Welcome to Issue 105 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter.
Happy New Year, Everyone! It’s been a cold year here so far with temperatures below zero many days, but my heart is warm with joy over all the new books I have to share with you.
First, I’m delighted to say my book Kawbawgam: The Chief, The Legend, The Man, which was named a UP Notable Book, is still getting a lot of attention at five years old. I’ve been asked to give a presentation on it at the Marquette Regional History Center on Saturday, March 8 at 1:00 p.m. as part of the National Education Association’s Big Read this year. The focus of this year’s Big Read is Roz Chast’s graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? The book deals with Chast taking care of her elderly parents, making end-of-life decisions, and finding out about their histories and lives. All the programs for the NEA Big Read have to deal with the people who made/make us who we are—ancestors, historical personages, grandparents, etc., and Chief Kawbawgam certainly falls into that category so I’m delighted to be involved.
The Marquette Regional History Center has also launched its History Book Club and Kawbawgam will be the read for April, so I will be attending the book club meeting there on Wednesday, April 16 at 6:30 p.m.
Kawbawgam, which may be the most important book I ever wrote, is a biography of Ojibwa Chief Charles Kawbawgam who reputedly lived in three centuries from 1799-1902. His earliest memory was of an act of aggression by American soldiers against his people at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, yet he went on to become one of the founders of Marquette, Michigan, and highly respected by Whites and Natives alike throughout the Great Lakes region. You can learn more about Kawbawgam at http://www.marquettefiction.com/kawbawgam.html
I’m also very happy to say my newest and twenty-fifth book, The Mysteries of Marquette, had a very successful launch in November and sold extremely well during the Christmas season. Reviews are filtering in and everyone is saying it’s a true page-turner. I appreciate all of you who wrote to congratulate me on its release and/or purchased a copy. You can learn more about it at http://www.marquettefiction.com/the-mysteries-of-marquette.html.
But enough about me. Some other wonderful books await you below, from a thriller novel set in the U.P. to personal development books to help liberate your soul, ignite your personal transformation, and help you cope with being a parent. We even have two teaching memoirs, one from a mountain climber and another from a bank robber. Check them all out below.
Stay warm, everyone. The best way to do that is to cuddle up with a good book!
I’ll be back in the spring.
Tyler Tichelaar
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”
— P. J. O’Rourke
If you’ve ever felt that being a parent sucks sometimes, then Rowena Starling’s new book Being a Parent Sucks…Sometimes: 18 Tips to Transform Your Pain to Peace is the book you need. Rowena knows all the ins and outs of parenting and the pain it can sometimes bring, even long after your child has grown and left the house. In this book, she offers advice to parents of all backgrounds and age ranges, whether single or married, whether with small or adult children.
But this is not a book about parenting—there’s no advice on potty training, how to get your child to eat their vegetables, or warning your kids about the dangers of doing drugs. Instead, this book is about the parent, not the child. It’s about how you, as a parent, deserve to maintain your sanity, and how you can do that.
Despite the tongue-in-cheek title, Rowena takes being a parent very seriously. First and foremost, she believes if you learn to see being a parent as a calling, you will change your mindset about the job of being a parent.
For more information, visit Being a Parent Sucks…Sometimes.
Donna Howald’s new book Finding Your Perfect Pitch: How to Ride Life’s Current to Liberate Your Soul is one of the most unique personal development books you will ever read. Donna has seen plenty of ups and downs in her life, and she shares them in these pages to help readers learn how she overcame her obstacles and found serenity and purpose. Other personal development authors have shared similar stories, but none have tackled the process by writing their books in verse.
While the book’s introduction and conclusion are in prose, the main chapters are all written in rhyming couplets. The reader can then enjoy watching Donna turn a phrase, giving the book a light-hearted tone that helps to emphasize her message that we can succeed no matter what life throws at us.
And life has thrown a lot at Donna—from teen pregnancy and being a single mother to having a controlling father who passed his behavior on to her, a mother who experienced both alcoholism and severe illness and needed Donna’s support, and the silent treatment from her adult children.
For more information, visit Finding Your Perfect Pitch.
“I just watched my friend Dan sail by and disappear over the cliff into the icy waters below.” So begins Staying on Guard, a powerful memoir by Dan Wenker about his mountain climbing adventures. That sentence is written by Jim Zingerman in the book’s foreword. Jim is the friend and fellow mountaineer who saved Dan’s life after he fell into an ice moat, a situation from which many have not returned to tell the tale.
The book’s subtitle, A Spiritual Encounter of Miracles and Gratitude to Discover Life’s Purpose, is in response to people telling Dan “You were lucky” after he was rescued. Several specific serendipities had to coincide for his rescue to be successful. He believes it was some sort of divine orchestration or intervention by God or the Universe that made it possible, and he lays out all the details, including the accident report filed by the park rangers at the Grand Teton National Park where his accident occurred, so the reader can understand his rescue was more than just luck.
But Staying on Guard is far more than the story of one mountain-climbing rescue. Dan details how he got involved in mountain climbing around the time of his fiftieth birthday.
For more information, visit Staying on Guard.
Robert Henry’s new book Unleashing Your Own Potential: The Self-Leadership Journey from Rock Bottom to Prosperity is a page-turner that is part memoir, part personal development, written by a man who transformed himself from living a life of crime to one of prosperity and giving back.
Henry’s story is like none you’ve ever read before. After a difficult upbringing that Henry shares, he seemed to turn things around by going into sales and prospering in his career. In fact, he was doing so well that he and some of his colleagues decided to go into business for themselves. That’s when everything started to fall apart. The company Henry worked for, learning their employees might soon become their competitors, brought unjust criminal accusations against them that made Henry’s life very difficult. After being found guilty for crimes that were not really crimes at all, his life became complicated when he was assigned to a corrupt probation officer. This probation officer did everything imaginable to keep Henry from getting back on his feet until Henry became determined to get out from under the probation officer’s power.
The result—Henry decided to pay off his court fines as quickly as possible through a series of bank robberies.
For more information, visit Unleashing Your Own Potential.
The Hole They Dug for You begins with a shocking moment. Recently widowed Ellie Bauer is out in the woods looking for her dog who has run away when she hears people shouting. Soon she is secretly spying on a volatile scene. A man is being held captive by a group of other men. They are accusing him of something he denies doing. Ellie finds it is all she can do not to reveal her presence when she suddenly watches the captive man be thrown into a hole the other men had dug. Next thing she knows, he is being shot and then buried. Ellie breathlessly sees it all.
After the killers leave, Ellie feels compelled to go to the grave and say a prayer for the man, only to hear him moaning. Suddenly, Ellie finds herself desperately trying to dig him out of the pit, figure out how to bring him home, and how to care for him.
Once she gets him home, Ellie realizes he is the teacher from New York, Evan Heyerdahl, who has been reported missing on the news. But what is he doing in the woods near her home in Upper Michigan, and who were those men who tried to kill him?
For more information, visit The Hole They Dug for You.
Dan McCormick and Ken Shelton’s new book Awakening Who I Am: Two Words to Ignite Your Transformation is the most powerful and positive affirmation book to date. A lot of books have advocated and celebrated the power of positive thinking and how using affirmations can increase positivity. However, few authors have gone so far as to devote an entire book to affirmations, and Dan and Ken do it in a structured way that turns it into a simple, weekly process that will have you saying affirmations until it becomes second nature.
The title was chosen because the authors want readers to ask themselves the question “Who am I?” along with several sub-questions, including “Am I who I say I Am?” “Am I who others in authority tell me I Am?” And “Am I who I think, behave, act, or perform as?” The purpose of these questions and the use of the affirmations that follow is to make the reader rethink who they believe they are and realize they can become almost anything or anybody they choose.
Unfortunately, when we start asking these questions, we might discover much of what we say about ourselves is negative. We probably aren’t even aware how negative.
For more information, visit Awakening Who I Am.
