Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

   (Visionary Living Publishing, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-94217-56-4 A few disclaimers to start. My wife Tonya and I have investigated some of the locations discussed in this book. The author also references some of our findings as they pertain to the Greene County Historical Society and Museum, which we have investigated with him on several occasions. We are listed in the Acknowledgments and one of our books is listed in the Further Reading section. That said, we have been visiting and investigating southwestern Pennsylvania for more than a decade—well before we were introduced to Kevin Paul by his coauthor on the first book in this series, the now deceased Rosemary Ellen Guiley. We have friends who own considerable acreage in the area, and we have done several home and business investigations and haunting mitigations in the county independent of our work with the author. If you read the bestselling Haunted Hills and Hollows , you’ll notice that Paul takes a slightly differen...

 (Odyssey Books, 2021). ISBN: ISBN: 978-1922311238 (ebook) The Amber Crane is richly researched historical fiction with complex metaphors and a touch of magical realism. Before you begin, have a look at the cover, which holds a clue: a squadron of World War II planes and, amidst them, a crane carved in a chunk of amber. Once you begin to read, you’ll see that the story primarily takes place in 1644, during The Thirty Years’ War (although no one living and fighting in that time knew how long it would be). The story’s protagonist is Peter, who is training under a master to join the amber guild and become a paternostermaker , so named because they mostly made rosary beads. Like my 22-year-old daughter, Peter has never known life without war, and it has touched him in many ways. His older brother Lorenz—handsome, charming, and popular—who served in Queen Christina of Sweden’s Army, was killed during the war, although it was not combat related. Peter’s mother died of grief at the...

  (Next Chapter, 2021). ISBN: 9798451056851 For the past three years, as part of my work as a Chautauquan and historical education specialist, I have portrayed Ernesto “Che” Guevara, one of the key personalities in the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro in the late 1950s. Much has been made of Che—to some a hero/Messiah-like savior and to others a heartless mass murderer. He is admittedly complex. As are all who choose the life of the revolutionary. This is the core subject matter of Alejandro’s Lie . Taking place in a fictitious country called Terreno (meaning “ground”) in 1983, which has suffered a military takeover ( junta) and now dictatorship by General Pelaron (meaning “to skin an animal”), the book explores the motivations of both those on the side of the general and those fighting against him. Although the book is rife with political complexities, it is primarily a character study. The main characters in this drama are the Alejandro of the title, who is a former ...

 (Gumshoe – A Next Chapter Imprint, 2021). ISBN: 9781034490845 “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” —Thomas Jefferson With this opening epitaph, Pete Adams had me hooked. As the US Federal Reserve (neither Federal nor a Reserve) buys up all it can at a bargain under the banners of Qualitative and Quantitative Easing amid whispers of a trillion-dollar platinum coin Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen could use to avoid a government shutdown, even some old-money families like the Rockefellers in West Virginia are chiming in to say “The Fix Is Fully In.” Dead No More opens with a car fire that kills two police officers—a mother (Dawn) and daughter (Carol)—and facially scars their granddaughter/daughter, Juliet. Carol’s husband, who is “something in the City,” which is code for a man of importance, is also killed. It’s clear that the two officers were murdered because they were working on a case involving high-level families...

  (Glannant Ty Publishing, 2016). ISBN: 978-1539080763 A few months ago, I reviewed Solaris Blueraven’s Alien Intelligence . Although One Million Miles ‘till Midnight uses much of the same subject matter (the abuse of technology to create a Matrix-like false reality on Earth and unlocking our true nature as cosmic beings), Alien Intelligence was Blueraven’s nonfiction account of what she experienced at the hands of operators of “synthetic telepathy” and artificial intelligence. In her words, it is “a reflection and parallel of an event I was inducted into in 2004 involving exotic technology and artificial intelligence” (from the Foreword). Blueraven’s story is provocative, as well as controversial. Considering, however, the debate about secret-society symbolism in pop culture (especially music); that, through Operation Paperclip, the US State Department brought Nazi scientists to America after World War II; and the existence of nefarious government-sponsored programs like MKU...