The Organization: Operative Nova
The Organization: Operative Nova is a spy thriller told in three mission arcs, following Nova Dunn as she graduates from training into fieldwork for a shadow agency that audits and intervenes where official channels cannot. Her first assignment is a dinner sting on a high-level government insider, Phillip Gregory Thomas, where she is ordered to assess any personal connection before deciding whether to kill him. That night becomes a test of discipline, because Thomas is tied to the operation that cost Nova her father, and Nova’s choice to follow protocol sets bigger pieces in motion. From there, the book widens into a human trafficking investigation under an FBI cover, and later a tightening endgame involving a Russian-linked network, a brutal adversary named Bull, a kidnapping that turns personal, and a late emotional reveal that reframes what Nova thought she’d already lost.
What I liked right away is how the author, Daniel C. Davis, leans into the nuts-and-bolts rhythm of tradecraft without making it feel like homework. The “name, ID, code” cadence has a steadying effect, like a metronome that keeps the story taut even when Nova’s emotions are trying to sprint ahead of her training. And when the book wants to slow down, it earns the pause with sensory clarity. A restaurant scene doesn’t just exist as a backdrop, it smells like seared meat and polished wood, and you can almost hear the clink of glass as Nova watches a man talk himself into deeper and deeper trouble. I also appreciated the mission structure. It makes the pacing clean, but it still leaves room for character beats that land because they come after pressure, not before it.
The ideas underneath the action are what stuck with me after I closed it. This is a book about competence, yes, but it’s also about restraint. Nova’s first mission is basically a moral stress test dressed up as an operational one, and the story keeps returning to that question: what does it cost to follow orders when your anger has a point. The trafficking arc gets especially heavy, and I’m glad the book treats it as ugly and urgent rather than as a sleek plot device. There’s a moment where the timeline tightens around a “shipment,” and the writing makes the risk feel immediate in a simple, stomach-dropping way. Then the later chapters pivot into something more intimate and raw, with Nova learning truths that don’t come with clean relief. The “Dear Jon” section, in particular, reads like the story finally letting Nova stop performing toughness for two minutes, and it hit me harder than some of the violence did.
Operative Nova sits firmly in the modern espionage thriller lane, closer in feel to The Bourne Identity than to slower, quieter spy fiction, but with a more emotional throughline than you might expect from a mission-of-the-week setup. If you enjoy fast, procedural scenes, morally messy assignments, and a lead who is both highly capable and visibly haunted, you’ll likely tear through it. I’d recommend it most to readers who want their spy thrillers sharp and propulsive, but who also appreciate when the story pauses long enough to let consequences bruise.
Pages: 231 | ASIN : B0GKQDFZ7N
Ischaemic
Ischaemic by Andrew Cahill-Lloyd is a dark, twisty thriller that jumps between a closeted truckie with a secret nightlife, a man blindsided by a DNA shock, and a homicide team chasing a string of killings. Joshua is introduced as a married interstate truck driver with “queer kink” and a taste for danger. Antony, meanwhile, gets DNA results that point to a same-age brother, and it flips his whole sense of self. As deaths stack up and detectives Webb and Tiernan work the case, pressure builds from every side. Then the personal hits the practical. Money goes missing through Antony’s own login, and later, he ends up donating a kidney to Joshua. The book barrels toward a final confrontation, a shooting, Joshua’s death, and Antony’s name being cleared.
The writing style is loud and visual. It often feels like a camera is parked in the corner of the room. I could see the lights, the sweat, the dread. I liked that pace. It kept me turning pages even when I wanted to mutter, “Mate, slow down.” The downside is that it can lean hard into big feelings and big setups. Sometimes it reads a bit stacked. One punch lands, then another, then another. Still, I respected the commitment. It swings for the fence. It does not do “subtle,” and that boldness can be a guilty pleasure.
What stuck with me was the mess of identity and control. Adoption. Shame. Desire. Family roles that rot from the inside. The kidney thread felt like the sharpest moral test in the whole book. Love versus obligation. Anger versus pity. It also goes into sexual harm and coercion, and that hit me in the gut. I had moments of real sympathy for characters, and then whiplash when the story shoved me somewhere darker. That push and pull felt intentional. It made the book feel mean at times, but also honest about how trauma can scramble people.
The wrap-up gives a sense of closure and a glimpse of healing later on, which I needed after all that intensity. I’d recommend this to readers who like gritty thrillers with family drama, queer themes, and a true-crime vibe. Bring a strong stomach. Expect explicit scenes and heavy topics. If you want a neat little mystery, nah. If you want a wild ride that punches hard and keeps punching, this one will do it.
Pages: 260 | ASIN : B0G94PTRGK
Luna’s Colour Quest
Rayhaan Jay’s Luna’s Colour Quest is a picture book that feels comfortingly familiar, yet still nudges readers to see the world with new eyes. From the first pages, the fairytale-style illustrations create instant warmth. They make the story easy to settle into. I especially love the watercolour backgrounds. They lend each spread a calm, softly dreamlike glow. Children will be drawn to the richness of the palette. Adults may feel a quiet pull of nostalgia.
At the centre is Luna, a little fox who receives an old film camera from her grandmother for her birthday. A simple prompt follows: photograph things in her favourite colour. That small idea opens into something larger. Luna begins noticing details she once skimmed past. Dew resting on a spider’s web. The fine curve of petals on a flower. Tiny moments that often vanish in the rush of the day. Each discovery becomes a lesson in attention. Not just looking, but truly seeing, then choosing what to hold onto.
The message that lingers is gentle and clear. The book encourages children to appreciate what’s around them. It also offers a quieter reminder. Not every moment needs to be captured to matter. Some experiences are valuable simply because they are felt. Seen. Lived. That idea lands with real emotional clarity, especially now, when so much is processed through screens.
There’s also something moving in knowing the author is a photographer with a deep care for preserving memory. That background gives the story a personal undertone. It feels rooted in a sincere desire to help children observe more closely, and to meet the everyday world with creativity and wonder.
Visually, the book is truly lovely. My favourite part is the way the colours bring softness and life to every page. The effect is calm. Immersive. Inviting. Young readers will linger over the illustrations, hunting for small details in the same spirit as Luna.
Luna’s Colour Quest is a warm, thoughtful picture book that balances simplicity with emotional meaning. It invites children to slow down, observe, and appreciate the beauty already present in their everyday lives. I loved the visuals, and I think children will too.
Pages: 28 | ASIN : B0GF92L551
The Girl from Korn
Set in 1903, the story follows Anna Mathilda “Tillie” DeFehr on a long, perilous passage to a new life. She leaves Russia with her family and arrives in the United States. A brief glimpse of the Statue of Liberty marks the threshold. Then the journey continues to Oklahoma, where they settle among a strict Mennonite community.
From there, the book becomes a clear-eyed record of Tillie’s new reality. The American plains feel stark. Daily life demands grit. Adaptation comes slowly and often hurts. Hard lessons land early and keep coming. Yet the narrative never turns bleak. Warmth appears in ordinary moments. Joy shows up in family bonds, small victories, and shared routines. The result feels grounded and honest, capturing the immigrant experience at the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth.
The Girl from Korn, by Eileen Hobbs, reads as young adult historical fiction. It will likely resonate most with readers around ages 9–12. At times, it carries echoes of the Little House on the Prairie books. Familiar in the best way. Rooted in place, work, and family.
The novel unfolds as Tillie’s first-person account. She begins on her eleventh birthday, still aboard the ship, nearing her new home. Fear shapes those early pages. Homesickness presses in. Disorientation feels inevitable. She is leaving everything behind during a formative stretch of childhood, right on the edge of adolescence.
Once in Oklahoma, the detail becomes the book’s strength. The days are long. The labor is relentless. Community rules tighten the world even further. Tillie endures it with stubborn courage. She stays resourceful. She stays determined. Most of all, she stays connected to her family, and that connection steadies the story.
In the end, Hobbs delivers a strong and satisfying YA historical novel, with crossover appeal for older readers. The prose is vivid without being fussy. Scenes come into focus quickly and linger. The author’s inspiration, stories passed down from her great-great-grandparents, adds texture and conviction, giving the book the feel of a lived memory rendered into fiction.
Pages: 250 | ASIN : B0FZG1B334
A Feedback Loop
The Fifth Anomaly follows an urban exploration team who are investigating an abandoned prison known for paranormal activity, where they discover their data and sense of time start to bend around the anomaly. What inspired Hillrose Penitentiary as the central setting?
That’s actually a funny topic. The entire story started from an approach of “Could I compose a good creepypasta.” Found footage, especially ghost hunters played a part in that, and penitentiaries carry a lot of weight in those circles. From the outside, it’s a set of walls containing dark things and keeping them from bleeding into the world. I just leaned into that containment failure.
The central idea that “observation changes the observer” drives the story. Where did that concept originate?
There’s not a lot in the horror space that scares me anymore, but one thing that has never ceased to unsettle me is the idea that “our assumptions about our world are inaccurate.” Look at the film Oculus for example. There’s something terrifying about “My mind tells me I’m biting into an apple, but it’s actually a lightbulb”. That extends into the premise of the book in the sense that “our world is not a closed system, it is a feedback loop.” Cosmic horror to me is basically anxiety codified into prose. Once you start thinking that way, everything looks fluid.
Do you see the book as horror told through technology, or horror about technology?
Horror told through technology. The horror comes from realizing how small we are and how little control we have over objective reality. Technology is just the lens. Discord logs, camera feeds, digital timestamps that stop making sense are just the artifacts we see through them. Yomi uses technology as a medium because she understands observation and documentation better than the humans do. The screens aren’t the threat; they’re just showing you what was always there.
What will the next book in that series be about, and when will it be published?
The next book, The Chuin Cascade: A Threshold Chronicle, has a complete first draft at 70,000 words. I’m currently doing a revision pass based on what I learned from editing Book 1. Cleaning up show-don’t-tell issues, tightening sentence structure, all the unglamorous craft work that makes the difference. Once that’s done, it goes to professional editing. I’m targeting late 2026 for release. The companion album, Threshold II: Catharsis, is already live on Spotify – the mythology was built first, so I could release the music ahead of the book.
Author Links: Facebook | Instagram | Website | Spotify
Until Hillrose Penitentiary.
What begins as another routine investigation becomes something else entirely when Marcus Chen’s team discovers a pattern. A pattern that repeats across decades, etched into the prison’s structure and buried in its records. As they document the anomaly, the pattern begins to replicate. In their footage. In their notes. In their perception of time itself.
Some patterns demand to be observed. And observation changes the observer.
The Fifth Anomaly is the first book in The Threshold Chronicles, a cosmic horror series exploring the boundaries between humanity and their place in objective reality. This edition features an integrated soundtrack experience. Scan QR codes at chapter endings to hear the music that accompanies each threshold.
For readers of American Gods, House of Leaves, and the New Weird.
I Was Tired of Starting Over
Side Hustle & Flow: The Daily Grind – 365 Days to Shine is a yearlong guide of short, daily reflections designed to help creatives, entrepreneurs, and side-hustlers build momentum without burnout. Was there a moment in your life when consistency finally “clicked” for you?
Yes. It was not some glamorous breakthrough. It was when I was tired of starting over. I had talent. I had ideas. I had big goals. But I kept relying on motivation. The real shift happened during my health journey when I reversed Type 2 diabetes and lost 50 pounds. I realized it was not about intensity. It was about daily reps. Same with sobriety. Same with building my music catalog. Same with scaling operations at Beautytap. Once I saw that small, boring, repeatable actions compound into freedom, consistency stopped feeling restrictive and started feeling empowering. That is when it clicked.
Your background spans music, business, and operations. How did those worlds shape this book?
Music taught me rhythm and discipline. You do not get better on stage. You get better in rehearsal. Business taught me structure. Systems beat willpower every time. Operations taught me leverage. If something is not documented and repeatable, it does not scale.
This book sits at the intersection of all three. It is creative but structured. It is motivational but practical. I am an artist who also thinks like an operator. So The Daily Grind is not just inspiration. It is about building frameworks that help creatives, entrepreneurs, and professionals win long term. Whether I am producing a record, hosting Deeper Grooves, or managing digital operations, the principle is the same. Show up. Execute. Improve.
What does “showing up” actually look like on days when motivation is gone?
It looks smaller than you think. It might mean writing one paragraph instead of ten pages. It might mean walking instead of crushing a two-hour workout. It might mean sending one email instead of building the whole funnel.
Showing up is protecting the streak. It is voting for the identity you want. On bad days, I lower the bar, but I do not remove it. I focus on one non-negotiable action that moves the needle forward. Momentum is easier to maintain than to restart. Most people quit because they think showing up has to be dramatic. It does not. It just has to be consistent.
How do you recommend readers use this book—morning ritual, night reflection, or something else?
I designed it to be flexible but powerful. Morning is ideal because it sets intention. It helps you frame the day before the world gets loud. But night reflection works too. It can help you audit how you showed up.
Personally, I like pairing it with a short daily planning session. Read the reflection. Identify one action for the day. Then execute. Every 30 day,s there is a deeper challenge, which I see as a reset point. It is not about perfection. It is about rhythm.
The goal is not to finish the book. The goal is to build a life where you do not need motivation to move forward.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Side Hustle & Flow: The Daily Grind – 365 Days to Shine is your year-long guide to consistency, clarity, and momentum. Designed for creatives, entrepreneurs, side-hustlers, and anyone chasing a better version of themselves, this book delivers 365 short, powerful daily reflections to help you stay focused, motivated, and moving forward—even on the hard days.
Written by entrepreneur, musician, author, and VP of Digital & Operations Cliff Beach, The Daily Grind blends real-world experience with practical wisdom. Each day offers a concise lesson, mindset shift, or action prompt you can apply immediately—no fluff, no overwhelm.
This isn’t about hustle culture burnout. It’s about intentional progress, sustainable habits, and showing up for your goals one day at a time.
Inside, you’ll discover:
Daily motivation you can read in under two minutes
Practical insights on discipline, confidence, health, creativity, and money
Honest reflections on doubt, failure, growth, and resilience
Monthly reflection checkpoints to recalibrate your direction
A steady reminder that consistency beats intensity—every time
Whether you’re building a side hustle, leveling up your career, improving your health, or simply trying to stay inspired in a noisy world, this book meets you where you are—and helps you keep going.
You don’t need a perfect plan.
You don’t need permission.
You just need to show up today.
One day. One page. One step closer to shining.
Through Her Eyes: A Memoir of Purpose and Courage
Through Her Eyes follows Jennifer Gauthier as she grows from a noisy, painful childhood into the role of founder and CEO of a nonprofit that centers healing, youth, and community. The book moves through her early years in a home shaped by addiction, her teenage pregnancy, homelessness, and single motherhood, then into her spiritual searching, discovery of Sufism, and her work as a mentor and leader. Along the way, she keeps circling one core message. Your story is yours to claim, even if the first chapters were written by other people.
I felt her voice first, more than any single scene. The writing is direct and chatty, like a friend talking with no filter. She warns you early that she is “that person” who talks to strangers in line and laughs too loud, and the prose matches that energy. I liked that she keeps the language simple and straight. She uses a lot of short, punchy lines, and she often drops into story mode with “Throwback” sections that read like spoken-word pieces. That style pulled me in. I could almost hear her accent, see her hands moving while she talked. She jumps from memory to lesson to side story in quick turns, and sometimes I wanted a bit more shape or pause, a little more space to sit with one scene before we moved on to the next.
Emotionally, the book hit me hardest when she wrote about addiction, codependency, and the way a child tries to manage a house that feels unstable. Her honesty about wanting her father to die, then shifting into years of praying for him to live sober, landed with real weight. There is no polish on those parts, and I appreciated that. I also liked her insistence on personal responsibility without erasing systems and trauma. She talks about racism, privilege, generational patterns, and spiritual harm, and still looks straight at herself and asks, “What can I control today.” I would have liked more direct talk about structural barriers, especially given her work with underserved communities. Even so, the through-line of “I will not stay stuck” felt honest to her story and background.
I walked away feeling like I had spent time with a real person, not a polished brand. The book would be a strong fit for readers who grew up around addiction, teen parents, people who have experienced trauma and are now ready to look at it, and anyone in social work, education, or youth programs who wants a reminder of what their clients might be carrying. It will also speak to women building something from scratch in midlife, especially those who feel “too loud” or “too much.” If you want a raw, talky, spiritually curious, no-nonsense story from someone who has actually had to claw her way forward, I recommend Through Her Eyes.
Pages: 228 | ASIN : B0GCFCTHLL
Birds of Prey Don’t Sing
Birds of Prey Don’t Sing follows Michael Harrier, a gifted and deeply broken assassin who was forged in childhood abuse and teenage bloodshed. We see him as a sixteen-year-old rifle prodigy hunting poachers in a burning Central African park, as a young man pulled back from a brutal suicide attempt in Los Angeles, and as a 2003 contract killer who chooses who deserves to die and who gets framed. The story jumps between these points in time as Michael, now working under the name Atropos, balances jobs for gangsters and power brokers with a twisted personal code that says he is there to protect victims and punish predators. Therapy tapes, old case files, and violent present-day set pieces all circle the same questions about guilt, justice, and whether a man built on rage can ever be anything else.
The prose feels physical. Author Joe Cary leans into concrete detail and rhythm. Fights read like choreography in tight, clear beats, not like a blur of action movie noise. I liked how the narration slips in and out of Michael’s head, with short, sharp questions and little self-directed jabs that show how much he hates himself and still needs control. Sometimes the sentences get dense, with long stacks of images and technical bits about guns, bikes, or anatomy, and that can slow things down. Most of the time though, the style rides a nice line between gritty and thoughtful, with a dark sense of humor that kept me hooked even when the violence got gnarly.
What really stuck with me were the ideas under all the blood. The book is obsessed with self-righteousness, suicide, and this urge to “be the justice” when the world looks rotten. Michael’s need to punish abusers comes from a real place, from watching his neo-Nazi father murder his mother and from feeling like a cowardly kid who did not step in. The sessions with Dr. Collins, the tapes about “counteraction” and the “Batman complex,” and the way Michael clings to Atropos as a kind of sacred role all make his violence feel both awful and heartbreakingly logical. I found myself rooting for him and then feeling uneasy about that, which I think is the point. The book pokes at vigilantism, at trauma as fuel, at how easy it is to recast vengeance as virtue when you pick the right targets. It also brushes against race, gangs, and class in LA in a way that feels lived in, even if it sometimes skims past big social questions to stay tight on Michael’s psyche.
I would recommend Birds of Prey Don’t Sing to readers who like morally messy thrillers and character-driven assassin stories, not to anyone looking for something light. If you enjoy books where the hero is dangerous and competent and also one bad night away from breaking, this will be right in your lane. Fans of gritty crime fiction, realistic fight writing, and psychological depth around trauma and self-harm will find a lot here to chew on. Birds of Prey Don’t Sing is a dark, intense ride that I heartily enjoyed.
Pages: 415 | ISBN : 9798993804620
