An Educator’s Guide to Constructing Employable Identities
Preparing students for working life means paying attention to who they’re becoming, how they communicate, and where they feel they belong. That’s the central concern of An Educator’s Guide to Constructing Employable Identities by Behnam Soltani and Kenneth Keng Wee Ong. The book brings research on graduate employability into conversation with the personal experience of entering a profession. Its guiding idea is that professional identity develops through interactions: graduates make claims about what they can contribute, demonstrate those claims, and respond to how others receive them. It’s a persuasive starting point for educators because it connects career preparation to experiences students can recognize.
The authors give this argument substance through theory and comparisons of Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Singapore. These chapters show how government priorities, university practices, employer expectations, and family pressures shape the professional futures students imagine. The comparison makes context matter: becoming a graduate carries different expectations across these settings. One especially useful contribution is systems capital, the capacity to understand and influence the systems in which career opportunities emerge. In practical terms, that means identifying decision makers, recognizing unwritten rules, connecting resources, and learning from feedback. The theoretical sections require concentration, but they give educators a clear rationale for the teaching activities that follow.
The book’s largest section offers 43 workshops, and this is where its educational promise becomes tangible. Activities explore digital identities, workplace belonging, small talk, humor, feedback, imposed roles, and future career aspirations. Learners might map their academic identities, rehearse a conversation about mismatched responsibilities, or examine the expectations hidden in a job advertisement. These are recognizable situations with real consequences for confidence and participation. Objectives, activity sequences, suggested timings, assessments, and adaptations give facilitators substantial material to work with. The recurring use of storytelling, visual mapping, role-play, and reflection creates a familiar teaching rhythm. Educators can select and adapt sessions to suit their learners, with plenty of scope for discussion and personal discovery.
What gives the workshops depth is their attention to the emotional and ethical dimensions of working life. The book takes seriously the effects of labels, cultural assumptions, exclusion, and pressure to keep proving one’s value. It also invites learners to consider their boundaries, their relationships, and the origins of their ambitions. A career aspiration can carry the weight of family expectations; feedback can reshape someone’s sense of professional possibility. Those connections make the material feel human. The facilitator reflections are a particularly thoughtful feature, asking educators to examine their own values, experiences, and influence. Teaching employability becomes a practice that calls for self-examination on both sides of the classroom.
The closing chapters extend that care into institutional and employer responsibilities. Recommendations on curriculum design, mentoring, accessible learning environments, paid internships, and recruitment grounded in evidence of professional growth give the book a broader reach. Its emphasis on collaboration is convincing because it follows through to the conditions that allow graduates to participate and gain recognition. For lecturers, career advisers, and curriculum designers, this is a substantial resource that can inform both an individual teaching session and a wider educational strategy. It combines intellectual ambition with sustained attention to the people doing the learning. This book gives educators a powerful way to help graduates build careers they can believe in and workplaces they can help change.
Pages: 400 | ISBN: 1041020627
Patrol Officer Hudson
Neri Lopez’s Patrol Officer Hudson drops you onto Haven Island just as Verie Tate arrives looking for her missing eighteen-year-old brother, Pike. Her best lead is Hudson Shaw, the patrol officer who once babysat Pike and whom Pike named in a note asking for help. Hudson’s search brings Verie into the orbit of a close-knit police department while Pike’s own chapters show how a night out with his old friend Tyler turns into a frightening stay among thieves and drug dealers. That three-way view gives this romantic suspense story an immediate pull: Verie is desperate for answers, Hudson is trying to earn his place as an investigator, and Pike knows more about the danger than either of them. The coastal setting has a busy, lived-in feel, from the bookstore and diner on Main Street to the beach rentals where trouble gathers.
The romance grows in the middle of that search. Hudson and Verie trade barbs, share meals, and find comfort in each other as the case stretches across a tense week. Their attraction is quick and openly steamy, with plenty of scenes that make this a contemporary police romance for readers who enjoy heat alongside danger. Their recurring arguments also give the relationship its shape. Verie needs honest updates about Pike and wants a say in what happens around her; Hudson’s protective instincts keep colliding with her resolve. Sometimes they make the same point several times, but those clashes show why trust matters so much to both of them. Hudson’s ambition to become a detective gives his work a personal stake, while Verie’s loyalty to her brother keeps the emotional pressure on even during the sweeter moments.
Pike’s chapters are the book’s strongest source of suspense for me. He’s grieving his father, struggling with his mental health and school, and only gradually accepting how Tyler uses their long friendship to control him. Once Pike agrees to help the police, his meetings at Sunset Bar, the monitored rental house, and the plans for a bank robbery turn the search into an undercover operation with real consequences. Lopez lets us see his fear and his wish to do something worthwhile at the same time. The supporting officers, especially Sawyer, Cain, Ryker, and their K-9 partners, give the investigation a team spirit, and their teasing adds warmth between the dangerous scenes. There’s a generous amount of police planning and repeated reassurance, so the middle moves at a leisurely pace even as the threat escalates.
What stays with me after the action is the way the Tate family starts talking to one another again. Pike’s disappearance exposes how each of them coped alone after their father’s death, and his return gives Verie, Stacci, and their mother a chance to reconnect. The book makes room for Hudson’s bond with Pike and for Vivian’s tentative new relationship, giving Haven Island the welcoming feel of a small-town romance series with an ensemble that has its own ongoing stories. The final stretch delivers a dramatic police confrontation and then settles into family dinners, career steps, and romantic commitments. If you like your romantic suspense with explicit love scenes, loyal friends, police teamwork, and a full-hearted happy ending, Patrol Officer Hudson offers all of that in a sunny island setting.
Pages: 383 | ASIN : B0HG7W6CMY
The Race for the Lost Coin | Book 2 Coin of Time Series
Luciana Cavallaro’s The Race for the Lost Coin follows a history teacher whose family inheritance comes with some alarming responsibilities. Nikolaos Zosimos, known as Nik, is trying to rescue his kidnapped grandfather while protecting an ancient coin that lets him teleport. His opponent, the wealthy industrialist Konrad Resnik, wants to unite two coins and use their power to advance his Nazi ambitions. It’s an adventure thriller with Greek mythology woven into its central mystery, and the second book in the Coin of Time series. The opening moves from Herakles discovering a mysterious stone to Nik evading the police in Paris, establishing the connection between ancient secrets and a very immediate family crisis. That combination gives the story a strong hook.
Nik’s loyalty to his grandfather is what makes the chase matter. He’s resourceful, stubborn, and increasingly willing to take risks, but he also worries about his parents, the students he should be teaching, and the friends helping him stay hidden. Those details give his predicament a personal weight. I especially enjoyed Sébastien, the taxi driver whose generosity and former smuggling contacts prove useful, and Odette, the prickly hacker who gradually becomes invested in Nik’s safety. Their conversations bring warmth and humor to a story full of suspicion. Even a small request for Australian animal toys helps make these friendships feel authentic. The coin itself adds welcome uncertainty: teleporting involves painful landings, exhaustion, and troubling reactions that Nik is still learning to understand.
Cavallaro spends plenty of time on the practical business of pursuit, including disguises, surveillance cameras, travel routes, and carefully arranged meetings. Paris, Geneva, and Rome provide an appealing setting for a hunt through antique shops, crowded landmarks, and historic buildings. The pace has some uneven stretches, particularly when Nik revisits the same concerns or repeats his arguments with Detective Alexandrie Sauveterre. Their developing attraction gives those confrontations another layer, though the frequent attention to Nik’s good looks and the women drawn to him can feel overplayed. The partnership becomes more engaging as they have to deal with each other’s vulnerability as well as their stubbornness. The strongest suspense comes when the coin behaves unpredictably, bringing the danger directly into a scene and giving Nik’s guesses about its power real consequences.
I recommend The Race for the Lost Coin to readers who enjoy artifact adventures, Greek legends, European settings, and a romantic thread running through a conspiracy plot. Fans of Indiana Jones-style quests will recognize the appeal of a dangerous relic, inherited knowledge, and an enemy intent on exploiting history. There’s also a particular pleasure here for readers who like capable supporting characters and the logistics of staying ahead of pursuers. I’d suggest starting with The Guardian’s Legacy, since this installment opens in the aftermath of earlier events and builds on Nik’s established guardianship. Its ending keeps the larger conflict open and raises the pressure for the next book. The lasting appeal is Nik’s struggle to honor a secret family duty while accepting the help he needs to carry it.
Pages: 220 | ASIN: 0645272663
The King in Purgatory
In The King in Purgatory, Travis Nelson has gone from commanding a Texas real estate empire to hiding at a small abbey in Norway. A disastrous deal with a Mexican cartel has made him a wanted man, and his survival depends on living as “Professor Price,” a Canadian academic among Cistercian monks. Travis arrives convinced he’ll find a way out. Instead, the abbey gives him time to face what he did to his wife and children while he was busy building a fortune. Author Robert DeLuca makes that change tangible: a man who once measured success in money and influence learns to value a walk through fresh snow, a useful day’s work, and a chance to tell his daughter he loves her.
The monks give the novel much of its warmth. Abbot Martinez protects his community with a firmness Travis can’t negotiate away, while Brother Dominic, the sharp-tongued librarian, becomes the friend who can tease him and still understand when he’s hurting. Their exchanges are funny because neither man lets the other play a grand role for long. Travis also brings his old skills into the abbey. After a bakery fire, he helps rebuild its operation; later, he plans repairs to the monks’ worn living quarters. Those projects give his remorse somewhere to go. He can’t erase his choices in Texas, but he can pay attention to the people in front of him and make their lives a little better.
The story reaches well beyond the abbey. Travis’s children are pursuing their own lives and a crooked businessman back in America, while his growing closeness with Astrid, a Molde librarian, puts his carefully guarded identity at risk. Family drama, romance, and crime suspense keep pressing on one another as Travis tries to reconnect with the people he misses. DeLuca gives the book a generous scope, moving from quiet conversations in Norway to a tense family reunion in the Caribbean and the legal reckoning Travis knows may come. Some stretches pause to explain a character’s history or the workings of a deal, but that detail also shows how many lives remain connected to Travis’s past.
What I liked most is the book’s interest in what an apology can do when the damage is real and time has passed. Travis wants his family back, yet each of them has had to live through his absence in a different way. Diane’s choices, in particular, give that question weight. The abbey changes Travis, but it can’t decide anyone else’s future for them. That makes his efforts to reach his family feel more moving than a simple promise to be a better man. The King in Purgatory finds its heart in the daily work of becoming someone others might trust again.
Pages: 348 | ASIN : B0FRNB4QNT
High in the Rocky Mountains
Robert John DeLuca’s High in the Rocky Mountains: Never Tangle with a Crazy Wildcat begins with a school trip that seems built for harmless trouble. Marshall Morris, a Texas high school senior with a huge appetite and a habit of landing in scrapes, arrives at a Colorado mountain camp with his best friend, Graham. Then a younger visitor, Chrissy Davis, goes missing. Marshall’s concern sends him up a trail despite the park ranger’s warning to leave the search to professionals. He finds her, but getting her home proves far more complicated. A cougar, armed poachers, a dangerous river and two bears give the first half the feel of an adventure told by someone who enjoys asking, “What else could happen to this kid?”
Marshall gives those escapades their warmth. He’s impulsive and accident-prone, but his first thought is usually for whoever needs help. Graham’s steadiness makes their friendship convincing, and their jokes offer a welcome breather between close calls. DeLuca also gives the landscape a strong presence. Loose rock underfoot, cold water moving too fast to fight and a night spent beside a small fire make Marshall’s choices feel physical and immediate. Clarence, the young bear Marshall encounters after the river carries him away, is one of the book’s most memorable creations. Their wary, improbable connection captures the story’s affection for wild animals, even as another bear reminds Marshall how unpredictable they can be.
The trip’s consequences follow Marshall back to Texas, where the book becomes a story about trust and reputation. Chrissy keeps contacting him, and her account of their night in the woods grows increasingly troubling. Marshall can’t clearly remember part of it; an accusation then threatens his future. His mother, Graham, and a local lawyer rally around him, while Chrissy’s father uses his influence to press the case. These chapters give the adventure a longer reach and show how stubbornly Marshall holds to his sense of responsibility, even when he’s frightened. They also expose a tension in the book’s breezy tone. Chrissy’s admission that she drugged Marshall deserves more space for its effect on him than the story allows, especially as it moves quickly into the legal dispute.
Readers of Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot may recognize the appeal of an earnest young person getting tangled up with reckless adults and memorable wildlife. DeLuca brings that energy to a more sprawling story, one that travels from mountain trails to a Little League field, family kitchens and a police station. The baseball episode, in which Marshall helps a shy boy find his confidence, is especially revealing: it shows the same generosity that sent him looking for Chrissy in the first place, without requiring another brush with death. High in the Rocky Mountains is at its most engaging when Marshall’s clumsiness and kindness meet in the same scene. He can make a mess of a simple task, and you’ll still understand why his friends trust him when things get hard.
Pages: 268 | ASIN : B0HJBTNZCP
The Biggest Unsolved Series of Crimes
Killing Time follows a gifted past-life investigator who is looking into a series of modern London murders that echo the crimes of Jack the Ripper. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story? What made the Jack the Ripper mystery particularly suited to the world you’ve created?
I was a Crime scene photographer for the Met police for 24 years, which means yes, I’ve seen awful sights in my time. I’ve also seen a lot of good forensic work and met a lot of skilled investigators in my time. So when I was looking for a new project to include my world of Awakening that I’d set up in my first book, The Many Lives of Adam Capello, I felt it was time to use my experiences to tell a tale of 2 investigations – one from the past and one in the near future. The mystery of Jack the Ripper is probably one of the biggest unsolved series of crimes in history, with a HUGE amount of interest. What better case to do my dual timeline investigation?
Awakening is all about discovering and confronting our past. Fantastic if you can pick up knowledge and past skills such as speaking languages, but at what price. What if you found out you’d once been Jack the Ripper? What if the shock was so terrible, your present day mind shut itself off, only to be replaced by the monster within?
What were some driving ideals behind Jason’s character’s development, and what makes him particularly suited to investigating crimes involving past lives?
Jason has a natural talent for reading body language and went on to study the subject in high detail – he excelled. His ability makes him a great Awakening investigator, able to push further and harder into people’s traumatic past lives to find who murdered them. He knows he’s putting his clients through a lot of pain for a good reason, but it still hurts him too.
Jason is, at the heart of it all, a really nice guy with a conscience. In crime writing that’s a huge no no! We want our detectives to be as complicated and flawed as their quarry to add as much character and drama to the story. So I wanted this skills to play havoc with his love life, as he over analyses everything. And inside he’s very shy, so the extraordinary expert in body language becomes and ordinary guy who can’t read a thing when he really likes someone. He’s just as clueless in those circumstances as the rest of us.
What interested you about placing the possibility of redemption alongside the idea that a violent past might literally return?
At first I just wanted the idea of a two timeline investigation with the Ripper, but as in any good film / novel, the antagonist must have redeeming features just as the protagonist has a dark side. The more I went into the Ripper’s mind, the more I wanted to find a reason for his savage attacks. It became a mission for me to twist the reader into having some sympathy for this monster, if only to confuse us. Where do our loyalties lie? What on earth could justify that level of violence? That’s what makes this more than just a historic murder mystery, it becomes psychological as well.
How does Killing Time expand the possibilities of the Awakening world established in The Many Lives of Adam Capello, and where do you see the series going from here?
Isambard Smythe is such an interesting character. I’d love to give him his own case to solve, possibly with 19th century royal connections. Sabina Bjorkman is also a very strong character, even just at the basic, ball busting, beautiful, scary DCI keeping ahead of her ‘superiors’. I’ve committed the sin of writing two related stories in different genres and from different perspectives. Both the novels are connected and yet they run alone as well. They intertwine to develop of their own accord. The next Awakening novel? Either Adam’s next adventure or another crime novel would be sensible – though I do have a great idea for a comically dark story reflecting my film work as a film stand-in. Watch this space.
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Now, a gifted detective questions his conscience as he hunts for Jack the Ripper through his reincarnated victims.
Invoking the Holy Spirit: A Guide to Awakening in Your True Self, Your True Home, The Holy Spirit
Moustapha Kemal Ozturk’s Invoking the Holy Spirit is a spiritual guide built from notes he made while studying A Course in Miracles during his train rides to work. Its starting point is personal: in the preface, Ozturk describes a period of upheaval in his twenties, and in the introduction he recalls hearing an inner warning just before gas bottles exploded at a construction site. He understands that warning as the Holy Spirit’s guidance. From there, the book speaks directly to the reader, asking what daily life might feel like if we trusted that same presence within ourselves. Across 172 short chapters, Ozturk presents awakening as a practice of forgiveness, love, gratitude, and attention to the thoughts we allow to settle in our minds.
The book’s distinctive idea is that we are awareness within God, while the bodies and world we perceive belong to what Ozturk calls the “embryonic Earth.” In his account, this world is a kind of remembered play through which God’s children come to know fear and suffering before recognizing their true home. He calls the loving way of seeing that follows “Christ Vision.” These claims shape the book’s practical advice: pause when anxiety takes hold, forgive the pain attached to a thought, let go of judgment, and make room for God’s guidance. Ozturk applies that advice to encounters with friends, enemies, family, and strangers. His insistence that forgiving another person also frees oneself gives the book its warmest and most usable thread.
Ozturk writes with the conviction of someone returning again and again to a discovery he wants to share. His images make that conviction vivid. The self is a projector that can change the film it shows; a worried mind is a sanctuary crowded with intrusive thoughts; an octopus trapped in a drainpipe reaches a lagoon when it releases its grip. Such scenes give shape to ideas that can be hard to picture. The many short chapters also make it easy to read a little at a time and carry one thought into the day. Over a full reading, though, the repeated calls to forgive, stop worrying, and guard the mind can feel insistent. I found the book most engaging when an image or a moment from Ozturk’s life gives that familiar counsel a fresh setting.
I’d recommend Invoking the Holy Spirit most to readers who enjoy devotional books they can dip into regularly, especially those drawn to A Course in Miracles and Christian language about the Holy Spirit, atonement, and forgiveness. Readers interested in Ozturk’s unusual vision of an ancient Earth preserved in God’s mind will find plenty to consider, too. His cosmology asks for a great deal of trust from the reader, and the book is strongest when read as his account of spiritual experience and practice. Its lasting invitation is simple to grasp, even when it’s difficult to live out: meet the next person and the next anxious thought with less judgment and more love.
Pages: 358 | ASIN : B0GHZNCLPZ
