August 2026 Book Reviews, Booklandia Commentary, And A Look Forward
August 2026 opened with devastation, losing my cat of nearly 20 years just hours before the calendar rolled over into August, and ended with a lot of fun - Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando, where my wife does an annual birthday trip for the first couple of weeks of the event and I generally come down from our home in Jacksonville on the weekends while working during the week. This year is really cool being an anniversary year, and we were able to do the Premium Scream Night for the first time, which was really fun - next to no one in the park and "free" food and drink. (For this event, you pay quite a bit more than a normal HHN ticket, so the more accurate term is "included". But we got to eat quite a bit of food and at least now know where we want to continue to spend our money through the rest of the event. :D)
Along the way, I managed to read an additional 18 books, bringing me to 129 on the year. Some were excellent, others were a bit of a letdown. Below, you can see which were which.
I also wrote a couple of commentary pieces as well as copied a post to this site that I still fear will eventually be taken down from its original home, and in the interests of free speech and maintaining an important - and dissident - voice, I chose to ensure that it would survive at least somewhere online so long as I remain capable of hosting a site myself. I even made a few changes to said site, the most prominent of which is a new "What I''m Reading" section along the right side in desktop mode, though I do need to work it a bit better for mobile at some point in the near future.
And now, on to the book reviews...
The Book Reviews
Blog Tour: Everything We Found by Kerry Lonsdale
For this blog tour, we're looking at an excellent and exciting conclusion to a series readers thought for nearly a decade had already concluded. For this blog tour, we're looking at Everything We Found by Kerry Lonsdale.
First, the review I posted to the book sites (BookBub.com BookHype.com /
Book Review: On The Mark by Florence Hazrat
Misses The Mark. This is a book that should have been completely objective. It should have been completely neutral on all things politics. It would have been an easy five stars and utterly useful for everyone had it been.
Instead, Hazrat chooses to infuse her personal politics into the story in several areas from the historical (including discussions of Shakespeare, the Bronte Sisters, Whitman, and the "correct" (according to her view) interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which gets a rather large amount of vitriol dedicated specifically to what she views as recent Supreme Court errors here) to the modern (praising a pregnant "man" emoji while proclaiming that precision matters... except when it comes to biological sex, apparently, while also going on an anti-AI diatribe a bit later). Now, these are certainly areas where if you agree with Hazrat's politics, you're going to appreciate these sections a lot more than someone who doesn't. But here's the problem: By including them *at all*, Hazrat calls into question every bit of the rest of her discussion here and even her professionalism and scholarship generally. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant. Causing such damage to what should be an instructive and informative book for everyone, no matter their views, is the massive flaw of this book - where it "misses the mark" and the source of the star deduction.
Book Review: Destination Funeral by Paige Harbison
Fun Spin On Time Loop Concept. Time loops have been done by a lot of storytellers in a lot of ways, but here Harbison presents a version of one I'd never seen before - a women's fiction tale set on the weekend of a funeral. I am intrigued.
Book Review: Captive Consumers by Chin Jou
Academic (ie, Extremist Leftist) Slant Mars Needed Revelations. This is one of those books that with a more balanced approach could have been a clarion call about an issue that few (particularly those "in power" or among the more general, non-incarcerated, population) will ever really consider in depth or even really at all. Documentation is among the best I've seen in a while, clocking in at 38% of the overall text, while at least some is clearly cherry picked. Still, at least a version of data and evidence is there, and given the rather explosive claims at times within this text, the Sagan Standard is absolutely applicable and at least in volume clearly covered.
Book Review: Beyond Biology by Jason Martens
Solid Introduction To Cultural Studies Marred By Dearth Of Bibliography. If you think that something "has" to be some way because of "biology"... Martens here is most like
Book Review: Against Convenience by Gabe Bullard
It Has Been A While Since I've Seen Someone Actively Praise Luddites. Until Now. Seriously, the title of this review pretty well sums up most of what you need to know about this book... that you could likely have figured out the gist of just from the title, subtitle, and description - at least as they exist roughly a month or so before publication, as I write this review.
Even from a - wildly - "left of center" (at least in US politics) approach, this book actually does a rather remarkable job of being a polemic without feeling like one. It is absolutely a polemic in that the entire purpose of this *really* extended essay is to specifically attack what Bullard calls "conveniences" but are more accurately "technology companies making decisions and becoming too popular to easily find another alternative". But it is also a polemic that openly questions even itself at times.
Book Review: The Magic We Made by Meg Cabot
Fun Mystery/ Romance Blend. This is a book that could take a bit of an adventurous reader, but for those readers who do enjoy it... you're *really* going to enjoy it. Yet again we have a romance where the couple such that once they're together, they - shock, gasp! - *actually enjoy being together*. Before marriage. So for those that have a problem with the last two words before this sentence... maybe not the book for you. Spice level is north of warm glass of milk but south of jalapeno, really.
Book Review: Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar
Myopic At Best Polemic. This is a book that starts with a personal preference premise - that cars are evil and parking is ruining urban cores - and proceeds to write a 200+ page book covering what could more rightly be a flyer.
It raises some interesting points here and there, enough for those willing to endure an hours long struggle session that is effectively laying your head on an anvil and allowing the blacksmith to hammer on your head repeatedly to learn the same maybe half dozen points over and over and over... and over and over and over... and over and over and over.
Book Review: The Women In White by Sarah Pekkanen
(Thankfully) Not For "Second Screen" Readers. This is one of those books with a lot of moving parts, a lot of understatement... and a lot of terror, just below the surface. If you're not actively engaged with this text, you're going to miss quite a bit of what is going on here, because while there is in fact quite a bit right there on the surface, perhaps the *most* disturbing aspects - and the other aspects that make it all work in rather excellent fashion - are the things just "off" the text. Blatantly clear and obvious to anyone actively engaged with the text, but also rather easily missed for those engaged in other activities and simply "reading" this book while doing half a dozen other things, just because "everyone" else is.
Book Review: The English Bookstore In Bologna by Boo Walker
Quite Possibly Walker At His Absolute Best. I've been reading Walker's books for a few years now, and they've pretty consistently been rather amazing. Truly.
This one, even with its perhaps a touch disjointed start (though well within established norms of many different versions of multi-character tales such as this), is quite likely his best to date - which is saying much, given how powerful his earlier stories were as well.
Book Review: Arbitrary Lines by M. Nolan Gray
More Comprehensive Than Some Yet Still Misses Key Elements. I read this book on my morning walks immediately following finishing Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar (about mandatory parking requirements in the US and featuring heavy discussions of some things and even sources that Gray discusses more briefly here), and I'll be following this book with Killed By A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall. Clearly, I have a theme
Book Review: Toward The Light by Mila Lewis
Interesting Blend Of Mystery And Romance With Atypical Setting And Characters. This is one of those books that is officially listed as a "book 2" but that can absolutely be read as a standalone. The story here starts slow, with a lot of setting up of both our characters and the remote setting they find themselves in... because they were each explicitly seeking out such a remote locale, for reasons of their own.
Book Review: To Kill A Poet by Onwe Arinze
Revolutionary. If you've ever wondered how a revolution could actually happen in the 2020s world... this is exactly such a tale. Set in post-Arab Spring Africa, this is one of those thrillers that shows exactly how a Katniss Everdeen type revolution could happen in the real world in 12K clarity.
Book Review: Perfect Stranger by Gregg Dunnett
Solid Thriller. This is one of those mysterious road trip thrillers where things start out clearly "off"... and turn rather explosive indeed. For those new to Dunnett, this is a pretty solid introduction, as it really does show off everything you really need to know - and that I've come to deeply enjoy across several books now. (Including having The Lies, the conclusion of his Detective Erica Sands series, to read here in the coming weeks before its release in just over a month!)
Book Review: Ideal Life by Evelyn Skye
Fun Tech-Based "Magical Realism" Romance. This is a really fun "magical romance"... for the tech crowd - be they professionals (as our primary characters here) or "simply" enthusiasts. Set in Silicon Valley and its startup culture, this is one that takes a rather interesting spin on the "do over" idea and really uses it to examine a lot of deep questions and issues... while never actually feeling like it is diving so deep as to be a more philosophy tome ala say Atlas Shrugged. (Which is an awesome story itself, but also explicitly has an 80 page *actual philosophy tome* buried within its story.)
Book Review: Hand Of The Nazarene by Randy Moon
Solid Thriller Will Make You Think - And Has Interesting Real-World Implications. This is a book that takes a passage that I literally preached my first (and so far only) "official" sermon on - John 8's "Woman Caught In Adultery", the famous "go and sin no more" encounter - and spins it into a modern day almost Dan Brown meets National Treasure type of tale where the action is tight, there is at least some travelling around... and a lot of shadowy figures are always *right there* lurking.
Book Review: The Forsaken Founder by Scott Greenberger
Solid Biography Of Little Known Founder. I'm not so sure that I would go so far as the title of this book in claiming that Morris is 'forsaken' in modern American history, and despite Greenberger's claims, he never really looks at the modern legacy of Morris enough to really solidify his claim in both the title and the closing words of the texts. This noted, Morris certainly doesn't get the zeitgeist or educational attention that several of the other Founders - specifically, the ones who became President but also a few others who held more central national government positions than Morris ever did ( Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, etc).
Book Review: The Everywhere Millionaire by Owen Zidar And Eric Zwick
Solid Expose That Could Have Been Better With More Balanced Treatment. First off, kudos to the authors for just how well documented this book is - roughly 27%. They build the case of their central premise well, and seemingly damn near every sentence has a footnote attached, at least at times. Yes, there are a lot of anecdotes and (brief, mostly) profiles of various people, but again - *very* well documented anecdotes and profiles.
Really the only even slight negative - enough for me to deduct a star and think it reasonably objective - is the authors' left of center viewpoints embedded in the narrative as simply axiomatic truths, including their far too common recommendations for future actions section (since all such books are seemingly required to have one) being the all-too-common Democratic/ Democratic Socialists approach of "more money" and "more regulation". This is one area where your mileage will absolutely vary based on your own political views and how well they line up with the authors', but there is also so much good, solid information here that even with these opinions baked in so heavily, they never come across as overly preachy so much as simply 'there'. Similar to a superhero story where you never get an origin or explanation, they simply exist, period, and the narrative moves on and never explains or questions said existence.
Booklandia Commentary
Gatekeepers by Sephera Geron As Originally Published In HWA Member Newsletter August 2026
Gatekeepers are a useful tool in fiction. They provide conflict and often offer the protagonist alternative ways to figure out how to reach their goals. I think about Ghostbusters when I think about Gatekeepers unless I’m thinking about that cool roller coaster at the Cedar Point gates.
In real life, though, gatekeepers are often self-proclaimed people who have decided that the rest of the world must follow their own moral code that they’ve developed from their own personal life experiences and interpretation of social and political events around them.
Oh, how I tire of the horror writer community and the gatekeeping that goes on. Perhaps things were better before we all got online, when we didn’t really know each other and our personal beliefs or our lives or our habits. We knew nothing of each other, and maybe that was a good way to be.
As someone who grew up typing novels on a manual typewriter, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the world. I was super resistant to personal computers; I thought we’d all get radiation poisoning and die, so I didn’t have a computer until 1987 when my husband bought me one to help me with my writing. I was very late getting a cell phone; I didn’t get one until 2008, because I don’t answer the phone anyway; why would I carry it around with me?
Some Thoughts On Clean Or Christian Fiction And The Necessity Of Labeling
From a guy who grew up in the Southern Baptist Convention and now swears like a drunken sailor, yet also actively reads books across a wider breadth of both genres and topics than nearly anyone
TL;DR: Labels are important, should be accurate, and should NOT detailed immediately before the story begins in eReader editions of books. “Clean” is not problematic, nor is “spicy”. “Christian” should in fact be “Christ-like”.
First up, let’s dispense with one thing: Like I said in the subtitle, I swear like a fucking drunk sailor - but as a “software engineering professional” by day, I come by it honestly. I’m not going to use it in every sentence, but I’m also not going to censor my thoughts here. I understand if you choose to leave, but I think I have a perspective you may likely miss entirely if you do. Your call, and I respect it. :) Also, this article was inspired by a discussion I saw between Bowen Greenwood and Andrew Gillsmith on Twitter/ X that also reached into Substack.
I grew up, again as I noted in the subtitle, in the Southern Baptist Church. My parents had actually gotten married at an Independent Baptist Church (that I would later be a member of myself in my early 20s), and my earliest memories of “church” were at a local Church of God before we moved to the SBC church I grew up in from roughly Kindergarten through when I left it for the Independent Baptist church I mentioned a moment ago.
The SBC church for a while had a church library, and that was actually one of the main libraries I used in that era. I was reading Josh McDowell’s Under Siege and Truth Slayers at the same time that I was reading Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books, and that would largely be the story of my reading for about 15 ish yrs. Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness/ Piercing the Darkness nearly alongside Joseph Masucci’s Code: Alpha (featuring one of the most brutal killings I ever read in fiction for *years*). Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse alongside Shanti Feldhan’s The Veritas Conflict. Bill Myers’ Eli alongside Dale Brown’s Battle Born. Tim Lehay and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series (the first three I read within 48 hrs of getting them one Christmas) alongside Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Aloysious Pendergast series.
Fishing For Books
A few days ago, Bowen Greenwood had an interesting discussion on genres - and specifically on the "Christian Fiction" genre - on Substack, itself influenced by a post from Gaius Konstantine on Twitter/X and a discussion thereon with both myself and Blake Carpenter. It was interesting, but it needed a response... except I couldn't find my angle. I knew roughly where I was going, but the overall structure was simply lacking. Very formless, even though I knew essentially where I was going.
Then, in another discussion
Digitization Is Preservation
My grandmother died in April 2013. It was, to date, the worst death I’ve experienced - the last one among my grandparents, with my grandfather (her ex-husband) dying just weeks after my birth, my other grandfather dying when I was 20 yrs old (almost 20 yrs to the day after the first grandfather here!), my step grandfather (and effectively second grandfather, as far as I ever actually experienced a second grandfather in my life) dying that summer, and my other grandmother (the wife of said step grandfather for longer than I had been alive, even accounting for her death a few years after his) dying a few years later.
As we as a (rather large - she had had over half a dozen kids, most of whom had had at least three kids each) family were going through her things in the days after her death, we found a lot of pictures. Apparently, per the files where the above image came from, something around 2,000 pictures. Including pictures without any of us, particularly in her later years - happenings in her life that she had told some of us about, but we never directly saw. Except, it turned out, that she had pictures of some of it.
And Now, A Look Forward (By Release Date)
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August 2019 (2026 Re-Release)
- Right For Me by Cindy Dorminy
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August 2026
- Promise Me Never by Liv Constantine
- Heart Of Glass by Jennifer Hillier
- Wicked Wanted Widows by Kimberly Bell, Cate Holahan, and Vanessa Lillie
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September 2026
- In This Life Or Another by Melissa Payne
- Target Down by Ryan Steck
- The Wish List Trip by Kerry Lonsdale and Orly Konig
- What Comes After Almost by Charley J.K. Rose
- Corpse Creek by Vincent Ralph
- Fear Farm by Vincent Ralph
- Failure Point by Rebecca Hodge
- Falling For Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey
- I'll Be Watching You by Allison Brennan
- The Wonder Of One by Suzanne Redfearn
- Shifta by Miles Joyner
- So It Grows by Andie Burke
- Your GLP-1 Game Plan by Heidi Skolnik
- The World Beneath Our Feet by Frank Ashwood
- Watch Her Run by Jennifer Moorhead
- The Lies by Gregg Dunnett
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October 2026
- The Last Train From Paris by Suzanne Kelman
- The Christmas Yes List by Melissa Ferguson
- When You Tell by Steena Holmes
- Why We Asky Why by Tania Lombrozo
- Break The Ice by Kristen Bailey
- Can Religion Save Democracy by Matthew Kaemingk and Shadi Hamid
- Have Yourself A Merry Little Meltdown by Sheila Roberts
- Please Enjoy Your Stay by Tara Goedjen
- The Bookshop by Andrew Pettegree
- Undersea War by Elizabeth Braw
- Until The Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould
- Appetite On Pause by Tierra Duncan
- The Best Christmas Ever by Sarah Morgan
- Tyrant Lizard Queen by Riley Black
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November 2026
- Set Your Life On Fire by Maddie Dawson
- Take My Word For It by Levar Burton
- The Cold Read by Tara Laskowski
- When They Find Me by Carter Wilson
- The Riddle Maker by Bruce Borgos
- Four-Letter Nation by Steven H. Jaffe
- The Crisis Of Biblical Authority by John H. Walton
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December 2026
- The Blue Hours by Stephanie Kryzwonos
- Meet Me At Midnight by Sophie Sullivan
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January 2027
- Age Of Security by Ruben Andersson
- An Expert Witness by Sue Black
- Take Back The Night by Heather Gudenkauf, Kaira Rouda, and Kimberly Belle
- Possessions by Carey Morewedge
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February 2027
- She Gets It From Me by Emily Bleeker
- Sub War by Bruce Jones
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March 2027
- When The Stars Answer by Harper Ross