More Best Reviews of All Time – You may have noticed my last post Best Reviews of All Time, included only three books. I’ve published eleven. Here are the best reviews for three other books.
The cover of my third novel Paranormal Privateers. Click to get yours.
Ruth McLaughlin
February 9, 2020
Whew! Lots of stories within stories with a wink of incredulity as we read along the pages.
Tongue-in-cheek adventures, modern day villains’, and zombies; wait, are they still zombies or not? Yep, we have that zombie virus run amok with various creations to transform them back and forth.
How much of a zombie body do you need to regenerate?
Gung-ho leader of the group Diane Newby, husband George, are charging on fighting crime with the discreet eye of the government as their silent partners. Somali pirates, Harrod’s London Store with real bulls in the china shop, parasitic cyborgs, virus-antivirus, bacteria, and other minute details tangle the story line into a braided rug of conspiracies and innovative solutions.
And little do they know, but their arch enemy is among their group.
What do zucchini, phoenix genetics, and superpowered kids have in common?
Oops cover final medium
Ruth McLaughlin
March 18, 2020
As I expected, story time at Andy’s house must include a recorder to grasp the many directions and characters he develops in each book. This set of several stories are exciting in a novel manner of disbelief overlaid with a tinge of possibility.
How many people have tasted a hummingbird zombie zucchini, a superpowered set of disabled kids with an intelligent hamster as co-partner, a phoenix genetic research specialist, all these under one cover? Well, step right up and open page one!
Each story includes ideas from his zombie turkey series and, as always, a hint of something new to come! I laughed and soaked up the words, wanting more.
More Best Reviews of All Time – Secret Supers
Secret Supers: What happens when ‘differently-abled’ people become ‘super-abled’?
Intriguing Storyline
Secret Supers audiobook
Mama4
July 9, 2019
I read half of the book to my elementary age daughter and she loved it so much she finished the book without me!! She still talks about the characters and their unusual super powers
‘He felt great. He was full of energy, he had many hens to breed with, and he was the leader of a great flock.’
Sam Melvin is a reporter with the Midley Beacon, it’s a tiny local paper – with an online presence – run by its penny-pinching editor Lisa Kambacher. When Sam sees the two turkey hunters on the slab in the local mortuary, he knows he has a story to cover and he sets out to do so with great gusto.
As the zombie turkeys multiply, Sam and Lisa are the leading media team on the ground and the Midley Beacon goes international, solving their financial woes and syndicating their work across the globe. But it’s not all good news. After all, there are those people-killing zombie turkeys heading into town…
This was a book I picked up with trepidation as it seemed all too possible it would be a ‘one trick pony’ stretching a single joke to beyond breaking point across the length of an entire novel. Wrong! It is like a bowl of potpourri on the sideboard of life – lots of subtle blending examples of humour – many of them very American …
This is a book that takes ironic comedy to a whole new level – maybe ‘steelic’ comedy…? Humour is a very personal thing, but this book hit me right on the funny bone.
Zombie Turkeys Review, Part 2
‘Wanted badly: .30-06 carbine. Will trade hunting dog or wife for it.’
This is a well-written book which takes a totally deadpan approach to a thoroughly – hysterically – funny sequence of events. It is dark comedy, so avoid if you are squeamish. The pace of the book rolls along in a perfect, unhurried way – screaming up into the action sequences and taking time to enjoy the more delicious moments of humour. The story itself is a lot deeper than many real zombie books and the explanation for the zombie phenomenon is as clever as it is satirical.
The characters are well portrayed, deep enough to engage with and care about . . . the humour is subtle, all-pervading: like the idea of the survivalist organic turkey farmer, part of a network of such, living off grid – except for ordering things from Amazon on his wife’s credit card of course…
‘The most disheartening thing was, she’d stab one through the heart, it’d drop fifteen feet to the ground with a satisfying thud, and then it’d stagger to its feet five minutes later and fly back up fifteen minutes later.’
This is a book I can recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who enjoys slow-boil satire and does not mind a few gory giblets thrown in the mix. If you want a good comedy read, you should gobble this up!
Best Reviews of All Time – Zombie Detective
Even better than the first one!
Zombie Detective cover
December 5, 2021 june
I love mysteries, and Andy Zach has come up with a fun and believable one with his “zombie Detective” book. It kept me reading to figure out the murderer. I missed the Peoria area locations from the first book, but I guess folks from other regions should get to join in the fun. Sit down, eat your grits, and enjoy another fun mystery from Andy Zach!
Best Reviews of All Time – My Undead Mother-in-law
Not your standard zombie tale
December 28, 2018 Stephanie Barr
My Undead Mother-in-law cover. Click to get yours.
When I started to read this book, I was leery. As far as I know, I’m less interested in zombies than anyone on the planet. How could I give a reasonable review? Turns out, it wasn’t hard at all.
I’ve said before and it turned out to be true here that, if you have a ridiculous premise that’s hard to swallow, run with it, normalize it, and readers /viewers will eventually accept. And it worked.
The original premise of cognizant, virtually indestructible zombies was lobbed and backed until I was a believer, actively rooting for zombies.
Plenty of (bloodier than average) action and some smiling, if not guffaw humor. Plus, a nice fulfilling story arc in an easy readable length made for a fun book. (If bloody action doesn’t bother you). With charm that didn’t take itself to seriously but still capable of many a tender and touching moments. I’m glad my prejudice didn’t keep me from enjoying this out-of-the-common-way story.
The Paranormal Privateers are zombies hired by the Federal government as privateers. The book opens with them fighting Somali pirates–by letting themselves get captured.
“Is that all?”
Nope! They go through the Suez canal and then on to Sevastopol, where they break up a human trafficking ring.
Paranormal Privateers back cover – Click to get your preview
Inhaling the salted breeze, he grinned back at Muhammed. He cheered and laughed in his seat behind the M2 machine gun in the bow of the boat they used to patrol the coasts and fishing waters of Somalia. The sun gleamed off his white teeth.
“Look, Dirac!” he said. “They’re stopping!”
True enough. The bow wave ceased as he watched. A pod of dolphins ended their sporting on the wave and submerged. The gleaming white yacht loomed above them. What were they doing in the fishing waters of Somalia? He couldn’t imagine the wealth on board. Enough for their whole village to eat well for a year!
Their supreme leader, Omar Ogala, organized Somali fishermen and former coast guard sailors to patrol their fishing waters. He ordered them to capture any fishing or cargo vessels they spotted. He told them the Americans and Europeans no longer cared about Somalia with the other crises around the world and they could defend their coasts from foreign competition—and dumpers. Many foreign nations, knowing Somalia’s military weakness, sent cargo ships full of pollutants and dumped them into their waters.
Dirac never expected to see a luxury ship here. It was as big as a cruise liner, but apparently a private yacht. He’d seen one once before when an Arab sheik visited Mogadishu. This one was three times the size! The owner would pay big to get it back. Maybe even a billion dollars? He couldn’t imagine that much money, and he was good with numbers. Let’s see: fourteen million people lived in Somalia. Divide a billion dollars among them would give each about seventy dollars. Unbelievable. A family of five could live comfortably for a year on that!
You Can Go ‘Round the World – Part 2
He came along as a navigator, fighter, and boarder, guiding their boat along the shore of Somalia and into the Arabian Gulf for several days, before leading them back. Besides Muhammed and him, there was Zahi, another fighter and boarder, and Ali, their captain.
“Dirac,” Ali said, “you and Zahi board this ship and take the helm. You will follow us back to Hobyo. Muhammed and I will stay on the boat and keep the machine gun on them.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Ali took the megaphone they carried for ship-to-ship communication. “Let us board! Let us board! Or we will gun your ship!”
Dirac didn’t understand English, of course, but he knew what Ali was saying. Ali was the only one who knew any English.
“Don’t shoot! Give us time! We have to get our ladder!” Surprisingly, the person spoke in Arabic. Good Arabic too, but with a strange Saudi and European accent. More surprisingly, it was a woman, a blonde, from what he could see of the figure leaning over the railing far above us. He kept a close watch on her. Strictly for security purposes, of course.
They kept their boat about fifty meters away from the ship and watched the crew scurry about the many decks. Dirac counted five including the main deck, and there were at least three more decks below the main one.
Part 3
Finally a rope ladder unrolled from the main deck, perhaps ten meters above them. They came close to the ship. A pod of dolphins flashed under their boat. Then they leapt out of the water and into it.
Only, they weren’t the dolphins he had seen earlier. Four people in green wet suits landed with heavy thumps in Dirac’s boat. They had no breathing equipment, not even snorkels. They took off their goggles, and their eyes shone bright red in the sun.
“Zombies!” Ali cried. “Shoot them!”
Automatically, Dirac sprayed the nearest with his AK-47. He heard the others fire too. Muhammed shot the largest one with the big .50-caliber machine gun. That could cut a man in two.
Dozens of red craters appeared in the black wet suit of the one Dirac shot. But she—a white, brown-haired woman—didn’t go down. Her brows furrowed in anger, and shouting in English, she ripped the gun from his hand and threw it into the ocean. He was like a baby with a rattle taken by his parent. The other zombies did the same, except the big one. He grabbed the barrel of the machine gun in both hands and wrenched it from Muhammed. Dirac could hear the zombie’s flesh sizzle on the hot barrel. Then the big zombie bent the barrel into a right angle. Rubbing his hands together afterward, the burned skin fell on the deck of their boat. Pink skin showed on his palms.
He was enormous, bigger than two Somalis put together. His red eyes looked out of his calm, square face. The bullets from the machine gun had sliced the wet suit open across his chest, and more pink skin showed in the gap. As he watched, brown hair grew.
You Can Go ‘Round the World Excerpt – From London
From Chapter 4 London, the first draft of Paranormal Privateers, we find the paranormal privateers, George, Diane, Lulu, and Sharon, going incognito as undeclared zombies, quite against British law at the time. They’re using bloodhounds and zombie corgis to track down terrorists threatening London. Oh, and they have a truckload of zombie bulls.
Scotland Yard met us the next morning when we docked in the port of London. We divided up into three groups to cover the area. Diane and I took everything between Grosvenor Place and Belgrave Place. Lulu and Sharon took the area from Belgrave to Basil. The Scotland Yard dog handlers Jerry Naismith and Benjamin Buxley took the wedge from Basil to Knightsbridge.
We jogged along, Diane and I. She had picked up the special two-wheel wheelchair, iBot, from Kamen industries office in London and loved tooling along at six miles per hour. Since we were in England maybe I should use the metric equivalent: ten kilometers per hour. I had no trouble keeping up with her, even as a deaf-mute. If people talked to me, I just handed them my deaf-mute card. The dogs, our two corgis, and two bloodhounds, also in service dog vests, loved it.
The Chapter 5 London chapter icon – what could it mean? Click and find out!
Then came a yell over our headsets. It was the Scotland yard crew, Jerry and Ben, both yelling.
“We’ve found them! The terrorists! They’re on the second floor of Harrods, in the tableware section!” said Jerry.
“We can’t get any closer! They’ve got tasers!” said Ben.
You Can Go ‘Round the World
Chapter 9 icon of Paranormal Privateers
After more adventures, the zombie privateers (lead by My Undead Mother-in-law Diane Newby) go to Washington DC.
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Go ‘Round the World – An Author Reading
Here’s another excerpt, read by Yours Truly, Andy Zach. Get Your Free Excerpt is from the beginning of the book, chapter 1.
Mama4
