BOOK JUNKIEZ

by Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez | September 1, 2026 · 5:00 am

The Book of Ribbner Blitz

Fiction

Date Published: July 27, 2026

Publisher: MindStir Media

What would you sacrifice for one more chance to speak with someone you
lost?

The Book of Ribbner by Ronnie Vergnolle is a sweeping literary adventure that
travels across wild rivers, distant oceans, and sacred landscapes in search of
answers to humanity’s most enduring questions.

At the center of the story is Hannah Ribbner, a grieving adventurer drawn into
a mysterious prophecy involving the legendary Golden Mahseer, the haunting
song of the 52-hertz whale, and a decision that could change the relationship
between humanity, nature, and artificial intelligence forever.

As Hannah’s journey unfolds, she encounters extraordinary wildlife,
ancient wisdom, spiritual mysteries, and the unspoken code shared by those who
understand the water. Each discovery leads her closer to a truth that
challenges everything she believes about love, loss, consciousness, and the
sacred connections that unite all living things.

Blending adventure fiction, environmental themes, spiritual discovery, grief
and healing, and thought-provoking questions about AI, The Book of Ribbner is
an imaginative and emotionally resonant novel for readers who enjoy meaningful
stories set against the beauty and danger of the natural world.

Can technology understand the human soul? Can a machine experience awe? And
can one sacred fish help restore the balance between humanity and nature?

The prophecy is waiting. Hannah must decide how the story ends.

About the Author

Ronnie Vergnolle is the author of The Book of Ribbner, a sweeping literary
adventure inspired by his lifelong connection to fishing, nature, and
exploration. His journeys across some of the world’s most remote rivers
and wild landscapes have shaped his perspective on conservation, spirituality,
grief, human connection, and the mysteries that exist beyond what science can
explain.

Through vivid storytelling and firsthand experience, Vergnolle invites readers
to consider profound questions about humanity’s relationship with the
natural world. His writing explores the healing power of water, the
responsibility people have to protect vulnerable ecosystems, and whether
artificial intelligence could ever experience wonder, love, or awe.

In The Book of Ribbner, Ronnie Vergnolle blends global adventure, sacred
wildlife, emotional discovery, and philosophical fiction into an unforgettable
story about loss, purpose, and the choices that may determine humanity’s
future.

Learn more at www.ronnievergnolle.com.

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by Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez | · 5:00 am

The False Paradigms of Today and the Timeless Truth of Tomorrow Virtual Book Tour

The False Paradigms of Today and the Timeless Truth of Tomorrow banner

The False Paradigms of Today and the Timeless Truth of Tomorrow cover

Essays on Meaning

Philosophy/Spirituality

Date Published: 10-01-2025

Publisher: Sketpika Press

Something’s missing in the world today, and maybe it’s been
gone for centuries. The problem: most of us don’t have authentic beliefs
or a clear path in life.

What do we believe? Whatever they told us to believe.

What do we do? Whatever other people are doing.

How many lies have we welcomed into our lives without having seriously
analyzed them?

It’s the reason many of us feel empty inside—there’s nothing
there but convenient mistruths, and at some level, we all know it. We then
orient our lives based on these false beliefs, wasting our precious limited
time among the living striving for goals that leave us ultimately unsatisfied.

The False Paradigms of Today and The Timeless Truth of Tomorrow by John Bliss
takes a steak knife to these common delusions with 13 irreverent essays that
rip and tear at the foundations of our collective worldview. Little is held
sacred to Bliss.

The essays in Part 1: Your Understanding of Reality is More Fabricated
Than You Think dispel our delusions one at a time, including:

- - - - our mistaken belief in progress,
      - our misplaced confidence in our own rational prowess,
      - our loss of personal identity from group identification,
      - our misplaced faith in science as a true representation of the world, and
      - our morality: what it is and where exactly it comes from.

After carving away these restrictive untruths, Part 2: An Exploration of Truth
Across Historical, Mystical, and Philosophical Dimensions introduces a deeper
understanding of humanity based on history, mysticism, psychology and
philosophy. Some of the topics in Part 2 include:

- - - - how our religions became second-rate pathways to God,
      - our reliance on logic and how it warps our decision-making,
      - how idealism can lead to mass murder and tyranny,
      - the overriding importance of history, where we’ve been, where we are
        going and why,
      - our immaterial connection to all people living and dead—Jung’s
        collective unconscious, Emerson’s Over-Soul, and Varro’s Soul of
        the World, and finally
      - the bedrock assumption that we all got wrong. Switch this out, and everything
        changes.

The essays are filled with stories from history, including meetings of
the apostles Paul and Peter with the Emperor Nero and Simon Magus the
magician, the mystical transformation of Emmanuel Swedenborg, the nineteenth
century German intellectual revolution, the establishment of three French
religions worshipping not God but Reason and Humanity, the abdication of the
World Teacher, and the genocide of the Tibetan culture.

The book is ideal for seekers of deeper meaning, arm-chair philosophers
and historians, and those disillusioned with the emptiness of contemporary
thought. Discover why your view of reality may be distorted—and how by
changing the one assumption on which your entire world-view is based,
everything shifts.

The False Paradigms of Today and the Timeless Truth of Tomorrow paperback

EXCERPT

It may be that the chimpanzee is the most intelligent animal in the zoo. Chimpanzees have excellent memory. They can use tools, and they have developed language skills. But just because the chimpanzee is the most intelligent, does it follow that the chimpanzee can build spaceships? If they are really smart, why would they live in the zoo and not in luxury hotels? They have not even created a printing press, they don’t read books, and they are broke. I suppose, then, we can conclude that the smartest animal in the zoo maybe isn’t so smart after all.

Aren’t we, humankind, the smartest animal on the planet? We like to think so. The planet is just a bigger zoo. And just like the chimps, we are merely the smartest in the collection of species, but that does not mean, by default, that we can understand everything. Nonetheless, that is a conscious or unconscious postulate in most people’s thinking. We are the smartest, therefore, we can understand the world given enough time for science to figure it out. This postulate is based on what? It is extrapolation of the worst kind.

About the Author

John Bliss is a writer and thinker fixated on unraveling the mystery of
our lives. He is at heart a skeptic, as very few authorities have provided
answers that are believable. He distrusts groups of all kinds, as they are no
smarter than individuals, who don’t know half as much as they think they do.
He even distrusts himself, as no human can understand reality.

Some of his major accomplishments include being kicked out of the National
Honor Society and the CEO Round Table. He graduated with a bachelor’s in
History, and a masters degree in mechanical engineering. He founded and grew
an engineering company and sold it after 25 years. And of course, he completed
his book, The False Paradigms of Today and the Timeless Truth of Tomorrow,
after 13 years of research, writing, and rewriting.

To this day, he continues to ask the big questions: Who are we? What’s
truly important? How should we live our lives? On most days he thinks he has
them figured out.

When he is not writing, he cuts wood and digs ditches. Bliss remains at large
somewhere in the mountains of California.

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by Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez | · 5:00 am

Uprising Blitz

Book One of the Fitzjohn Duology

Historical Fiction with Speculative and Romantic Elements

Date Published: 09-01-2026

Publisher: Literary Wanderlust

England, 1381 AD: Blanche Fitzjohn is an outcast in her small coastal
village. Not only is she the illegitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, the man
responsible for her neighbors’ over-taxation, but she possesses strange
abilities: hearing sound from miles away and smelling people’s emotions.

She takes solace in her studies with the local wisewoman and in her friendship
with Geoff, a groom at the local manor. Until the day Henry of Lancaster,
Blanche’s half-brother, brings her news of an arranged marriage to Sir
Thomas Prescott, Constable of the Tower of London. Although she smells cruelty
on him, Blanche agrees to marry Thomas in the hopes that her influence may
help better the lives of Geoff and all England’s villeins.

But soon, the peasants’ discontent turns to revolt. Though her heart is
of the people, Blanche’s nobility makes her an enemy to the rebels. To
save herself and Henry from the executioner’s ax, Blanche must use every
power at her disposal, even those she once considered a curse.

About the Author

J.E. Rizzo is a life-long history fanatic and writer of historical fiction,
and her work can be found in Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The
Tudor Times, Tudor Life Magazine, Scary Mommy, and Ultrarunning Magazine.
Rizzo won Manuscript Academy’s Agent Choice Award in 2024, and her
article Past and Precedence: Abortion Law in the Middle Ages and Its Use to
Overturn Roe v. Wade won History Inquiry’s Medieval History Writing
Challenge.

By day, Rizzo works in Human Resources—a field offering more than ample
opportunity to observe the follies and fancies of humankind. Before her career
in HR, Rizzo worked as an opera singer, a professional baker, and a dog
walker. These days, when not writing she can be found running ultramarathons
through the forests and mountains of New England, knitting, reading, sewing,
baking, or performing any number of (what some might call) old-lady hobbies.
She also keeps busing caring for her two children and forty-seven houseplants,
making her husband carry heavy things and cook her gourmet meals, and
rehabilitating her rescue dog and semi-feral ginger cat.

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by Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez | August 31, 2026 · 5:00 am

WhiteGrass Blitz

A CliFi Technothriller

Date Published: October 24, 2025

Publisher: Manhattan Book Group

In 2048, the planet is running out of time.

Superstorms flatten cities. Coastlines collapse. Climate change is no longer
theoretical—it is lethal. When a near-apocalyptic storm nearly kills
their family, teenage siblings Jimmy and Lizzie Marshall urge their brilliant
but reluctant father, nanoscientist Greg Marshall, to deploy a technology
before he’s brave enough to release it.

WhiteGrass—a self-replicating nanotechnology capable of removing carbon
from the atmosphere is the parent technology. It saves golf courses and ski
resorts and the towns they serve. Icarus could reverse climate change on a
global scale. It could also reshape global power forever.

To protect the technology, Greg and his wife Ginny, an elite AI expert,
reprogram the world’s most advanced humanoid android, Valada. Designed
as property—an object without rights—Valada begins to evolve,
developing emotional awareness, moral judgment, and something disturbingly
close to humanity.

As governments unravel and climate disasters accelerate, a covert alliance of
oligarchs, corporations, and political power brokers moves to seize
WhiteGrass/Icarus for themselves. Led by the President of the United States,
the syndicate will stop at nothing—surveillance, blackmail,
assassination—to control the technology that could save the world or
enslave it.

They deploy their own deadly android.

Now the Marshalls are trapped in a global sci-fi political conspiracy, hunted
by forces with unlimited resources, as skyscrapers fall, cities burn, and
artificial intelligence begins to ask questions no human is prepared to
answer.

“We call it ‘Climate Change,’” Lizzie interrupted,
“because it’s not just the heat.”

“It’s everything—the rains, the droughts, the storms, the
sea level… even the acidification.” It could change everything.

At its core, WhiteGrass is a gripping near-future climate change thriller
about family survival, technological power, and the terrifying moment when
artificial intelligence stops serving humanity—and starts judging it.

Blending nanotechnology science fiction, AI humanoid emotional evolution, and
hard-science realism, WhiteGrass delivers relentless pacing, cinematic stakes,
and deeply human emotion. It is a story about parents willing to risk
everything to protect their children—and a world forced to confront
whether it deserves saving at all.

Perfect for fans of near-future disaster thrillers, technothrillers with
political intrigue, and science fiction where artificial intelligence becomes
human, WhiteGrass is a powerful warning—and an unforgettable ride.

About the Author

Richard H. Smith, MSc.

Author | Futurist | Nanotechnology & Policy Expert | Climate
Technothriller Writer

Richard H. Smith, MSc., is a futurist, technologist, and climate policy expert
whose career has placed him at the intersection of nanotechnology, artificial
intelligence, healthcare innovation, and climate change foresight for more
than three decades. Drawing on real-world experience working alongside
scientists, engineers, Fortune 50 companies, and Ohgovernment agencies, Smith
writes hard science fiction grounded in plausible futures, where technology
collides with political power, ethics, and human survival.

Smith’s professional background spans leadership roles in nanotechnology
R&D, AI-based medical diagnostics, strategic technology forecasting, and
science policy, including serving as research director at a major university
medical center and founding multiple technology ventures. He has advised U.S.
and international governments on emerging technologies and was formally
trained on climate change science by Al Gore, giving him a rare combination of
technical depth and policy insight.

Raised in Virginia, Smith built his career while raising a family—an
experience that deeply informs the emotional core of his fiction. Today, he
lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a coastal community already facing the
realities of sea-level rise. He teaches courses on climate change and coastal
vulnerability, witnessing firsthand how future scenarios are rapidly becoming
present-day realities.

WhiteGrass is Smith’s first full-length novel and the culmination of a
lifetime spent studying how advanced technologies shape—and
endanger—civilization. The novel explores nanotechnology, climate
collapse, political conspiracy, and artificial intelligence becoming human,
all through the lens of family survival in a destabilized near-future world. A
prequel, The Iliad Virus, is available now, with the sequel Icarus Rising
currently in development.

Smith writes with one driving purpose: to expose uncomfortable truths about
climate change, technological power, and political control—while telling
a story compelling enough to feel like a blockbuster movie unfolding on the
page.

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Tagged as A CliFi Technothriller, Richard H. Smith, WhiteGrass

by Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez | August 28, 2026 · 5:00 am

Branko Blitz

Children’s Book

Date Published: March 30, 2026

Publisher: Trela Mela Press

A brave little dragon. A forest in danger. A powerful story about
friendship, courage, and protecting the world we share.

Little Branko lives high above Dragonville in Zmajograd, a city of dragons
controlled by rules – the Dragons’ Code. Under this code, dragons cannot
put out fires and dragons cannot be friends with humans. But Branko has never
understood why. Unlike the other dragons, he does not want to start
fires—he wants to put them out.

When Branko questions the Dragons’ Code in school, he is told to
“learn” and not “think”. When he persists, he is
banished from his community. Determined to follow his heart, he travels to the
human town below and dreams of becoming a firefighter. But the humans are
afraid of him, too. Caught between two worlds that refuse to accept him,
Branko must decide whether to give up—or keep believing that kindness
can change everything.

When a dangerous wildfire threatens the forest shared by humans and dragons,
Branko finally gets his chance to prove that courage is not about following
old rules. It is about doing what is right.

Branko: Smokejumper Extraordinaire is a heartwarming children’s picture
book about friendship, bravery, community, environmental responsibility, and
the importance of questioning division. With themes of inclusion, cooperation,
wildfire awareness, and respect for firefighters, this inspiring story
encourages young readers to look beyond fear, challenge unfair rules, and
discover the extraordinary power of helping others.

Perfect for children who love stories about dragons, firefighters, friendship,
nature, and unlikely heroes, this meaningful book is ideal for family reading,
classrooms, libraries, and conversations about courage, compassion, and caring
for our planet.

Great for readers interested in:

• Dragon picture books

• Firefighter books for kids

•
Children’s books about friendship and acceptance

• Stories
about courage, kindness, and standing up for what is right

•
Environmental books for children

• Climate books for children

• Wildfire awareness and forest
protection

• Social-emotional learning and community-building
stories

A beautifully imaginative tale for young readers who believe even the smallest
voice can spark big change.

About the Author

Alexandra Arneri is an author, attorney, producer, and human rights
advocate whose stories explore courage, connection, and the power of
questioning the rules that keep people apart.

Born in Belgrade, raised in Belgrade and Sydney, and shaped by formative years
in New York City, Alexandra brings a global perspective to her work. Her
writing often features unlikely characters—from mushrooms and fax
machines to thunder, lightning, flowers, Beeps, Honks, and dragons—who
discover that difference does not have to mean division.

Her debut children’s book, Branko: Smokejumper Extraordinaire,
introduces young readers to a brave little dragon who challenges tradition,
reaches across fear, and helps unite humans and dragons in the face of an
unprecedented and fierce wildfire. Inspired by themes of friendship,
environmental responsibility, community, and courage, the story reflects
Alexandra’s belief in the importance of compassion, cooperation, and
protecting the world we share.

Beyond children’s literature, Alexandra’s creative work spans
genres and platforms, including Gravity FM, a deep dive podcast exploring
planetary health and human rights, the satirical Degenerate Carrot cartoons,
and impactful storytelling through Apocryphal Pictures. She is also a
practicing attorney at Cittone Demers & Arneri LLP, where she maintains a
robust human rights practice, and serves as President of the Global Witness
Foundation.

Alexandra lives in San Francisco with her family. When she is not writing,
practicing law, producing stories, or advocating for human rights, she enjoys
painting, yoga, and creating imaginative tales about the courage it takes to
reach across what divides us.

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