Bibliophile Support Group

Wayback is an adult Christian fiction sci-fi novel by the first time author Sam Batterman. (ISBN: 978-1-933204-87-1, VMI Publishers, 2009, $14.99) It all begins with the discovery of a strange and super-powerful futuristic weapon that has been hidden since the fall of Hitler and his Nazis. He had a horrific plan to use it's abilities to transport its user to any time period in the past. Now, a group of handpicked scientists, adventurers, and geniuses have been recruited to put this machine to use as a tool for understanding the true age and history of the world. What they find and the time period they enter proves to be dangerous and eye-opening for science, so-called established facts, and religions. So, in Wayback the machine takes this group to the time of the Flood and Noah's arc in biblical times. I'm not a big fan of biblical fiction, but for those of you who are interested... The writing is of a pretty high level. I felt that Sam Batterman wrote with lovely imagery...

Runaway is the third and final book in the Airhead YA trilogy by Meg Cabot. Here I am sounding like a broken record again - but please, please, PLEASE do not read the review of this book if you haven't yet read Airhead and Being Nikki - it will have all sorts of spoilers for the uninitiated! Anyway, Runaway starts shortly after Being Nikki left off - the recently-revealed-psycho Brandon has Em held hostage, basically, because he has threatened to tell his father, president of Stark Enterprises, where the real Nikki is (and that she's alive in another girl's body) if Em doesn't go along with his crazy plan to get whatever info Nikki has that made her killable in order to take down his father (because he doesn't like him anymore than Em does). Oh, yeah, and his oh-so-great plan to force Em to pretend to be his girlfriend. Doesn't get more insane than that. Especially for a guy as dumb as Brandon. From there, some pretty darn exciting stuff starts happening. St...

The Missionary is an adult fiction novel, co-written by William Carmichael and David Lambert. (ISBN: 978-0-8024-5569-7, Moody Publishers, 2009, $13.99) American missionary David, his wife Christie, and four-year-old boy Davy are living in Caracas, Venezuela, helping to rescue homeless, sick, and starving orphans on the streets - of which there are many. The only problem is that David begins to find his work to be almost pointless - for every child they take in at Hope Village, there are dozens more still out there. He desperately wants to do more. And when an opportunity presents itself, David finds himself participating in a dangerous attempt to change the Venezuelan government - an attempt that puts his life, as well as his wife's and son's, at risk and causes him to become an international fugitive. So, I thought the premise sounded pretty good - and it is. Plus, the cover is nice and eye-catching. There's a slow build in momentum, and the action does pick up. At times ...

The Crimson Thread is a retelling of Rumplestiltskin, written by Suzanne Weyn, in the Once Upon a Time series published by Simon Pulse. I personally love this series. I’m behind a few, but I absolutely adore retold fairy tales. I still have fun watching old Disney movies. I just love the whole fairy-tale genre, to tell you the truth. From the sweeter and romantic to the darker and magical, to all variations in between. Honestly. Lol. Anyway, my favorites in the Once Upon a Time series are The Storyteller’s Daughter (Cameron Dokey), Snow (Tracy Lynn), and The Rose Bride (Nancy Holder) – but I love them all in varying degrees. The Crimson Thread takes the tale of Rumplestiltskin (one of the creepier stories for me as a kid, I’d say) and twists it into a story of an Irish immigrant family in New York in 1880. The main character’s name is Bridget (though so not to confuse you if you read the back of the book, she changes her name to the more Americanized Bertie) and her family realizes b...

NOTE: For some reason the cover of Golden Girl is flipping out (just like the cover of Emperor Dad ), please click one of the links at the bottom of the post to see a pic of the cover as it is supposed to look. Golden Girl is yet another novel from Henry Melton, an author I’m beginning to think should be on a lot more bibliophile bookshelves! The synopsis of this YA sci-fi novel is thus: Debra is just another teenage girl with a bit of a rebellious streak towards her not-quite-sure-how-to-be-a-dad dad, when she’s suddenly torn from her bed and told she’s in the future. Not exactly the best wake-up call, right? Well, things don’t turn up from there. Her lab-suited abductors quickly tell her that things are pretty bad in the future and it all comes down to a huge asteroid impact, which they believe she can prevent by making only a few small changes to her present day (ya know, the one they tore her from before she had changed out of her nightgown). Just as Debra is convinced of most,...