When it comes to books, do you feel like you’ve got everything figured out? Every book on the shelf is same old, same old. You can spot the plot twists coming from a mile away. It seems like there’s nothing original out there anymore. Fortunately, the writers below seemed to take the challenge to create something entirely original to heart. Maybe they just spun a wheel and flipped a coin. Hmm, romance and … zombies? Aliens and … linguistics? And of course the ever-popular cloning story—paired with Marilyn Monroe. Find yourself a book unlike any you’ve ever read before and prepare to expect the unexpected.

How to Talk to an Alien

Nancy Du Tertre
New Page Books
Softcover $15.99 (224pp)
978-1-63265-021-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

This discussion of ufology will help alien communicators successfully say, “Take me to your leader.”

How would extraterrestrials communicate? Would they prefer to read our minds or to learn our languages and communicate on our level? The questions that this readable book poses will fascinate ufologists and entertain others.

How to Talk to an Alien presumes the existence of not only extraterrestrials but of extraterrestrials who have already attempted to contact humans. This makes it a satisfying read if only because reports of alien contact provide a foundation. At points, skeptics may wish that the theme were more hypothetical. Several sources originate in apocryphal accounts of alien encounters and from Internet sites whose sourcing is difficult to verify, though serious ufologists would argue that the only reason these sources are questionable is that they have been suppressed.

Though the title implies a discussion of linguistics, the bulk of the book is rooted in ufology. The book never discusses options for opening a dialogue with any nonhuman—for example, methods for talking to someone whom you suspect may communicate via pheromones. If such contact were to occur, this volume would at best serve only as an overview of past reported contact.

Du Tertre scrutinizes specific reported incidents, giving the book something of a scholarly, analytical tone. However, she appears to takes pains to remain accessible, often using the first person to describe her research. The overall result is an intimate book that implies a camaraderie of ufologists who are as passionate about their field as any lab researcher. Even for nonbelievers, the author’s palpable excitement over the subject matter is endearing and entertaining.

Ufologists won’t want to miss this work. Anyone interested in aliens or alien contact will find it an interesting read worthy of discussion with fellow enthusiasts.

ANNA CALL (August 27, 2015)

Bring Me to Life

August Kert
Samhain Publishing
eBook $4.50 (172pp)
978-1-61922-990-7

Cannibalism … hmmm … not exactly romantic—hard to imagine that consuming human flesh could play a part in a love story. August Kert’s zombie zinger Bring Me to Life proves this unthinkable undertaking can be accomplished as long as the protagonists refrain from eating each other in the heat of passion.

Just like a May-December romance, this human-zombie affair dares to flaunt the primal urges and animalistic instincts then somehow points toward a happy ending on the horizon. Yet the audacity of the characters sustains this eccentric tale, lifting it from the remains of chewed-up pulp.

Lyric and Anson have a thing going on. From the moment Anson first spotted his beautiful, very-much-alive heroine, he wanted to beat the horrible disease that incapacitated him, making him dependent on his own species for sustenance. His inner man struggles to reemerge for the sake of love.

Held in captivity like prey and waiting to become the next meal, Lyric feels a magnetic pull despite the danger. “I hated his blue eyes and how he looked at me. I despised how it seemed like with one glance he could see into my soul. He watched me in a way that was foreign to me.”

JULIA ANN CHARPENTIER (August 27, 2015)

The Lizard Princess

Tod Davies
Exterminating Angel Press
Softcover $15.95 (304pp)
978-1-935259-29-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

Examining society through the lens of a fairy tale, this fantasy quest lends a hand toward making our contemporary world a little better.

Fairy tales are quite often relegated to the realm of children. And while they might make for good bedtime stories, they can equally serve as critiques of the more-difficult-to-discuss aspects of society. Tod Davies’s The Lizard Princess is the coming-of-age story of a princess on a quest to find a missing key once possessed by her mother, the late queen of Arcadia. It is also a brilliant polemic on the destructive forces of patriarchy and capitalism, and the obsession humanity has with besting death.

After finding herself transformed from the waist down into a lizard, after a game of chess gone awry, Princess Sophy sets out with her lemur companion Leef to find a way to reverse the spell. Of course, the path of fairy-tale quests never runs smoothly. In the course of her adventures, Sophy stumbles through the Dead Wood, lives in the slums of Megalopolis, and works on the perfect False Moon. She also finds the love of her life, meets her long-lost father, accepts her fate to find the missing Key, chats with Death herself, and comes into her own as the queen of Arcadia.

The Lizard Princess holds all the hallmarks of a good fairy tale—a princess on a quest, a daring hero, a curse, magical creatures, a fairy godmother (of sorts), an evil witch, talking animals—but these elements simply sit atop a deeper critique of society. Megalopolis provides a harsh look at the direction in which society is headed: a population hooked on anti-aging pills, diet pills, mood stabilizers, and drugs to suppress every quirk a child might exhibit … a society solely focused on expanding, with no appreciation for the destruction to the environment these actions cause, which has created a place that’s the perfect artificial environment but where life cannot seem to thrive. It is set up in direct opposition to Arcadia. Patriarchy versus matriarchy, industrial farming against organic, a desire to conquer death and an understanding that death and life go hand in hand.

The story is never heavy-handed and offers no easy answers. It is fairy tales such as this that may allow us to examine our own world with a critical eye and perhaps even change it for the better.

ALLYCE AMIDON (August 27, 2015)

The Ambassador

Yehuda Avner
Matt Rees
The Toby Press
Hardcover $29.95 (339pp)
978-1-59264-388-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

An intelligent, fact-paced historical novel moves up the formation of Israel by ten years and reimagines Jewish-Nazi diplomacy during WWII.

Israeli diplomat Yehuda Avner and journalist Matt Rees join forces in a gripping political thriller that reimagines Israel’s creation and, by extension, the world around it. Theirs is an intelligently constructed and immersive novel that explores the far-reaching implications of diplomacy.

What if Israel had come into being in time to save Europe’s Jews? This question is at the center of The Ambassador, whose title character, Dan Lavi, is selected by David Ben-Gurion to represent nascent Israel’s interests in Germany. He arrives in 1938, just ahead of kristallnacht and the implementation of the Final Solution, and is compelled to work closely with figures like Adolf Eichmann to speed the emigration of Germany’s Jews to the Jewish state.

The genius of Avner and Rees’s book lies in how little they change: though Lavi is an imagined character, the world of The Ambassador hinges upon one different UN decision, one “yes” in place of a historical “no.” Israel begins in 1938 instead of 1948. Jews are afforded a national advocate. A late twist involving Churchill, Roosevelt, and Ben-Gurion adds one more element of change, and the reader is reminded of the astounding human costs that follow strategic wartime decisions.

Lavi is a sympathetic and complex character, one who works diplomatically with the leaders of the Reich, despite their open disdain for his heritage and his nation. He strikes a tortured balance between duty to his country and his people and the tugs of conscience that accompany all brushes with overt evil. His wife, Anna, and a gruff Mossad agent become the perturbed “good” angels on his shoulder, constantly voicing dissent over the choices he must make—and at what expense?

A fast pace and intelligent dialogue make the novel continually consumable, even as its philosophical and aesthetic questions percolate. The addition of a brilliant German-Jewish musician, whose genius almost reaches the souls of lead Nazis, pushes questions around the character of culture to the fore. A thrilling conclusion is satisfying at a narrative level, and readers are left with much to ponder.

MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (August 27, 2015)

Witches Protection Program

Michael Phillip Cash
Chelshire Inc.
Softcover $12.99 (238pp)
978-1-5114-1134-9
Buy: Amazon

With elements of romance, action, crime, and fantasy, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy.

Badges and broomsticks collide in Witches Protection Program, a fast-paced, lighthearted piece of crime fiction with a supernatural twist from screenwriter and novelist Michael Phillip Cash.

Reprimanded and reassigned after a particularly disastrous case failure, Agent Wesley Rockville has serious doubts about his new orders. The Witches Protection Program, an undercover, black ops extension of the police force is so secret that even Wes isn’t really sure it exists, but in no time he is trading in his Glock and cuffs for a Steampunk Vaporizer, curious green liquid, mirror, and duct tape, all much more effective for dealing with witches, or so he is told.

With a new partner and a lot to prove, Wes must learn to navigate the world of renegade, shapeshifting, spellcasting witches while unraveling a clever but destructive plot involving the girl of his dreams, world domination, and some extra special face cream.

Witches Protection Program starts off at a sprint and maintains an action driven pace throughout. Wes, along with his mysteriously wise and unflappable partner/mentor, Alastair Verne, finds himself in an increasingly dangerous series of situations ranging from typical cop chase and apprehend maneuvers to battling alley cats after morphing into a frog and treating a wound filled with deadly venom with essence of goat. Just when the plot seems to settle onto the path of predictability, Cash throws out some twists and surprises.

This book is more humorous and fun than dark or suspenseful. The witches cast their spells with often groan inducing rhymes such as, “Box them in, seal the door, ship them all to Singapore,” “No time to waste, give me speed, slide down forty floors on my ass, indeed,” and “Time for you to listen to me, do my bidding like a robotic zombie.” World domination through cosmetics actually makes sense given the circumstances, and Wes’s instant romance with reluctant witch and heir to the Pendragon legacy, Morgan Pendragon, is sweet rather than steamy. Brawls and battles notwithstanding, Witches Protection Program does not seem to take itself too seriously, hitting just the right note between mischief and mayhem.

Although Wes, Alastair, Morgan, and even Bernadette Pendragon, the evil mastermind pulling the strings behind the conspiracy, are more than one-dimensional, with hang-ups, histories, and heartaches galore, action definitely supersedes character study, and heartfelt moments are typically revealed quickly through dialogue without much fuss, angst, or inner deliberation. Even Bernadette’s nefarious henchmen, the voluptuous Scarlett and leather clad Wu and Vincenza, are so colorfully drawn that it is difficult at times not to cheer for them as well the heroes.

With its lively characters, quickly moving plot, and amusing dialogue, Witches Protection Program is a great summer choice, ideal for beach or poolside reading, and with elements of romance, action, crime, and fantasy, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy.

PALLAS GATES MCCORQUODALE (July 7, 2015)

The Norma Gene

M. E. Roufa
Bitingduck Press
Softcover $14.99 (302pp)
978-1-938463-41-9
Buy: Amazon

Set some time in an undisclosed future, The Norma Gene embraces the possibilities, both grave and absurd, of human cloning and all its potential consequences and complications.

History, biology, genetics, and the curious twists of fate and chance encounters bring Norma Jeane Greenberg and Abraham Lincoln Finkelstein together in a madcap adventure that contemplates some of life’s greatest puzzles—from nature vs. nurture and the ethics of human cloning to the mystery of the elusive sock ever missing from the dryer. The Norma Gene, by M. E. Roufa, is a fun mix of earnest soul searching and quirky social commentary, guaranteed to alter popular perceptions of founding fathers, tragic starlets, and the happiest place on earth.

In a time when in vitro human cloning is commonplace, Abe, an exact DNA match of America’s 16th president, is an anomaly. His patriotic and idealistic parents ignored the laws prohibiting “the cloning of dictators, presidents, and other ‘crucial’ historical figures,” and Abe, an American-history teacher in Orlando, Florida, is still coming to terms with his lofty (and illegal) genetic makeup. Meanwhile, across town, Norma, a perfume-counter girl at Lord & Taylor’s, is one of many (perfectly legal) Marilyn Monroe copies and a new member of Normalyn, or Marilyns Anonymous, a support group for Marilyn clones. Both are muddling through life when a designer evening gown, a serendipitous crash, and the Emancipation Proclamation kick off a series of events leading them on an unparalleled adventure.

Hitting a lighthearted note despite some thoughtful ruminations, the combination of both results in a tale that feels less like science fiction and more like a true life adventure, albeit complete with a pretentious restaurant serving only dishes made from the once extinct dodo, a Segway chase through Orlando’s largest theme park, and a top-secret government facility intent on extracting memories by any means necessary.

Action, suspense, science, romance, and history all come together with wit and humor while Abe and Norma reflect on the genetic codes that render them both singular and familiar. As Abe speculates, “Given the choice of being a real person, or someone unique (even if only unique by way of being the precise opposite of unique), which would you choose?”

PALLAS GATES MCCORQUODALE (August 27, 2015)

Hannah Hohman is an editorial assistant at Foreword Reviews. You can contact her at hannah@forewordreviews.com.

Hannah Hohman
December 4, 2015

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