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This is a beautiful and extraordinary story of love between two male teens, Liam and Charlie, who were constantly battling prejudice, bullying, and depression. This is an eye-opener on the vulnerabilities and feelings that gay people face every day as a result of living a lifestyle that goes against mainstream society. Although the United States is mainly and generally known as a free-spirited and accepting society, unfortunately, not all people are truly tolerant. Liam was a sensitive eighteen-year-old who blamed himself for the loss of the love of his life in a tragic car accident. He was constantly bullied and was in a school environment where nobody really cared. He was just trying to survive every day, that is, until Charlie came. In Charlie he was given another chance to love and be happy. Charlie was a breath of fresh air for Liam. He was like the savior that swooped in to protect Liam from all the hate and the one person who lovingly pulled him from the year of constant emotional pain after the accident. Liam and Charlie found a love that was complete in itself, together they were strong, but the outside world in the form of bullies strongly interfered. In the end, love prevailed, and Liam and Charlie were free to finally express the love that they had for each other and share that love and happiness with loved ones and friends.
This is a story of acceptance. It showed that even God accepted them for being gay. There was nothing awkward about their love. It was heartfelt and true. And only evil seems not to see how this love was like any other true love, just like the genuine love between a man and a woman. It showed the humanness of a person, whether male or female, and how our feelings are the same.

This is an action-packed story of love for justice, for humanity, and for family. Jack Smith was an accomplished and decorated CIA commander assigned in CIA Black Operations. He is one of the most trusted operatives in the agency who could lead missions with machine-like precision with almost guaranteed success and had been assigned in many chaotic and poor societies. His love for his country and for all humanity, and his ability to lead and protect his men in missions was unwavering and without compare—that is, until he learned that the government itself is spreading diseases like AIDS in places like Africa to control people, as leverage against governments, and for profit. He gave twenty-five years of his adult life in the service of the CIA, protecting many people around the world. Now disillusioned, he sought to distance himself from the government that he had spent almost half his life taking orders from and protecting. Shanon McNally was a dedicated, beloved teacher and strong advocate for social justice. When Eliza Rosenbaum died and made Shanon executor of her very large estate, Shanon and Jack was brought together and then fell in love. Love softens most people, and Jack was no different. The robotic, nonemotional perfection crucial for his line of work that he displayed was shadowed by vulnerability when his loved ones were involved. Unfortunately, the government could not let Jack go, and Shanon and Jack’s union was marred with many violent clashes with people from Jack’s past that he was trying to get away from.
This is a story of two powerful people who can depend on each other in times of need. It is a case of the other being strong when the other is weak. Jack is Shanon’s protector, but when Jack had to be protected, Shanon did not even hesitate.

Lighthearted . . . Creative . . . Adventurous

The Power of Alsban is a fictional story telling the exciting story of Oliver Jackson and his friends as they are sucked from their quiet but carefree young life in planet Earth to Alsban—a continent-turned-planet that has been separated from Earth due to powers beyond the control of the individuals who want them.
Reading The Power of Alsban is like joining the adventure of the young friends as they, in their desperate quest to get back home, pick up even more friends along the way.
Recommended to any young reading audience, the story is told in a witty, easy, conversational-style writing and with a lighthearted tone. Great for any age, though, the book not only is thrilling to young readers but also can be a good source of entertainment for adult readers—a good companion in times of rainy days coupled with a cup of hot chocolate.
Join Oliver, Heather, Kittencane, Key, and Kaku (the chupacabra) in their journey across Aslan as they search for magic crystals and powerful staffs that happen to be their only tickets home. As the readers join the adventure, all are expected to be entertained by their new friend Shocks, and even more characters along the way.
Monsters, spirits, aliens, and other supernatural beings abound in Aslan, and the Earthlings will have to adapt—fast—if they must survive and get home in one piece.
The Power of Alsban is continued in a new chapter, “Blackstone Family Trip,” in a different book, and the adventures are expected to be more exciting as the readers have already traveled, journeyed, and fought with Oliver and his friends in the first book.
Ending with a cliff-hanger, the readers are all invited to continue the quest with the young heroes as they face each opponent—and there are a lot of them in Alsban—stronger as they draw strength, determination, wisdom, and power from each other. Though outlaws, the heroes are incredibly good at heart and are, therefore, always ready to take on new members and friends in this adventure.

Riveting . . . Haunting . . . Poignant

A series of long-buried and hard-kept secrets are uncovered as Ethan Benson decides to embark on an unknowingly dark journey to resolve an “open-and-shut” case involving the murder of the young hooker Heather Starr. A respected, world-renowned surgeon, Rufus Wellington, shocks the entire world with not only being caught red-handed in the crime and then confessing to the whole thing, even waiving the right to trial. Keeping quiet for two full years, Rufus does not speak to anyone about the incident—not even to his attorney or the police . . . That is, until—playing a game of his own—he calls for an exclusive interview with Ethan and his anchorman, Peter Sampson, and decides to tell them “everything.”
Unsuspecting, Ethan investigates and resolves to produce the interview—even when he has to dodge angry pimps, chase hookers in dark alleys, outrun stalkers in a life-and-death pursuit, and distinguish who are actually telling him the truth and who are part of the spiderweb that he has been entangled into. All this while he tries to fight his own demons eating him from inside out and tries to salvage his marriage, save his family, and get his life in order—or what’s left of it.
Live to Tape thrusts readers into a web of conspiring law enforcement officials, scared legal personnel, angry pimps and hookers, and even a scandalous nonprofit home for runaway young women—all entangled in the surgeon’s insane goose chase that eventually concludes to a series of wicked surprises buried all over the small, eerily quiet town.
One is taken into a gloomy tour of a small town unsuspectingly immersed in tight-lipped conspiracy to cover up the perversions of an overwhelmingly rich and successful and, thus, spoiled socio-psychopath.
Written by an author with abundant, jargonized journalism background, Live to Tape slowly but purposefully tells a murder story from an outsider’s—no, a stranger’s initially clueless but well developed perspective. The book will not only keep you flipping through the pages but also keep you deducing your own answers and judgments. Just as Benson must decide at every turn, a reader is left with his own individual choices to proceed as he is also taken for good, old mysterious ride.

This book feels drawn from personal experience and quite an eye opener on the inner workings of the Italian, specifically Sicilian, family and Mafia. It seems to contain some information that only those in the inside would know. It did include very graphic and bloody parts, but it was fascinating. It’s always a source of wonder how seemingly ordinary people leading outwardly mundane lives hide an extraordinary strength and skill and pursue shockingly violent activities. It may have helped that the main character seems to belong in the top echelon of the Mafia organization. He seems to have a lot of pull, on top of having excellent physical abilities. It also helps that the book told his story from being an innocent boy all the way to being an adult who is a contract killer. It’s like a version of the neighbor next door gone bad and mad. The surprising part is that instead of condemning him for taking part in illegal activities and killing, I came to like him, understand him, and am willing to overlook the brutal nature of his professional life. I’m having a case of hero worship. It may be different if he is real. Perhaps if he was ugly and had shown a cruel and unreasonable side, I’d have been less forgiving. The bias may also have emerged from the fact that he was dealt an injustice and payback seems inevitable, and he had to survive.
The love angle toward the end is a bit surprising but good nonetheless. It emphasized the humanness of the main character. The story of the girl in South America, for me, was a little over the top, but it added some charm to the story. And the fact they got together in the end just wraps up the story and was the happy ending that every story should have.

The story narrates the main character’s real-life experiences in New York, especially those times when she was scammed and the impact or effects it had on her several years after it happened. Not only that, the author shares her story during her employment years as a nurse. Even though she graduated summa cum laude, she was not exempted from experiencing difficult times during her career. Her struggle wasn’t easy as she also experienced losing a husband, children and close friends. It was a great loss that torn her apart but in the end made her a strong woman.

The story clearly puts into detail how the main character was scammed and how she was enlightened to avoid such scamming that could have possibly put her family’s welfare into danger. The amount that supposedly was put into scam doesn’t just involve hundreds but thousands, and every single dime of that was hard earned. The main character nearly gave away their savings and did not inform her husband about it. The story has a little suspense and thriller because the scammers were pushy and wouldn’t stop until they wouldn’t reach their goal in deceiving someone. As a reader in the story who haven’t experienced scamming that involve a big amount of cash, I would say that I learned from this book, and if I would experience such threat in my life, I would feel the same kind of trauma as what the author have felt. Reading this piece gives us ideas on finding ways to avoid people who have no good intentions to us.

The book is very impressive because the main character could still remember the time of the year as well as the events clearly in her life. It’s a no non-sense reading material and definitely not a waste of money because you can realize how other people overcome their challenges despite losing not only a single loved one but almost every member of the family.

This true-to-life story narrates the unforgettable experiences of an American veteran. During the prewar era, the navy veteran and his family were already exposed to chaos that was happening in different parts of the world thru the events they heard on the radio until such time that they themselves were all required to cooperate in the war. The author, a U.S. Navy veteran, and his brothers who were in the army and defense plant were all assigned to various places to participate in the war while his parents also took roles in helping the war effort, with his father working as an air raid warden.

The story is inspiring because as readers, we will know how heroic the veterans were during the World War II. Their struggle was real and definitely not easy. A lot of people died, and one would just be lucky to be alive during that time. We realize that people nowadays do not reflect how hard life was during the times of the war. But here, it was narrated in quick detail how the people survived with all traumatic events that were surrounding them, considering they were just receiving K rations and sometimes none at all. The main character in this true-to-life story have experienced the worst events during the battle.

As ordinary citizens, we may experience panic and fear when we hear a single gunshot, but as I read this book, gunshots and bombings are commonplace during the war. People’s life during the 1940 to 1945 were not normal at all, as narrated in the book, and you can imagine something like what would I do if this occurrences would happen today? When the American fighters defended their country and other nation’s territory, they fought the powerful fighters in the world who wouldn’t accept defeat at all. But regardless who won or surrendered in the end, Americans, Japs and all those involved had made history, which until now would never be forgotten.

I love this story. It portrays the indomitable spirit and vigor of youth. It tells of a young boy who applied for a paper route and got rejected because all the routes were taken but was given the job of selling newspapers in the streets. He went on to sell all his papers and attracted steady customers. One day he met a man who took his picture and told him it was for a chamber of commerce project. In the end the book describes the boy seeing a newly installed bronze statue in the park honoring the spirit of the youth. It was from the 1963 chamber of commerce. I wonder if the book was based on a true story. I also wonder if the boy realized that it was him.
The story portrays a boy leading an ordinary life, poor but happy. He went on to get a job, help his single-parent mom and his siblings, go swimming, play with his friends, and loiter around his community. It’s amazing how his simple existence can have so much meaning well beyond what he himself may have realized and how such a seemingly ordinary life can be a symbol of hope that can touch so many lives for posterity, such symbol of hope forever immortalized in a bronze statue.
It was also a time when mobile technology was not yet evident, so it’s nice to read about young people playing outside and having fun. A sadder observation, though, is that the family unit had started changing, with the increasing number of single-parent households, as early as 1963, but then maybe having one parent is better than two who constantly argue, traumatizing the kids. There are so many good values that can be taken from this story, and it brings us back to a time when life was simpler and, for some, better.