Reviews
Trolling for Murder (A Vashon Island Mystery)
Charlotte Stuart (Colvos Publishing)
In Charlotte Stuart's Trolling for Murder, workplace investigator Lavender “Lew” Lewis discovers the body of Quin Armstrong at the base of Vashon Island's iconic Bird King Troll sculpture, a note declaring him “no friend of nature” taped to the wooden giant's pointing finger. When high school teacher Audrey Young becomes the prime suspect due to volatile confrontations about bullying, Lew digs into the victim's extensive list of enemies—from feuding neighbors to scorned developers—only to uncover that the killing resulted from decades of suppre...
The Matriarch Mission
Maxime Trencavel (Tail of the Bird Books)
Maxime Trencavel’s The Matriarch Mission opens in 1913 Crimea, where thirteen-year-old Oksana Mangupli, a bookish Krymchak girl, follows her dying grandmother into a mystical cavern and encounters Asherah, an ancient divine feminine force. This meeting launches Oksana into a decades-spanning saga weaving through the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik terror, and World War II, as she follows her destiny as a woman of the “bump”—a genetic marker linking her to a matriarchal lineage tasked with finding the legendary “black object” and the blue light of...
The Long Run to Love
Florenz Dombey (Self Published)
Florenz Dombey’s The Long Run to Love is the sixth installment of The Willow Chronicles, an expansive historical romance spanning 1963 to 1969, set against the turbulent backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and Seattle’s maritime culture. The novel follows Willow “Billie” Benton, a tall, fiercely independent shipping magnate who built the container empire Pinctada Holdings, and Sidai “Sid” Ackroyd, a brilliant six-foot-tall Maasai economist appointed to an endowed chair at the University of Washington. Their chance meeting at the Olympic Hotel...
Second Term
J.M. Adams (Oceanview Publishing)
Second Term by J.M. Adams is a propulsive political thriller that links two explosive timelines: the catastrophic 2012 Benghazi attack and a dystopian January 2029, where outgoing President Terrance Locke refuses to concede defeat and orchestrates a second, far deadlier Capitol insurrection to retain power. The narrative follows Cora Walker, a decorated covert operative code-named “Bronco” who survived Benghazi only to find herself battling domestic terrorism as Press Secretary for Speaker Sarah Vasquez. As Locke’s “Keep the Peace March” devolv...
Winning with AI Personalization: The Privacy-First Playbook for E-Commerce Growth
Brian V. Anderson (Entrepreneur Books)
In Winning with AI Personalization, Nacelle CEO Brian V. Anderson delivers a ruthless diagnosis of why e-commerce personalization has failed for two decades: brands are trying to apply one-to-one retention strategies to anonymous acquisition traffic. The “personalization paradox” is real—software utilization remains abysmal because marketers cannot identify the vast majority of visitors, and Apple’s privacy earthquake has shrunk tracking windows to seven days. Anderson’s contrarian thesis offers salvation through a Three-Stage Personalization F...
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One Venture, Ten MBAs: A Warrior Guide to Building Startups
Ksenia Yudina (Entrepreneur Books)
Ksenia Yudina’s One Venture, Ten MBAs chronicles her breathtaking journey from a Russian immigrant with $200,000 in student debt to the founder of UNest, a family-fintech platform she bootstrapped and scaled to a $120 million valuation, only to lose it in a devastating hostile takeover during the 2023 banking crisis. Structured as ten “mini-MBAs,” each chapter distills a brutal truth about startup survival (from execution, fundraising, hiring, pivoting, M&A, to venture debt) into tactical wisdom that elite business schools fail to teach. Yu...
Starting Startups: Integrate People, Product, and Position for Success
Douglas Y. Park (Advantage Books)
In Starting Startups, Douglas Y. Park delivers a masterclass in entrepreneurial execution, dismantling the myth that brilliant ideas alone guarantee success. Backed by decades as a Stanford advisor, PhD sociologist, and securities lawyer, Park pioneers the idea that sustainable ventures require three load-bearing pillars: People, Product, and Position, which he calls the “3Ps.” He presents a framework that posits that startup failure often originates not from bad luck but from systemic misalignment among these elements. Park contends that execu...
The Next Marketing: From Molecule to Mindset
Harshit Jain (Entrepreneur Books)
In an era where Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) are suffocating under an avalanche of data, Dr. Harshit Jain’s The Next Marketing: From Molecule to Mindset delivers a radical prescription: stop shouting and start nudging. Challenging the status quo of pharmaceutical marketing—which often adds to the cognitive “sludge” burdening physicians—Jain presents a compelling thesis rooted in behavioral science. Drawing on the work of Thaler and Sunstein, he argues that true engagement comes not from volume, but from precision. By understanding the dual-p...
Bait - A Harper Jones Novel
Jeffrey Butler (Self)
In Jeffrey Butler's relentless thriller Bait, Detective Harper Jones of Wolf Hollow, North Carolina, hunts a car bomber when the ghosts of his past as a black-ops soldier come calling. Ten years ago, a mission to eliminate a Corsican arms dealer ended in disaster, leaving Harper believing his teammate and lover Josie was dead. Now, a vengeful crime syndicate, the mysterious Rosanera, has targeted Harper and his family, delivering a severed pig’s head as a warning and shooting his partner, Mary Lou. When Harper discovers Josie is alive, imprison...
Sustaining the Mission: Building a Billion-Dollar Nonprofit Network by Rewriting the Rules of Partnership
Ryan Dewey Smith (Forbes Books)
Ryan Dewey Smith’s Sustaining the Mission is a hybrid memoir and business manifesto chronicling the creation of Inperium, Inc.—a pioneering “constellation” of affiliated nonprofits designed to rescue struggling mission-driven organizations while preserving their distinct identities. This book showcases the wisdom of thirty years in intellectual and developmental disability services. Smith argues that nonprofits typically collapse not from a lack of passion but from operational and financial challenges. The book follows the growth of Inperium fr...