Blog Archives
Echoes of Fortune: Knights of the Golden Circle
Echoes of Fortune: The Knights of the Golden Circle, by David R. Leng, is a historical thriller that blends Civil War secrets, modern conspiracy, coded messages, and treasure-hunt adventure. The story follows historian Jack Sullivan, along with Emma, Priya, Steve, and their allies, as they uncover a hidden legacy tied to Jefferson Davis, Confederate gold, and the real secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. What begins as a historical puzzle grows into something much larger and more dangerous, moving between the final days of the Confederacy and a present-day threat that reaches into the highest levels of power.
I enjoyed the way the book treats history as something alive and unsettled. Leng does not just use the past as decoration. He lets it press against the present, sometimes like a warning and sometimes like a buried fuse. The Civil War chapters have a cold, tense atmosphere, and the modern scenes move with the quick pulse of a conspiracy thriller. I liked how Jack’s academic curiosity keeps pulling him forward, even when common sense says to stop digging. That felt true to the genre. In a historical thriller, the best discoveries should feel both exciting and dangerous, and this book understands that.
The author makes some bold choices with scope. This is not a small mystery tucked inside an archive. It grows into a sprawling adventure with politics, military action, secret networks, old codes, and personal stakes. At times, that scale gives the story real momentum. At other times, I felt the book was trying to carry a lot at once, especially when the plot shifts from a research-driven mystery into high-level national danger. Still, I appreciated the ambition. The relationships also help ground the larger plot. Jack and Emma’s bond, Priya’s sharp mind, and Steve’s loyalty give the story a human center, so the book is not only about maps, symbols, and hidden treasure. It’s about trust, fear, obsession, and what people inherit from history without always realizing it.
I recommend Echoes of Fortune: The Knights of the Golden Circle to readers who enjoy historical thrillers with a strong conspiracy angle, especially fans of secret societies, Civil War mysteries, coded clues, and fast-moving adventure. If you like stories where old documents can open dangerous doors, this book will likely pull you in. It’s best for readers who enjoy a big, cinematic plot and don’t mind when the stakes keep rising far beyond the first mystery.
Pages: 647 | ASIN : B0H46XN5CG
Weapons Deployed
Black and White Smoke follows a CFO who is trying desperately to navigate his company through a dangerous period after the founder disappears from active leadership. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve always found power and leadership transitions, including CEO succession battles, to be riveting. Especially so when the eventual outcome is the least expected one. Several shows, including the Succession series and, perhaps oddly for a business fiction book, the intrigues behind the election of popes, including the incumbent, served as inspiration.
The novel treats boardrooms like battlefields. Was that a conscious decision from the start?
Indeed, that’s the crux of the protagonist, Jon’s plotline, where analogies to chess battles are often drawn. On the chessboard, having attacking momentum, ensuring the strategic placement of pieces on the right squares, and seeking material advantages are the keys to victory.
Similarly, in the boardroom, the weapons deployed are timing, the power of persuasion, novelty of ideas, and the ability to forge potent alliances, be they collaborative or nefarious in nature. In these settings, subtext and subtlety are key features of the verbal duels. That’s what I intended to showcase in the novel.
Which character surprised you the most while writing?
Paxton, who is one of the antagonists. Ordinarily, I’d have little time for a character like him- a boisterous blowhard. However, my admiration of his qualities and understanding of the motivation for his choices increased multi-fold as I developed his character arc.
What do you think today’s business leaders could take away from the novel?
The essentials for success at the top echelons of organizations, such as having outstanding communication skills, strategic vision, a nose for opportunity, bias for action, drive, resilience, and ruthlessness, are on full display among the book’s characters. The book also doesn’t shy away from highlighting the personal costs of scaling the totem pole. All said and done, a central message is that forging the right alliances and who you have in your corner make a difference.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Threats are mounting against an innovative business intelligence firm. Its CFO, Jon Kiza, a behind-the-scenes operator, hasn’t been in the spotlight. But when the CEO vanishes, and a game-changing deal starts unraveling, he’s thrust into an unexpected race for the top job -where he faces Paxton Stump, the firm’s charismatic rainmaker. Guile and patient positioning are pitted against charm and flamboyant thrusts. It’s a duel between the chess-minded quant and the warrior poet.
While on a trip, Jon is put in the crosshairs of alluring forces he didn’t see coming. A smear campaign takes shape, and he realizes that far more dangerous threats lurk in the shadows. Cornered, he fights back. Meanwhile, Paxton bags a game-changing deal with a client prospect, but obstacles follow, and the goal posts keep shifting. Regardless, the bacon winner won’t be stopped.
Of the two, who will sway the board?
Set across multiple cities, Black and White Smoke is an international, fast-paced corporate thriller packed with boardroom intrigue, spiced with corporate espionage, and with characters diced by unchecked greed.
In this world, every tidbit of information is leverage. And every choice has consequences.
Extraordinary Abilities
Violet Mystique: Part 1 follows a woman with unusual violet eyes and emerging abilities she doesn’t yet understand, as she becomes entangled with a police detective investigating a robbery. What inspired the concept for this story?
I wanted to write about a young woman with violet eyes who was in a big city, struggling to get by, and what resulted was a whole new story about a young woman with extraordinary abilities who wants to live a normal life. Though we learn that her life is anything but normal.
How did you create the rules and structure of this hidden world?
I’m a panster, so the rules and structure for this hidden world were created as the story kept developing. You’ll think it strange, but I listened to my characters and to what their world is like, and I made sure to stay true to it.
Were there moments where the story surprised you as it developed?
Yes! I wasn’t planning on the way certain individuals met their demise or exactly what Jalyn Wilds could do in the mind realm.
Have you already mapped out where Jalyn’s journey goes next?
Absolutely! The next book will dive deeper into Jalyn’s mind and if there are other gifted individuals.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Instagram | Website | Amazon
Detective Ed Daza senses something otherworldly in Jalyn, and as he follows the trail, he discovers a hidden network of “Others”—individuals with extraordinary abilities targeted by Madam’s shadow organization with deadly plans. Each step pulls Ed deeper into a world of manipulation, betrayal, and supernatural intrigue, where those he trusts may not be who they seem.
Hunted and caught between forces far beyond ordinary law enforcement, Jalyn must navigate a web of psychic danger and hidden agendas to survive. Violet Mystique is an urban fantasy thriller that pulses with suspense, mystery, and supernatural power—a story of gifts, secrets, and the lengths one young woman will go to protect herself and the lives she touches.
Black and White Smoke – C-Suite Woes: Subtlety Has Limits
Black and White Smoke, by Thomas V. Papa, is a corporate thriller with its feet planted firmly in boardrooms, investor meetings, private jets, cocktail bars, and the quiet corners where reputations are made or ruined. The book opens with a regulatory fight over credit rating agencies and quickly widens into a story about money, control, succession, and the people willing to bend or break the rules to get ahead. Its early mantra, “Evidence, evidence, evidence,” captures the world of the novel well: everyone claims to be guided by facts, but almost everyone is also chasing power.
At the center is Jon Kiza, VASPI’s CFO, who’s trying to steer the company through a dangerous period after founder Vlad Fabiano disappears from active leadership. Jon’s rival, Paxton Stump, is louder, flashier, and more naturally theatrical, while Tessy Hill has to hold the company together from the board chair’s seat. Around them, Abe Quinn and Krenith bring a more predatory energy to the story, turning what could’ve been a corporate succession drama into something closer to a chess match with surveillance, planted scandals, hostile media, and real physical danger.
What makes the book so engaging is how seriously it takes corporate life as a battlefield. Papa doesn’t treat finance, acquisitions, data, or board politics as background noise. They’re the machinery of the plot. The scenes work best when the characters are sparring across a table, testing each other’s weaknesses, or trying to read what isn’t being said. Jon is especially compelling because he isn’t a smooth superhero type. He’s smart, proud, bruised, and sometimes cornered, which makes his fight to survive feel personal as well as professional.
The writing has a brisk, slightly satirical edge, with plenty of sharp internal commentary and personality packed into the dialogue. Paxton’s bluster, Dreyfuss’s bluntness, Quinn’s menace, and Jon’s controlled irritation all give the book texture. The plot is busy, sometimes deliberately crowded, but that fits a story about a sector being reshaped by deregulation, ambition, and backroom pressure. The line “Subtlety has limits” feels like the book’s operating principle: polite corporate language keeps giving way to harder tactics.
Black and White Smoke is a smart and energetic corporate thriller about who gets to lead when a company is under siege. It blends boardroom maneuvering with espionage-style tension, while keeping its focus on character, loyalty, ego, and judgment under pressure. Readers who enjoy high-stakes business fiction, succession battles, and stories where the real weapons are information and leverage will find plenty to chew on here.
Pages: 244 | ASIN : B0GQ1X71NF
Violet Mystique: Part 1
Violet Mystique: Part 1 is a supernatural mystery thriller with a strong paranormal suspense thread. The story follows Jalyn Wilds, a young woman with strange violet eyes and abilities she does not fully control, after a robbery pulls police detective Ed Daza into her orbit. What starts as a criminal investigation quickly opens into something larger: disappearances, hidden experiments, a secretive colony, and people whose gifts have been treated less like miracles and more like property.
What I liked most was the way the book drops the reader straight into trouble. Jalyn is not introduced with a long explanation of who she is. We meet her under pressure, with a gun pointed at her, and that works. It tells us she is afraid, powerful, guarded, and tired of being seen as strange, all at once. The writing has a quick, pulpy energy that fits the genre. Scenes move fast. People argue, run, hide, fight, and reveal secrets before the dust has fully settled. At times, that pace can make the story feel crowded, but it also gives the book its bite. There is always another door opening.
I also found myself interested in the choices around Jalyn and Ed. Their connection could have been treated as simple attraction, but the book keeps tying it to fear, control, trust, and the danger of being known too well. That gave the relationship more weight for me. Madam is written as a clear villain, almost theatrical in her cruelty, yet the larger idea behind her is the part that stayed with me: what happens when people with unusual gifts are raised, trained, used, and traded like tools? That question gives the supernatural elements a harder edge.
I would recommend Violet Mystique: Part 1 to readers who enjoy paranormal suspense, supernatural mystery, and character-driven thrillers with romance simmering under the action. It will especially appeal to readers who like gifted heroines, secret organizations, moral gray areas, and stories where the mystery keeps expanding instead of staying in one neat box.
Pages: 254 | ASIN : B0GYVDHQZ3
Blood Echoes
Aaron Ryan’s Blood Echoes follows Tracie Vossler, an ex-Marine turned prison security guard, as she becomes entangled in the horrifying mystery surrounding identical twins Elias and Gabriel Brickert. Set largely inside Airway Heights Corrections Center and told through shifting timelines, the novel begins with a murder that should be impossible and then widens into something far stranger: occult rituals, demonic possession, body-swapping, institutional panic, and a mother’s desperate fight to protect her daughter, Lela. What starts as a prison thriller curdles into supernatural horror, with blood evidence, security footage, and human memory all becoming unreliable witnesses.
I was most compelled by the novel’s atmosphere. Ryan gives Airway Heights a clammy, pressurized quality; the prison never feels like a backdrop so much as a sealed lung trying to breathe around something rotten. Tracie’s voice is brash, bruised, funny in the wrong places, and sometimes jagged enough to cut through the melodrama. Her fixation on burgers, cigarettes, nail appointments, and her daughter’s teenage moods keeps the story tethered to ordinary life even as the plot begins to levitate into the occult. That grounding matters because without it, the supernatural machinery could have felt too gaudy; with it, the horror feels personal, almost domestic.
The book also has a maximalist streak. It piles on murders, rituals, possessions, confessions, betrayals, legal fallout, and emotional wreckage with very little interest in restraint. The momentum is hard to deny. Ryan writes like someone determined to shove every locked door open, and the result is messy in a way that often feels alive. I especially appreciated how the novel refuses to let Tracie remain a clean heroine. Her love for Lela is luminous, but her choices grow morally murky, and the ending leaves a residue of grief rather than the neat click of a solved case.
I think this would be a great book for readers who enjoy supernatural horror, prison thrillers, demonic possession stories, occult suspense, body-swap horror, and psychological thrillers. Fans of Stephen King’s The Green Mile may recognize the charged prison setting and the sense that something otherworldly has slipped into a place already built for suffering, though Ryan’s novel is more lurid, more frantic, and more openly demonic. Blood Echoes is a grim and feverish book about blood ties, borrowed bodies, and the terrible cost of surviving evil.
Pages: 332 | ASIN : B0GXN2TMD5
Curse of the Caribbean
Curse of the Caribbean is a fast-moving Lou Gault thriller that throws readers straight into cartel violence, stolen yachts, and modern-day piracy in the Caribbean. Author Dave McKeon opens with a brutal introduction to Antonio Sanchez, a cartel assassin known as “The Butcher,” and from there the story quickly expands into a dangerous scheme involving hijacked luxury boats, corrupt networks, MI6 attention, and a vacation that goes very, very wrong.
I really enjoyed the book’s mix of tropical adventure and gritty crime thriller energy. Lou Gault is the kind of rugged, capable hero readers expect in an action series, but the story also gives plenty of room to Kate, Jake, Koby, and the villains, making the plot feel bigger than one man against the bad guys. The Caribbean setting adds a fun contrast too: bright beaches, boats, and island ports sit right beside murder, cartel power, and lurking danger. This would be a fantastic read for fans of thrillers, crime fiction, maritime suspense, adventure fiction, and modern pirate thrillers.
The villains are nasty in a way that keeps the stakes high. Sanchez is especially chilling because he’s not just dangerous; he genuinely enjoys the violence. Carlos and the Chameleon add more layers of calculation and corruption, so the threat feels organized rather than random. The story leans into exposition and detailed backstory, but fans of plot-heavy thrillers will probably enjoy how much ground the book covers and how many moving parts come together.
Readers who enjoy Clive Cussler-style adventure, especially books like Sahara, will find a similar appeal here: exotic locations, dangerous waters, hidden agendas, and capable heroes pulled into a larger conspiracy. Curse of the Caribbean is darker and more violent than a breezy treasure-hunt adventure, but it has that same “one more chapter” momentum. It’s a good pick for readers who like their thrillers packed with boats, bad guys, survival instincts, and a sun-soaked setting with danger just beneath the surface.
Pages: 326 | ASIN : B0DXQ1NDP3
Fatal Consequences
Deadly Dial follows a radio host who takes a chilling late-night call that opens the door to a civic nightmare. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
When I began developing the novel, the country was on the verge of another government shutdown. Approximately 1.4 million people (670,000 federal employees and another 730,000—including personnel from the TSA, NASA, OSHA, and the EPA) were forced to work without immediate pay. With roughly $14 billion in wages temporarily withheld, localized consumer spending collapsed. The politicians orchestrating this crisis appeared entirely insulated from its fallout, detached from the reality of citizens struggling to afford basic necessities.
Simultaneously, public discourse was fracturing; people grew increasingly brazen, invoking their First Amendment rights while remaining blind to the consequences of their words. While no single event inspired this book, the collective anxiety and social friction of that era heavily shaped the narrative. This atmospheric tension is also why I chose to leave the setting unnamed—I wanted to capture a universal cultural climate rather than anchor the story to a specific location or headline.
Were there particular crime novels, political scandals, or media events that influenced the book?
Although I intentionally steered clear of writing the story based on direct current events, reality had a way of bleeding into the pages. A mere week into writing the manuscript, a well-known conservative commentator was assassinated during a Q&A session on a university campus as he fielded questions about violence. Ironically, he was a man of faith who prided himself on unfiltered speech, and his sudden death served as a chilling, real-time validation of what I was exploring in my fiction. It proved, in the most tragic way possible, that our current culture of reckless speech carries heavy, sometimes fatal, consequences.
Did you want readers to fear the Prophet as a person, or as a symptom of something larger within the city?
I wanted readers to fear the Prophet as a symptom of a much larger, systemic issue within society. On a personal level, the Prophet simply mirrors the dark realities we see every day: politicians driven by corruption, self-interest, and a complete disregard for the “ordinary person.” The true horror stems from the reality that, in our world, these figures rarely face consequences for the devastation they cause. In my novel, however, that immunity is stripped away. While I am certainly not advocating for real-world assassination, within the heightened dramatic stakes of the book, these corrupt actors are finally exposed and forced to face the ultimate reckoning for their actions.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Writing has truly become something I simply cannot put down; creating these worlds and sharing them with readers is incredibly therapeutic and fulfilling. Right now, I am juggling several exciting projects. I am currently finishing a medical-dental suspense thriller titled A Deadly Extraction. Additionally, I have three completed, fully edited novels ready to go for The Dante Villehart Files series, along with a few standalone projects. My main focus right now is deciding whether to continue down the self-publishing route or pursue traditional publishing for these next releases. Either way, there is a wealth of new material coming very soon!
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Amazon
In a world where words can wield deadly power, talk show host Riley Anderson finds herself at the epicenter of a possible political storm. When an anonymous caller, later dubbed “The Prophet”, rants about government corruption, his chilling threats suddenly turn into reality as the politicians he names, along with some of their associates, begin to turn up dead.
As fear grips the city, Riley struggles with the weight of her role in amplifying the chaos. Teaming up with seasoned detective Alex Thompson and tech whiz Eleanor “Ellie” Mitchell, Riley embarks on a harrowing quest to uncover the truth behind the calls. But when they discover that the number used by the caller belongs to a man who has been presumed dead for years, the lines between reality and conspiracy blur.
With each shocking revelation, Riley must confront the haunting legacy of a man driven by vengeance and the dark secrets that could change everything. As the clock ticks down to the next assassination, Riley and the team must race against time to unravel a deadly game that could cost her–and everyone in the city–everything.
Perfect for fans of political thrillers, murder mysteries, and fast-paced suspense, Deadly Dial delivers a pulse-pounding ride where the truth is the deadliest weapon of all.
