Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Chanticleer 5 Star Book Review

THE FOREST by Miriam Verbeek – Crime Thriller, International Mystery, Organized Crime

The Forest, a slow-burning mystery and the second book in Miriam Verbeek’s Saskia van Essen series, follows a young investigator trying to unravel a mystery that sits deep in the core of a private logging organization.

Saskia, a co-owner of International Financial Services, is requested by Tania to help uncover a network of criminal activity in her family’s Australian timber business. After taking over the company as its new director, Tania doubts the legitimacy of their remarkable profits, given high expenses, severe competition, and a substantial reduction in timber production that should have made it difficult to make any substantial gains.

Wasting no time, Saskia travels to Australia, having agreed to investigate possible criminal activity while helping the timber mill restructure.

Shortly after settling in, she identifies a weak correlation between the employment of three people: Daryl in carpentry, Con in flooring, and Peta in finance. More concerning, a huge amount of data ”accidentally” gets lost immediately after her arrival, including crucial due diligence records.

Saskia’s investigation reveals a series of suspicious activities such as fake invoices and massive cash payments for unsold furniture and flooring. Furthermore, she finds that the companies making the purchases are mere shells with complex, disguised ownership. Adrenaline levels rise as her secret pursuit begins to take shape. She tries to exercise caution, but not before a ruthless figure comes after her with everything he’s got.

In The Forest, Miriam Verbeek characterizes the cruel world of organized crime.

She exposes crime syndicates’ desperation to put a legitimate face on their riches through careful money laundering.

Her prose keeps readers engaged with the developing mystery, which will change a reader’s view of cash-heavy businesses.

Among the many heroes in this book, Saskin stands out. She shows expert sleuth skills and competence despite her short stature. The problems she encounters are ones that the author has found Australian companies and society also dealing with, and she brilliantly incorporates the input of the NSW police, the Federal Police, and the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forests in fighting these financial indecencies.

This novel shows how money laundering has now moved from the simple transfer of cash into financial institutions to sophisticated systems of layered multi-business transactions.

Money laundering is a worldwide problem, and Miriam Verbeek does a great job emphasizing the need for international law enforcement cooperation. The Forest is an eye-opener for mystery readers and the business world alike.

January 29, 2024
ELODIA’S KNIFE by Robert S. Phillips – Historical Fiction, Action/Adventure, Roman Empire

Elodia is a young woman driven by dreadful circumstances to act with deadly force in the Robert S. Phillips novel Elodia’s Knife.

What Elodia hoped would be her leap away from danger instead left her surrounded by perilous threats that now threaten to consume her. Armed with her courage, determination, instincts, and a trusty knife, Elodia faces a hostile world in foreign territory.

Not all are against her though. Allies– even a friend– can be found, if Elodia can summon the bravery to listen to her feelings and own deep wishes.

Young Elodia is unhappily married to an abusive husband. But when he tries to attack her again, she strikes back and kills him.

By her own hand, she is set free from a brutal life, yet not fully liberated. Now her husband’s family pursues her, intent on revenge. Elodia must flee for her life, driven into the unknown, alone across the Danube River. She can never return, but what she finds before her is a crumbling empire on the brink of war. They view her as one of the enemy, to be conquered and enslaved. Refusing to be bound again, she keeps her knife close at hand, and her wits about her at all times.

Elodia is captured upon landing by men who blame Gothic peoples, like her, for the troubles in the Western Roman Empire of the late 4^th century CE. But among them is Caius, who sees her in a different light.

He treats her not as a prisoner, but as a person. Is his compassion genuine? As he oversees the work he orders her to complete, that’s when she first notices his smile. A small smile, and a friendly one. Will Caius become a possible ally? Even someone she could trust? Or possibly more? Elodia allows hope to churn within her. But she cannot dwell on that hope alone. She will need to foster the strength to rise out of slavery in this foreign place.

Elodia takes thrilling actions to seize the day and take control– to lead a Roman city.

Elodia’s Knife surrounds readers with a vivid and riveting time in early history.

Author Phillips shows the fascinating details of how people of those times faced the challenges of life and a complex society. He skillfully weaves the decline of the Roman Empire– a world on the brink of collapse– into the pulse of this exquisite story.

Lives and times change, but human nature is at the heart of it all. The struggles of these characters leap off the page with fervor. Readers will cheer for Elodia as she fights with hope fueling her soul and Elodia’s Knife clutched, at the ready.

January 22, 2024
REVENGE: A Bruce and Smith Thriller Book 2 by Randall Krzak – Global Thrillers, Suspense, International Crime

Randall Krzak raises the bar of the thriller genre with Revenge, the action-packed second book in the Bruce and Smith series.

Javier retires from the Army and his despised desk job at the Pentagon. He lived for the action of working in the field, so as a civilian, he tries to build an international investigative agency called The Brusch Agency. Thanks to his connections from the military, he can do exactly the work he wants, with the people he chooses.

Krzak sets up this book meticulously, building conflicts in the first several chapters. Javier needs to apply for his concealed-carry permit and private investigator’s license while finding office space for his agency, but his plans are staggered as his condo is broken into and trashed. Despite his investigation and that of law enforcement, the culprit remains a mystery.

Despite a rough night on his slashed mattress, he focuses on business, getting his permit and license. When he starts receiving a series of threatening emails, he realizes the B and E job on his condo wasn’t random, and he enlists his friends and fellow Brusch Agency investigators to uncover this threat.

Krzak masterfully uses AJ, Javier’s romantic interest, to ramp up the heat as their relationship grows, but also the tension when her life is put on the line.

AJ helps Javier as a partner, and Krzak’s smart and sexy female lead can more than hold her own. She helps Javier find the new office building, and within a day, it’s his. He begins to build his team, with AJ first on the list, but she hasn’t yet committed to giving up her gig at the CIA.

The target on Javier’s back only gets bigger as his agency grows.

The Brusch Agency gets its first overseas client and job from the DEA, while juggling the threat to Javier.

Javier’s team, including Snakes from book one in the series, The Columbia Betrayal, works to uncover the details of Islamic State terrorist trainers who worked out of Mexico. They discover that the person seeking revenge on Javier was a survivor of the Mexico attack.

As they begin work on their mission in Bermuda for the DEA, Krzak shifts his plot into high gear.

The team starts to unravel the case, putting together names in the local drug mafia and discovering where the drugs are delivered.

Krzak deftly weaves between Javier and his team’s work on two investigations. All the while, Javier is growing closer to AJ, but as much as he wants to take their relationship to the next level, he can’t until he finishes these missions and resolves the danger to his life.

This thriller draws on the precision of a retired military author to build a world of international intrigue, one well-versed in international diplomacy and foreign military aid.

Krzak uses these details to create a fascinating novel. His characters will draw readers in with their development, and commitment to keeping one another alive. Lovers of Lee Child and Tom Clancy will appreciate Krzak’s world-building, the detailed scenarios, and the daring rescues put forth by his heroic characters.

Revenge by Randall Krzak won First Place in the 2022 CIBA Global Thriller Awards for High Stakes Suspension.

January 12, 2024
A GRAVE EVERY MILE: Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail Book 1 by David Fitz-Gerald – Historical Fiction, Oregon Trail Fiction, Family Saga

Each day’s trumpet blasts the predawn quiet of the sleeping wagon train, demanding that its migrating families face what’s ahead, whether incredible scenery or mortal danger, in David Fitz-Gerald’s A Grave Every Mile.

This beautifully told story mixes adventure, survival, community, and history, all shown through the eyes of Dorcas, a feisty mother of four. She’s dreamed of hitting the trail to the storied West for so long, but much about this trip and their destination remains unknown.

Another wagon travels alongside hers. Who are they? Will they remain strangers, or become friends? Now that Dorcas stands with her family at the trail’s starting point and on the brink of changing their lives forever, a tremor of doubt surfaces about what lies ahead. Is her family strong enough to face their future? Will it be everything she and her husband hoped for? That future is 720,000 turns of the wagon wheels away, and there may be A Grave Every Mile. It all starts with that first pull by the team of oxen.

The action starts on page one when an intense fistfight breaks out amid a crowd of people stocking up their wagons.

The crowd cheers on the two combatants in a frenzy. Dorcas, however, has seen enough. Leveraging her athletic and tall physique, she moves in to break up the fight. Her boldness will have to carry her forward on the trail, as she and her family face unfamiliar challenges every day. They struggle to keep their wits and sense of humor about them through the rigors of the daily chores and travel. Even something seemingly straightforward, like crossing a river, requires skill and careful planning in 1850.

Human nature remains unpredictable. A traveling caravan becomes a community of individuals with joys, but also concerns and burdens.

Can these strangers pull together in tough times and help each other, or do they tear each other apart? Each family’s story is deeply touching. Traveling this path, the tensions and frictions within a family grow until they can’t be ignored. Further down the trail, those wounds may not be able to heal.

Children are not immune to the effects of these wild, open spaces. As with adults, previously hidden aspects of their personalities take hold.

Dorcas sees her oldest daughter’s soulful reaction to tragedy as bordering on the paranormal. Her adventurous son becomes even more daring, while her other son enthusiastically begins a newsletter as he researches and documents incidents along the way. Underlying all the travails, there is love. Sometimes that love is found when and where it is not expected. Sometimes it sparks jealousy. And so often that love is cherished. Yet, there will come a time when Dorcas is going to have to make a very difficult choice.

Climb on board and get those wheels turning to experience a journey into the frontier of 1850, described in full sensory detail.

Award-winning author David Fitz-Gerald’s fascination with this era is skillfully displayed throughout this novel. Historical insights and facts are skillfully woven into the plot, with a hint of the paranormal sparking some intrigue. His memorable characters warm the heart, excite the conscience, and will often take readers by surprise. This novel’s unique writing style is incredibly engaging, as the pages and the days on the trail eagerly turn from one to another.

January 10, 2024
FENIX And The FIREWORK FLIERS by Once Upon a Dance – Picture Books, Dancing, Animal Stories

Join Fenix the firefly for the Solstice Celebration, where the animal who most captured the Spirit of the Season will be announced! Once Upon a Dance presents another delightful tale of movement and courage in Fenix and the Firework Fliers.

While Fenix is too small to be a member of the Firework Fliers, he’s excited to cheer on his best friend Bolt who is going to be the highest point in the firework finale! His cheering inspires Bolt to do his best as a new recruit. But trouble looms when the butterflies bring Bolt’s favorite drink, nectar, despite Fenix cautioning him that it may be possible to have too much of a good thing.

As in all Once Upon a Dance books, there are suggestions for movement activities that can be done while reading!

Ballerina Konora returns to help guide readers through the literal motion of the story. These steps include simple movements like stretching up to show the sunrise, and ways to embody the different animals like snakes, frogs, and rabbits that Fenix encounters as he tries to save the Firework Fliers Finale.

Fenix shows us that even the smallest among us can make a difference.

Filled with excellent guides that will get readers up and dancing, Fenix and the Firework Fliers takes us on a dangerous adventure, watching for predators as Fenix works to save the day. An inspiring book on movement and stepping up to help your friends!

Note: Fenix’s gender is never explicitly mentioned, so it would be totally reasonable to refer to the brave firefly as she as well! The book will be available March 1, 2024!

January 8, 2024
WOMAN STRONG by Anna Casamento Arrigo – Poetry, Family & Relationships, Political Strife
Anna Casamento Arrigo’s Woman Strong showcases themes of love, heartbreak, death, disease, and political strife.

In the newly-released audio version, Casamento, with the help of her narrator Valentina Latyna, captures the essence of life and living. Latyna brings these poems to warm, sensuous life. Her accent, at once elegant and romantic, lifts the poems off the page and gives them voice.

The pearls strung into Woman Strong’s beautiful strand of poetry will stun and amaze readers. Many of them speak to the strength of women, as can be expected from the title, but many others talk about the fragile nature of life, of love, and of time.

Each poem explores a theme, some overlapping, and all of them provide the hope that we are strong enough to survive anything.

Casamento’s reminiscences of childhood show a creative mind already at work bending metaphors and figures of speech as she scrapes a knee or witnesses a transgression.

One poem stands out in particular, the three-part “Just Ice.” In part I, it discusses an old woman who is the butt of the neighborhood jokes because she doesn’t like dogs pooping in her yard. Casamento gives this invisible woman a voice and reveals her as human. As a young woman, she brought conversation and blueberry muffins.

The muffins appear again in Part II, where she talks to a veteran in the hospital, who is “between knowing and accepting.” Vincent had fought in a war seeking justice but failed to find it. Instead, he lost his limbs, and now questions justice as he calls it “Just Ice.”

In part III, she enters a church, hoping to find justice when a woman who wears a smile “between knowing and accepting” joins her. “Just Ice” kept repeating in the silence.

Casamento laments that humanity cannot exist in a world filled with just ice.

In “Exorcizing the Monster,” she tells of a day she becomes faceless, and as she writes, she exorcizes the monster, Cancer.

“Woman Strong,” explores hell and heaven separated by a fissure, where Casamento finds herself with an inescapable truth. She grows through the pain of her uncertainty, remembering her art and her passions, which become her solace.

“Clothing Drive” is about mining for memories, and “Wanted Desire” takes us to the edge of sensuality through her masterfully descriptive language.

Her title poem “Woman Strong,” as most of the poems in the collection are, is lyrical and powerful with images of strength as a mother, and the power as a lover to reveal the source of every woman’s strength: perseverance, patience, and love.

Casamento’s thoughtful words come clearly through Latyna’s heart-felt and skilled readings.

Take this collection of poems with you on your next long walk. You won’t be sorry.
January 5, 2024
I AM A PRISONER Of HOPE by Samuel Ole Lotegelauki, PhD – Contemporary Social Issues, Race Relations, Black History

Author Samuel Ole Lotegeluaki, PhD, states in the very title of this book, I Am a Prisoner of Hope. He goes on to explain why this is the case and why hope is central to our beingness.

A Maasai originally from Tanzania and one of three boys in a family with eight children, Lotegeluaki has been living in the United States for many years and has seen much good and much bad, in the country and around the world. In defiance of social inequality and bigotry, Lotegelauki maintains a strong belief in human unity, “Day and night I am reminded of the fact that we as human beings, regardless of culture, language, religion, gender, skin color or social economic status, are all under God’s huge canopy, and we are convincingly related.” He reminds us, “You may not look exactly like me, but rest assured, we are not just related, but more importantly, we are siblings.”

Lotegeluaki tells the reader his experiences, the histories of places he has lived and the people he has met, and observes what each has to teach and offer humanity. He remains dedicated to the pursuit of togetherness within diversity, no matter our differences. In Chapter Four, “Grandmother’s Quilt,” he uses the metaphor of a handmade quilt with emotional overtones and ties to explain human nature and all that it entails.

Lotegelauki goes on to investigate the history of the worldwide slave trade, how it introduced and transformed African cultures in North America, and how it has affected American society to this day.

The Civil Rights Movement was a start to heal the wounds inflicted during the slave trade years, but bad blood and racial strife have continued throughout the succeeding decades. In the following chapters, we are reminded that humanity is too complex and multi-faceted for any group of people to hold dominion over all others, “None of us can claim the absolute ownership of this global canopy.”

Nor can we simply assume that we can “make a home in some other places such as Mars or even the moon,” Lotegelauki states. Perhaps in a few years that may be possible, but until that time, we still have to deal with the world we have now, and the people we have now. “We all belong to one race, and that is the ‘human race.’ Getting along is not and should not be a choice, but rather a necessity.”

This book points to the work yet to be done towards true unity. Are we there yet? Not on your life. Are we well on our way to being better? It doesn’t hurt to keep working on it, does it? We keep trying. We are only on this earth for a short period of time, Lotegeluaki reminds us, and we need to make the best of it.

December 29, 2023
THE SOUND Of The FUTURE: The Coming Age of Voice Technology by Tobias Dengel with Karl Weber – AI Technology, Analysis & Strategy, Voice Technology, Business

The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology by Tobias Dengel with Karl Weber presents elaborate insight into the evolution of voice technology, showing it to be the next big innovation in the tech world.

Dengel begins by stating that long-distance vocal communication was unattainable for a long time, and now can seamlessly liberate humans from familiar but ‘clumsy’ tools such as keyboards, knobs, pedals, buttons, and levers. It has been well articulated by various news quarters that voice recognition is gaining a reputation and growing usage with the rise of artificial intelligence and intelligent aids, such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. This technology has for the first time allowed consumers to interact with technology simply by conversing with it, facilitating hands-free propositions, reminders, and other simple duties.

This technology is presently in a major shift, as numerous industries worldwide are incorporating it into their daily routines and procedures.

The author has proposed some of the greatest benefits of voice technology, along with reasons why it has not yet transformed the world as quickly as it could. His findings and deductions are persuasive and beautifully illustrate how business leaders can stay ahead of the game rather than scramble to catch up as voice technology uncovers its potency.

Through Dengel’s research and experience as a global leader in digital product design, readers will learn what makes voice technology phenomenal to the point that every big player in the business sector is heavily invested in it. Dengel states, “The voice is completely different from previous interface revolutions because the voice is not a technological interface but rather a human interface, one that virtually all humans on earth learn to use beginning in infancy and use naturally and intuitively every day of their lives.” These words usher in his well-founded justifications for voice as the present day’s ultimate and indispensable interface for economic pursuits.

The Sound of the Future thoroughly covers the impact of AI on humanity. It is one of the best technological compasses yet written.

This book offers practical scenarios to help readers easily understand various complex technological details. These advancements will soon impact all of human enterprise, and Dengel expertly demonstrates to the reader the need to learn and educate others about the growing dependency on AI tools. This lively book thereby becomes an indispensable companion to anyone who wishes to understand AI technology, its quest for human-level intelligence, and its ever-growing influence.

December 27, 2023
FRIENDSHIP GAMES by Mark James – Political Thrillers, Middle East, Military Thrillers

Mark James’ latest geopolitical thriller, Friendship Games, brings together a cast of characters that will keep readers glued to their seats.

James’ action-packed novel doesn’t waste a second to deliver espionage, military strategies, and defense, as an urgent question takes center stage: who is responsible for bombing the American aircraft carrier, USS George Bush, in the Persian Gulf?

We begin in Bahrain with twenty-one-year-old Khalid Husseini, a terrorist spy working at the US Naval facility in Manama. He is on his way home to prepare for a birthday night out, courtesy of his American sailor friends, when an explosion rocks the Khawr al Qulay’ah inlet between Muharraq Island and the main Island of Bahrain. Khalid takes it as the sign he’s been waiting for from his Imam, Hussein Salmeen, setting off a series of events the Imam could not stop, even as he wants to with all his being.

Meanwhile, Hector Gonzales is finishing his day at the US Navy base that Khalid just left. Gonzales, Special Warfare Operator Master Chief of Echo Squad, is celebrating a successful interdiction of a Panama-flagged Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf – whose crew could take comfort that it was the Americans, and not Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, or Al-Qaeda, or another Islamist terrorist group who apprehended their ship.

When a bomb hits the George W. Bush the tension literally explodes as Gonzales and Chief Petty Officer Buck Bradshaw assume they are under attack.

Lieutenant Commander Nigel Wood goes into action with Gonzales’s help. Wood, a British/American, Harvard and Oxford grad, Rhodes Scholar, and Navy SEAL, takes charge as commander of Alpha, Bravo, and Echo Squads of the Navy SEALS. He and Gonzales commandeer Logistics Specialist Seaman Apprentice for FSC, Thew Bryson to move much-needed supplies in the crisis. Wood sets Echo Squad on a mission to save the lives of as many survivors as they can from the bombed ship.

In Iran, Rear Admiral Hashemin Ghavam, Commander of Southern Forward Naval Headquarters at Bandar Abbas, gets news of the bombing of the George W. Bush, and is as confused as the Imam, Wood, US President Bell, Thew, and everyone else. The question of who carried out this attack dominates everyone’s minds.

Friendship Games becomes a cautionary tale of what could happen if such an attack took place amidst so much political and military tension.

James brings to life characters from the highest military officers to the lowliest grunts. He does not answer with every detail of this horrific scenario, and as the tale unravels, we meet heroes and cowards and are left to wonder how volatile our position in the Middle East might truly be.

Mark James’ Friendship Games thrusts readers into a potential nuclear confrontation between the US and Iran. This terrifying and thrilling read earns five stars!

December 22, 2023
TAX MYTHBUSTERS: Don’t Fall Prey to the Tax Misconceptions by Lily Tran – Money Management, Taxes, Essays

Tax MythBusters: Don’t Fall Prey to the Tax Misconceptions, compiled by tax professional Lily Tran with essays by other financial, tax, and accounting professionals, gives valuable insight into the myths of what can and cannot be claimed as a deduction for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This work provides tips and strategies to optimize tax planning and make the most of available deductions. As the foreword reminds the reader, “Knowledge is power when it comes to taxes,” adding that gaining a better understanding of the tax rules and regulations will allow you to “make smart financial decisions and protect yourself from unnecessary risks.”

The essays that make up this work are short, succinct, and to the point about the pitfalls and challenges that face small business owners, framing these dangers as “myths.”

Some of them are old myths disguised as new enticements, and Tran and her authors keep the reader wary about how fast money online works, the truth about influencer deductions, tax write-offs, and vehicle deductions. Knowing how these popular myths have transformed for the modern age is a must.

The more intensive essays focus on complex and misleading parts of the tax code. Highlights include understanding the rules around reporting losses on the stock market (capital losses), issues around hiring contractors over employees, and even working to understand common myths found on TikTok. There are even myths discussing even including how to deal with cryptocurrency transactions. A better understanding of this collection will help anyone with questions get started on the right track.

The essays in Tax MythBusters are both clear and comprehensive, offering knowledge that small business owners can use and understand comfortably.

This collection avoids complex equations that might put off those who are less math-oriented, instead focusing on sage advice. Staying down to earth, all the advice and warnings that these professionals impart can be taken to heart. The information provided by Lily Tran’s Tax MythBusters: Don’t Fall Prey to the Tax Misconceptions will be invaluable for those seeking tax clarity.

December 20, 2023