Chanticleer Book Reviews

Category: Reviews

THE GIRL WHO RECYCLED 1 MILLION CANS by Shaziya M. Jaffer, Brad W. Rudover, Jessica Alexanderson – Children’s Environmentalism Books, Picture Books, Climate Change

The Girl Who Recycled 1 Million Cans, by Shaziya M. Jaffer, Brad W. Rudover, & Jessica Alexanderson, is perfectly written for children between three and eight years old.

Eye-catching colorful graphics by Adam Trask, fun characters, and a wonderfully lighthearted storyline uphold this book’s message of protecting the environment. Both children and adults will feel empowered to help our planet one can at a time.

An adventurous young girl named Ellie wants to buy a Unicorn. To earn the money she needs, Ellie plans to collect and recycle one million cans. But she soon realizes that her plans may need to take a different track. Together with her community of friends, who show great teamwork and perseverance, environmental lessons continue on with fantastic results.

Few books do such a fine job of combining so many life lessons while still keeping the learning lighthearted and fun.

This is a refreshing tale of environmental hope, and an all-around winner for both children and adults to learn that you can help the planet through something as simple as recycling metals.

One of the coauthors, Jessica Alexanderson, has provided book readings at schools and libraries and has built a fun hands-on program to learn more about metals and recycling.

She has supported many metal recycling fundraisers at not only local schools here in Washington State, but in several other states around the U.S. as well. Jessica recently coordinated a can recycling competition at nine different schools in eight different states.

You can visit the Scrap University Kids website to purchase this wonderful book, learn more about recycling metals, and get started on making a positive difference for our planet! kids.scrapuniversity.com

October 30, 2023
A STORY Of WHOA by Chris Corbett – Children’s Determination Books, Picture Books, Children’s Emotion & Feelings Books

In A Story of Whoa, Chris Corbett shows one way that parents can explain the often loud and frightening problems of the world to children, and how anyone can make a difference.

Whoa watches the news every night with his father, where tragedy, injustice, and cruelty so often take center stage. Seeing these terrible things happening on TV, Whoa decides the time has come to step up. With his father’s support, he learns every martial art he can, ready to do battle with the toughest challenges in the world!

With patience and encouragement for Whoa’s many KERPOWS!!!, his father helps him discover that fighting injustice often goes beyond physical strength.

The story’s simple narrative voice carries reader through with ease and comfort. Corbett does an excellent job understanding the difficulty of talking to kids today about what they might see on the news, and then brings it home by showing the kids that they can help make the world a better place.

Illustrations from Richardo Galvao delight and pair perfectly with the story, helping put each page in context. Personified depictions of Tragedy, Injustice, and Cruelty add a charming sense of personality and fun to a serious topic.

A Story of Whoa offers an empowering story to help children deal with major problems. Maybe, like Whoa, we can all make the world a better place.

October 27, 2023
DESPAIR Of The SEER: Book One of the Pithios Dominion Series by Antonio Guadagno – Dark Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic, Suspense Action

In Despair of the Seer, the first book of Antonio Guadagno’s Pithios Dominion Series, Revenant soldiers mercilessly hound two friends for their vital knowledge as they are pulled away from their everyday lives to a life-or-death fight through a fantastical empire.

This world is filled with life-threatening dangers and horrors that could shake even the most stoic individuals. What weapon could defy these evils? Is determination enough to propel a young man through the Pithios Dominion, defying the deadly, flesh-ravenous Revenant Army? Seeking to reunite with his father, Paxton Roald must race against the powerful forces he blames for this misery. Will he and his best friend, Terrance, be able to find the strength and forge the unity to face their enemy and fight its power?

True to its name, the Pithos Dominion dominates its people so that only the foolhardy and the desperate dare stand up to their threats. The reader is gripped wondering if two young friends can survive when their lives in Miami are turned completely upside-down. Terrance is on the brink of proposing to his girlfriend, and Paxton is caring for his mother and granny when the tentative, uneasy stalemate between governing powers begins to crack.

Laced with endearing humor, Guadagno’s suspenseful and exciting fantasy adventure plunges the reader into a power struggle that threatens to defeat humankind itself.

The ambitious Controller demands military supremacy from the lead scientist of the Revenant Project, Eugene Roald – Paxton’s father.

Instead, Eugene flees to avoid putting his hands on the scales of destiny. But Paxton becomes the Controller’s target, in the hopes he’ll lead them to his father. No one knows if the Controller plays with forces beyond his understanding, or has he found a way to tilt the scales in his favor.

J’Nou, First Brother of the Revenant, is the terror dispatched to pursue Paxton. Torment of the son, or anyone who gets in the way, is simply a means to victory. He shows Paxton the terrible price of power, until Paxton can no longer tolerate this despotism.

The Despair of the Seer may be prophetic as the land of the Dominion is filled with terrible creatures beyond his imagination.

With characters seeking ultimate power, fascinating in their ruthlessness, Despair of a Seer captivates like a horror you can’t force yourself to look away from. The luckless heroes evoke an empathy that will have readers cheering them onward. These two sides clash in a stunning plot that makes this story impossible to put down.

October 25, 2023
IF IT’S The LAST THING I DO by David Fitz-Gerald – Financial Thrillers, Historical Fiction, Small Town Fiction

If It’s The Last Thing I Do by David Fitz-Gerald tells the story of Misty Menard, a 69-year-old woman who in 1975 returns to her upstate New York hometown to attend the funeral of her beloved father. She is dumbfounded to find she has inherited his business, making wooden dowels and buttons.

A receptionist for most of her adult life, with no business experience, she is at best ill-suited to the job. Personal problems hang over her as well, as a divorcee determined to keep sober and cigarette-free while in weekly therapy. But to keep her father’s memory alive, she is determined to keep the business afloat while she decides what to do with it in the long term. The last thing she imagined she would be doing on the cusp of 70 was running a business.

She turns the business into an employee-owned enterprise, an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan.) This gives her employees a shot at owning part or all of the business. The skill with which If It’s the Last Thing I Do integrates ESOP into its story, making it digestible, is among its many pleasures.

Her three-man management team is aggressively against it, and the local bank that hosts the trust and handles its transactions is resistant to providing loans to facilitate the deal. As the ESOP continues taking shape, the bank becomes its mortal enemy.

While those issues would be difficult on their own, the collapsing economy of that era pushes Misty’s company to the brink of insolvency.

Buyers emerge offering to purchase it on the cheap. There are unexplained incidents of vandalism on the premises. And in an almost Biblical moment, a huge storm brings raging floods that threaten to destroy the company’s physical foundations.

The decision to turn the company over to its employees, giving them a stake in its future, becomes more complex as the financial noose tightens.

Misty’s family life adds yet more weight to her shoulders.

Her husband abandoned her for another woman. One of her two sons is dead, leaving the other son to bring up his nephew, who in turn has a child. That child, a boy nicknamed Four, has ambitions to become an Olympic skater, but finds his path may not wind up as he envisioned.

Misty is filled with self-doubts. She makes decisions from the heart instead of from practicality. But her belief in the rightness of her decisions, her essential goodness, is one of this novel’s strengths. People both good and wicked drive this story, their motivations and machinations not always apparent at first.

Readers who enjoy a well-paced, gripping novel should put If It’s The Last Thing I Do on top of their reading list. Misty’s complex relationships with her family and her own mortality, combined with her efforts as a CEO, turn this novel into a true page-turner.

October 23, 2023
LIAR, ALLEGED: A Tell-All: Celebrities, Sex and All the Rest by David Vass – Memoirs, LGBTQ+ Humor, 1960s

Liar, Alleged: A Tell-All: Celebrities, Sex, and All the Rest is a raw and mature memoir, the account of a resilient individual, David Vass, who had felt ‘instinctively’ different and shunned since he was a child.

Vass was born in Baltimore as the seventh child of eight. His large family knew nothing more than chaos and absurdity, biting poverty, a violent father, and an eternal hand-to-mouth crisis. At an early age, he had recognized his inextinguishable fascination with other males, a discovery that he would later bring himself to express to his mother. He was pretty confident that being gay was core to who he would become.

By the time he was twenty-four, David’s parents had already passed on. But as fate would have it, he would come to meet ‘the mother he never had’ in the jazz legend Anita O’Day. She dealt with problems of alcohol, drugs, and men; the outcome had been nine abortions, stubborn guilt, and infamy as a heroin addict. Nevertheless, the two would become close confidantes until Anita’s demise at the age of eighty-seven.

Author Vass exemplifies his background in a forthright and emotional manner that will bring readers to laughter and tears alike.

He tells of a tightly wound household, and carefree buddies eager to determine whether he was male or female before answering his sexual longings and plea for companionship. In this book, readers get to learn of the prevalent suicide rate in the gay community around the late 50s and early 60s, with particular true stories narrated in articulate but bare street language.

Carol, one such true individual, revealed eye-opening details such as a little-known disorder that left her unable to feel remorse or guilt as she engaged in indecipherable sexual activities. In the setting of 1966 Baltimore, clubs paid politicians to allow underage workers, and Vass would greatly benefit from the arrangement. Readers may find their emotions stirred by such ordeals of the young teenager, who had started working in one of the shadiest, mafia-owned cross sections of America.

Liar, Alleged: A Tell-All: Celebrities, Sex, and All the Rest delivers a roller coaster of emotions that delves into the highs and lows of a resilient and warm human being.

The narrative is intense and unapologetically honest, leaving a lasting impact, with unfiltered, vulnerable storytelling. Vass refuses to hold back, offering readers a front-row seat to all the dark, raw, and unflattering drama. This memoir is conclusively enticing and well-crafted, and a worthy recommendation to those seeking a blunt and well-told experience of the world.

October 20, 2023
A VOICE From HEAVEN by Alexander V. Girman & Cynthia J. Girman – Spirituality, Overcoming Grief, Addiction/Recovery

Cynthia J. Girman shares transcendental conversations with A Voice from Heaven – her son Alec, who had tragically passed away a few months before.

During his life, Alec struggled with ADHD & Asperger’s (his preferred term). Social awkwardness made it difficult for him to connect with other people – a heavy emotional weight from which he fled through substance abuse. Though he supported himself with work as a programmer, fitting his special interests in computers and mathematics, he lived alone in DC and tried to hide his addiction from his family.

Cindy and Tom tried tirelessly to help their son. Through rehab centers and sobriety coaches, Alec began making gradual improvements, even as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed him into deeper feelings of isolation. But treating addiction isn’t a fair fight, especially with the ability of opioids to rewire the brain; Cindy and Tom’s greatest fear was realized when Alec used kratom without understanding the toxicity of its alkaloid components.

In the depths of grief after Alec’s passing, Cindy and Tom found hope in meetings with three mediums. These mediums channeled Alec and other lost loved ones, promising that Alec was at peace. Beyond that awakened hope, though, Cindy began to experience her own connections to the other side, until Alec’s spirit reached out directly to tell her of what he’d learned since his physical death.

Cindy allowed Alec’s spirit to work through her hands as she wrote this book, revealing the nature of the human soul.

Mortal life is a lesson that the soul wants to learn. One sliver of a full human spirit inhabits a body on Earth, unaware of its true self, so that the difficulties and choices of this life will teach it an important lesson. Each soul seeks to understand the same thing: how to become a being of love.

But the afterlife offers much learning of its own. Alec delves deeply into the mysteries of the universe, in a way that mortal humans never could, and even takes on the role of a teacher to other spirits. These roles and details of the afterlife are explained in great detail, and while the book repeats these details more often than it should, they’re nevertheless interesting to consider.

Between these explanations of the world beyond death, A Voice from Heaven threads wondrous imagery and comforting possibilities.

There is beauty that no mortal eye has seen, colors beyond physical vision, the playful music of other spirits, and even great cosmic wonders. Author Cynthia translates these otherworldly senses into evocative prose, giving readers a glimpse of the other side.

All this joy and bliss of the spiritual realm is shared with loved ones and friends – both from one’s latest life and those before. Alec connects with the family he knew and ancestors he never could have, even finding dear pets waiting for him. But as wonderful as this realm is, Alec insists that mortal life has purpose and beauty as well and that one should embrace it entirely.

Pursuing her own purpose, Cynthia J. Girman researches the development of treatments for Substance Use Disorder.

She explains promising technology to the reader – transcranial magnetic stimulation (TEMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) – which could become invaluable in undoing the brain chemistry alterations of addiction. Her drive to make a difference for people who struggle as Alec did is inspiring, and grounds this book’s ideas of prioritizing love in one’s life.

Though a spiritual guide, Alec maintains a sense of humanity throughout these conversations.

Alec’s mortal struggles are easy to empathize with, especially for neurodivergent people. For such readers, and any who have faced addiction in themselves or their loved ones, Alec’s words offer a sense of resilience and understanding. On the other side, he recognizes his mistakes but also works to forgive himself for them, as all souls must do. This personal connection gives a real emotional weight to A Voice from Heaven’s image of the afterlife.

This book seeks to give peace to those readers reeling from loss, hope that such loss is not forever, and the message that one should embrace their passion and let go of their fears.

October 18, 2023
THE PENNY MANSIONS by Steven Mayfield – Historical Fiction, Mystery, Small Town Fiction

The Penny Mansions by Steven Mayfield, a historical novel of Paradise and Boise Idaho at the end of WWI, offers a concert of drama, comedy, and noir-tinged crime thriller.

The town of Paradise, Idaho, grew as a prospecting town, but the gold and people alike have dwindled. They no longer have a high enough population to keep the state government from taking the land through eminent domain. So, the town counsel puts an ad in papers across the country for families to purchase one of four mansions in town for only a penny. There’s a catch, of course – they must move in, fix the place up, and remain there for the next census count in 1920.

Readers will love the colorful characters who fill Paradise, from Bountiful Dollarhyde, an African American woman raised by the madam of what used to be the local bordello, to Lariot, a genius orphan skilled with rope tricks, and Goldstrike, an old prospector who gladly shares his strong opinions. These lively folk face a powerful threat. Gerald Dredd, a greedy land baron with a high office in the state government, uses his clout to bludgeon others into his schemes to ensure that Paradise doesn’t hit their all-important population count.

Through the people of Paradise, Mayfield explores themes of communities and found families – and what people will do to save them. He shows the dangers of government corruption gone unchecked until it creates malefic control.

Many of the characters are willing to sacrifice so much of themselves to save this small town in the Pacific Northwest frontier. And as the story pushes forward, even the newcomers to the town – not necessarily there in good faith at first – fall in love with the community and stand up against weaponized bureaucracy to save their newfound friends and home.

Mayfield’s writing style is extremely personable and fun.

The dialogue is playful and, at times, terrifying. Readers will connect with and worry for their favorite characters, and rightfully despise the antagonist and his willing compatriots. The Penny Mansions is also among the best depictions of a community banding together for a single cause.

There is a bit of a stylistic shift part way through the novel. After a major event, the story abruptly moves from a historic drama to a noir crime thriller. While this change might be jarring to some readers, the charm and humor of the book remains throughout.

The Penny Mansions will make readers chuckle and smile, and grimace with anger. Mayfield juggles emotion with ease, all while chugging the plot forward to intense confrontations.

October 16, 2023
IF YOU FIND ME WORTHY By Pam Landen – Contemporary Romance, Women’s Fiction

If You Find Me Worthy introduces forty-six-year-old Kate Baker, a woman who knows her own mind. As the former owner of a million-dollar private jet charter service, Kate is well established in the world of aviation as well as the world of CEOs.

Having started her career in the technology field, Kate is returning to her roots when her friend and former business partner asks her to use her technical expertise to assess the disaster recovery plan of North American Bank. She negotiates to exchange her assistance for a look into the bank’s lending practices for her study on the prejudice against female business owners.

Kate is certainly not looking for love. Having lost her husband to ALS years previously, she is focused only on her work, her son Stuart, and golf. However, when she meets Curtis Michaels, the CEO of North American Bank for the last seven years, she immediately feels an unfamiliar, and unwelcome, attraction. So begins If you Find Me Worthy by Pam Landen.

Curtis finds Kate exceptionally intriguing. He can’t help but constantly challenge the beautiful blonde.

A widower himself, Curtis has raised his daughter Sarah alone and carries the scars of his former bad relationship. He knows he shouldn’t even think about approaching Kate since she is temporarily working for his bank, but he can’t help himself.

The more Kate learns about Curtis, the more she realizes their similarities in the business and personal worlds, but Curtis’s demons threaten their fledgling relationship before it has a chance to truly blossom. She questions her ability to maintain her distance from the man who so clearly needs her help, but will the two be able to defeat the memories of his former life?

This novel’s greatest strength is character development.

Both Kate and Curtis have extreme depth. The pain from their former spouses has created a pain simultaneously unique to the characters while bearing striking similarities. Kate’s husband, Sam, left Kate with extreme feelings of inadequacy despite her running a successful business and caring for him during his illness. Their story is one Kate is embarrassed to admit to Curtis.

Unbeknownst to Kate, Curtis has his own shameful secret concerning his dead wife Carol. His trauma is, perhaps, the most critical to the novel’s plot as it keeps him from seeking future happiness with Kate. Though perfect for each other, the two have a chasm of hurt between them. The strength Kate has found through therapy and self-actualization won’t allow her to settle for less than Curtis’s full heart, but finding the patience to help him get the counseling he needs proves difficult. Numerous times, their relationship stands on shaky ground, but the growth of their love is endearing.

A major theme of the novel revolves around Kate’s research project – the treatment of women in business.

Kate must repeatedly prove herself in this “man’s world.” She faces extreme sexism from Jake, the lead marketing representative for the bank. His constant berating, questioning, and name-calling push Kate to her limit, but she refuses to allow Curtis to step in on her behalf. With few women in positions of power within the bank, Kate’s journey is entirely uphill with Curtis often throwing roadblocks in her path as well to test her business acumen.

An interesting twist is Kate’s acceptance of Curtis’s behavior. She sees Curtis as a flirt rather than an opponent. Though Curtis has macho-man control issues, his treatment of Kate is chivalrous and giving. She willingly gives up power to him on occasion, and she seems mostly unbothered by that power release. His validation of her feminism makes her feel like a beautiful, treasured woman for the first time in her life, and, in some way, actually accentuates her feminine power.

Behind the details of business and technology lies a touching romance. Recommended!

October 13, 2023
ROADS To The INTERIOR by W. Hans Miller – Poetry, Philosophical, Haiku

Roads to the Interior by W. Hans Miller is a journey through the interior of the mind, seeking to find answers, peace, and insight.

This book is inspired by, and dedicated to, the works of Matsuo Basho, the father of haiku and other spiritual writings. Haiku usually has a fixed pattern of three lines with a 5/7/5 syllable pattern – often referencing nature or reflecting on life – but the haikus within this book don’t always follow that tradition. Rather, Roads to the Interior turns the haiku’s reflective questions on the mind itself.

Each of this book’s three sections is filled with raw emotion, existential musings, and careful contemplation. Recurrent readings of this collection will allow readers to absorb yet more truths and insights.

Different poems make reference to many thinkers, writers, and literary characters.

“Part I – Wide Roads to the Interior”, considers struggle and longing. “Each Newborn Bubble” shares these truths: “Even Siddhartha had bad days. A dear friend tells me to persevere: don’t search for spring’s source, care for each newborn bubble.” In “Penance” the speaker says, “I’ll speak no more of my predicament, always fearing my words will mean less than they say. I’m taller now but wiser when I was seven…”

“Part II – Narrow Roads to the Interior”, reflects on the existential.

Poems such as “Longing to Trust the World” and “Nothing is the Answer” pull readers into this shift. “Paradise Lost” is shaped much like a cocoon, taking the reader from dust to revelation and then dust again. These poems draw on other authors such as (T.S. Elliot and Walt Whitman, and even the protagonist of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”, through such lines as, “Mersault found a truth. A truth that brought light falling upon that which already lit his gentle indifference to the world. His death testimony cause peace and calm to warp their arms around an unfinished circle on his brow.”

The final section, “Your Brain’s Secret Interior Life: Seven Poems”, comes with an epilogue of the author’s journey through the complexity of the human mind. These last poems provide thoughtful considerations in the pursuit of understanding the Road to the Interior that each one of us must walk.

October 11, 2023
FLOWERS Of EVIL: Hani’s Daughter Mysteries Book 1 by N.L. Holmes – Historical Mysteries, Ancient Egypt, Murder Mysteries

In Flowers of Evil by N.L. Holmes, a new generation steps up to face the dangers and intrigue of murder in Ancient Egypt.

The people of Egypt are bustling despite the heat, businesses are thriving, devotion is a way of life, and families are at the pulsing heart of society. Not all is happiness, however. The city hides deceit, malice, and ambition in the shadows. Here, a lethal hand wields a sharp knife. Desperate to save her bleeding patient, Lord Hani’s daughter applies all her medical knowledge. But evil wins and Neferet watches her innocent patient ‘pass to the West’.

She cannot let such a ruthless murder rest until she finds out who did it.

Neferet has seen her father face the dangers of investigation in the past, but she’s determined to follow through for the chief florist of the Hidden One’s temple and to solve the mystery that turned his flowers of beauty into Flowers of Evil. Is she prepared to face the perils ahead?

Lord Hani’s family is a vibrant clan, and his daughter has never shied away from a challenge. Despite the biases and societal rules of ancient Egypt, she has studied healing and medicine in the pursuit of helping people, especially children.

The studies were challenging enough, but after opening the doors of her practice she’s seen few patients seek her services. Neferet confides sadly to her fellow healer and partner, Bener-ib, that patients do not come to them because they do not trust two young women with their health. They vow to change people’s minds. An early-morning patient defies this bias because of desperation, bringing the suffering florist to the women’s doorstep, bleeding vociferously. There is no question this man has been murdered.

Neferet’s father is concerned about his daughter’s involvement in a murder investigation. He worries not only about the violence of a killer, but about the malice of a rival healer, and a potential confrontation with his own sworn enemy – the former chief of police, Mahu. But father and daughter are much alike, and despite Hani’s misgivings, Neferet continues on her investigation, with help from Bener-ib and their medical assistant, a youth who exhibits remarkable detective skills. When the mystery takes a diabolical turn, will Neferet muster the courage to nip the killer in the bud?

Author Holmes creates a compelling historical mystery, full of detail and curiosity.

Flowers of Evil immerses readers deeply into the historical world of Ancient Egypt. Visual descriptions give a colorful perspective in the midst of the culture and community, of the time. This story is a vivid visit to a place long since gone to the sands of history. N.L. Holmes proves herself both a professional archaeologist and an extraordinary storyteller.

This is the first book in the Hani’s Daughter Mysteries, and warmly welcomes readers back to the world and characters of the much-loved Lord Hani Mysteries series. Neferet takes the helm with an exciting and treacherous tale.

October 6, 2023