Rui Carvalho reviews Karolina Simos’ Ambrosia Chronicles Book 1: The Discovery

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The Ambrosia Chronicles: The Discovery by Karolina Simos

Karolina Simos' book cover
“What am I thinking, saying something like that to the person who just terrified the wits out of me?” confesses Alex to
herself after just telling Lucas to be careful.
Is she just afraid of dying, or is there more going on? I contemplate this when I reach the turning point in the first book of Karolina Simos’ Ambrosia Chronicles. I wonder what further surprises the remaining chapters still contain …
The novel has an intriguing starting point and the sense of adventure grows stronger within each new chapter. When reading the Ambrosia Chronicles, we enter into mystical contemplation and reconsider the most intriguing metaphysical questions we encounter in life.
Mystery, fear and adventure capture my state of mind at this point, and the freshness of the YA fiction genre only adds to these feelings.
Certainly, those who want a captivating reading for this summer should try Ambrosia Chronicles: The Discovery. I have only finished half of the book so far but am already experiencing a good mix of unsolved questions that are transporting me to another world. In this other world, reality contains seeds of a hidden part of our psyche – dreams of things I desperately want to see but which frighten me because they will require me to understand and contemplate my own personal weaknesses.
Ambrosia Chronicles: The Discovery is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Ambrosia-Chronicles-Discovery-K-C-Simos-ebook/dp/B00R4WWNBQ/

Elizabeth Hughes’ Book Periscope

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Charles Schneider’s The Vale of Years

Cover of Charles Schneider's novel

The Vale of Years starts where Portrait left off. Nicole is now in modern day Paris and Susanne Bruante is in 1800’s Paris. She is found by Nicole’s mother in Nicole’s small apt. battered and bruised from coming through the portal. Nicole’s mother brings Susanne to her house and Nicole’s son knows right away this woman is not his mother. Susanne tells them that she is a relative. Read Vale of Years for the continuing story of Nicole and Susanne Bruante. This is a very good book and will keep you on the edge of your seat page after page. I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it.

The Vale of Years is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Vale-Years-Sequel-Portrait-Time-ebook/dp/B00U426OE0/

Books

an original piece from Elizabeth Hughes

Since my poor laptop got a virus, I have had to go to the library and use the computers. This one is only 19 minutes left on it. I love reviewing and reading books. I love libraries and the feel of a book in my hand. With all the ebooks around, I still prefer a book, something I can hold, turn pages and the corner down to mark my place. I love to curl up with a book and a cup of tea and disappear into the world of whatever story I am reading at the time. I find it so sad when I see kids just sitting around playing games on phones and tablets and won’t pick up a book. Or parents that actually discourage their children to read books and won’t even let them check books out or have a free book. There is nothing in the world like reading a book. There are books on every subject and books that will let you get lost in your imagination.

I love mysteries, suspense, romance and thrillers the best. Since I have been reviewing books, I have read many different
kinds and it has opened my mind to all different subjects. I have the greatest respect for authors, it is very hard to write a book. Some people think it is easy, but, it is not. You can get frustrated and have writer’s block or simply wonder “will my book be good enough”. I try to suggest to people in our complex to start their kids out in reading some of the free books. They were even going to have a class in reading for the tenants, sadly, no one was interested. So, pick up a book or download one and escape into the world of books.

Poetry from Joan Beebe

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STORMS

Suddenly it seems so quiet.  The birds have stopped chirping,

No longer do you hear the rustling breeze through the trees.

Now we notice the sun is slowly fading and quickly

Darkness enfolds us in its eerie and encompassing determination.

Everyone is wondering when suddenly a thunderous boom is heard and

Streaks of bright light emanating from them are whip lashing in

Jagged forms across the sky.

The wind has become a gale and the rain falls in a cadence of dance,

Pouring itself out in a rhythm of its own.

You watch at your window at this splendid display of nature’s fury.

It seems dangerous but still you are frozen in place.

Nature, in all its magnificence is putting on a display long remembered

All is quiet now and the sunshine brings forth

Beauty in the sparkling raindrops on trees.

Children laughing and splashing in puddles they see

A spirit of peace dwells within us and we know

That, once again, Nature will cause us to stop and wonder.  

Poetry from Patrick Ward

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BOTTLED FLAMES

There’s a bottle,

filled with,

explosive flames

It starts with a flicker,

then it ends with an eruption.

And so it goes with the mind,

and the emotions.

The emotions fill,

the mind with anger,

until the point of unhappy expression.

There’s no way,

to escape,

the mind,

and the emotions,

are like,

bottled flames

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Poetry from Timothy Drake

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i

i am out and the

hole world comes crashing through

the viscera the window the pain streaked

on the walls whose virgin white

reminds me of you reminds me of ghost

until day until night i remain in the

stasis in the tumult in the faceless

crowd unblinking undulating breathing

talking wordless

i remember the castle i remember

the shore the cliffs of dover the sunset

the vision always fading of roses of roots of

daffodils of mountains singed with sky

now who are we emptied of each other who

held ourselves out across the bramble void

and made a flame in the devouring dark

all all who kiss all all who last last but an instant

xii

visage my clarity gone

old world absconds in the mists

of the new our machines inject

ancestral void in the marrow and the

compass closed i weigh

my futility on the edge of the world

the razor of horizons

and snap the pendant we plummet

and we call this living

making a living

a living plague in our days

our maladies a routine

penciled in on years of calendars

like a band-aid to stop gangrene

and nothing not dying not leaving

takes us away from our amputations

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Essay from Christopher Bernard

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Photo from astronaut Ron Garan

Photo from astronaut Ron Garan

Toward an Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the 21st Century

By Christopher Bernard

I am no moral authority—am neither a rabbi nor an imam, a minister nor a pope. But, as an average straight older European American male, I am deeply concerned about a future I may see only the dark, leading edge of, but that will be affected in many small ways by the life I and others like me have lived, to say nothing of our material “afterlife”: our words and actions and their effects, which will last long after our physical existence is over. And so this is as much a personal statement as it is a call to thought and action.

I offer the following as a modest part of a debate we will, all of us, need to have about the long-term future of life, including the life of human beings, on earth. The phrase “ecological civilization” is not a new one; it has become current over the last several years in a number of environmental circles, though its first official use may have been by the Sino-German Environment Partnership, which in 2012 used the phrase to describe the heart of its mission.

That we need to create a way of life in better balance with nature if we as a species hope to have a tolerable future is something most of us, I suspect, would agree on. I will not waste time in describing and trying to justify the sense that we are in a plight that is indeed dire, possibly as great as the human race as a whole has ever faced. The question is how to achieve that new balance. I describe below several basic goals to keep in mind as we take thought on how to act to face a crisis that will drastically affect the future life of the human species, even its survival, and the fate of all of life on earth.

In the following I sometimes take a deliberately provocative tone; I do this to inspire response and engagement, not in mere comments on the internet, but in the analog world where we live, breathe and have our being—and where we will decide how, and if, we will live in the future.

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Kahlil Crawford reviews Lisa Stalvey’s memoir Food, Sex, Wine and Cigars

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 Cover of Stalvey's memoir. Photo of author with a bandana standing in a kitchen.

A renowned chef, Lisa Stalvey spent the past eighteen years of her life penning her independently published cookbook-to-memoir, Food, Sex, Wine & Cigars.

A raw, experiential self-reflection; FSWC, to me, is more than a mere book – it is a Movement. Lisa embodies the literary risk-taking often absent today – a reality she, certainly, can relate to as a culinary innovator.

A personal memoir, in itself, is a massive undertaking; and to pen one, in lieu of culinary trendiness, is quite admirable. Reading Lisa Stalvey is like working in the culinary domain she previously mastered – spontaneous, intense, unpredictable, shocking..

One can never fully understand an artist’s creative process, but Food, Sex, Wine & Cigars is guaranteed to fulfill.
You may order Lisa Stalvey’s book here: