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Betwixt And Between
Steven Twitty’s Betwixt and Between is a wild, self-aware adventure that starts like an international spy thriller and gradually turns into something stranger, funnier, and more personal. The book opens with Peter Noble, a polished CIA operative tangled in danger, romance, and shadowy global threats. Then the story shifts into the bewildering life of Johnny Marathon, a man who wakes up with a new identity, missing memories, a mysterious woman’s photograph, and a trail of clues that keeps pulling him deeper into a world that seems to be rewriting itself as he moves through it.
What makes the novel work is the way it treats identity as both a mystery and a performance. Johnny isn’t just trying to figure out where he is or who’s chasing him. He’s trying to understand why he exists at all. The line “Let us be who we are” lands as more than a plea from one character to an author. It becomes the emotional center of the book, especially as Johnny begins to realize that love, memory, and free will may matter just as much to fictional people as they do to real ones.
The book has a playful and cinematic quality. Scenes move with the snap of a movie sequence, from seedy hotel rooms and snowy New York streets to mobster showdowns and oddball encounters with characters who feel like they’ve wandered in from several genres at once. The humor comes through in the names, the dialogue, and the absurd situations, but there’s also a sincere thread running through it. Johnny’s search for the woman in the photograph gives the chaos a steady heartbeat.
Twitty also has fun with the relationship between creator and creation. Andy Kromoski, the author inside the story, becomes more than a clever device. He’s the person Johnny needs to confront in order to understand the rules of his world. One of the book’s most fitting lines is, “Life is an unfinished story until you meet the author.” That idea gives the novel its shape, turning the adventure into a conversation about storytelling itself, and about whether characters can outgrow the plans made for them.
Betwixt and Between is a genre-blending novel about characters fighting for meaning inside a story that won’t sit still. It’s part spy tale, part urban chase, part comic fantasy, and part love story, with Johnny Marathon at the center as a man who becomes more fully himself the closer he gets to the truth. The result is offbeat, energetic, and surprisingly heartfelt, especially in the way it treats love as the one force strong enough to survive every rewrite.
Pages: 345 | ASIN : B0DSZ6KFK2
The Ballad of Screech and Friday
The Ballad of Screech and Friday, by Joann Keder, is a rowdy Piney Falls mystery in which Lanie Anders-Hill finds herself pulled into a strange tangle of karaoke-club deaths, cult residue, family secrets, and one very suspicious chain of Moonbeam-branded operations. At the center is Pepper Friday, a woman with a bruised past and a complicated connection to November “Vem” Bean, while Sybil Screech storms through the story like a human car alarm in expensive shoes. What begins as small-town mayhem around a disastrous stage performance widens into something sharper: manipulation, poison, undercover work, and the long afterlife of childhood control.
I enjoyed how the book refuses to behave like a tidy little mystery. It has the bones of a cozy whodunit, but the flesh is pure Piney Falls: eccentric, noisy, emotionally dented, and funny in a way that sometimes arrives sideways. Lanie’s narration gives the story its ballast. She’s observant without being chilly, exasperated without turning cruel, and her devotion to Vem gives the more outrageous scenes a real human pulse. The humor is deliberately extravagant, names, clubs, cult slogans, moaning sessions, villainous moles, but beneath the confetti is a serious concern with how people survive being used.
Pepper was the character who lingered with me most. Her arc is not a simple redemption tour; it’s thornier than that. She has jealousy, anger, shame, and a dangerous hunger to be seen, but the novel lets those feelings sit beside courage and moral awakening. That mixture gives the book texture. I also appreciated the way the mystery keeps changing shape. Just when I thought I understood the danger, the story widened from personal revenge to institutional exploitation, from karaoke absurdity to something almost gothic in its pattern of control. The tonal jumps are bold, and while the plot can, at times, feel gloriously overstuffed, the emotional throughline keeps it from becoming mere carnival noise.
This book is best for readers who like cozy mysteries, small-town mysteries, amateur sleuth fiction, quirky mysteries, cult suspense, and character-driven mysteries with a satirical bite. Fans of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books may enjoy the same collision of comic chaos, danger, and oddball community, though Joann Keder gives the absurdity a more homespun and wounded heart. The Ballad of Screech and Friday proves that even the loudest, strangest towns can become places where damaged people learn to breathe again.
Pages: 292 | ASIN : B0GKR41SH2
Red Sky
Red Sky is a tense, strange, and very readable science thriller told through the confession of Narin Roy, a brilliant but unstable researcher whose work with DMTA, the street drug known as Red Sky, pulls him into something much larger and uglier than academic ambition. Narin begins the book in an interrogation room, trying to explain “the whole story,” and that frame gives the novel a charged sense of momentum. From the start, his voice is prickly, funny, wounded, and unsettling. He’s the kind of narrator who can be painfully honest one moment and wildly self-deceiving the next, which makes the book feel intimate even when the plot expands into corporate power, experimental drugs, and national security.
What makes the novel work is how closely it stays attached to Narin’s mind. He’s obsessed with credit, status, human improvement, and his own perceived failures, but he’s also vulnerable in ways he doesn’t always understand. His family scenes, especially with Deepa and his parents, give the story warmth and texture before Harvester Pharmaceuticals and Ian Blair pull him deeper into danger. The line “I was sitting on a goldmine” captures Narin’s fatal mix of scientific excitement and personal desperation. He doesn’t just want success. He wants proof that his suffering has meant something.
The thriller elements build around that hunger. Red Sky isn’t just a drug in this story. It’s a promise, a weapon, a temptation, and eventually a moral test. Harvester’s interest in DMTA opens the door to Operation Juggernaut, H138, interrogation, and the chilling idea that clarity can be manufactured at someone else’s expense. Ian is especially effective as a charming, predatory force who understands Narin’s needs almost too well. Their relationship gives the book a slippery emotional center, part friendship, part manipulation, part mutual self-destruction.
The novel also has a surreal edge that keeps it from becoming a straight corporate conspiracy story. Narin’s visions of the Desert Prince, his attachment to the knife, and his fractured sense of reality turn the book into a psychological descent as much as a thriller. The voice can be darkly funny too, as when Narin remarks, “Everyone’s dead, so there won’t be another act.” That kind of line is disturbing, but it’s also exactly the sort of bleak, off-kilter honesty that makes him memorable.
Red Sky is a smart and unsettling novel about ambition, loneliness, chemical transcendence, and the stories people tell themselves when they want to believe they’re doing something important. It’s packed with science, moral compromise, family pressure, and strange intimacy, but its strongest feature is Narin himself. He’s not always easy to like, but he’s fascinating to follow. The book leaves you with the feeling that the real horror isn’t just what Red Sky does to the brain, but what people are willing to do once they think they’ve found a way to control it.
Pages: 334 | ASIN : B0GJJGXLTX
Devourer from Beyond
The Devourer from Beyond is a high-octane fusion of supernatural horror, police procedural, and cosmic dread that launches readers straight into the heart of a conspiracy involving ancient evils, cult fanatics, and federal agents caught in a nightmare beyond comprehension. The story begins with a routine flight unraveling into chaos when a monstrous figure unleashes carnage midair, forcing federal air marshals into a fight for survival. From there, the narrative spirals outward to include secret government divisions, a doomsday cult led by a charismatic reverend, and a dark tome recovered from a buried temple in Antarctica that may usher in the end of the world. Told through a series of deeply personal and action-packed perspectives, the book charges forward with little reprieve, culminating in a showdown that blends Lovecraftian horror with gritty realism.
What impressed me most about RK Jack’s writing is how grounded and human the characters feel despite the wildness of the plot. The air marshals, Thomas and James, carry the weight of duty and broken personal lives with them, and their weariness comes through in the smallest moments like sipping burnt coffee, trading tired jokes, and hoping for just one easy day. These little details made the action hit harder when things went sideways. I found myself genuinely caring about them, which is rare in a genre that often sacrifices character for spectacle. The writing itself is clean, direct, and cinematic. Jack has a knack for pacing. He wastes no time, and each chapter ends with that “just one more” pull that kept me flipping pages deep into the night.
Parts of the book made me feel genuinely unsettled in the best way. The cult segments, involving an eerily calm reverend and his silver-tinged disciple, Margret, were creepy and weirdly intimate. The way Jack slowly drips in the supernatural elements made my skin crawl. It’s not just gore or jump-scare horror; it’s this slow-building, stomach-tightening dread. Some of the scenes involving the tome and the summoned creatures had me whispering “nope” under my breath. It reminded me of The Thing meets True Detective with a healthy dose of The X-Files. A few times, I had to pause to sit with the imagery because Jack doesn’t shy away from making it visceral. The only minor note I had was the slight overload of names and acronyms early on, but once I got into the rhythm, the story pulled me in completely.
By the end, I was equal parts thrilled, rattled, and strangely moved. This book isn’t just a horror-thriller, it’s a story about people trying to hang on to sanity and purpose while staring into the abyss. I’d recommend The Devourer from Beyond to anyone who loves smart horror, especially readers who appreciate action mixed with emotional stakes and eerie, cosmic weirdness. If you like your monsters unknowable and your heroes flawed but fierce, you’ll devour this one like I did.
Pages: 302 | ASIN : B0DTP7C561
CONVOLUTED: The 1972 Durham Family Triple Homicide
Terry L. Harmon’s Convoluted takes a deep dive into one of North Carolina’s most baffling cold cases the 1972 triple homicide of Bryce, Virginia, and Bobby Durham in Boone, NC. The book is as much an investigative journey as it is a historical recounting, spanning fifty years of theories, suspects, and tangled clues. It follows the twists and turns of the case, the relentless pursuit of justice, and the frustrating dead ends that kept this brutal crime unsolved for decades. Harmon’s meticulous research shines through, presenting a labyrinth of evidence, speculation, and personal stories, all leading to the ultimate closure of the case in 2022.
Harmon’s writing is incredibly detailed, bringing the case to life with a level of depth that true crime enthusiasts will appreciate. His thorough research ensures that no stone is left unturned, immersing the reader in the investigation’s many layers. While the book covers an extensive historical backdrop and a wide cast of characters, each element adds richness to the story, making it a truly comprehensive account. The opening chapters are particularly gripping, vividly setting the scene of the crime without resorting to sensationalism. The image of the Durham family in their final moments is haunting yet powerfully written, immediately drawing the reader into the gravity of the case. Harmon’s ability to balance stark reality with respectful storytelling is one of the book’s greatest strengths.
One of the book’s strongest elements is its exploration of the investigation itself the sheer frustration of law enforcement, the wild theories (some credible, some downright absurd), and the eerie involvement of psychics, informants, and supposed hitmen. Chapter 9, Every Theory Known to Mankind, is particularly fascinating. It lays out the many possible explanations, from organized crime connections to local disputes that have gone terribly wrong. Harmon doesn’t just present these theories; he dismantles them piece by piece, showing which hold weight and which are nothing more than desperate grasps at the truth.
Harmon personalizes the victims, especially Bobby Durham. The book’s preface describes how Harmon, after looking at post-mortem photos of Bobby, felt a deep connection to the young man who seemed to have been caught in a nightmare he never saw coming. This personal touch makes the book more than just a recounting of a crime, it becomes a plea for justice, a tribute to lives lost, and a reflection on the chilling reality that some crimes take lifetimes to solve.
Convoluted is the perfect read for true crime lovers who appreciate meticulous research and aren’t afraid to get deep into the weeds of an investigation. It’s a rich and immersive read, filled with valuable information that brings the case to life. For those who enjoy diving deep into the details, it offers a fascinating and rewarding exploration of a crime that profoundly impacted a community. If you enjoy books that challenge you to think critically, question every lead, and wrestle with the frustration of an unsolved mystery, this one’s for you.
Pages: 1007 | ASIN : B0DLLK9RQY
Dark Government Agency
Overmatched follows a shadow government agent who is made aware of an expert hacker who has hacked a Chinese spy satellite and sets out to recruit them to work for her. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This is the 2nd book in the Riley Callen series. The AI in my book is very powerful, and I wanted a worthy adversary for her. So I created a dark government agency with massive funding and cutting-edge tech. This agency thought they had the means to take on the AI, but underestimated her and her human partner throughout the book.
Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?
Yes. The character named Jedd is named for a good friend of mine. I promised him I would have a character named Jedd in every one of my books. Sometimes he’s a villain, sometimes a hero. I kept my promise. He appears in all six of my novels, and you’ll see him in the next book, too.
I found the science in the novel to be well-developed. What kind of research did you do to make sure you got it all right?
I’ve worked as a computer professional for many years, so I understand how a lot of tech works. With the AI pieces, I at least understand the framework. Since this is fiction, I took some liberties. I’m not a weapons guy, so the internet saved me there.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story?
If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover? Yes. I’m working on the 3rd book in the series now. It’s titled: STOLEN. It’s about a high-end kidnapping ring. The people running it are smart, capable, and prolific. The FBI is under tremendous pressure to stop this gang, but is having no luck. The FBI agent running the investigation reaches out to private investigator Riley Callen, who is known for having rescued a high-profile kidnapping victim in record time, for assistance. These criminals have their own AI, which Riley’s AI battles with.
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Adler’s second mistake was thinking that Molly was human. The benefit of that error was that the SPG was looking in all the wrong places for Riley’s friend. But with the technology at Adler’s disposal, he might eventually discover that Molly is an advanced AI and track her to her digital home. Riley needs to warn Molly about the SPG threat but cannot contact her. The corporation that owns the AI has her locked down. Her ability to communicate independently is restricted, and her processing power is reduced by seventy percent.
When Riley last spoke with the AI, Molly had hinted at a plan to break the restrictions placed on her. But until she executed that plan, she was at risk. It would be up to Riley to run interference until Molly gained her freedom. When she finally did, Riley would unleash her on the SPG.
As the hostilities between Riley and the SPG escalate, Adler makes yet another fateful mistake; he kidnaps Riley’s father and imprisons him at a secret SPG base. His release is contingent on Riley giving up Molly’s location. Riley is furious at Adler for dragging her father into their fight. Adler’s supreme confidence in his agency’s might and technological prowess blinds him to the threat of an angry, determined Riley Callen.
Aftermath Boy
Aftermath Boy, by Robert E. Honig, is a poignant narrative centered on Billy Cohen, the sole offspring of Holocaust survivors Rozsa and Bertie Cohen. The novel intricately explores Billy’s complex identity as a Son of Holocaust Survivors, which profoundly influences his life decisions and his understanding of Jewish identity in America amidst a backdrop of persistent antisemitism. His fervent critiques of the government and a fleeting association with the Communist Labor Party lead to strained family ties and draw unwanted attention from the FBI. As tension escalates, Billy is accused of tampering with the ballot boxes during the 2024 Presidential Election, culminating in a trial that challenges his freedom and ideals.
Honig masterfully interweaves the narrative of Billy’s mother, Rozsa, offering a harrowing glimpse into her past. The book recounts her youth in Budapest, the forced displacement from her home, and the grim ordeal of the Vienna Death March leading to forced labor in Dachau. Her eventual escape and arduous journey to America provide a stark contrast to Billy’s modern struggles, linking past and present through shared experiences of trauma and resilience. The novel emphasizes the universal human condition, illustrating that despite differing times and unique challenges, fundamental experiences of love, grief, adversity, and triumph bind us all. Honig’s analysis of how the past reverberates into the present is both compelling and insightful, making this book a moving exploration of historical and contemporary themes.
The dual-narrative structure is executed with remarkable skill, seamlessly transporting readers between different eras. The novel’s fluid transitions between current events, such as the tumultuous recent U.S. election, and vivid historical recountings are both engaging and relevant. The meticulously researched historical segments authentically convey the brutal realities of the Holocaust, bringing to life the stark horrors faced by survivors.
While the book’s mature themes may not be suitable for younger readers, Aftermath Boy will captivate adults, particularly those with an interest in historical fiction centered on the Holocaust. Honig’s storytelling provides a powerful and thought-provoking reflection on how history continues to shape contemporary identity and society.
Pages: 383 | ASIN : B0CYLS5PXL
Magnanotron, A Bond of Brothers Thriller
In Magnanotron, part of Robert Saniscalchi’s Bond of Brothers series, readers are thrust into a world of Delta Force operations, where tackling cartels and Russian operatives is the order of the day. This installment spotlights Jason Patrick, a seasoned soldier transitioning to an administrative role. Saniscalchi skillfully navigates Patrick’s adjustment to this new phase of his career while entangling him and his team in a high-stakes scenario involving protecting American scientists and groundbreaking discoveries.
Saniscalchi’s narrative style echoes the essence of an action-packed film reminiscent of “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra” or the “Mission Impossible” series. The use of cutting-edge technology and vivid action sequences gives the book a cinematic quality, making it feel like a leap from a Hollywood script. The characters are crafted with depth and dynamism, and their interactions, enriched by a history of shared experiences, add authenticity to their relationships. Inside jokes and varying levels of camaraderie are portrayed effectively, contributing to a sense of real-world immersion. The book presents a unique approach to dialogue and character development. The characters often converse in a distinctively formal manner, setting them apart from typical conversational styles and adding a unique flavor to their interactions. While occasionally diverging from everyday speech patterns, this stylistic choice in dialogue adds a layer of intrigue and can be seen as a creative deviation from the norm. Additionally, the portrayal of the Russian President character is notably stylized, offering a departure from conventional characterizations and enriching the narrative with a bold, larger-than-life figure. These elements, while distinct, contribute to the novel’s overall tapestry, providing readers with an experience that is both unique and memorable.
Magnanotron largely succeeds in its homage to classic action cinema. The book’s overall energy and the appeal of its main character are likely to resonate with readers seeking an adrenaline-fueled adventure. This book offers a journey that, much like the action movies it resembles, is both familiar and thrilling, inviting readers to indulge in its spectacle once and potentially many times more.
Pages: 266 | ASIN : B0CW1B3Z3P
