C Gockel Writes

Featured Fantasy: Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James

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Featured Fantasy: Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James

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From the New York Times bestselling author of Murder Road comes a gripping novel that “is the perfect blend of history and mystery, with a little paranormal activity and romance thrown in for the ride” (Suspense Magazine).

England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex’s wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to the family’s estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband’s origins…and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths’ past is just the beginning…
 
All is not well at Wych Elm House. Dottie’s husband is distant, and her son was grievously injured in the war. Footsteps follow Jo down empty halls, and items in her bedroom are eerily rearranged. The locals say the family is cursed, and that a ghost in the woods has never rested. And when Jo discovers her husband’s darkest secrets, she wonders if she ever really knew him.  Isolated in a place of deception and grief, she must find the truth or lose herself forever.
 
And then a familiar stranger arrives at Wych Elm House…

Book Review: The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity by Timothy C. Winegard

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I love this type of book! It traces the ripples of one pivotal stone toss across the waters of human history—or in this case, the ripples of grass through the steppes. Horses were a mode of transportation, a machine of agriculture, and a weapon of war for nearly 5,000 years. This book traces their domestication, their adoption as a mode of transport, and their eventual importance in warfare. It’s surprising, informative, and entertaining.

Highly recommended!

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Book Review: Free Speech – A History From Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama

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This book should be required reading for everyone in the “free” world.

Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama should have a byline. I propose “And Why We Should Want it Even Though Humans are Stupid.”

The format of the book is just what you see on the tin. It’s a history of free speech from Ancient Athens to modern Social Media, and it is very engaging. All of the time periods are equally interesting, but I listened to this book after reading an article by Mr. Mchangama about the Weimar Fallacy: the belief that if the Weimar Republic had just censored the Nazis the Third Reich never would have happened.

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Featured Fantasy: Mature Magic by Sam Cheever

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Featured Fantasy: Mature Magic by Sam Cheever

Start the Series FREE (Book 2 for only $2.99)
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A PARANORMAL WOMEN’S FICTION NOVEL

Psst! Can I tell you a secret? Midlife is a c-r-a-z-y ride. Not what I expected at all. But, I’m having a ton of fun in between the…you know…near death experiences and bladder-testing moments of complete terror.

Curse, curse, swear! How did midlife get so out of control? All I wanted was to make my own mark on the world. Start my own business and celebrate the end of an uninspiring marriage. Instead, I have a bat in my belfry. Not a metaphor…a REAL bat. The woods in my back yard is full of something dark from my nightmares. I’ve got a mysterious and sexy neighbor who seems to appear out of nowhere and knows more about my life than he should. And my best friends? Yeah, they’re witches.

What the..?

My life has become a carnival and I’m sitting at the OhMyGoddessNo! spot on the most heart-stopping roller coaster.
Things are getting hairier than my chin. And midlife is definitely not shaping up to be the calm and graceful phase I’d been expecting.

But, I’ve got a good grip on my granny panties and I’m taking the ride. What could possibly go wrong?

Featured Sci-fi: The Humans by Matt Haig

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Featured Sci-fi: The Humans by Matt Haig


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Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay (FREE at your public library!)

I loved this whimsical look at humanity from an alien perspective. It’s hilarious and deep at the same time.

The bestselling, award-winning author of The Midnight Library offers his funniest, most devastating dark comedy yet, a “silly, sad, suspenseful, and soulful” (Philadelphia Inquirer) novel that’s “full of heart” (Entertainment Weekly).

When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal.

He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martin’s family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans’ imperfection, and begins to question the very mission that brought him there.

Praised by The New York Times as a “novelist of great seriousness and talent,” author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subject—ourselves.

Book Review: Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh

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Book Review: Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh

I picked up Downbelow Station a few years ago at the library and didn’t finish it. I picked it up from Amazon one day when it was on sale, and I loved it. It was, I realized, the font in the library edition. It was a BEAUTIFUL, delicate, serif font … and it was so faint where the weight narrowed on the curves it was hard to read, especially on the slightly yellowed paper of the older book. At least for my 50+ year old eyes. So three cheers for eReaders and the ability to change the font, the font size, and the background color. This book wasn’t one that I devoured, like some of the Foreigner series, but it was one I kept coming back to night after night. The characters were just so real I couldn’t abandon them.

The plot was exactly what it says on the tin: there is a breakdown in Earth’s expansion into space as the people in space—the people in stations, the people on worlds, and the people in the merchant and “navy” fleets that tie them all together—develop different cultures. A completely unnecessary and predictable war breaks out, and atrocities and heroism both happen. C.J. Cherryh isn’t afraid to let bad things happen to good people, and I wasn’t sure who was going to make it out alive, and didn’t count on the directions that certain characters took … but every move they took made sense.

There is action, but this is very much a drama of the psychological, political, and familial variety.

I do believe that sci-fi that takes place in space is motivated by humanity’s desire to expand outward to the stars, and it’s our way of psychologically preparing for it. We are a species that likes to roam, and maybe needs to. Downbelow Station is a beautiful addition to this preparedness—which is maybe why it won the Hugo. Highly recommended.

Besides Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia the ebook is on Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

The audiobook is available on Audible. Everand features an audiobook with sound effects—I might get it!