Stranger than fiction
345441
As author Fred Goodman tells it, Allen Klein was not the robber baron who contributed to the break up of the Beatles but was a lonely insecure man only looking for acceptance. It is a fascinating story of how a lonely boy grew up to be one of the most powerful men in the music industry. Obsessed with the Beatles from their beginnings, every business deal he makes seems to be an effort to get their attention. Held at bay by Brian Epstein, Klein actually celebrates on hearing of his death proclaiming "Now I've got them". He does indeed get them briefly which only excelerates their demise.

This book is filled with colorful characters and jaw dropping anecdotes. There is also information I have never heard anywhere else like the first artist to record on Apple records was Frank Sinatra! This is a read stranger than fiction and a must for fans of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and 60s pop culture in general.
1782212
Oh my!!  I didn't know what I was getting into when I casually looked over the first few pages of a book I had set aside to read in the near future.  It simply could not wait and I found myself turning page after page of a captivating story.  They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and that is the case here.  What an eye opener to the underbelly of our society that so many know nothing about, and I can assure you that you will never pass by another adult business and not be reminded of Victoria's story.  People may think of Jesus in terms of religion, but her story is proof of the fact that  it is nothing about religion, quite the opposite, but all about a relationship with the Creator of the universe and your very soul that transforms lives in the most radical way possible, in a way that only He can do.  I challenge you to read this book and learn about Pam Younker and not have your world wrecked by what you read!
1475490
I was expecting something like Richard Marcinko's "Rogue Warrior" light, I guess. I was pleasantly surprised that this is really nothing like that. The author's experiences are remarkable and are another example of truth being stranger than fiction. You couldn't make this stuff up. No spoilers, but this is really a great story in addition to being very entertaining and offering an insight into the life and times of a Vietnam Combat SEAL. A must read
3657771
They say that truth is stranger than fiction.  Well, in the case of In With the Devil, James Keene's true story (tautly-paced by co-author investigative reporter Hillel Levin) is a compelling, astonishing, and mind-blowing tale of courage and devotion to a father.

Amazing, one, that a man would risk his life in order to be redeemed from prison to be with the father he loved and thought may soon die, and, two, mind-blowing that federal and state authorities would ever make such a bargain in the first place, all to catch a serial killer.  It is truly beyond what Hollywood could concoct.  Were it not all true, I would find a movie comprised of such audacious twists and turns almost ludicrous!

But time and again, as I looked up from the pages of this book -- which I felt compelled to read in one sitting despite being 218 pages long -- I was brought back to the text by the knowledge that this incredible, astonishing story actually happened.  To a real person.  To a man of apparently amazing courage and devotion to the father he loved so much.

Yes, James Keene made some terrible mistakes that landed him in prison as he sought to find significance in a culture sometimes obsessed with wealth and achievement.  But he more than made up for it with a self-sacrificial journey as harrowing as any I've ever heard of.  I couldn't help thinking over and over as I read this book: "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend."

And so I couldn't help asking myself asking time and again, "Would I risk my life for my freedom?  Would I risk my life to be with my father again?"  I found myself amazed, challenged, and thoroughly entertained.

Yeah, I guess you could say I recommend this book. -- Rick
1675809
Before taking up Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon, I knew very little about the Hindenburg disaster, I was just vaguely aware of it. As I read into this work of fiction I became fascinated by it. I even explored an internet site that Ariel mentions at the back of her book, and know I will go back to it. I am not that much interested in non-fiction, but sometimes a work of fiction sparks off a new awareness and quest for more.

The names of the characters are those of the actual travellers on the Hindenburg. As Ariel points out the survivors said not much happened on the trip. However she picks up from there and writes a fascinating and page turning view of what might have been. How the Hindenburg became engulfed in flames is a mystery as yet unsolved. Even back in those times - 1937 - bomb threats were a worry and the crew were aware and cautious.

Ariel Lawhon takes this event and these people and makes it accessible to me - the reader. As the story rotates among a number of characters, slowly I as the reader, build a picture of them. Their hopes, griefs, jealousies, and longings. I witness the crew and staff as they interact with kindness, blackmail, duty, subterfuge and revenge. I come to care for these characters and through them the actual people who travelled that fated time.

This book has been well researched, I learned things about the airships that I did not know, all thanks to this research. What an amazing feat of technology. How amazing to have travelled in this way.

As I said I knew very little about the Hindenburg before I started reading this novel. I had heard of its demise, but that is all. I had assumed there were no survivors. Amazingly there were. Many of the actual real survivors went on to live long lives.

If you like historical fiction, fiction based on real events then this is for you. Or... perhaps you are like me - very vague about this event and time. Yes, most definitely this book is for you.
2778692
There are only a handful of authors that consistently push the boundary of "imaginative" fiction, that every time I hear of the emergence of a "truly new talent" I'm really skeptical. Neil Gaiman, however, has completely won me over, and American Gods was a real eye opener in many ways.
It's the story of a completely rootless, and emotionally impoverished "regular guy," freshly paroled from prison only to discover that the life he's longed for in the joint has been totally annihilated with the unexpected death of his wife. At loose ends, he meets a mysterious, burly traveler who offers him a job on the spot, which Shadow (our hero) declines. As Shadow discovers not only that his wife is dead, but was killed during a sexual liason with his best friend and former employer, the tiny flame of emotion, so carefully guarded and cared for in prison, is snuffed out. The mystery employer, introducing himself as Mr. Wednesday, reappears to press his case once again, and this time Shadow takes him up on it.
Shadow is brought into a weird, orbiting subculture of seemingly everyday people, living on the fringes of American life. Each seems oddly familiar to him - as they will seem to you. And slowly, Shadow begins to realize the scale and scope of what he has become involved in - an impending battle between the scattered, ancient gods of immigrants and slaves, and the emerging gods of the American cultural and technological revolution.
For me, simply the amount of creativity put into the plot makes this a terrific read; but add to that Gaiman's craft of description and narrative - very stylish and stark - that combination makes American Gods a real treat. Ordinarily, I might observe that a hero with only a hole for a heart is hard to identify with, but Shadow isn't really heartless, you discover as the story progresses, and Gaiman does a great job of slowly bringing the reader along for the ride, with a boatload of creative plotwork along the way.
Neil Gaiman has placed himself outside of the current state of fantasy or horror - forgoing Clive Barker's tendency for cheap thrills, and Stephen King's dense description for a more economical style that describes in shadows and light, with occasional vivid color. American Gods is a well-crafted and imaginative trip behind the scenes in a land whose gods are as vulnerable as the people themselves.
807702
The spare prose in "From Away" transports the reader to a mysterious world of dark secrets in which the elements of normality assume a sinister aspect. It is a large, complete world with its own mythos, creatures and conspiracies.

The Island people are fun and real. There is wisdom in their dialogue and pathos in their fears. And there is a huge cast of them, each with their own unique voice. Some of them know some of what's happening and some others fear what might be . . . but no one knows all.

Perhaps most impressive of all is that this is genuine serial fictionjust as advertised. This is not a rambling text dump that the author didn't want to edit. The first episode is a satisfying contained story yet I cannot imagine any reader not wanting to explore the dark further. It is a thriller in the grand tradition of Lovecraft and Poetruly I do not hesitate to invoke those great names.

"From Away" announces the presence of a new talent in Weird Fiction. Give it a download.

C
1635920
I must say, I haven't read a book like this since "The Innocent Man" by John Grisham. Although this is a work of fiction it could very easily be true to life. I'm not going to disclose any information about the story but I can honestly tell you that it had me so upset at times that I just wanted to put it down and try to forget it. But I couldn't. I was spellbound from the beginning to the very end. I gave this book five stars because it is very well written and delivers a powerful message. Except for some areas that would not seem plausible in real life, this story could easily be nonfiction. And that is "scary".

Quite a few readers gave this book one star for a variety of reasons. Some were legitimate and some were just plain idiotic.
Some said that there were parts of the story that couldn't possibly happen in real life. Hello out there; this is a work of fiction .
Some said this is a book that the author is flaunting religion. I'm not a religious person and I was not offended at all. This particular book with the story line it intoned was perfect for the religious intonation.
Some were upset because they bought this book by mistake, thinking they were getting a "John Grisham" book. I don't think it's fair to rate a book one star because you didn't look who authored it before purchasing it. To blame Amazon or the author is equally ridiculous.

This is a book of fiction. It's an outstanding book that Will test your emotions all the way through.
1759214
This book is a great read. It offers a glimpse into a little known part of USA history in Latin America. The individuals discussed in this book had to put up with tremendous hardships while performing their duties for the IGSW. These stories truly are "stranger than fiction." I highly recommend this interesting and informative piece of adventure non-fiction.
3032213
Florida-based Rob and Trish MacGregor are successful authors of both fiction and non-fiction who have each separately won the Edgar Allen Poe Award. They are also married to each other. This bang-up-to-date, concise 154-page hardcover volume from Crossroad Press (pub 2013) offers their take on UFO encounters, alien abduction and synchronicity. They begin as out-and-out skeptics with an outsiders' perspective and, as the saying goes, have no dog in this particular fight but are simply curious to find out if there's anything real to these odd but persistently reported phenomena.

The result is an engaging and serious book which examines a handful of cases old and new with appropriate investigative rigor, discusses these subjects in a thoughtful and intelligent way and concludes that Something Really Is Going On Here. Although the target readership is obviously intended to be the casual middle-market `demographic', even those well-read in this subject will find plenty of new and fascinating material.

The story of Charles and Helene Fontaine, a couple in Quebec, is deeply moving in that they didn't even believe in UFOs prior to their experience (the `aliens in the backyard' of the book's title) and found their encounter deeply traumatising at every level, the more so because they felt they couldn't talk about it for fear of ridicule, so told no-one. Charles in particular suffered deep psychological trauma, and several months following the encounter felt he might be going insane. The authors quote the late Dr. John Mack of Harvard University Medical School: "Experiencers can't `unknow' what they know. Once your worldview has been turned inside out by such a shock, there's no undoing it".

The MacGregors personally investigate this case and a great deal more primary material, some hitherto completely unknown. After talking to real people who have these shocking, bizarre experiences and investigating their stories, they conclude that there is no question that the reported breeding-focussed activities of at least some of these abducting entities, including missing pregnancies, is real. It's not imagination, this stuff is happening: there are too many persistent reports from credible people for it to be otherwise. Likewise bodily scarring and `implants' resulting in nosebleeds, in one case following an abduction event a child bleeding so severely from a scalpel-like incision deep in the throat that he needed hospitalization.

The authors have taken the time and trouble to read and familiarize themselves with the literature on the subject, including the works of the late Budd Hopkins, John Mack and Dr. David Jacobs, Whitley Strieber and others, and put all these differing perspectives into the mix. Chapter 8 contains a section titled: `What does the Government know?' in which the MacGregors report that from the day the Fontaines' story was posted on their website, their statistics counter started logging visits from the Department of Defense, the FBI, the US DODNIS, NINC, the FCC, the 754th Electronic Systems Group (who operate out of Maxwell AFB, AL and whose declared mission is "to fly and fight in Air, Space and Cyberspace") and the Canadian Mounted Police. If all this stuff is nonsense, as professional debunkers would have you believe, then why all this covert interest in an internet blog from the INTEL community and the Department of Defense?

In summary, AitB is more thought-provoking, intelligent and informative than you might be led to think from a casual glance at the title and cover-summary. Despite a small handful of typos and examples of lax editing the writing style is warm, engaging, at times even humorous, and stands with the best of the genre. It's a serious original work of admirable brevity and no matter if your interest in these phenomena is persistent or merely casual, reading it is time well spent.
1947233
First off, this isn't a typical Amazon title, rather it is the product of PS Publishing, which puts out limited, signed editions by various science fiction and fantasy authors. Specifically, "The Human Front" was limited to 400 hardcover and another 500 paperback copies, all of which have long since sold out from the publisher. That said, there are copies available on the internet, and fans of alternate history will definitely want to track this one down.
As I alluded to above, "The Human Front" is Ken MacLeod's take on alternate history, but anyone who knows MacLeod knows it will be anything but conventional. Actually, it does start off conventionally enough: it's the early 1960's and World War III has been raging with varying degrees of ferocity since 1949. Joe Stalin is a romanticized guerrilla fighter in the model of Che, and the Soviet Union has been beaten down to the point where the allies have installed a government in Petrograd.
Macleod rather cleverly juxtaposes roles in this world; in addition to Stalin, JFK is reviled as a butcher ("Hey, Hey, JFK, how many kids have you killed today?"). By so doing, he obliterates the myths of the past, and rather shrewdly, points out that historical interpretation is largely a function of the circumstances in which one lives, or more simply, a result of how the past turned out. While he is no apologist for Stalin (by any stretch) he creates a plausible reality where he is revered as a pragmatic, dedicated revolutionary, rather than reviled as a butcher. Thus removed from our known context he can create an absurd inversion that nonetheless sheds light on how we view our own heroes.
However, instead of following this believable alternate reality to a logical conclusion, MacLeod throws a curveball in the main character, John Matheson's, enigmatic encounter with one of the U.S.'s strange disc shaped bombers. Although the next twenty pages of narrative are fairly conventional, MacLeod has set the stage, and everything thereafter is tainted by this puzzling mystery.
To go any further would spoil the plot, but suffice it to say that the novel takes numerous bizarre twists before arriving at a fascinating ending. Specifically, unlike most Alternate History, which revels in an outcome discrete from reality, MacLeod attempts to reconcile his world to our own in a manner reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle". The mechanism of this reconciliation is completely original without being outlandish, and the statement made is simple but profound. In essence, MacLeod is arguing that we are all victims of circumstance, that, generally speaking, shaping the world's destiny is beyond the individual. Thus, it is left to each of us to live as best we can, in the hopes that the cumulative result is something better than where we started. At the same time, unlike much Alternate History, (and particularly what one would expect from such a politically conscious writer) MacLeod isn't entirely displeased with the path history has taken, and actually seems to find it better than many of the alternatives.
MacLeod packs more into the seventy-five pages of "The Human Front" than most authors do in novels four times as long. He has blended so many genres, I've lost count, and it's almost unfair to categorize it as Alternate History, in spite of the fact that it won the Sidewise Award for best Short Form Alternate History in 2001. Rather, MacLeod created a true SF hybrid, that evokes the best of many different themes. At the same time, he has written a character driven novel that explores some interesting themes around meaning and purpose. Ultimately, this is a work of literature in which the content far surpasses what one might expect from the length.
Jake Mohlman
1906606
Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. If you are an alien/E.T. believer this will be a tough, but necessary, read. Valdez explodes many UFO myths. Be prepared, however, as the truth is darker, stranger, and more sinister than the pro E.T. viewpoint. Valdez gives names and places and provides both the facts and the narrative to understand the Dulce enigma. If you take some of the central elements of Greg Valdez's thesis and apply them to other UFO cases, a pattern will begin to emerge.

 I can't recommend this book enough. Short of the DOE, CIA, or the NSA opening its books to the public, this is the best work on the subject of animal mutilations and UFOs in northern New Mexico. Get it while you can. I will be surprised if this book stays on the market long. There are many agencies that will probably move swiftly to halt this information. Keep that in mind as you ponder the E.T. riddle.
2704957
Originally published in F&SF as The Pale Brown Thing, this novel won the World Fantasy Award for best novel of 1978. For some reason, I've not got around to reading it before this.

It concerns Franz Westen, a writer of weird fiction living in San Francisco. From his apartment building, he sees through his binoculars a pale brown thing on a distant hill. When he goes to the hill, he has some odd experiences, then trains his binoculars on his apartment ... and sees the pale brown thing waving from his window.

Surprisingly little that would be called "action" occurs in this book; indeed, well over half of it is conversation, much of it expository. Yet it's so well-written and the characters (especially Westen) so compelling that it matters not: the book will keep you in its spell to the end.
780484
I was certainly not expecting such an interesting read when I picked up this book. It is full of lurid stories of drugs, the mob and even murder. This book demonstrates once again that truth is stranger than fiction.
1864853
I wasn't sure when I got the book what I might be reading.  I got the book because of who the author was.  This book was a great surprise.  I like science fiction, and I got my reward for an extremely interesting story.  It's not always you find the human earth people who are the aliens.  I just had a difficult time trying to picture just what the residents of the planet visited were actually like because I try to envision what the characters actually look like. They could have been out of the Star Wars cast of oddities.  With the latest stories about space travel, if you are someone who believes that this experience could actually happen, you will love this one.
1470783
This is a fascinating book which supports the saying, "Truth is stranger than fiction." Synchronicity amazes the reader as the well-researched case is detailed in taut, concise sentences. At times it is a big repetitious, but it helps the reader keep each piece of the story separate.
4326844
If this UFO book is not one of the most talked about in recent years, it deserves to be. Despite painfully dodgy editing  its written in a compelling, lucid style and delivers hair-raising descriptions of alien abduction phenomena.

Oh yes, and there are intriguing photos and X-rays film sheets of what the author believes are alien implants in his leg.

TERRY LOVELACE comes out of obscurity to plant himself center stage among the likes of other famous abductees, such as Travis Walton, Betty and Barney Hill and the two men who were taken aboard a craft in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in 1973  Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson.

Lovelace is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He used the GI bill for law school after an honorable discharge. In addition to private practice, he served as Assistant Attorney General for the state of Vermont. He kept his UFO story under wraps throughout his professional life, he says, because revealing this information would have been career suicide for a lawyer  which is certainly true. Now that he is retired, he wants his story known.

On the one hand, his details about a lifetime of frightening, intrusive abductions by aliens breaks no new ground  all the familiar elements of what other experiencers have reported for years are here. Its almost as if he has taken the standard elements of what has become the UFO abduction genre and re-told a story deeply familiar to the UFO community.

On the other hand, Mr. Lovelaces natural talent as a writer and gifted skill for rolling out a compelling narrative will inject a new vividness and feeling of visceral terror for the reader.

In an unexpected way, this latter aspect may unfortunately cut both ways for the author.

What I mean is, this narrative is so well-rendered it will give rise to a higher degree of skepticism among some. Indeed, a negative review on here on Amazon has already suggested that Mr. Lovelace simply read a lot of UFO books and has borrowed all the standard UFO abduction elements to cobble together a riveting fictional tale  which he is passing off as true.

But one would be equally justified in saying that Lovelace is telling the truth because his experience confirms historically well-documented elements of UFO abduction scenarios as reported by thousands of others.

There are other aspects of Mr. Lovelace's story that will invite endless debate -- but that's what a good book does. I found this to be a riveting account with a definite ring of authenticity. Certainly one of the best UFO books issued in recent years.