Neutrality Act
The Consulting Agent: Neutrality Act, by Jonathan M. Bryant, is a historical noir crime and espionage novel set in Atlanta in 1939, just before the world tips fully into war. The story follows Mark Morgan, a damaged former corporate fixer turned consulting agent, as he is hired to keep watch over German delegates attending the Baptist World Alliance meeting. What begins as a protective job quickly pulls him into Nazi politics, local corruption, murder, police violence, and the uneasy question of what neutrality means when evil is standing right in front of you.
What I appreciated most about this book is how lived-in it feels. Bryant gives Atlanta texture: the heat, the class divisions, the racial lines, the clubs, the trolleys, the old buildings, the stink of streets that have not recovered from hard times. The city is not just a backdrop. It presses on Mark from every side. The noir genre works well here because Mark is bruised in all the ways a noir lead should be, but he’s not a cartoon of cynicism. He’s weary, proud, scared, impulsive, and often slower to understand people than he thinks he is. That made him interesting to follow. I did not always admire him, but I believed him.
The author also makes a smart choice by tying the mystery to real historical tension rather than treating history like decoration. The Baptist World Alliance, Nazi delegates, American isolationism, antisemitism, segregation, and the coming war all sit under the plot like a low rumble. Sometimes the book is a detective story, sometimes an espionage tale, and sometimes a character study about a man trying to decide what kind of person he still is. I liked that the title keeps echoing through the story. Neutrality is not presented as clean or noble. It starts to feel like a thin coat of paint over fear, self-interest, and exhaustion. That is where the novel has its sharpest edge.
I would recommend The Consulting Agent: Neutrality Act to readers who enjoy historical fiction with crime, espionage, and moral tension woven together. Fans of noir mysteries, prewar spy fiction, and character-driven detective stories will get the most out of it, especially if they like books that care as much about atmosphere and history as they do about plot. It’s thoughtful, gritty, and grounded, with enough danger to keep the pages moving and enough unease to linger after the last chapter.
Pages: 275 | ASIN : B0GHVRDKHW
When I First Started Travelling
Managing the Bucket List: Vol I follows your post-retirement “Travel Big Year” across glaciers, cathedrals, rainforests, pilgrimage routes, and historic cities as you discover that bucket-list travel is about letting the world revise how we understand it. Why was this an important book for you to write?
When I first started traveling, I didn’t envision a book but by the third trip, Italy, I realized that the trips are very informative and I wanted to capture the information and experience, so I started a journal. I left space to write about the previous two trips from memory. Within one or two of the next trips, I decided that an overview of the trip and my perspective may be something that book readers would be interested in. So, I really started thinking about how to structure the book to be most readable and effective. Although at first, it was about a book for the first year, I quickly realized that I would pursue multiple travel years and therefore multiple books. Specifically, why is it important for me to write? Because I feel that my background adds a certain comprehensive lens to my knowledge gained and experience encountered that can help others to understand the world better, people and environment.
Of all the places you visited in this volume, which destination changed your perspective the most, and why?
That is a tough question because I learned many new things with every trip and location. But if I have to pick one, I think that the trips to Patagonia and Alaska to see the glaciers really conveyed the effects of climate change. Seeing firsthand how far Mendenhall Galcier had receded in Alaska. Most of the glaciers in Patagonia had also significantly receded except for Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina which is growing. Everyone hears about the impact of climate change on the environment. However, when one sees the impacts in nature’s setting, there is an emotional connection that is difficult to encounter when reading about or viewing on television. Documentaries do a great job of providing the information, but the emotional connection requires seeing first-hand.
How has visiting UNESCO sites, religious landmarks, and natural wonders affected the way you think about preservation and global responsibility?
I have become much more appreciative of the efforts that have been made to preserve history whether man-made or nature-made through UNESCO recognition, cultural or religious landmarks, and natural wonders. In some cases, these sites are hidden pieces to understanding a historical evolution that can shed light on potential future challenges. In other words, understanding our past can help us to be better prepared for our future. Once these treasures are gone, they are gone forever. Bamiyan comes to mind and the Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban during their first reign in Afghanistan. Having spent time in Iraq too, war-torn countries have lost many of these historic sites over centuries, but hopefully there are means to protect what is left. Iraq has so much history with the iconic city of Babylon in its borders. It would be a travesty for any ruins left to be destroyed by twenty-first century war.
What advice would you give to retirees or lifelong learners who want to create a meaningful bucket list but feel overwhelmed by the planning?
First, put a little effort into thinking about where one would like to go and what one would like to do. For some people that might be easy because they have acquired insight for some period of time on preparing a bucket list. They may have been building that list since their early twenties of the places and activities they want to do when they finally have the time. For others, do a little research. Quite a bit of my list has been from friends that have described places and activities that they have done. One friend’s parents traveled the continental United States visiting national parks largely staying in a tent after they retired. Through their experience, she built her own list, accomplishing some with her children while they were growing up. I feel like I missed the boat not doing that more with my children. Now, I am trying to catch up with family trips to these places for my granddaughter to experience the value of nature at a very early age. I have a family trip planned to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for a few days and then Asheville, North Carolina to visit Biltmore Estates. I’ve been to both places with a friend, but the family engagement makes the trip a special memory. My two sons are doing falconry at Biltmore, an activity one son has dreamed about since he was a child.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
Using a country assessment index, I evaluate the stability of the nations that I have visited. Reading this book, one gains a better understanding of the world. This better understanding promotes a philosophy of respecting cultural differences while recognizing that we share many of the same core human elements: rights, desires, and challenges. One should embrace our similarities while celebrating our differences. The year encompassed travel to Portugal; Argentina and Chile’s Patagonia; Italy; Seattle, Washington, United States; Switzerland; France; Australia; Alaska, United States; Spain; Hungary; Slovenia; Austria; Germany; Czech Republic; and Costa Rica. This grouping of countries is just the first of a multi-year endeavor; the quest for learning and understanding is an iterative approach. This book is to inspire readers to travel to gain better understanding of the world, its land and people, through bucket list natural wonders and man-made accomplishments. For those challenged to travel for a number of reasons, my journey provides a literary approach to experience the world.
The intent of this book is a literary journey traveling the globe to gain a better understanding of international relations and geopolitics and share my knowledge to entice others to be intellectual travelers too.
In Search of the Optimal Human Diet: A Layperson’s Guide to Nutritional Science
Jonathan Spitz’s In Search of the Optimal Human Diet is an ambitious and deeply researched layperson’s guide to nutritional science, built around one central conviction: that a whole-food, plant-based diet is not a fringe preference but the clearest answer emerging from centuries of nutritional inquiry. Spitz begins with a personal wound, his father’s fatal heart attack at fifty-one, then widens the lens into a sweeping history of discovery, from James Lind’s citrus experiment with scurvy-stricken sailors to the work of Lavoisier, Liebig, Krebs, Ornish, Esselstyn, and Greger. The book moves from deficiency diseases to diseases of excess, from vitamins and macronutrients to the microbiome, ending with a firm argument for fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and a conscious avoidance of animal and heavily processed foods.
What I found most compelling is the book’s insistence that nutrition is a story of hard-won knowledge, not casual advice. Spitz has a gift for making scientific history feel alive, especially when he slows down over moments of intellectual trial and error. Lind’s oranges and lemons, Lavoisier’s calorimeter, Magendie’s unsettling dog experiments, and Krebs’s painstaking mapping of metabolic cycles all become part of a larger human drama: the body gradually yielding its secrets to measurement, curiosity, and revision. I admired the humility embedded in that structure. Even when the author writes with absolute confidence about plant-based eating, the historical chapters remind us that science advances by correcting itself. That gives the book a sturdy moral rhythm, as if every mistaken theory still carries value because it helped clear the path.
Spitz’s passion is unmistakable and often moving. The sections on observational and interventional studies, especially the discussions of wartime Norway, The China Study, Ornish, Esselstyn, and plant-based diabetes interventions, make a persuasive cumulative case. Phrases that cast opposing voices as unserious or contaminated by industry influence may satisfy readers already inclined to agree. I appreciated the author’s practical honesty in places like the appendix on vitamin B12, where he acknowledges that a plant-based diet requires supplementation in the modern world. That kind of candor strengthens the argument because it admits that an ideal diet still has real-world obligations.
The book is at its best when it braids biography, chemistry, and public health into one flowing narrative. It can be dense, sometimes almost encyclopedic. Yet I rarely felt that the detail was merely decorative. Spitz writes like someone who has lived with these ideas for decades, and his conviction gives the material warmth. The conclusion returns to that personal beginning with satisfying emotional force: the son who lost his father to heart disease becomes the older man who sees food as empowerment rather than deprivation. I’d recommend In Search of the Optimal Human Diet to thoughtful general readers, plant-curious eaters, health professionals open to nutrition-centered prevention, and anyone who wants a serious, historically grounded case for whole-food, plant-based living.
Pages: 337 | ISBN : 9781662973574:
Am I Ready For This
In First Time Homebuyer Gold, you walk readers through the emotional and financial strains of purchasing their first home, from budget and offers to insurance and the final walk-through. Why was this an important book for you to write?
This book was important for me to write because I worked in the mortgage industry for over 20 years and have seen many individuals denied on their home purchase. If they were not denied, they failed to have an inspection completed on the property, or they just did not understand the home-buying process. Creating these books gives me an opportunity to have individuals read them, comprehend them, and then truly ask themselves whether they are ready for this.
Are there warning signs during the homebuying process that people often overlook?
Yea, failing to complete inspections on the home because they “trust’ what the seller is advising them. They often get into “bidding wars.” This is where there are many offers placed to the seller for the house, and people would pay more for the home than it is actually worth.
What role does patience play in successful homeownership?
Patience plays a big role. You have to know that you are ready for this journey. If there are doubts or you have no idea what you are getting yourself into, please do not go forward with the process. It is ok to take some time and do your research. Then, when you are truly ready to become a homeowner, go for it. Be sure to look at the rates before purchasing.
Are there other areas of personal finance or real estate that you’d like to write about in the future?
I have had readers ask to complete an investment book on how to successfully invest in real estate. It is a good idea, however, I need to focus on how to put together the journey for the book.
I am eager to put together a book regarding flipping homes.
Author Links: Amazon | Facebook
A little about me… I was born and raised in the beautiful U.S. Virgin Islands. I have worked in the mortgage compliance industry for over 17 years, the last two as a Regulatory Analyst and Advisor. I am also certified as a CFCP and a MCPC. Throughout my entire mortgage compliance career, I have come to understand that there is such a tremendous need for simplified educational materials as reflected in this book, for first-time home buyers or anyone planning to own a home. I felt that it was my obligation to help educate anyone planning to purchase a home or property, by providing them with the information they may not have known or have heard of in an easy-to-understand way.
My hopes to all of my readers is that you use the insights provided in this book to take the reins on your purchase. Go into your potential purchase with knowledge and understanding, remembering to never be afraid to ask questions or question something that does not look right. Always trust your gut!
To my readers thank you for stopping by and I wish you many blessings always on your journey! See you on the upcoming read!
So You Want To Be A Race Car Driver
So You Want To Be A Racecar Driver is an engaging installment in a career-focused series that introduces young readers to the exciting world of professional racing. The book explores what it takes to become a racecar driver while offering a realistic look at the responsibilities, training, and dedication required for this profession. It presents the information in an accessible, age-appropriate way and includes additional facts and resources for children who may want to learn more about this career path.
I appreciated the level of detail provided throughout the book. It is both informative and entertaining, giving readers a strong understanding of the career while also sharing interesting facts and trivia about racing. The book offers a look into a day in the life of a racecar driver and highlights the work involved in preparing for a race, both on and off the track. It makes clear that racing requires preparation, discipline, teamwork, and commitment. I especially enjoyed the inclusion of information about the pit crew, one of the most fascinating aspects of racing.
I would recommend So You Want To Be A Racecar Driver to young readers who are beginning to think about what they might want to be when they grow up. This book is a fun and informative introduction to a unique career path, filled with facts and trivia that will keep curious readers engaged from start to finish.
Pages: 38 | ISBN : 978-1972766156
Mari’s Light Burning Bright
Kaitlyn Marquart’s Mari’s Light Burning Bright is a young adult contemporary fiction novel about Mari, a teenage girl trying to live with memories of childhood abuse, self-harm, a family move, and the fear that she may never feel whole again. As the sequel to Amber Luna My Bright Light, the book follows Mari after Camp Evergreen as she enters Northstar Wellness Center, meets other young people carrying their own pain, and slowly begins to understand that healing is not a straight path. It is messy. It is brave. And sometimes it starts with simply letting someone sit beside you.
Mari’s voice is raw without feeling forced, and Marquart gives her room to be angry, funny, scared, judgmental, tender, and wrong. I appreciated that. Teenagers are not tidy people, especially teenagers in crisis, and the book does not try to polish Mari into someone instantly inspirational. Her thoughts loop, flare, retreat, and return. That rhythm felt honest to me. The scenes at Northstar could have easily become heavy in a flat way, but the author balances them with small flashes of humor and human detail, like Scrabble games, awkward meals, and characters who are much more than the reasons they are there.
I also found myself thinking a lot about the author’s choices around faith, family, and recovery. Mari’s Mormon background is not treated as a simple answer or a simple problem, which makes the story more interesting. Her family loves her, but they often miss what she is trying to say. That hurt to read because it felt real. People can care and still fail to understand. The book is candid about pain, but it is careful with it. It doesn’t turn Mari’s suffering into a spectacle. Instead, it keeps asking a quieter question: what does it take for someone to believe she is worth saving when shame has been speaking louder than everyone else? The answer comes slowly, through therapy, friendship, memory, music, and the fragile courage to try again.
I would recommend Mari’s Light Burning Bright to readers who appreciate reflective young adult fiction with emotional depth, especially stories about mental health, trauma recovery, friendship, and finding a voice after silence. It’s not a light read, and readers sensitive to self-harm or childhood abuse should approach it with care. But for those who value hopeful, character-driven fiction that understands healing as a long walk rather than a sudden rescue, this book has a steady glow.
Pages: 153 | ASIN : B0H56ZX1V8
The Best of Young Athletes
The Sweet Season centers around a group of overlooked girls who are shaped into a softball team led by an aging coach with a stubborn belief in effort. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
As a high school football player who had the great fortune to play on a very successful team, the book began as an ode to all the coaches who spend countless hours coaxing the best out of young athletes. However, early on I realized that while Coach’s character was a critical component, the story needed to be told from the point of view of the players and I elected to go with teenage girls since they often must confront life’s many challenges, both on and off the field, much earlier than teenage boys. Similarly, I decided to build the story around a softball team, not only because girls are more commonly engaged in this sport but also because it’s a very strategic game that requires its players to make many critical decisions on an inning-by-inning, game-by-game, basis. So, I crafted a disparate group of overlooked girls who, with the aid of their aged coach, find not only themselves and each other but also something none of them ever expected—they become a team, an entity separate and apart from their individual selves, an entity that accomplishes more than any of them ever dreamed possible.
How does sports fiction allow you to explore character in ways that other genres might not?
When you show up for a team sport, you’re immediately confronted with issues and problems that can often be ignored in everyday life. Suddenly, your effort and dedication matter. If you don’t give it your best, then it’s not just you that suffers—all of your teammates will suffer as well. Each member of any team needs to put in considerable time and effort, not only to improve their own skills but also to find the best way to help their teammates improve their skills. In the Sweet Season, I explore this dynamic through characters like Jessee, an exceptional athlete who learns that helping her teammates is far more productive than criticizing them; and Fee, an exceptional student who learns that despite her lack of athleticism, there are ways she can help the team succeed; and Bebe, a dedicated member of a very conservative church who learns that leading by example is far more productive than imploring others to see the world through the same religious lens that she does.
Cat becomes the emotional center of the story. When did you realize how important she would be to the novel?
I live in a town with a large immigrant community from Somalia and I once attended a lecture from a member of that community who described his incredible overland march from his burned-out village to a refugee camp and ultimately to America. Although I had initially conceived the Cat character as an outsider, casting her as an immigrant who practices a religion utterly foreign to most girls who have grown up in a small midwestern town allowed me to delve even deeper into prejudices built around race, religion and culture, all of which evaporate when the evil you don’t know becomes the person you do know. Cat’s courageous ability to overcome the crippling adversities that her family endured, as well as her own fears, becomes the lodestar that ultimately unites her teammates.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
My first book, Morocco, A Remembrance of Childhood, Colonialism and the Cold War, is a memoir covering my early childhood years growing up as the son of a U.S. Navy officer and airplane pilot in a very foreign country, while The Sweet Season is centered on adolescence. Logically, my next book should focus on my adult years working as a corporate lawyer. However, I’m not John Grisham and I apparently lack the creativity to extract an interesting story from that time of my life. Instead, I’m currently crafting a novel centered on a widowed writer living alone in a small town in Northern Michigan who bumps into a middle-aged woman who shows far more interest in him than would appear warranted. Following this chance encounter, their budding relationship is disrupted by a murder that jeopardizes both of their futures. On the way to its surprising conclusion, the book will delve deeply into the small town’s historical past and the many ways in which this past has colored the lives of the man and woman at the narrative’s center. Just your average historical novel, mystery story, and court room drama, focused on an unlikely relationship that may or may not blossom. My target date for publishing is sometime during the summer of 2027.
Author Links: Amazon | Website
A chance meeting between a crabby old man, rehabbing a dilapidated Victorian mansion in an impoverished midwestern town, and five disparate teen girls pessimistically seeking contributions to support the summer softball team they have, for various reasons, been “sentenced” to join, ultimately alters the course of all their lives.
More than a sports story, more than a coming-of-age story, The Sweet Season is an inspirational exploration of the journey we all take from childhood to adulthood; as well as a thought-provoking exploration of the critical pathways we either choose or reject along the way.
Listening to Spravato
Listening to Spravato, by Justin Page, is a personal and practical meditation on how music shapes the experience of Spravato treatment for depression. Part memoir, part guide, and part argument for more intentional clinical care, the book follows the author’s journey from years of severe depression and suicide attempts into the fragile, complicated hope offered by esketamine sessions. Page explores the Spravato chair as more than a medical setting, showing how light, blankets, headphones, silence, clinicians, playlists, and even the soft crunch of recorded snow can become part of the treatment environment. At its center is a clear and quietly radical idea: when the mind is most vulnerable, sound isn’t background. It’s structure, shelter, and sometimes a lifeline.
What moved me most was the book’s tenderness toward suffering without ever turning it into spectacle. Page writes about depression with an intimacy that feels earned, especially in the personal note where he remembers being sixteen and feeling that the word “depression” was far too small for the storm it named. That passage gives the rest of the book its emotional gravity. The later chapters on playlists, clinic rooms, and session phases could have felt purely technical, but they don’t, because they’re rooted in the lived knowledge of someone who has needed these tools to survive. I found the “one bad trip” chapter especially striking. The absurd interruption of a Spotify ad, followed by the terrifying intrusion of a screaming solo flute and a rumbling Beethoven passage, makes the book’s central argument suddenly visceral. Page doesn’t merely tell us that sound matters under Spravato. He lets us feel how quickly music can become a menace when the self is unmoored.
The writing is strongest when it trusts its own lyric intelligence. Page has a gift for turning sensory experience into language that feels both precise and haunted: ambient music becomes architecture, a soft piano feels like a hand on the shoulder, public soundscapes offer “the comfort of a crowd without the threat of contact.” I admired the way he balances poetic reflection with practical restraint. He’s skeptical of mystical claims about 432 Hz and “healing frequencies,” yet he’s generous enough to admit that symbolism can matter when the nervous system is open and afraid. Its ideas are persuasive because they are humble. Page isn’t selling music as magic. He’s arguing that care is often found in the smallest, adjustable details.
I came away from Listening to Spravato with a renewed respect for the unseen textures of healing, for the chair, the headphones, the nurse outside the door, and the final grounding track that helps a person return to themselves. This is a compassionate, idiosyncratic, and quietly necessary book, one that makes a convincing case that treatment environments should be designed with more imagination and more mercy. I’d recommend it to Spravato patients, clinicians, clinic owners, music therapists, and anyone interested in how sound can help hold a person steady when language has gone temporarily out of reach.
Pages: 116 | ASIN : B0GQHXYRRV
