The Dream Ender by Dorien Grey
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Lambda-nominated mystery author Dorien Grey returns to his Dick Hardesty mystery series, as we return to publishing reviews. The question is...does Grey's latest live up to the rest of the series, or is this one dead on arrival? Check out the review and find out!
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The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

A storm is brewing in the Midwest, and with it comes a vicious serial killer looking to do as much damage to humans as the tornado does to the land it crosses. So is this novel by Blanchard a F-5 of a story or a whimper of wind? Read the review here.
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Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Although it makes no sense for a publisher to make only two books out of a six book series into ebook format, Roc brings to electronic format the adventures of Harry Dresden, Wizard for the first time. Left with no choice but to break his long-standing Ebooks Only rule, reviewer J. Alan Hartman takes us inside Book 4, while making a plea for the rest of the series to be digitized.
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The Zero Game by Brad Meltzer
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

This time of year, we've got politicians chasing us, trying to grab our vote. What happens when those same politicians may be looking to kill us instead? Although it's a bad idea in terms of getting elected, it makes for a terrific plotline in this latest outing by author Brad Meltzer.
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Out Of Whack by Jeff Strand
Comedy
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

A stand-up comic once said that a comedian dies a thousand deaths on-stage before hitting it big. Author Jeff Strand has enjoyed a healthy life on-stage with his previous works, but OUT OF WHACK deals his track record a tough hit. Fortunately, it's a minor wound and not a fatal blow.
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The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson
History
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Progress, innovation and brilliance. Murder, greed and corruption. Good vs. evil. Man vs. nature. It's not usually possible for one ebook to contain all of these and be a non-fiction work, but Larson's epic tale of the construction of the Chicago World's Fair...and the murders that took place there...is an incredibly well-written cohesion of all of these aspects. Delve into our review, then read the ebook and rediscover one of America's biggest events.
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Law And Order: Dead Line by J. Madison Davis
Movie/TV Tie-In
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

When a formula works, it often works well. Such is the case of NBC's hit show LAW AND ORDER, which mixes the intrigue of a criminal investigation with the drama of a trial. Can a novelization achieve the same elements? Read our review of LAW AND ORDER: DEAD LINE and see.
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Boy Meets Girl by Meggin Cabot
Romance
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Meggin Cabot is back with another wondrously humorous and romantic romp to follow up her previous hit, THE BOY NEXT DOOR. J. Alan Hartman takes us inside this very unconventional romp to see what happens when an entire story is told through emails and restaurant menus.
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The Codex by Douglas Preston
Action/Adventure
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Indiana Jones...move over! Well, maybe not. Douglas Preston attempts to write an action-adventure story that is meaty and filling, but fails to bring anything new to the table to put on the reader's plate. Read J. Alan Hartman's review and avoid going hungry with your ebook reader.
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The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

KnowBetter.com reviewer J. Alan Hartman happily discovers that The Patterson Formula continues to work its magic in the latest Alex Cross thriller by one of the most popular mystery authors in the business. Of course, this isn't the first time our reviewer has encountered the author, in more ways than one...
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In The Steps Of Mister Proust by Stanley E. Ely
Gay/Lesbian
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Forget "Catcher In The Rye" already. It's a book that's becoming hopelessly irrelevant to today's generation. Fortunately, according to reviewer J. Alan Hartman, a considerably better replacement has been found that will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Potentially award-winning fiction? High-quality literature? You bet, and a sure-fire runaway bestseller for GLB Publishers.
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Murder Crops Up by Lora Roberts
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Call it totality among the tomatoes, finality among the fava beans or corpses among the cabbage...amateur sleuth Liz Sullivan is back in another engaging mystery from author Lora Roberts. KnowBetter reviewer J. Alan Hartman takes us inside this mystery, and provides a bit of warning about a certain mutant plant possibly taking over central Florida.
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Spider-Man by Peter David
Movie/TV Tie-In
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

"Is he strong? Listen bud...he's got radioactive blood!" Everyone's favorite webhead swung into theatres in 2002 to record box office numbers. KnowBetter.com reviewer J. Alan Hartman talks about why attending the opening day was important for him, and how Peter David's novelization of the film brings even more depth to the comic's characters.
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Body Of Evidence by Max Allan Collins
Movie/TV Tie-In
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Admit it: from the moment you hear that song "Who Are You?" you find yourself wrapped up in the cases and lives of the people of C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation. Good news for all of you C.S.I. fans: Simon and Schuster is publishing all-new ebook adventures of everyone's favorite investigators. KnowBetter reviewer J. Alan Hartman takes you inside the latest release in the series, and reveals a startling confession of his own.
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Thirty-Two And Raining by Daphne McLaren
Gay/Lesbian
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Author Daphne McLaren presents a work that may truly be the first to successfully cross sexual identity lines in readership. A novel dealing with relationships, the definition of family, suicide, love and loss, this is one of those ebooks that cannot be missed by people who enjoy quality literature. Don't let a bisexual theme be a deterrent from discovering a work that should have won awards by now. Read the review, and see why although for some people the sun always shines, in other people's lives it's always Thirty-Two And Raining.
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The Boy With The Big Ear by Barbara Toledo-Linder
Children/Young Adult
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

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Ruminations On College Life by Aaron Karo
Comedy
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Sleeping until four in the afternoon. Pub crawling. The consistent search for sex. No, this book isn't about a rock-and-roll band, it's a hysterical...and VERY accurate...look at college life from the point of view of a student who has lived through it all. Don't be surprised if you read it and think it's about you. Read the review and see if it doesn't trigger some memories of your own. Read the book, and relive it all.
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Designer You by Bob Stein
Children/Young Adult
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

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The Hired Man by Dorien Grey
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Lambda Mystery Award Nominee Dorien Grey is back with the next installment in his Dick Hardesty mystery series, and this outing is even more unusual than before. Reviewer J. Alan Hartman tells how a combination of Grey's growth as a writer, combined with great storytelling, makes this a mystery that fans of the genre are sure to enjoy.
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The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life At Rose Red by Joyce Reardon, PhD.
Fiction and Literature
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

A diary of strange occurences in the life of a lonely woman in the early 1900's Seattle. The Rimbauers are surrounded by eerie happenings in their new house. Are the deaths and disappearances accidental, or does the house have a mind of its own? Is Ellen Rimbauer insane, or is the house looking to exact a terrible revenge and keep her at any cost?
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The Tetrahedron by Charles L. Harness
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

When a patent dispute erupts over the true owners of a time machine, the litigants must go back to Renaissance Italy to get a deposition from the true creator: Leonardo da Vinci. However, one member of the time-travelling party discovers she is to play a bigger role in history than anyone thought.
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Plane Insanity by Elliott Nester
Biographies/Memoirs
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

From flight attendant Elliott Nester comes this compilation of the highs and lows of working in the airline industry. Often humorous, sometimes sad and mostly outrageous, Nester has created a truly engaging list of some of the most bizarre antics he's encountered at 30,000 feet.
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Muzzy: A Terry Saltz Mystery by Margo Pierce Dorkson
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

2001 certainly was a year of change, wasn't it? The good, the bad, the ugly...we certainly saw it all. In the world of ebooks, the independent publishers survived and thrived and the big publishers shuttered their websites and ebook divisions. One of these was Time Warner's ipublish.com website, which although it was publishing great titles felt that it simply wasn't a profitable venture at this time. It's a shame, because if they had spent more time publicizing books such as Margo Pierce Dorksen's Muzzy, they might still be around in 2002.
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Blood, Threat & Fears by Robert L. Iles, Christine Spindler, Elizabeth Dearl, Dan Sontup
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Some things just naturally go together: peanut butter and jelly, static electricity and cat hair, Harry Potter and the money in your checkbook, etc. However, when a publisher decides to put mystery stories together in a collection, particularly when these stories are based on characters of existing novels, the result is often like two magnets pushing against each other.
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The Bar Watcher by Dorien Grey
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Dorien Grey is without a doubt one of, if not THE, best new gay mystery author to appear in a very long time... the mystery is incredibly well crafted and flows with considerable ease. This is yet another of his books to be thoroughly consumed, whether you are gay or straight. Hardesty is one of the most likable protagonists to come along in ages, and Grey infuses him with a sense of humor and hysterical outlook that are not to be missed.
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The Cartoonist by Sean Costello
Horror/Suspense
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

...[H]orror novels don't typically scare me. Turn my stomach with graphic descriptions, maybe, but terrify me out of my mind? Nope. I find I'm more attracted to a horror novel that gives me a a creepy case of the willies. Not terror mind you, but just dang creepy... Without a doubt, this is one of the creepiest books I've read in a really long time. People looking for gory descriptions won't really find them here, but psychological terror abounds.
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Genuine Haunted House For Sale by Susan E. Lee
Children/Young Adult
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

I think everyone goes through that stage of their lives where they say "There is no way I'm EVER going to be like my parents!" I'm certainly no exception. However, as I approach my 30th birthday I find I'm starting to do the whole "what's the matter with kids today" routine. Of course, part of it is jealousy. Kids today have so much more available to them than I did when I was their age. I spent three years as a Waldenbooks store manager, wondering why children have so many more quality reading options available to them than I did. Not surprisingly, I've picked up many of these "children's" titles and thoroughly enjoyed them myself. Such is the case with Susan E. Lee's Genuine Haunted House For Sale, published by Wordbeams.
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Close To Home by T.A. Stone
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Through my various reading travels, it's not uncommon for me to come across a somewhat-unknown author who deserves to break out into the mainstream. What I find frustrating is when that author obviously has tremendous potential, but their novel doesn't quite hit the mark. Such is the case with T. A. Stone's Close To Home.
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Malicious Intent by Elizabeth Dearl
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Murder stories can be a dime a dozen, and mystery stories by the same author in one volume have a tendency to be repetitious and lose their originality before one gets to the end of the collection. That's not a problem here. Dearl has come up with very new, O. Henry-esque takes on murderous intent.
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A Host of Ghosts by Jim Gilbert
Fiction and Literature
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

The term 'fluff' has many different connotations. To some, it's what you do to a flat pillow. Others see it as a wonderful marshmallow treat... In the literary world, fluff tends to describe a book or piece of writing with very little substance to it. Generally, fluff pieces are frowned upon as the inadequate relatives of their more literary cousins. However, it IS possible for a fluff piece to be written so well, that you read it completely for its intrinsic entertainment and humor, devouring it from cover to cover and concluding with a much satisfied and rested feeling. Such is the case with Jim Gilbert's A Host of Ghosts published by Zander eBooks.
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Guilty As Charged by Jay Hatheway
Biographies/Memoirs
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

If you haven't heard the phrase "Don't ask, don't tell" repeatedly over the course of the past ten years, then you're just not keeping up on your current events... As long as there have been armed forces, there have been gay men and women serving in them. A new release from GLB Publishers entitled Guilty As Charged focuses on one such person, the author Jay Hatheway and his time spent in the Special Forces from 1971-1976 and the discrimination he encountered during that time.
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Brass Pony by Marsh Cassady
Gay/Lesbian
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

As both a gay male and a reader of what is considered minority literature, I tend to look for anything that falls out of the mainstream fiction world and into something a bit more specialized. I'm happy to say that I've been quite pleased with what I've read so far from GLB. That is, until now.
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Think Fast by Darby Roach
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Being bashed over the head with useless information brings me to my current review, an unfortunate piece of literary scrabble entitled Think Fast, written by Darby Roach and published by Boson Books. Although described as "gritty" and "quirky" by the publisher, I found that these adjectives best described Roach's writing here rather than the plot of the book.
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The Butcher's Son by Dorien Grey
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

Gay mystery authors abound these days, although quality authors do not. Writers such as Mark Richard Zubro, John Morgan Wilson and Mary Wings are still popular, yet gay mysteries seem to be losing some of their luster... Fortunately, Dorien Grey ranks right up there with the best mystery authors and clearly demonstrates his staying power in his latest release, The Butcher's Son.
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The 8th House by Wendy Jensen
Mystery/Thriller
Reviewed By J. Alan Hartman

I have to admit that I've been somewhat cynical of late of indie ebook publishers. The books I've read have been little more than fan fiction, usually full of editing errors. I'm extremely pleased to say that I was completely blown away by the quality of the writing in The 8th House.
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