Tag Archives: Seventh Street Books

Spider John is Back in A Bottle of Rum

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A Bottle of Rum
Steve Goble
Seventh Street
Paper $15.95
ebook $9.99

I became a fan of Steve Goble’s Spider John mysteries from the first book. The idea of a pirate solving mysteries is one of the freshest I’ve come across in a long time. The current installment in the series is no exception.

Before I get to the review, I would like to thank Samantha Lien from Seventh Street Books for providing me with a PDF review copy. I have been spending so much time staring at a screen the last couple of months that I went ahead and bought a print copy to save strain on my eyes.  It was money well spent. Continue reading →

2014 in the Rear View Mirror

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And good riddance to it. But before I get to that, here’s a quick rundown of the publishers I thought had the best overall lines in 2014. Rather than do multiple posts across all the blogs, I’ll list everything here.

I received more review copies than I was able to read this year.  I would like to thank everyone, large publisher or individual, who sent me something to review.  I apologize if I didn’t get to it.  Personal factors also cut into my reading more than I would prefer.  Still, I managed to read quite a bit from a number of different publishers.  What follows is a list of who had some of the best overall material in 2014 with a brief commentary.  These are trade publishers, not indie publishers.  In most cases, I’ll not discuss individual titles. Nor will I do a best books list.  I wasn’t able to read as many titles as I wanted, and as a result there are some glaring omissions in what I did read.

The list is in alphabetical order, not ranked. Continue reading →

2013: An Assessment – Publishers

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As I promised in yesterday’s State of the Blogs post, here’s my summary of what I read this past year.  I’m going to include both publishers and individual works that I thought were standouts, but due to length, I’m going to break the post in two.  The list of year’s best authors and titles is here. Many of them are published by the publishers listed below.

I’m going to restrict this list to imprints that have distribution in the major chains.  That means no small presses.  Small presses tend to focus on reprints or collectible editions that are often priced for the collectors market.

Also, I’m going to list some science fiction and crime/noir titles and publishers as well.  I’ve not read enough in those fields this past year to justify a separate post on Futures or Gumshoes.  I plan for 2014 to be different on that point.  Details in tomorrow’s post.

We’ll start with publishers, in alphabetical order (For publishers with more than one imprint, the imprint I read the most will be listed first.): Continue reading →