Relic's Reunions, Vernon Frazer, Beneath the Underground Books, 2000
Lunar Encounter, Harold W.G. Allen, Perspective Books, 2000
The Information God: The Modern Pragmatist's Guide to God, Aroutioun Agadjanian, 21st Century Information, 1999
Across African Sand: Journeys of a Witch Doctor's Son-in-Law, Phil Deutschle, Dimi Press, 2000
How to Overthrow the Government, Arianna Huffington, ReganBooks (HarperCollins), 2000
Twisted Shadows, James Schmerer, Writers Club Press, 2000
Rage Against the Veil: The Courageous Life and Death of an Islamic Dissident, Parvin Darabi and Romin P. Thomson, Prometheus Books, 1999
The Fifth Goddess, Staci Backauskas, Jai Creations, 1999
Necropolis, Xina Marie Uhl, XC Publishing, 2000
Red Reflections, Mark Moorstein, Writers Club Press, 2000
After The Rain: How the West Lost the East, Sam Vaknin, Narcissus Publications, 2000
Transformation Mother: Psychic Sex and Psychedelics, Anthony Lojac, 1st Books, 1999
Rumors of Justice, Tom Eagan, Aran Press, 2000
Lunar Encounter, Harold W.G. Allen, Perspective Books, 2000
The Information God: The Modern Pragmatist's Guide to God, Aroutioun Agadjanian, 21st Century Information, 1999
Across African Sand: Journeys of a Witch Doctor's Son-in-Law, Phil Deutschle, Dimi Press, 2000
How to Overthrow the Government, Arianna Huffington, ReganBooks (HarperCollins), 2000
Twisted Shadows, James Schmerer, Writers Club Press, 2000
Rage Against the Veil: The Courageous Life and Death of an Islamic Dissident, Parvin Darabi and Romin P. Thomson, Prometheus Books, 1999
Necropolis, Xina Marie Uhl, XC Publishing, 2000
Red Reflections, Mark Moorstein, Writers Club Press, 2000
After the Rain: How the West Lost the East, Sam Vaknin, Narcissus Publications, 2000
Transformation Mother: Psychic Sex and Psychedelics, Anthony Lojac, 1st Books, 1999
Set in the late 21st century, two geologists on a routine exploration trip on the moon suddenly disappear. An intensive search yields nothing, until, by chance, a secret passage is found under the surface. It leads to a base used by a group of humanoid aliens called Matusians, where the two geologists are safe and sound. The Matusians have been watching Earth for many years, but their existence must remain a secret until their starship arrives in about 30 years. Until then, their moon base is defenseless against any earth dictator with missiles who feel that the Matusians must be destroyed, because they threaten the status quo.
The secret doesn't stay secret for long, and the Matusians are forced to reveal themselves to the people of Earth. The keepers of the status quo, including the American president, don't take this lying down. A plan is hatched whereby two nuclear bombs are secretly transported to the moon. One is placed outside the entrance to the Matusian base, and the other is hidden inside Earth's lunar base. The idea is to make it look like the Matusians attacked and destroyed the Earth base, they were destroyed when Earth attacked them in retaliation.
The author has some unique theories on various subjects, which he explores via a science fiction novel. Among other things, he talks about a one-world government, religion, evolution and cosmology (he asserts that the Big Bang Theory of universe creation is wrong). Read this book for the theories, not for the quality of the fiction.
The author presents a really different view of God and how to connect with Him in this modern, information age.
What he calls God is a global field of information and energy that covers the entire Earth, and includes all living things. At death, a person's soul is released into this global field, perhaps to show up in another body elsewhere. God has always existed, and was personified into what present-day people know as God by early humans.
Agadjanian looks at how to connect with God through flowers, music and dancing, family celebrations, movies, and even through war.
All human organisms are in a state of constant exchange of energy and information between themselves and this global field. Illness is caused by an abnormal exchange of information between the individual and everyone else. Flowers are brought to the sick because they are a natural amplifier of signals of the Global Field. Drinking a cup of coffee, for instance, temporarily connects the drinker with millions of others worldwide also drinking coffee at that moment to participate in a global information-energy meditation. Everyone watching an athletic competition becomes a collective mind thinking constantly about needed improvments in the genes of new humans to make them more capable of competing in sports. God, therefore, can put some informational improvements in the souls of new human beings. Hollywood is part of the most powerful religious tools ever created; the religion of common sense and positive emotions. This is the most important way that God disseminates "right" American culture and values throughout the world.
Some say that this is a very un-spiritual world. The author says exactly the opposite; that mankind has never been as spiritual as now.
This is a very thought-provoking book. I'm not sure that I agree with any of it, but for a very different view of the world, check this out.
This is the self-written story of an American expatriate spending five years as a teacher in the southern African country of Botswana. Being a rather restless type who can't stay in one place for very long, Phil spends a school vacation bicycling across the Kalahari and Namib deserts, a distance of almost 3000 miles, mostly through soft sand and mud.
The tale of his journey is interspersed with flashbacks of his life in Botswana. There is a big difference between official, and actual, equality between blacks and whites. Some teachers prefer to use the physical violence method of teaching, where beatings occur for almost any reason, while other teachers would rather spend their time propositioning female students. As the only white person around, it took a while for Phil to be accepted by the villagers; he later falls in love with, and marries, the daughter of the local witch doctor.
While on the journey, Phil has all sorts of adventures. He almost gets trampled by a herd of elephants, he is stalked by lions, and he is nearly eaten alive by mites, ticks and other flying creatures, He also meets a black mamba snake that prefers privacy, while riding or pushing a 90-pound bike through days where the temperature gets well over 100 degrees.
For those of us who would rather read about such an adventure than actually do it, this book is well worth reading. It talks about a part of the world unknown to most Westerners, it's heartfelt, and quite well done.
A former member in good standing of the Washington Conservative Power Structure, Huffington has written a scathing indictment of the current state of politics in America.
During the 1992 run for Congress of her ex-husband, Michael Huffington, she saw what Michael Harrington called "The Other America", the poverty, the homeless shelters, the lack of health care, in Santa Barbara, California, one of the richest counties in America. During his 1994 US Senate Campaign, Huffington was exposed to the current state of political campaigns; so dominated by pollsters and consultants that for a politician to speak the truth is practically the kiss of death.
The political landscape is so full of deceit and outright lying by our elected leaders, that it's no wonder that people are streaming to the exits to get out of the political process, with those same politicians holding the doors open. Under our current campaign finance system, politicians are not just influenced, they are owned and controlled, by corporate lobbysist and big campaign conrtributors. The phramaceutical industry has been one of the major contributors behind the recent anti-drug messages aimed at America's youth, while, at the same time, proclaiming that drugs like Prozac or Ritalin are the answer for any child who is less than emotionally perfect. Political campaigns have become sewers where anything and everything about an opponent is fair game. Even "positive" ads usually have large amounts of manipulation and/or outright falsehood.
Well done, Ms Huffington! This book also includes a chapter on how to restore real democracy in America. This one is highly recommended.
Lou Parker, retired New York police detective, lives in Florida and spends his days on his boat, drinking beer and pretending to fish. One day, he receives word that Sean, his son and a fellow member of the NYPD, has been killed. Even though Lou wasn't exactly a model father, he is on the next plane to New York, forcing himself into the investigation.
The trouble is, there isn't any official investigation. Normally, cops will stop at nothing to find a cop killer. But, accusations that Sean was involved in drug dealing and had a Swiss bank account with many zeros in it serve to cool any official desire to solve the case. So Lou investigates on his own.
He runs into Chris Preston, Sean's former partner and former lover. She is young enough to be Lou's daughter. Their relationship can best be described as volatile; when they aren't ready to explode in each other's faces, they manage to fall in love with each other. A couple of attempts on their lives show that they're closing in on the killer.
I really enjoyed this novel. The settings and atmosphere are very realistic, and the author certainly knows his way around police procedures. Ed McBain, look behind you!
In February of 1994, a woman committed suicide by setting herself on fire in a public square in Teheran, the capital of Iran. This wasn't your average woman, this was Dr. Homa Darabi, one of Iran's most popular child psychiatrists and a lifelong advocate for civil rights. Darabi's sister, Parvin, tells her story.
Seemingly born a dissident, Darabi became a student activist in the politically volatile days under the Shah, while earning her medical degree. She did her medical residency in the United States, eventually getting her license to practice in 49 states. While Parvin emigrated to America in 1964, Homa was always drawn back to Iran. At that time, people thought that Ayatollah Khomeini would return from exile in France, remove the Shah from power, then hand power over to a democratically-elected government. Besides, anything was better than the Shah and SAVAK, his secret police. They were wrong.
Khomeini reimposed harsh Islamic law on women. The most well-known law mandated that women cover everything but their faces and hands in public. Also, a man can divorce his wife without telling her. A woman cannot work, travel or go to college without her husband's permission. Beatings, jailings and executions of women and young girls in the name of God were commonplace.
Homa was fired from her much-loved teaching position at Teheran University and forced to close her private practice because her dress was not sufficiently Islamic. With seemingly no purpose in life, Homa became more and more depressed. Parvin tried, several times, to get Homa on a plane to America, but Mohsen, Homa's husband, was, at best, apathetic to her plight.
This book is very impressive. It tells the story of one woman's life in Iran, instead of trying to sound like a sociological treatise. Written in an honest and forthright manner, it is Highly Recommended.Top of Page
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The Fifth Goddess, Staci Backauskas, Jai Creations, 1999
Rena Sutcliffe is your average young woman living alone and working in the advertising industry in present-day New York City. It's not exactly a good, high-paying job; it's more like a comfortable job for Rena. She spends her nights alone and in front of the TV eating delivered Chinese food. Rena doesn't go out at night because she has a severe weight problem. She joins a self-help group at a local church, and it actually helps for a while. Losing enough weight to need a new wardrobe, Rena is made leader of the group. A run-in with another member, also with a severe weight problem, causes her to leave the group permanently. She and Richard, her steady boyfriend, break up, and she drifts from one illicit relationship to another.
Rena gets up the courage to accept a better paying job at another agency, with increased responsibility. She gets quite an education in the politics of the advertising industry. Her new agency sends her to Las Vegas for six months to get a new branch office off the ground. Slowly, but surely, she moves up the corporate ladder to the point where her income hits six figures. One day, she is offered a chance to live, and work, on a New Jersey horse farm. What does Rena do?
This might seem like a female "Bright Lights, Big City" except that Rena doesn't know that she has four of the most famous goddesses of antiquity living in her head. Erishkigal, the Sumerian Goddess of the Underworld; Inanna, the Sumerian Goddess of Wisdom; Kuan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Compassion, and Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Destruction talk among themselves, quite irreverently, and control Rena's every move, pushing her in the direction they think is best for her.
This works really well as a novel of contemporary New York City. It also works quite well as a goddess, or spirituality, story.
This fantasy story takes place in the desert land of Eretria, which has just finished a war with Cyra, its neighbor. The uneasy truce is to be solidified by an exchange of official hostages. The hostage going to Eretria, a young priest named Dru, never reaches the Eretrian palace. Instead, he is imprisoned and severely beaten. He is saved by another of the inmates, an ex-Eretrian councilman named Gilas. Being able to leave the prison at any time with the help of sorcery, Gilas gives Dru to Conyr, a war veteran and prison guard. Gilas tells Conyr that it would really be in Conyr's best interests to nurse Dru back to health.
With unintended help from Jesra, owner of a local wine shop, who Conyr has had his eye on for some time, and her daughter, Val, Conyr nurses Dru back to health. Dru's official absence causes much political concern. Various factions who would like the truce to completely collapse send assassins, both human and non-human, to take care of Dru, once and for all. As Dru begins to regain his memory, which is why he went missing in the first place, it becomes clear that the answer to everything lies in an ancient, underground part of the city, the sort of place no one visits willingly, a place that verymuch lives up to its name of Necropolis.
I really liked this story. It may be a little on the "quiet" side, but this is still a strong, well done, you-won't-go-wrong sort of novel.
Michael Berenson is a lawyer in present-day Virginia. He had a legal battle with a Russian defector named Alexei Ribakov. A body is found that may or may not be Ribakov's, and, finding, incriminating evidence in Berenson's private plane, the FBI is very interested.
Mike tells the story, in flashabck, how, at a lawyer's conference in Moscow, he met a beautiful young translator named Anna Severova. They immediately fall for each other. Later, Anna comes to the US on a fellowship. Trouble is, she's married to Peter Belarsky, who spends his time belittling Anna, when he isn't getting drunk. Anna and Michael see each other whenever they can.
Questions begin to be raised as to whether or not Anna really is a student on a fellowship and in love with Michael, or if she really works for the Russian Federal Security Bureau, the descendant of the KGB. Several different people tell Mike that they are the good guy, and everyone else would just as soon see him dead; each of their stories has enough holes to make Mike wonder who to believe.
Underlying all of this is the accusation that Ribakov may have been selling high-tech optical equipment, from a Russian camera factory, to Iraq, Iran, North Korea or anyone with the money.
Moorstein does an excellent job all around. It's a good love story, it's a very good spy story that will keep the reader guessing until the end, and the author does a fine job at getting inside the Russian psyche. It is well worth reading.
This is a series of short essays, written and published over the last few years, on the politics and economics of present-day Central and Eastern Europe. More specifically, it is about the breakup of Yugoslavia, written from the perspective of someone who has spent the last several years living in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Therefore, the author has seen a lot of things from the "inside" (a very rare perspective here in the West).
When politicians and government agencies in the West are accused of corruption or gross stupidity, no one bats an eyelash. When the same thing happens in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the offenders are subject to heaps of scorn, diatribes and/or sanctions. The West firmly believed that if the communist hierarchy was removed in Eastern Europe, millions of common people would embrace capitalism like a long-lost relative. It was up to the West to provide the opportunity. The West didn't realize that communism was a mutual undertaking, a decdes long symbiotic relationship between all parts of society. "Post-communist societies are sick and their institutions are a travesty." Privatization, the selling of state assets to private companies to encourage capitalism, is little more than a "spastic orgy of legalized robbery of state assets" where millions lost their jobs while a few people became rich. Large amounts of foreign aid, intended to help the suffering people of Kosovo, ended up in markets, white and black, all over the region, still carrying the stamps of their donors. Un forces have been known to require bribes to let goods into Serbia. A system of winks and nods, plus lots of palm greasing, came into existence between the multilateral institutions and the "ruling mob families that pass for regimes in these parts of the planet."
Some knowledge of present-day European politics and economics (more than comes from watching the TV evening news) would help in reading this book. Otherwise, this is a very good and very well-written group of essays from an extremely needed perspective, here in the West. This one is well worth reading.
A man named Genetic Freeman engages in a multi-year quest to bring his girlfriend, Allison, back from the dead. He believes that they are destined to be together, and he also has faith in his ability to do this, whatever the cost. He enters worlds that could best be described as part Hieronymus Bosch, part Salvador Dali and part acid drug trip (with a little reality included).
This book is very much Not for the faint of heart; it will also take some effort on the part of the reader. For those who like their fiction really strange and mind-blowing, this novel is worth serious consideration. I enjoyed it.