Awesome Indies: APPROVED

XYZ

XYZ
Title: XYZ
ASIN: B07TTWHYL2
Category:
Published: July 31, 2019
Author's Twitter: @_william_knight
Jack Cooper blames the internet for everything bad that’s happened to him, and he badly needs an update. Once a king of computer coding and a Space Invaders champion to boot, he's now middle-aged, unemployed, cynical and sarcastic. He drinks too much and is addicted to online hook ups. His wife wants a divorce, his single daughter is expecting a baby and his shameful, twenty-something, species-confused son dresses as a bear. But when Jack’s daughter engineers a job for him at totally-lit tech firm Sweet, he’s confronted by a Generation Y and Z culture he detests. He loathes every detail – every Instant Message, gif and emoji, and the constant broadcasting of "success" on social media. Can Jack ever relate to the gender-neutral, app-wielding, digitally-connected snowflakes at his new politically-correct company, or will he remain a dinosaur stuck in the 1980s?And will Jack halt his slide into loneliness and repair things with his family?

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

The Children in Hiding Trilogy

The Children in Hiding Trilogy
Title: The Children in Hiding Trilogy
ASIN: B07V46MMF6
Tag:
Published: September 8, 2019
Author's Twitter: @Entlover27
Get on Board Little Children, Come on Home Children, and City of Hidden Children now available in one volume.An unborn infant. A toddler. A teenager. What these three have in common: they are all being hunted by the enforcers of the Bureau of Population Control in the years following the passage of the No Unwanted Children Act. The law made it a felony in Washington state to carry to term an unlicensed pregnancy. Any such children who escaped the net became subject to confiscation, to be raised and trained in the education/labor camps.In Get on Board Little Children, Sophie and Josh must make the right choices and make them fast, under pressure from the Bureau to submit to their harsh demands or face imprisonment and worse.In Come on Home Children, Willa’s four-year-old daughter has been seized by the same arrogant arm of the state as an unlicensed child. Unless Willa can rescue her, Katy faces a life of stigma, toil, and despair.In City of Hidden Children, Katy is now an adolescent, and memories of her confinement in the labor camp are beginning to surface. She realizes that her two best friends are still imprisoned there and determines to let nothing stop her from finding and freeing them.Dystopian thrillers set in a future Seattle, each tale tests whether love can outwit bureaucratic greed in a future that is all too conceivable.

Assessed 

The author has combined her three Awesome Indies Seal of Excellence and Approved  books, Get on Board Little Children, Come on Home Children, and City of Hidden Children into a trilogy, The Children in Hiding Trilogy

 

RoboDocs

RoboDocs
Title: RoboDocs
ASIN: B07GCCQX6H
Tags: ,
Published: August 10, 2018
Even in 2030, young people who dream of becoming doctors want to help people in need. Hal believes that health care is about caring, and patients want their doctor to be knowledgeable, trustworthy and compassionate. However, medical training seems designed to whittle away at his convictions and reshape him to fit its own purposes. College, medical school and residency spend eleven years molding him into a cog that fits in the healthcare machine. Contending with A.I. Assistants, cybernetic implants and robots, Hal’s journey is an emotional roller coaster. His wife Sarah does everything humanly possible to save his last spark of passion and hope; she even follows him to Africa in search of his dreams. Can she rescue his humanity? A few years ago, this story would have been pure science fiction. But medical technology is advancing at breakneck speed; the doctor you visit tomorrow could be a RoboDoc.

Assessed for 

Endurance

Endurance
Title: Endurance
ASIN: B01JSIH9E4
Publisher:
Published: September 16, 2016
Author:
Author's Twitter: @acspahn
A disrespected ship, exiled to lonely patrol in the dark corners of the solar system. A crew of screw-ups, written off by the entire fleet. They're about to change everything. If they don't blow themselves up first. Join the Endurance's crew - a trigger-happy first officer, a hyperactive engineer, a shy covert operative, a conspiracy-spouting physicist, and a captain trying to earn his way back into his superiors' good graces - as they explore the galaxy by accident and trip their way into saving the world. This anthology includes all five Endurance novellas, as well as two bonus short stories.

The Endurance series is no longer available as separate volumes.

Volume 1: Enduring Endurance

Volume 2: Mightier than the Sword

Volume 3: Under Cover

Volume 4: Preferred Dead

each received Awesome Indies Approval.

The complete series of Endurance 1 to 5 is available as one book.

 

 

Priestess of Ishana

Priestess of Ishana
Title: Priestess of Ishana
ASIN: B07KNYWT36
Tags: ,
Series:
Published: November 17, 2018
Author's Twitter: @JudithStarkston
A malignant curse from the Underworld threatens Tesha’s city with fiery devastation. The young priestess of Ishana, goddess of love and war, must overcome this demonic darkness. Charred remains of an enemy of the Hitolian Empire reveal both treason and evil magic. Into this crisis, King Hattu, the younger brother of the Great King, arrives to make offerings to the goddess Ishana, but he conceals his true mission in the city. As a connection sparks between King Hattu and Tesha, the Grand Votary accuses Hattu of murderous sorcery and jails him under penalty of death. Isolated in prison, Hattu’s only hope lies in Tesha to uncover the conspiracy against him. Unfortunately, the Grand Votary is Tesha’s father, a rash, unyielding man, and now her worst enemy. To help Hattu, she must risk destroying her own father. In a whirlpool of magic, politics, family crisis and love, Tesha pursues justice.

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

 

A Broken Reality

A Broken Reality
Title: A Broken Reality
ASIN: B07HRYRSBP
Published: September 27, 2018
Author:
Ten-year-old, Danny Madsen, has been missing for four days when Jesse Carlton begins his own search for his godson on a frigid, snowy night. Driving along a deserted rural road, Jesse hits a stretch of black ice at the same time Danny appears from the thicket. Unable to control the car, Jesse slams into the boy and watches helplessly as Danny’s body flies back into the dark brush. When Jesse regains consciousness, he has no recollection of how he and his car wound up in a ditch. However, there’s a witness: Charles Hastings, the sociopathic kidnapper who chased Danny through the brush and into the path of Jesse’s car. Hastings takes this chance to set up Jesse so he’ll take the fall for both Danny’s fate. And so the mind games begin—an onslaught of psychological manipulation that devastates Jesse, his wife, Danny’s parents and the cops’ investigation. Inexplicably, the torment continues even after the primary suspect is killed and the rollercoaster of emotions and confusion seems never-ending, until the final and devastating truth is revealed.

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

 

The Butcher’s Block

The Butcher's Block
Title: The Butcher's Block
ASIN: B074HD7KM6
Tag:
Publisher:
Published: August 1, 2017
During a routine patrol, police arrest two men in possession of human body parts intended for sale to the dissecting rooms of a London teaching hospital. Bow Street Runner and amateur pugilist Dan Foster makes the grisly discovery that they are the remains of fellow officer George Kean. The arrested men are charged with Kean’s murder, but Dan is not convinced that they are the killers. In pursuit of the real murderer, he investigates the unhallowed activities of the resurrection men – bodysnatchers. The bodysnatching racket soon leads Dan to something bigger and much more dangerous. In a treacherous underworld of vicious pugilists, ruthless murderers, British spymasters and French agents, Dan must tread carefully…or meet the same terrible fate as Kean. 'The Butcher’s Block' is the second Dan Foster Mystery. 'Bloodie Bones', the first in the series, was joint winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016.

Assessed for 

Disappear Our Dead

Disappear Our Dead
Title: Disappear Our Dead
ASIN: B01NCOVO07
Category:
Tag:
Published: December 21, 2016
Author:
When the worst happens, would you rise or fall… On the coast of Maine, a devastating death, a widow grappling with grief. Then, a second chance at life. This is Abby Tiernan’s story, a story of the heart. But in order to learn to live again, Abby must solve a troubling mystery. After the death of her beloved husband, Abby hits bottom—hard. Her flickering will to live reignites when she becomes a home funeral guide, teaching the bereaved the age-old tradition of after-death care for loved ones at home. But troublesome questions arise over the death of a woman whose home funeral Abby guided. Was the death really natural? The police chief refuses to investigate what appear to be unfounded concerns of a distraught relative. But members of the community mystified by home funerals target Abby as a suspect, and swirling rumors threaten to destroy her fledgling business and fragile spirit. Abby discovers a funeral home director and a caterer who bleed red ink when people choose home funerals, money-hungry motivation to set up Abby as a murderer. And what about the long-suffering husband? Was he ready to move on with his life before his wife was ready to die? To save her failing business, Abby—with the help of a widower detective she feels guiltily drawn to—must uncover the truth. As Abby unmasks the murderer, and the killer sets sights on her, Abby realizes there’s one thing she wants more than anything she’s ever wanted—to live.

Assessed for 

The English Heart

The English Heart
Title: The English Heart
ASIN: B077BCKKX2
Publisher:
Author:
Author's Twitter: @helenahalme
A stylish 1980’s Cold War love story based on true events. Young Finnish student Kaisa falls head over heals in love with Peter, a dashing newly qualified naval officer. Kaisa realised she’d never felt like this before. This was love. The stuff she’d read about in books since she was a teenager; the films she’d watched. This was how Ryan O’Neal felt about Ali MacGraw in Love Story, and Barbra Streisand about Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Kaisa grinned. She’d wanted to pose the same question to the Englishman that Katie had to Hubbell, ‘Do you smile ALL the time?’ ” When a young Finnish student, Kaisa, is invited to the British Embassy cocktail party in Helsinki to celebrate a Royal Navy visit to Finland, she’s not looking for romance. After all, her future has been carefully planned: she’s to complete her degree, marry her respectable, well-to-do Finnish fiancé Matti, and live happily ever after. Enter the dashing Peter, a newly qualified naval officer. Like a moth to a flame, Kaisa falls head over heels in love. Kaisa and Peter embark on a long-distance relationship, but at the height of the Cold War, while the Englishman chases Russian submarines, Kaisa is stuck in Finland, a country friendly with the Soviet Union. Can they trust each other? Can their love go the distance? A stylish 1980s Nordic love story based on true events.

Assessed for Awesome Indies (Previous title: The Englishman)