Welcome to Issue 49 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Hello Everyone,
Happy Holidays to all of you.
If you’re a fan of the play or movie Camelot, you’ll remember that King Arthur requested that we tell Camelot’s story “each evening from December to December.” Well, I am telling the story this December to anyone interested in reading Arthur’s Legacy: The Children of Arthur, Book One. Now is a perfect time to read it because the next book in the series Melusine’s Gift: The Children of Arthur, Book Two will be out in January. It’s available at my website www.ChildrenofArthur.com and most online bookstores.
And it’s not too late to catch me at a holiday book signing. I’ll be at Book World in Downtown Marquette on Saturday, December 20th from 1-4 p.m. I’ll be joined by my fellow UP Authors, Larry Buege, author of Cold Turkey and a Native American series of young adult novels, Sonny Longtine, author of Murder in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Gretchen Preston, author of The Valley Cats children’s book series. So if you’re in the area, come down and meet your local authors.
Finally, don’t forget that books make wonderful holiday gifts. I often attend book signings with other authors who write children’s books and I hear repeatedly from customers, “I don’t have any children to buy books for.” Sadly, we all have children to buy books for. There are countless children in this world who do not have books to read and cannot afford to buy them. This season, support literacy and our children’s future by giving the gift of books. Plenty of organizations collect books to give to children at the holidays. Contact your local school district or public library to find out how you can help. I can’t imagine what my childhood would have been like without The Wizard of Oz series, The Chronicles of Narnia, the George and Martha books, and so many other favorites. This month I only have one children’s book listed, Boy Entrepreneur, but it’s a powerhouse book that could change a child’s life, so check it out. As children’s author Avi said, “Children’s books are full of promises.” Give a child the promise of a better life through the gift of a book.
Happy Holidays to all of you!
Tyler
New Books
Driving Lessons for Life is not a driver’s ed manual, although maybe it should be. It’s actually a thoughtful and inspirational look at life lessons, using driving and car metaphors to illustrate its message. Jim R. Jacobs handles his subject with surprising deftness, taking a situation we might experience on the road and teaching us how that experience can benefit us in other areas of our lives. The reason why this book is miles ahead of most other self-help books is because the lessons stay with us rather than being easily forgotten. Jim achieves that because as he points out, most of us drive every day, so whenever we get behind the wheel, the lessons we learn in these pages will be reinforced by the act of driving. Trust me, its lessons are far more memorable and just as important as any your teenager will learn in driver’s ed class.
To read more, visit Driving Lessons for Life.
Boy Entrepreneur is the perfect book for anyone who wants to take charge of his or her destiny by owning a business—from the eight-year-old girl with a lemonade stand to the second or third career adult wanting to be self-employed. Reading Boy Entrepreneur is equivalent to having personal one-on-one sessions with over two dozen of the world’s greatest thinkers in business and in life. I won’t reveal who all those people are, but they range from Zig Ziglar to Mother Teresa, and they all make appearances in this charming but poignant fable about a young Hawaiian boy, Ikaika Marks, who wants to earn enough money to join his team for a baseball tournament in California.
Before Ikaika knows it, he realizes that while he enjoys baseball, he enjoys being an entrepreneur even more because it is the best solution for making all of his dreams come true.
To read more, visit Boy Entrepreneur.
David Armstrong’s new book Messages from the Spirit World is bound to stun anyone who reads it. Armstrong begins by explaining that he has always felt a connection to the spirit world. As a young boy, he had spiritual guides who spoke to him and assisted him with difficult tasks, but pressure from family members and society made him quit listening to his guides until a near-death experience in college resulted in his being given an intense amount of information about how the universe operates and the different dimensions and realms that exist. To my knowledge, this information is far more complicated than in any other books I have read by people who have had near-death experiences, and for me, much of it rings true.
I cannot even begin to list, much less explain, all the information Armstrong shares in this short book review, but I’ll give a few highlights.
To read more, visit Messages from the Spirit World.
In her new book, Agapanthus Rising, Roxana Bowgen tells the exciting, sometimes dangerous, often moving, and always inspiring story of an adventurous life full of paradoxes. She was raised in Peru, grew up in Beverly Hills, lives in Connecticut, and has traveled the world. She has traded stocks and organized volunteer missions to Third World countries. She grew up Catholic, has been interested in Judaism and Buddhism, and been a speaker for the Methodist Church. In other words, she has never failed—even when at times she feared—to reinvent herself. And for that reason, she compares herself in this book to the Agapanthus flower, which is able to bloom wherever it is planted with just a little nurturing. Rather than complain or wither when she has found herself in a difficult situation, Roxana has only dug her roots deeper, and soon after, she has bloomed and shown her true, brilliant colors.
To read more, visit Agapanthus Rising.
Author Mary Flinn pushes the borders of romance once again with her new novel Breaking Out, the story of a twice married, once divorced, and once widowed, middle-aged woman who is facing the prospect of spending the rest of her life alone. Dr. Susannah Brody has a flourishing career as a dermatologist in the small community of Magnolia Village, but that doesn’t leave her a lot of options for meeting eligible men.
And maybe Susannah doesn’t want another man. Her first husband, Kent, cheated on her, and now he has the nerve to be dating her sister. Her second husband, Stan Brody, was the great love of her life, but his unexpected death left her heartbroken. Now on the third anniversary of his death, she still hasn’t managed to clean out Stan’s closet and she likes to lounge about in his robe.
To read more, visit Breaking Out.
Robert Murray is back with another winning new book: Unlocked: Finding the Key to Practical Leadership. I love that Murray specifies that this book is about “practical” leadership because a lot of books out there talk about leaders, but he boils down his topic to simple, realistic, and practical examples, often illustrated by entertaining stories. A real benefit of this book is its easy-to-read and accessible format of fifty-one short chapters that will allow anyone who aspires to being a practical and good leader to spend five minutes a day reading a daily chapter and then contemplating it before moving on to the next one. For me, this short chapter format makes Unlocked the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff of leadership books.
Robert Murray is himself a self-described “turn around mercenary” for businesses. That means companies hire him on a consulting basis to come in when they have problems and they need help getting their companies back on track and moving toward success.
To read more, visit Unlocked.
