Kāne’s criminal past.
“Treachery Times Two” – The action begins with a vivid description of a volcanic earthquake as “Pele, masquerading as a glassy-haired old woman,” destroys an abandoned cemetery and unearths a mystery that will shake up Hilo Hawaii’s Chief Detective Koa Kāne’s life as he knows it. The destruction brings forth the body of a woman mutilated by her killer to conceal her identity. While trying to solve this mystery, he finds himself at odds with a mysterious defense contractor with a politically connected board of directors. Defying his chief of police, Koa becomes entangled in an FBI espionage investigation of Deimos, a powerful secret military weapon. To top it off, Koa—a cop who thirty years earlier killed his father’s nemesis and covered up the murder—now faces exposure by the dead man’s grandson who mysteriously comes into town demanding answers. Koa is forced to investigate his own homicide, and step by step, his cover-up unravels until another man is falsely accused. His character is tested as he debates whether to stand by and let an innocent man pay for his crime or come clean and risk losing it all.
Detective Koa Kāne is on the trail of another killer who thought the crime would be covered up by volcanic lava. Not only does he need to find out who killed the mysterious woman, he is constantly looking over his shoulder and dreading the day when his past crime will be revealed. It follows him constantly: “The investigation which had consumed his waking hours had now invaded his sleep.” Every time he closes a case, he visits Anthony Hazzard’s tombstone. As with the previous books, “Treachery Times Two” features highly developed, complex, and relatable characters, as well as Hawaiian terms, language, and history. Sometimes these Hawaiian terms and names slow down the pacing of the story, but it is worth it and readers are rewarded with a thrilling murder mystery filled with one plot twist after another. The author’s love of Hawaii is evident in his writing by his use of beautiful poetic language, especially when describing volcanic activity, as when the lava was “spreading thin, glassy particles of Pele’s hair like strands of cotton candy.” Koa Kāne is a deeply flawed character, comparable to Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne. He is running from his past while trying to be the best detective he can be all the while people he thought he knew disappoint him but he still struggles on. The highlight is Chapter 9, which has eye-opening historical background on Hawai’i including how in 1893, the Committee of Safety, a group of western businessmen, with the backing of US Marines, staged a coup d’état against the reigning monarch and five years later, the United States annexed the islands. The plot twists keep the reader guessing until the shocking end. “Treachery Times Two” is another remarkable murder mystery by Robert McCaw and is recommended for fans of Michael Connelly who also appreciate a historical lesson or two. The good thing about this excellent mystery series is that each novel stands on its own and can be read in any order.
*The author received a copy of this book for an honest review. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.
‘Love in Hopeless Places’ is the new romance novel by Mitchell Megaley
Mitchell Megaley is a romance and fiction Australian-based author who began writing at a very young age, guided by his creativity. While he was growing up, his parents restored an old brewery, which also had been a village school and a farm. Fascinated by his environment and its happenings, this fueled his inspiration for writing after wandering through stories of his new home’s previous owners. Mitchell became fond of making notes and consolidating the patchworks into more extended stories that he would rather keep for himself. He nurtured a great passion for writing and was compelled to let others in on his archive of drafts. Mitchell Megaley began distributing more elaborated stories to the inhabitants of the surrounding villages and cities, introducing them to his world of possibilities. He moved to Australia on a journey of self-discovery. Mitchell’s books are comprised of stories inspired by his past and new experiences in Australia, accompanied by unparalleled creativity. Mitchell paints the awe-inspiring landscape of Australia in the minds of his audience in form of mouth-watering literature on each page.
In his new book released this month, ‘Love in Hopeless Places: Her Dangerous Experiment,’ will Alexa and Jude live happily ever after, or does the hopelessness of dangerous circumstances make theirs the cautionary tale of once in a lifetime love that was too good to last? (Mitchell Megaley, 2022)
‘Love in Hopeless Places: Her Dangerous Experiment’ – Alexa Williams lived a simple life. As an athlete and a programmer, she had her troubles and had always pushed through…but this time was different. She definitely was not looking for love, nor was she looking to get mixed up in any ugly dealings, but when they say love is found in hopeless places, this could easily have been what they had in mind.
Forcefully taken away from her home and all that she was familiar with for a dangerous experiment that threatened her life, things could not be more hopeless. And as for love…
Jude was careless with a lot of things, including his finances, and it was this carelessness that led him to the mess in which he now found himself. He needed solutions and he needed money—lots of it and fast. So, when a job as a researcher for a deadly project became his latest opportunity, it was an offer he could not refuse. It was never part of the plan to get head over heels distracted, but there is no other way to describe his situation once he set eyes on the beautiful Alexa.
Things heated up fast, and now it seems like it is all about to come crashing down. He is stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, and now Jude must choose between what he desperately needs and what he desires more than anything.
‘Harbor City Homicide’ is the new mystery novel by David Bradbury. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
David Bradbury is a former newspaper crime reporter who has long been fascinated with the gang culture of Los Angeles. His new book “Harbor City Homicide” takes readers into the underworld of LA’s gangs. It is available now on Amazon.
“Harbor City Homicide” – Exciting action, danger and crackling dialogue – a reader’s comment. Early morning. The concrete forecourt of a Los Angeles motel you would not check your family into. The owner, a man with a past who was planning a particular future, has been shot in the back. Career detective Helen Freitag’s investigation of the murder takes her into the underworld of LA’s gangs, as racial tensions and arson attacks rise across the sweltering city. Looming in the background is an official inquiry into her questionable shooting of a bank robber, as well as increasing trauma from her army service. The handsome, disgraced journalist Prentice Taylor is drawn into the inquiry by Freitag when the dead man’s daughter runs away from home.
The new Reacher tv series will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on February 4, 2022. Photo: amazon
Lee Childis one of the world’s leading thriller writers. He was born in Coventry, raised in Birmingham, and now lives in New York. It is said one of his novels featuring his hero Jack Reacher is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds. His books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world and have sold over one hundred million copies. Two blockbusting Jack Reacher movies have been made so far. A TV series adaptation of Jack Reacher will premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime Video on February 4, 2022. All eight episodes of the first season will drop at once. It stars Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher. (amazon, 2022)
The first season will adapt the “Killing Floor”novel. Jack Reacher is a former major in the United States Army Military Police Corps who now roams the United States taking odd jobs and investigating suspicious and frequently dangerous situations. In “Killing Floor,” Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia because he remembers his brother mentioning that a blues musician named Blind Blake died there. Much to his surprise, shortly after his arrival he is arrested in a local diner. He must try to prove his innocence.
Harrison Taylor raises the bar with his breakout novel “Those Who Hunt Wolves.” It will be released February 22, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Readers who love sci-fi, thrillers, and action-adventure are in for a treat with Harrison Taylor’s debut, “Those Who Hunt Wolves.” Published by Metal Rooster Publishing House, the techno-thriller officially releases February 22, 2022 and offers a terrifying wake-up call of what our world might become if certain technology goes astray. (Harrison Taylor, 2022)
The fate of nations, and humanity itself, revolves around the Blackout, the United States’ most powerful—and most enigmatic—weapon. It is the United States government’s most guarded secret, as well as the key to unthinkable control for those who know about it and wish to leverage its potential for their own endeavors. When the last remaining Wolf, a super-soldier created by a military experiment, steals it, it is up to the three former members of a top-secret group to hunt down the Wolf and get it back before it is too late. But who is working for whom? Amid political intrigue and an impending international crisis, no one is who they seem, and anything can happen.
Born in Colorado, Harrison Taylor found his love for literature in movies. With a deep love for cinema, Harrison started his creative career writing screenplays for low budget shorts. He then switched to becoming a novelist, where there are no budgetary constraints. He first prose story was “The Pharmacy.”
As a movie buff, Harrison crafted his writing style with a cinematic flair that keeps the pages turning. “I love storytelling, and movies,” says Taylor, who is also a medical doctor. “My goal with this book is to give readers an exhilarating experience, like they are reading a movie. I watch scenes from Quentin Tarantino movies before I start writing.”
Metal Rooster Publishing House is an independent publishing house dedicated to telling captivating stories across the genre spectrum. They believe the best stories are not told in black and white, but many shades of grey. The company is dedicated to inspiring others to pick up that pen, paintbrush, or mic, and to create.
‘Quicksilver,’ Dean Koontz’ new novel, will be out January 25, 2022. Photo: amazon
Internationally bestselling author Dean Koontz is the author of seventy-nine New York Times bestsellers, fourteen of which rose to #1, including “One Door Away from Heaven,” “From the Corner of His Eye,” “Midnight,” “Cold Fire,” “The Bad Place,” “Hideaway,” and “Intensity.” Rolling Stone has hailed him as “America’s most popular suspense novelist” and his books have been published in thirty-eight languages and have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide. His new book “Quicksilver,” he takes a surprising and exhilarating road trip with a man in pursuit of his strange past―mile by frightening mile. It will be released on January 25, 2022. (amazon, 2022)
“Quicksilver”– Quinn Quicksilver was born a mystery― he was abandoned at three days old on a desert highway in Arizona. Raised in an orphanage, never knowing his parents, Quinn had a happy if unexceptional life. Until the day of “strange magnetism.” It compelled him to drive out to the middle of nowhere. It helped him find a coin worth a lot of money and it saved his life when two government agents showed up in the diner in pursuit of him. Now Quinn is on the run from those agents and who knows what else, fleeing for his life. During a shoot-out at a forlorn dude ranch, he finally meets his destined companions: Bridget Rainking, a beauty as gifted in foresight as she is with firearms, and her grandpa Sparky, a romance novelist with an unusual past. Bridget knows what it is like to be Quinn. She is hunted, too. The only way to stay alive is to keep moving. Barreling through the Sonoran Desert, the formidable trio is impelled by that same inexplicable magnetism toward the inevitable. With every deeply disturbing mile, something sinister is in the rearview―an enemy that is more than a match for Quinn. Even as he discovers within himself resources that are every bit as scary.
‘The Starless Crown’ by James Rollins. Photo: amazon
A new month means new books on the horizon. These are some notable new releases for January in my favorite categories: Fiction, Young Adult, History & Biography, Mystery & Thriller, Science fiction, Fantasy, and Historical fiction. My pick for this month is “The Starless Crown” by James Rollins because I enjoy reading fantasy novels and he is one of my go-to authors. (amazon, Goodreads, 2021)
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations. When Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.
Nothing will get in the way of Millie Price’s dream to become a Broadway star. Not her lovable but super-introverted dad, who after raising Millie alone, does not want to watch her leave home to pursue her dream. Not her annoying and ongoing drama club rival, Oliver, who is the very definition of Simmering Romantic Tension. And not the “Millie Moods,” the feelings of intense emotion that threaten to overwhelm, always at maddeningly inconvenient times. Millie needs an ally. And when a left-open browser brings Millie to her dad’s embarrassingly moody LiveJournal from 2003, Millie knows just what to do. She is going to find her mom. How can you find a new part of your life and expect it to fit into your old one, without leaving any marks?
The Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of “All the President’s Men” — the chronicle of the investigative report about the Watergate break-in and resultant political scandal which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation—recalls his formative years as a teenage newspaper reporter in JFK’s Washington—a tale of adventures, scrapes, clever escapes, and the opportunity of a lifetime.
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath. Twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren’t really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?
Every family has issues. Most cannot blame them on extraterrestrials. Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, are not on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he had been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob. When Evie’s UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate and discovers Jakob is back. He is different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings have not changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.
A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death. Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of outcasts: A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he is forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home. An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact – one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe. On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation. But with each passing moment, doom draws closer.
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. The family will survive that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.
The movie adaptation of ‘The Lost Daughter’ by Elena Ferrante is now playing in theaters everywhere. Photo: amazon
Elena Ferrante is the author of seven novels, including four New York Times bestsellers; “The Beach at Night,” an illustrated book for children; and “Frantumaglia,” a collection of letters, literary essays, and interviews. Her fiction has been translated into over forty languages and been shortlisted for the MAN Booker International Prize. In 2016 she was named one of TIME’s most influential people of the year and The New York Times has described her as “one of the great novelists of our time.” Her book “The Lost Daughter”has been adapted into a major motion picture directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Paul Mescal, and Peter Sarsgaard. (amazon, 2022)
“The Lost Daughter” – Leda, a middle-aged divorcée, is alone for the first time in years after her two adult daughters leave home to live with their father in Toronto. Enjoying an unexpected sense of liberty, she heads to the Ionian coast for a vacation. But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family in this “arresting” novel by the author of the New York Times–bestselling Neapolitan Novels, which have sold millions of copies.
In his new book, Marc Savoy shares the fascinating story of Cajun Music’s iconic instrument. Photo: amazon
Born in 1940, Marc Savoy grew up in a rural French-speaking community outside of Eunice, Louisiana, and started playing the accordion at age twelve. By age twenty, he was building and selling his own Acadian-brand Cajun accordions. In 1966, he opened the doors to the iconic Savoy Music Center in his hometown. Today, he is revered as one of the finest builders and players of the instrument in the world. His new book “Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion” is the story of how an instrument once known as the “German-style” accordion became the iconic image of Louisiana’s Cajun culture. (Marc Savoy, 2021)
Most strands of American music have an iconic instrument. Horns for jazz, banjos for bluegrass, and electric guitars for rock and roll, but few invoke the immediate recognition as the accordion found in the wildly unique music of Louisiana Cajuns. Few know the instrument as intimately as world-renowned accordion player, builder, and author, Marc Savoy. Upon seeing a Louisiana-handmade diatonic accordion for the first time in 1957, a teenage Marc Savoy began a quest that arguably no one has come closer to achieving: to build the perfect Cajun accordion. Told in Savoy’s own words, “Made in Louisiana” is the story of the evolution of his Acadian brand accordions—from being a young prodigy to a self-made businessman to a music store owner to a definitive figure in Cajun music.
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