We took some time in 2023 to put down the electronics, stop the death scroll routine before bed each night and read some awesome books. One of our goals for 2024 is to continue this and take it to another level, more time for more books!
BECOMING THE BOOGEYMAN
Author: Richard Chizmar
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
If you like things creepy and disturbing then Mr. Chizmar’s work will be to your liking. Stephen King said “Becoming the Boogeyman is a worthy and frightening sequel to Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogeyman. Terrific storytelling. You won’t be disappointed.” We loved “Chasing the Boogeyman“, and King’s appreciation of the sequel was more than enough to have us read it and get the heebie-jeebies all over again.
“A riveting, haunting sequel to the New York Times bestselling thriller Chasing the Boogeyman—a tale of obsession and the adulation of evil, exploring modern society’s true-crime obsession with unflinching honesty, sparing no one from the glare of the spotlight. Will those involved walk away from the story of a lifetime in order to keep their loved ones safe? Or will they once again be drawn into a killer’s web? As the story draws to its shattering conclusion, only one person holds all the answers—and he just may be the most terrifying monster of them all.”
You can purchase a signed first edition of this New York Times bestseller HERE or you can purchase an unsigned edition HERE.
UFO OF GOD: THE EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY OF CHRIS BLEDSOE
Author: Chris Bledsoe
We’ve been intrigued with the Chris Bledsoe story for years now but it wasn’t until we listened to his 
interview with Danny Jones that we were hooked. (FYI, that interview was over 3 hours long and can be found on SPOTIFY. We’ve listened to it 3 times now.)
You MUST suspend your previous thoughts about the UFO/ E.T. phenomenon and just give this a thorough read. The first question you should ask is, “If this is all mumbo-jumbo, WHY were multiple agencies within our government so involved with hearing this man’s story and WHY do they STILL, to this day, engage with him on a regular basis?”
The events experienced by Chris and his family have immensely impacted their lives and not all of it has been positive so again, ask yourself, “WHY would they put themselves through this if they didn’t have to?”
Chris Bledsoe, a deeply religious family man and successful business owner from North Carolina was on the verge of the unthinkable after losing everything in the 2007 financial crisis and suffering from a debilitating chronic disease. Fishing along the banks of the Cape Fear River with three co-workers and his teenage son, he walks away from the group and cries out to God in a desperate prayer for help. Suddenly, a UFO appears and saves his life and cures him of his illness. Experiencing four hours of missing time, he returns to his group and finds them troubled. Terrified, they run for their lives as several UFOs chase them home.
This is the true story of hope, love, lies and deception, involving officials from the U.S. Government, CIA, NASA, a string of professors, and MUFON.
Prepare to go on a spiritual journey of awakening and transformation with a visit from the Lady, remote viewing, assassination plot of the Pope, dripping orbs, a burning tree, the Monroe Institute, and healing the son of an elite Washington DC power broker with ties to the IC and the White House. 16 years on, the phenomena still visits the Bledsoe family and affects the lives of people who come in contact with them. To outsiders this can be seen as evil, but those who are willing to be open and accept it, it is a blessing.
Are the events that are playing out around the world controlled and shaped by the Phenomena? The U.S. Government says UFOs are real. And millions of people believe GOD is real. So what do we make of it? Mark 10:27 says, “All things are possible with God.” So, UFOs must be interrelated with GOD if holding the scriptures to be true. It would be impossible to have one without the other.
UFO of GOD is an #1 Amazon Bestseller and can be purchased HERE. (It is also being made into a major motion picture!)
THE LAND OF LOST THINGS
AUTHOR: John Connolly
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster
It must be said that we are MASSIVE fans of Irish author John Connolly. His Charlie Parker thriller series is one of our all-time favorites. We also loved his, “The Book of Lost Things” so when we realized he had just released a sequel, we immediately got it.
“Twice upon a time—for that is how some stories should continue…”
Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident—a body without a spirit. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud the fairy stories Phoebe loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.
But an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, to journey to a land colored by the memories of childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father—a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; a land where old enemies are watching and waiting…
If you like fantasy stories then this one will keep you turning page after page after page.
THE RIVER OF DARKNESS
Author: Buddy Levy
Publisher: Bantam Books
This book is absolutely insane. It’s like a time machine that takes you back centuries to the very beginning of exploration of the Amazon. We can’t even imagine the size of the balls Spanish Conquistador Francisco Orellana had to have to even CONTEMPLATE this expedition but he had them and he did it.
From the acclaimed author of Conquistador comes this thrilling account of one of history’s greatest adventures of discovery. With cinematic immediacy and meticulous attention to historical detail, here is the true story of a legendary 16th-century explorer and his death-defying navigation of the Amazon – river of darkness, pathway to gold.
In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito in search of La Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, “the golden man”. Driving an enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and other animals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition begin to disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the course of a powerful river.
Soon hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, their numbers diminishing daily through disease, starvation, and Indian attacks, Pizarro and Orellana made a fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returned home barefoot and in rags, Orellana and 57 men, in a few fragile craft, continued downriver into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon, serenaded by native war drums and the eerie cries of exotic predators. Theirs would be the greater glory.
SURPRISE, KILL, VANISH: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins
Author: Annie Jacobsen
Publisher: Back Bay Books
New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer prize finalist Annie Jacobsen pays attention to the details and the untold. We love her books and this one is no exception. We can’t even imagine the amount of hours, months and years of research she has to undertake to write ANY of her books. Each one is STUFFED with information that, like us, you probably had no clue about.
We must preface this admiration of her work with the fact that you will find yourself angry, astonished, saddened but many of the information in ALL her books. She digs deep and like we said earlier, she tells the untold, but not all of it pleasant. (Which is part of the reason we have yet to read her latest book, “Nuclear War.” We are extremely hesitant to learn more about something that unfathomable.)
Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace.
When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA’s Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world.
Originally known as the president’s guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination.
With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils — like never before — a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs.
Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine.
Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen’s exclusive interviews — with members of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon’s generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division’s Ground Branch operators who conduct today’s close-quarters killing operations around the world — reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA’s paramilitary army America’s weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.
THE STARGATE CHRONICLES: MEMOIRS OF A PSYCHIC SPY
Author: Joseph McMoneagle
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Ok, by now you probably can see we like stuff a little left or right of center. This book, for some of you, is going to be WAY beyond those parameters BUT, again, we ask that you suspend all disbelief and read this incredible story of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001.
Joseph McMoneagle is now known as the best Operational Remote Viewer in the history of the U.S. Army’s Special Project—Stargate. His intelligence collection results have never been surpassed and rarely equaled. Among his achievements:
- He described the interior of a top-secret Soviet manufacturing plant and accurately predicted a new class of submarine under construction there.
- He sketched the location and described the thoughts of a kidnapped U.S. Army General being held by the Red Brigade in Northern Italy.
- Nearly a year in advance he accurately predicted when Skylab would leave orbit and where it would impact on the Earth’s surface.
- After conventional reconnaissance failed, he and others were able to locate a downed Soviet bomber that had been carrying nuclear materials.
He achieved these results using scientifically designed and tested double-blind protocols. And in the years since his retirement he has continued to demonstrate these abilities on camera for national television in three countries, in the lab at the famed Monroe Institute, and for private companies.
Are his abilities a natural gift, or taught? Was it his largely unsuspected psychic ability that helped keep him alive in Vietnam, and aided in his invaluable contributions to the cold war effort, that made McMoneagle a first-class remote viewer? How much did he owe to his near-death experience in the 1970s? And why would he give up a safe and distinguished career as an advisor to the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command to become Remote Viewer 001? This is his story.
MOTHER OF GOD
Author: Paul Rosolie
Publisher: Harper Collins
Paul Rosolie is our spirit animal. Paul is a conservationist, writer, explorer, filmmaker, naturalist, speaker and bad-ass who spends most of his time working and living with locals in the Amazon rainforest in southeastern Peru. He is bringing attention to the environmental atrocities that are happening down there and works diligently to slow the destruction of this area.
This book, his first, will take you on a journey into the uncharted tributaries of the western Amazon and open your eyes on the unseen miracle that is the Amazon.
In the Madre de Dios—Mother of God—region of Peru, where the Amazon River begins its massive flow, the Andean Mountain cloud forests fall into lowland Amazon Rainforest, creating the most biodiversity-rich place on the planet. In January 2006, when he was just a restless eighteen-year-old hungry for adventure, Paul Rosolie embarked on a journey to the west Amazon that would transform his life.
Venturing alone into some of the most inaccessible reaches of the jungle, he encountered giant snakes, floating forests, isolated tribes untouched by outsiders, prowling jaguars, orphaned baby anteaters, poachers in the black market trade in endangered species, and much more. Yet today, the primordial forests of the Madre de Dios are in danger from developers, oil giants, and gold miners eager to exploit its natural resources.
In Mother of God, this explorer and conservationist relives his amazing odyssey exploring the heart of this wildest place on earth. When he began delving deeper in his search for the secret Eden, spending extended periods in isolated solitude, he found things he never imagined could exist. “Alone and minuscule against a titanic landscape I have seen the depths of the Amazon, the guts of the jungle where no men go, Rosolie writes. “But as the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett warned, ‘the few remaining unknown places of the world exact a price for their secrets.’”
So there you have it. We loved these books and wanted to put them on your radar. We completely understand if they are… “not your thing” but if you give them a chance, just maybe, they will intrigue you enough to delve deeper.
More Articles You Might Like
Biblio Bloom’s Acrylic Book Vases Are Perfect for Bibliophiles
John Connolly’s “The Instruments of Darkness” Combines A Horrific Crime & The Supernatural For Pure Binge-Worthy Reading
