Mini Book Expo For Bloggers

Utopian Reality [Popin's review]

Increasingly, I am reading that blurbs on books are misleading and sometimes even wrong!   Utopian Reality is no exception according to Poin at Popin's Lair:

I loved the concept of this book and the world Simone created is wonderful to read. However, the execution isn’t that great.
* 2 stars *

Keep reading Popin's review...

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More information

• • First Page
  • Read a Sample   
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468087
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468084

Axis Mundi Sum [Sean's review]

Sean at the fortress of solitude recognizes that Axis Mundi Sum may have benefitted from some tough editorial love in its development:

Axis Mundi Sum was in short, a disappointment.

Keep reading Sean's review...

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More information

• Excerpt
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com 
• ISBN-10: 1931468168 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468169

Ice Tomb [MonieG's review]

Ice Tomb surprises MonieG on her blog, Reading With Monie:

Volcanologist, Dr. Erica Daniels, misses a unique opportunity to be a participant in an upcoming mission to the moon to establish the first moon base. As a consolation she is given an assignment in Antarctica. Deep inside a hotspot scientists have been disappearing. Paired up with a fully armed Navy Seal team Erica and the new team are sent to find the missing scientists and find out just what is really under all that ice.

Geologist, Dr. David Marsh is the scientist who landed the assignment on the moon. His goal is and has always been to come out on top no matter what the consequences are. He proved this ten years ago when he stole Erica’s college thesis and passed off two years of her work as his own. Years of telling himself that it was worth it have come down to this critical mission and he can’t afford the doubts now causing him to let his fear slip through the cracks.

What Erica finds under the ice has a surprising connection to David’s work on the moon and now she’s forced to work with him again. With the fate of the earth at stake, she has no choice but to set aside the hatred she’s carried for ten years and figure out a way to survive.

Set in 2015 Ice Tomb is a shocking thriller that takes you from the coldest place on earth to the desolate landscape of the moon. What makes this so scary to me is that the storyline seems very plausible even with the surprising ending. The technical aspects of the book are written so that they are easily understood. With books of this type it’s easy to get lost in the details but I was able to stay right on track with Jackson’s descriptions.

The characters aren’t real deep but I still felt empathy for both Erica and David. The one thing I was disappointed in was the sex scene with Erica and an archeologist on the new team. It was kind of out there with no back story between the characters. They’d only known each other for a couple of days and after the one sex scene Erica and the archeologist both claim to love each other. The archeologist goes so far as to claim that this “quickie” in an airplane bathroom was the best sex of his life. This part of the story was so out of place it was an awkward chapter that I wouldn’t have missed.

Other than that portion of the book I do recommend Ice Tomb. It was a pretty good thriller that really surprised me.

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More information

• Author Site:
  • Deborah Jackson
  • Deborah’s Blog
• Extra Info: Excerpt
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468192
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468190

Proof Of The Illuminati [Samia's review]

Proof Of The Illuminati gets a review by Samia that Seth Payson would have appreciated:

Proof Of The Illuminati was originally written in 1802. This non-fiction tale of the Illuminati is exciting to read with many well-known people involved. After each chapter ended I was left wondering what would happen next. It is written well and makes you wonder if what you are reading and watching and your beliefs weren't influenced by the Illuminati. This book will make you look at this world in another perspective.

It all started with Mary Francis Arouet, born in 1694, who we all know as the philosopher Voltaire. He planned to overthrow religion by mixing philosophy with impiety. Since it took twelve disciples to form Christianity, he decided he would try to overthrow Christianity all by himself. However, he soon discovered that one person wasn't enough.

Voltaire recruited some conspirators to help him with the job. He would tell his fellow conspirators "...hurl the Javelin, but hide your hand." (34) Voltaire wrote many books and encouraged anti-Christian writings that made the reader question their belief by trying to show that "...the strongest proof of the existence of a God is contradicted by daily experiments." (36)
* 5 stars *

Keep reading Samia's review...

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More information

• Extra Info:
  • Table of Contents
  • First Page
  • Excerpt
  • The Actors Existence Object and Secret
  • Progress of the Conspiracy the Triumph
  • Illuminism Its Origin Actors and different
  • The Mysteries and Government of the Order
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468141
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468145

Proof of the Illuminati [Silverlotus's review]

Another review of Proof of the Illuminati wonders how Payson's 'proof' held up in 1802, let alone 2009:

In this age of conspiracies, there is hardly a person left who hasn’t heard of the Illuminati.  They are a secret organization who rule the world from the shadows.  They control our banks, the world’s governments, and all of the biggest corporations.  Or so the conspiracy theorists would like us to believe.  But belief in the Illuminati and their world ruling, religion crushing goals isn’t something new.  In Proof of the Illuminati we are given a look at how they were viewed in 1802.
* 3 stars *

Keep reading Silverlotus's review...

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More information

• Extra Info:
  • Table of Contents
  • First Page
  • Excerpt
  • The Actors Existence Object and Secret
  • Progress of the Conspiracy the Triumph
  • Illuminism Its Origin Actors and different
  • The Mysteries and Government of the Order
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468141
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468145

Tattoo of a Naked Lady [DML's review]

Oh dear. Evidently, Tattoo of a Naked Lady is a complete disappointment for DML:

The back cover sounded great - murder and infatuation...100 pages in, it is just sex no story.
* 1 star *

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More information

• Extra Info: Excerpt 
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 193146801X 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468015

Proof of the Illuminati [Charlene's review]

Proof of the Illuminati seems to have quite the opposite effect that ol' Payson intended on reader Charlene :

This book was originally published in 1802 under the title, Proofs of the Real Existence, and Dangerous Tendency, of Illuminism. The topic of the book extends beyond Illuminism, as Illuminism is only a symptom of a more general tendency of modern society to conspire against Christianity. The true conspiracy began with Voltaire’s writings; Voltaire used his reason and philosophy to seduce the public away from the virtues of Christianity. Payson attempts, with this work, to uphold Christianity against the immoral attitudes of the Illuminati, stated to be “to prevent political and religious oppression” (26), which he interprets as an effort to abolish religion and the state (“the subversion of every social, moral, and religious obligation” [26-7]).
* 2 stars *

Keep reading Charlene's review...

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More information

• Extra Info:
  • Table of Contents
  • First Page
  • Excerpt
  • The Actors Existence Object and Secret
  • Progress of the Conspiracy the Triumph
  • Illuminism Its Origin Actors and different
  • The Mysteries and Government of the Order
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468141
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468145

Diverse Druids [Bobbie's Review]

Bobbie requested a copy of Diverse Druids and found it ...disappointing. I guess the morning sun god didn't shine so bright. She reviewed it over on Book Reviews by Bobbie:

I was overwhelmed with quotes, sightings and information from more then 160 different sources. This book had a definite ‘conspiracy theory’ feel to it and in my opinion, was choppy and disjointed. As a reader, I would have benefited greatly from an index and glossary of some kind.

Keep reading Bobbie's review...

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More information 

• Excerpt
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• Paperback: 368 pages 
• Publisher: Invisible College Press, LLC (October 1, 2003) 
• ISBN-10: 1931468176 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468176

Axis Mundi Sum [Rebecca's review]

 Variety is the spice of Axis Mundi Sum:

Because sometimes life needs a little random. Escape to Dave Smith's reality with Axis Mundi Sum.
* 4 stars *

Keep reading Rebecca's review...

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More information

• Extra Info:
• • Excerpt
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468168 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468169

ChasingChasing the Roswell Alien [April's Review]

When we talk of UFOs these days it's hard to banish the image of Fox and Scully wandering Vancouver's Stanley Park, looking for crop circles. But we muddle through in our beliefs. April, from Cafe of Dreams, chose Chasing the Roswell Alien and found it mysteriously intriguing (do doo doo dee doo):

Chasing the Roswell Alien is stated to be a work of fiction by the author, however he leaves it up to the reader to decide for themselves, whether or not the story is based on truth.

Keep reading April's review...

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More information

• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• Paperback: 284 pages 
• Publisher: Invisible College Press, LLC (September 1, 2005) 
• ISBN-10: 1931468257 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468251

City of Pillars [Silverlotus's review]

Oh dear, it seems as if City of Pillars couldn't keep Silverlotus turning its pages:

The book has a good premise: a man is mistakenly given a cryptic manuscript and must do everything he can to stay alive when the bad guys come looking for it.  I’m sure there is more to the book than that, as the back cover promises “an ancient, worldwide conspiracy”, but I didn’t get that far.

* 3 stars*

Keep reading Silverlotus's review...

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More information 

• Extra Info:
  • Excerpt   
  • Read the first page
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468001 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468008

Ice Tomb [Deborah Jackson]

Courtesy of Invisible College Press

The year is 2015. Deep within the Antarctic Ice Sheet a hotspot suddenly appears on satellite tracking. The US science team that is sent from McMurdo Station to investigate finds an icy graveyard. Minutes later, their transmission is cut off. The last sounds heard over the radio are their screams.   

NASA lures volcanologist Erica Daniels to a conference in Houston by promising to consider her for their upcoming mission--establishing the first moon base. Instead, her archrival and ex-lover, David Marsh, gets the plum assignment, while she’s sent to Antarctica to lead a new team beneath the ice. Even worse, she’s sent in blind. They told her about the thermal signature, but not about the bodies. Where did they come from? They don’t belong to the missing investigative team, so what had become of her fellow scientists? Is the activity under the ice the remnants of an ancient civilization or is there a more sinister explanation? The answer could mean the very survival of the human race. To find out, Erica will have to join forces with the man she despises--a man who’s on the moon.

About the Author   
Deborah Jackson lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She grew up grew up on a farm near Woodstock, close to Stratford. Far from soaking up Shakespeare, she spent most of her time reading science fiction and fantasy. In 1986 she received a Baccalaureate Degree in Science from the University of Ottawa. For many years Deborah worked as a dialysis technician, crafting the odd story on the side until she turned it into a career. She’s a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, writing children’s novels as well as adult, but always with a twist of science fiction or mystery.

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More information

• Author Site:
  • Deborah Jackson
  • Deborah’s Blog
• Extra Info: Excerpt
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com

Product Details

• 2 copies available This book is CLAIMED
• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Invisible College Press, LLC (September 1, 2004)
• ISBN-10: 1931468192
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468190

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Stonecypher Road [Tamara's review]

Stonecypher Road reminds Tamara of something important:    

The book arrived and I looked at the cover and it was awful. Not appealing at all...garish colours with childlike graphics that gave you a false negative sense of the book...but then I started to read the book and settled in.
I have had so many good books to read and review lately that I have been expecting to eventually come across one that I would have to force myself to finish. This is NOT that book. This book was an easy and interesting read and proof of the old adage,

Don't judge a book by it's cover!

Keep reading Tamara's review...and scroll down to see Warren Longwell's comment!

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More information

• Author Site: Warren & Nancy Longwell
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468230 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468237

 

Chasing Elvis [iubookgirl's review]

iubookgirl struggles through Chasing Elvis :

The premise of Chasing Elvis sounded interesting to me...a bank robbed by a man dressed as Elvis, another man obsessed with finding Elvis, the daughter who picks up the robber's trail 20 years later, and the possibility the robber really was Elvis. However, in all honesty, I was tempted to stop reading by page 8.

Keep reading iubookgirl's review...

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More information

• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468206 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468206

Stonecypher Road [Janel's review]

Stonecypher Road promises more than it delivers for Janel:

Crystal skulls, the Holy Grail, the Knights Templar and secret government directorates. All of these things and more are featured in Stonecypher Road.

Keep reading Janel's review...

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More information

• Author Site: Warren & Nancy Longwell
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468230 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468237

Chasing the Roswell Alien [J Kaye's review]

J Kaye finds the reading experience of Chasing the Roswell Alien a thrilling chase in itself, and gives it 3 stars:

The prologue opens with identical birthmarks of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. It then jumps to 1927 with Thomas Edison and Bill Hammer and  continues to 1937 with Amelia Earhart’s crash. The story then jumps to a decade later to the Roswell crash before moving to the present day with Melissa Vaughn, who works for Weird Magazine. By the end of the story, the author will tie all of these events together.

Keep reading J Kaye's review...

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More information

• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468257 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468251

Utopian Reality [C. A. Simone]

  Courtesy of Invisible College Press
Evolution's first gift is on the horizon. No spells, wizardry or magic of any kind produced its coming. Its technical details are very practical and realistic. It brings us a world where our fairytales can come true. Most of our wishes are simply to have a beautiful home and garden, nonetheless, some claim their right to a castle in the sky.   

It is only so sad that this new world was born to such a destroyed, toxic earth. If only we could go back a few years in time with the knowledge we have now.

The plan is to safely harbor individuals from the contaminated air, without leading our unknown adversaries to our underground locations. We must race to trace the web of violent assaults so to find and stop these foes before our new world is destroyed as well.   

I have confidence we can succeed, but only time will tell.

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More information

• Extra Info:
  • First Page
  • Read a Sample
   
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com

Product Details

• 1 copy available  This book is CLAIMED
• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Invisible College Press (August 15, 2002)
• ISBN-10: 1931468087
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468084

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Adopted Son [John's review]

John likes the premise, but not the structure of Adopted Son:

       Adopted Son by Dominic Peloso describes a world in which a virus of apparently alien origin begins to alter human offspring around the world.  The story, with enough covert ops and government conspiracies for a season of  X-Files episodes, is mainly an examination of the socio-political responses of the world, and the US in particular, to a perceived threat from within.  In this case the threat is an alien-human hybrid, but some of the reactions bear an uncomfortable similarity to those that we are actually seeing post-9/11, and throughout the book I found myself nodding my head as I recognized in the plot yet another unfortunate aspect of modern life.
       I was originally interested in reading Adopted Son because its plot sounded similar to Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear.  Readers looking for the same kind of hard science fiction found in Bear's book will likely be disappointed though, since the emphasis here is not on the science, and there are also a few scientific inaccuracies.  Rather, I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy conspiracy theories and an examination of the effects that the truths behind them may have on individuals and society.  If you miss the dark "trust no one" world of Mulder and Scully then this book is for you.
       While there are some very interesting and entertaining ideas in this book, be forewarned that it does suffer somewhat in execution.  Rather than being organized into chapters, it is divided into a series of short vignettes.  This in itself is not necessarily bad, but they are presented out of chronological order, and referenced relative to other events in the story, both past and future.  The result is a narrative that is more confusing than an episode of Lost, with its mix of flashbacks, flashforwards, and current time segments.  I also could have done without the blockquote style used to separate paragraphs, and the author has the unfortunate habit of frequently switching the narrative from present to past tense and back, sometimes in the same paragraph.
       I thank Invisible College Press for the chance to read this book.  I hadn't heard of this publisher before, but I see that they offer a number of titles in a similar vein to Adopted Son, and I always enjoy a good conspiracy theory, so I shall have to look for some of their other titles.

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More information

• Author Site: www.tinyghosts.com 
• Extra Info: An Excerpt of Adopted Son 
• The Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca | Amazon
• ISBN-10: 1931468265 
• ISBN-13:978-1931468268

New England and the Bavarian Illuminati [Kaye's review]

Kaye cautions that New England and the Bavarian Illuminati isn't for those in search of a thriller:

Originally written as a doctoral dissertation in 1918, author of New England and the Bavarian Illuminati, Dr Vernon Stauffer took the political temperature of the day and found a slackening of the strictness of Puritanism. The author’s brief history of the state of affairs  before the American revolution gives the reader an understanding of the numerous legislative acts regarding church and state and how the attitudes of the people of New England were in a state of flux with the waning of the clergy’s influence and the acceptance of foreign ideas.

Keep reading Kaye's review...

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More information

• Read a sample of 'New England and the Bavarian Illuminati'.
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 1931468222
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468220

Tattoo of a Naked Lady [Randy Everhard, B D Kwiatek, B. D. Kwiatek]

Courtesy of Invisible College Press

"Kill him," Bunny whispered as she tightened her grip on me. "Kill my husband so we can be together forever." Bunny was what sex boiled down to. One hundred percent pure. The end-all, be-all drug -- upper, downer, and everything in between. And me -- I was the addict who'd lost all sense of shame. I was the burnout on the street, the junky in the gutter, the loser in the sewer. I'd sell my soul for the next fix of that girl." 

Carnival owner O.B. Krass never should have married Bunny LaFever. He's too old and she's too full of fire. She's mad for kicks, and it'll take more than a sugardaddy's dough to tame that animal inside her. 

Enter Randy Everhard, a carny after the easy score. But the con man meets his match in busty, blonde Bunny. When these raunchy grifters hit the road, Randy spins into a downward spiral of depravity with shiftless strippers, sadistic sheriffs and outlaw bikers. 

Tattoo of a Naked Lady is a Molotov cocktail of sex, carnivals and methamphetamine that explodes the empty come-ons and carnal appetites of the American way. Tattoo of a Naked Lady is a joyride of bad taste -- Spillane at his worst meets Bukowski, Crumb and John Waters at their best. 

About the Author
Randy Everhard was born in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the son of a traveling Bible salesman. At the tender age of sixteen, he ran away with the carnival and never looked back. A graduate of the "School of Hard Knocks," he sees his future very optimistically and would love to play King Lear. 

B.D. Kwiatek is the author of Unleash Your Dolphin-Human Potential and The Dolphin-Human Potential World-Mastery Diet. 

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More information

• Extra Info: Excerpt 
• Invisible College Press | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com

Product Details

• 4 copies available This book is CLAIMED 
• Paperback: 284 pages 
• Publisher: Invisible College Press (April 1, 2001) 
• ISBN-10: 193146801X 
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468015

Shipping within Canada & US sponsored by Invisible College Press