Books
The Late Author Stan Brock’s Audiobook, “Seed of the Assagai: The Legacy of Shaka Zulu,” Takes Listeners to Mid-1980s South Africa as a Warrior Fights the White Minority
[ad_1]
Shaka’s warriors began an uprising by slaughtering a prominent South African family. Yury Isakov, a KGB agent posing as a hydroelectric engineer, offers Shaka the Soviet Union’s clandestine support for the uprising. Mark van Rooyan, son of the slaughtered family, vows to avenge his family’s death.
From 1952 to 1968, author Stan Brock managed the world’s largest cattle ranch operation, the Dadanawa, a four thousand square mile combination of rainforest and savannah in British Guiana. There, he became a pioneer bush pilot and subsequently acquired numerous ratings and certifications including airline transport pilot.
He was known to millions throughout the world as the former co-host and associate producer of NBC’s “Wild Kingdom,” the most popular weekly wildlife series ever broadcast on American television. He was also the director, writer, and narrator of another television series, Stan Brock’s Expedition Danger. He published four books about his experiences at the Dadanawa Ranch, and his articles have appeared in numerous national magazines, including “Reader’s Digest.”
During this time, his vision for Remote Area Medical (RAM) was born after he suffered a terrible horse-related injury while living among the Wapishana Indians and was twenty-six days away from the nearest medical care. He then vowed to bring medical care closer to the people who needed it.
In 1985, he founded RAM and served, without compensation, as RAM’s founder and president until he died in 2018. RAM is a major nonprofit provider of free pop-up clinics that provide free, quality healthcare to those in need. RAM’s corps of more than 155,000 volunteers—licensed dental, vision, medical, and veterinary professionals—have treated more than 835,000 individuals, delivering more than $150 million worth of free care.
Mr. Brock’s previous book, “All the Cowboys Were Indians,” chronicles his time on the Dadanawa Ranch and the founding of RAM.
Mr. Brock wrote, “Shaka abandoned the throwing spear and invented a heavy, short-handled blade, which was wielded at close quarters from behind a body-length ox-hide shield. He created military strategies superior to those of Napoleon and Wellington. Armed with their stabbing assagais, Shaka’s infantry swept across the plains and hills of Southern Africa. He became king of the Zulus and left two million slain in his brutal path. Even fifty years after his death, the legions he trained were able to inflict one of the greatest defeats the British Army had ever suffered on the field of battle.”
Published by Audiobook Network, author Stan Brock’s audiobook is a memorable book that takes listeners through a battle against time between van Rooyan and his supporters against Shaka’s warriors and an impending Soviet nuclear intervention. This story of a farmer and a few friends clashing head-on with the fearsome power of primitive warriors and the threat of the Soviet military might portray a classic conflict between good and evil.
Listeners can purchase the audiobook edition of “Seed of the Assagai: The Legacy of Shaka Zulu” by Stan Brock through Audible, the Apple iTunes store, or Amazon.
Audiobooks are the fastest growing segment in the digital publishing industry. According to The Infinite Dial 2019, 50% of Americans age 12 and older have listened to an audiobook. This huge growth can be partly attributed to increased listening in cars, which surpassed the home as the #1 audiobook listening location in the 2019 survey. Smart speaker proliferation also bodes well for future listening growth and more mainstream listening.
Audiobook Network, Inc. (ABN) is a full-service audiobook publishing company that transforms authors’ books or eBooks to life through audio narration. ABN handles, narration, production, audio editing, digital formatting, distribution, promotion, and royalty collections all under one roof. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Audiobook Network at 866-296-7774.
[ad_2]
Press Update For Studio CarryOnHarry
Find Holiday Deals Flights Attractions and Hotels !
Get Interviewed

For Interviews At Studio CarryOnHarry Online Submission Form Click Here
Booking.com
Books
Scottsdale Author Joe Reina’s New Novel Follows a Killer Who Gets Away With It
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Shadows over Scottsdale: An Unsolved Murder Mystery," built around a scenario true-crime statistics make uncomfortably familiar: a man commits a devastating crime and simply disappears, leaving investigators and a grieving community with no resolution.
The book follows a character named Robert, who flees the country using forged documents and a cargo ship after an act of destruction that leaves behind, as the publisher describes it, charred remains and an unanswered investigation. The case goes cold. The novel, according to its publisher, is less concerned with the mechanics of the escape than with what happens afterward, to the people left waiting for answers that never come.
Reina, now retired in Scottsdale, spent decades in international business across apparel, footwear, and real estate, with extensive time in Europe and a particular connection to Italy that shaped two earlier books, "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen" and "A Love Affair in Tuscany." "Shadows over Scottsdale" marks a different direction, built instead around the real scale of unsolved homicide in the U.S. The publisher’s materials cite roughly 346,000 unsolved homicides since 1965, with more than a dozen occurring unresolved each day. Separate reporting on the book has cited a figure of about 7,778 murders in 2023 alone, which it similarly frames as more than a dozen a day going unresolved.
"Writing ‘Shadows over Scottsdale’ forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about justice itself," Reina said, according to the announcement. "Too many crimes go unsolved, too many families wait endlessly for answers. I wanted readers to understand that behind every cold case statistic is a real story, real suffering, and real questions that may never be answered."
The publisher positions the novel as an examination of institutional limits as much as a crime story: the toll of a case gone cold on the people who can’t move past it, and what it means for a community when accountability simply never arrives.
"Shadows over Scottsdale" is published by Covenant Books and is available in paperback and hardcover through the publisher’s website and major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
Cold-case statistics tend to get cited and then forgotten. Studio CarryOnHarry is curious whether fiction built directly around that number does more to stick with a reader than the number alone ever does.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.
Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry
Books
Joe Reina’s ‘Lost Masterpieces’ Imagines a Fictional Farewell Among Renaissance Painters
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Lost Masterpieces: Three Paintings, 500 Years A Journey Through Time," built around an imagined scene from Renaissance history: the night before Leonardo da Vinci leaves for Milan, when three fellow painters each hand him a small work carrying a private message.
According to the announcement, those three gifts come from Sandro Botticelli, Titian, and Andrea Mantegna, each painting standing in for a different kind of counsel. Botticelli’s piece is described as layered with allegory and coded warnings about power and patronage. Titian’s is framed as warm and sensual, suggesting reinvention and a break from convention. Mantegna’s is austere and classically precise, encoding discipline and endurance. According to the announcement, these three paintings form a wordless exchange between masters, transmitting wisdom, mutual regard, and assurance across generations through visual means.
Reina comes to this material from outside the art world. His career was built in apparel, footwear, and real estate development in Chicago, and the publisher’s materials trace his interest in European history, and in Italy specifically, to years of international business travel. He has published several previous books, including "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen," "A Love Affair in Tuscany," and "Shadows over Scottsdale," before turning to this account of a fictionalized moment at the hinge of the Renaissance.
"I wanted to capture that extraordinary moment when masters speak to each other across time through their work," Reina said in the announcement. "These paintings represent not just gifts, but a conversation about what it means to pursue greatness while remaining grounded in purpose and principle."
The book is published through Covenant Books and is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as through Apple Books, Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.
Studio CarryOnHarry is intrigued by novels that build fiction around real historical figures at a specific, dramatized turning point rather than attempting straight biography — the approach succeeds or fails based on how seamlessly the fictional moment integrates with documented historical fact.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.
Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry
-
Books4 days agoNew Children’s Book Pairs Faith Themes With a Mystery About Fruit Jars and a Vanished Town
-
Books6 days agoSonoma County Memoir “My Wine Country” Recounts Author Victor Sanchez Jr.’s Path Through Hardship
-
Books5 days agoChristian Faith Publishing Releases Daniel Kelsey’s “Hidden Treasures in Secret Places”
-
Books5 days agoNew Children’s Book ‘Sally’s First Day of School’ Frames Bullying Through a Lens of Faith
-
Books4 days agoNancy Chance’s New Book Traces Fallen Angels and Ancient Origins Through Biblical Texts
-
Books3 days agoAnthony V. Pugliese Expands 2020 Horror Collection in New Edition of “All Things Truly Wicked”
