Location: United States
Member Since: July 21, 2011

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Gilbert M. Stack

Biography

Gilbert M. Stack has been creating stories almost since he began speaking and publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2006. A professional historian, Gilbert delights in bringing the past to life in his fiction, depicting characters who are both true to their time and empathetic with modern sensibilities. His work has appeared in more than a dozen issues of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Michelle, and their son, Michael.

Where to find Gilbert M. Stack online

Website: http://www.gilbertstack.com
Facebook: Facebook profile
Blog: http://gilbertstack.webs.com/apps/blog/

Series

Legionnaire Chronicles by
Legionnaire Chronicles bundles the Legionnaire series--a gritty High Fantasy set on the borders of the far-flung Republic of Aquila. While political in-fighting and scheming are the order of the day in the heart of the Republic, the borderlands are awash with dangers only kept in check by the might of the legions. Fell magics, savage peoples, and scheming empires all threaten the country Patrician Marcus Venandus has sworn to defend using his wits, military strategy and his small command of highly disciplined legionnaires.
Marcus Takes Command
Price: $6.99 USD.
Marcus Goes to War
Price: $8.99 USD.

Books

Marcus Goes to War by
Series: Legionnaire Chronicles, Book 2. Price: $8.99 USD. Words: 227,020. Language: English. Published: February 25, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Epic, Fiction » Adventure » War & military adventure
To honor his dead brother’s obligations, Marcus has agreed to help the city of Amatista defend itself in the coming war with mighty Diamonte and its allies, but his Gota enemies refuse to believe an infantry composed of the despised Qing and Gente peoples can prove to be any kind of threat to them. Little do they understand that Marcus isn’t training mere soldiers. He’s making legionnaires!
Marcus Takes Command by
Series: Legionnaire Chronicles, Book 1. Price: $6.99 USD. Words: 180,640. Language: English. Published: February 4, 2020 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Epic, Fiction » Fantasy » Historical
(5.00 from 1 review)
Legionnaire is a gritty fantasy series set on the borders of the far-flung Republic of Aquila—lands awash with dangers kept in check only by the might of the legions. Fell magics, savage peoples, and scheming empires all threaten the country Patrician Marcus Venandus is sworn to defend. This volume includes the first 3 books in the series: The Fire Islands, The Sea of Grass, and The Jeweled Hills.

Gilbert M. Stack's tag cloud

army    bandits    battle    high fantasy    legion    magic    rome    skeleton    undead    war   

Gilbert M. Stack's favorite authors on Smashwords

Chris L. Adams
Latest book: Conan and Old Crem (A Tale of Conan of Cimmeria).
Published May 16, 2018. (3.00 from 2 reviews)
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Mike Adams
Latest book: Sound the Alarm.
Published November 24, 2023.
Visit their website

Smashwords book reviews by Gilbert M. Stack

  • Atlas of the Serpent Men (A Tale of Conan of Cimmeria) on April 25, 2018

    This tribute to Robert E. Howard’s Conan starts on a strong note giving a very credible account of Conan facing off against a band of thieves. The crisp action pulls you right in and doesn’t let you go from start to finish. Adams has a real feel for everyone’s favorite barbarian. These are pages that feel like REH could have penned them. There's also a delightful piece of Conan flash fiction at the end so make certain you read until the final page.
  • Conan and Old Crem (A Tale of Conan of Cimmeria) on May 30, 2018

    Conan and Old Crem is a delightful piece of flash fiction that no Conan library should be without. If you ever enjoyed a tale of fiction’s most famous barbarian, you’ll love this story. So drop what you’re doing and read it right now!
  • Megalodon on Jan. 05, 2021

    People have been trying to outdo Jaws since Peter Benchley first published the novel and ever since Steve Alten’s Meg, the megalodon is a favored tool to accomplish this feat. Skipper takes a slightly different course than most. He postulates that megalodons never died out and are just in such small numbers that no one has noticed them. So his protagonists, after catching sight of a video of a shark attack on a whale, figure out what the creature really is and decide to prove they still exist. And that’s basically the whole book. Having decided to look for the megalodon, they quickly find one and then a larger one. If you think about that too long, that’s pretty hard to accept, but Skipper makes up for it with an interesting cast of characters—treasure hunters looking for a new kind of prize. Rather than play for terror, Skipper puts a lot of his energy into the ethics of the search and what can be done with a clearly endangered species even if it isn’t yet on any government’s list. If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
  • My Boss is a Serial Killer on Feb. 18, 2021

    I like the concept behind this book, the slow realization that your boss is not the person he or she appears. The moment I realized I was in for the long haul was in chapter four when Harlin brilliantly brought the very sweet relationship between her heroine and the boss to life and made me really like both of them. Now let’s face it, in a book in which the title tells us that the boss is a serial murderer, you don’t expect to like the boss and yet I honestly did. Bill Nestor is an obsessive compulsive with maybe a touch of autism who doesn’t handle stress very well and our heroine is the legal secretary who can calm him down and refocus him when he has an episode. They are a such delightful team that I immediately began to look for someone else who could fit the serial killer label and I came up with a great theory—but you will have to read the book to see if I was right because, let’s face it, it’s actually easy to imagine Bill slipping over to the dark side. In addition to the mystery, there is also what I think of as a “cutesy romance” between the heroine and the detective on the case. This is necessary for plot purposes, but I wish it had taken up less of the book. I was far more interested in the heroine’s fascination with television series. Again, this was a quirk that just made her a delight to read about. She is constantly referencing an old TV series and I loved searching my brain to see if I remembered it, or better yet, had watched it for a time. It was a fantastic tool for getting me, the reader, to connect with the heroine. So—good mystery, good characters, good book!
  • My Boss is A Dead Man on April 19, 2023

    TV detective series fanatic, Carol Frank, is back with her zany group of friends and bosses for another mystery. This time, the “boss” in question is her old and hated employer. He’s the sort of boss that no one can think of a single good thing to say about. He’s just a jerk who relishes in being a jerk. So, when he disappears leaving only a lot of blood behind him, there are about 3 million suspects as to who might be responsible. Unfortunately for our heroine, the detective who catches the case is focused solely on her, and while there certainly is some evidence to link her to the crime, it annoyed me that the detective really wasn’t interested in finding another suspect. Carol, being the detective series fanatic she is, and being somewhat popular with most cops because of her detective boyfriend and her work in the last book, never seems to really mind the detectives animus. But then, Carol isn’t mad at the woman who tried to kill her in the last book either. She just doesn’t have a “hold a grudge” personality type, which makes the certainty that she must have killed her old boss even more peculiar for the reader. A lot of fun of this book is in watching Carol fix problems for everyone she knows and even try to do so for the detective who is out to get her. The ending of this one was a wild ride that I thoroughly enjoyed. Carol gets herself into quite a tangle by the end of the story and the way she gets out of it was both exciting and satisfying. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series as much to see what her and her zany friends are up to as to see if I can solve the next mystery.
  • My Boss is a Wanted Woman on April 23, 2023

    I’ve really enjoyed this trilogy and the final book was as good as the first novel. Carol’s detective boyfriend asks her to go undercover in a legal office to help the Kansas City Police Department with a case. That always seemed a little strange, but I figured the author needed an excuse to get her heroine away from her good boss and under a potential criminal again. The new office has all the shenanigans we’ve come to expect of this series and more potential crimes than Carol was led to expect. There’s also an insurance investigator who has a particularly worrisome problem and Carol is, by chance, right in the perfect place to help him as well, even though her boyfriend doesn’t want her to. The ending was another wild and zany ride, a great conclusion to the story and actually wraps things up in a very nice trilogy, pulling some lingering plot threads together in a “classically Carol” fashion. I was all set to say goodbye to some truly wonderful characters when Harlin teased us with a great problem for a fourth novel. So, my question is, where’s the fourth book Ms. Harlin? You published this one in 2013! I think it’s time for you to finish the story.
  • Purgatory Island: Dan Mason Series Book #1 on April 25, 2023

    Purgatory Island starts with a bang. A wealthy, entitled, and not-particularly-likable young woman gets kidnapped while on a vacation at an elite resort called Purgatory Island. (No, that name doesn’t make any sense despite Burton’s efforts to justify it in the book.) A mercenary is hired to rescue her by her U.S. Senator father. The father refuses to bring in any law enforcement agencies to help—an important clue to what’s really happening that I missed. To complicate things, a hurricane is scheduled to hit the island during the rescue attempt. The story is quick moving and entertaining with a clever twist that complicates things before the end. I especially enjoyed the way in which the hero escapes captivity at one point in the tale. Overall, it’s a quick, fun read.
  • Murderous Affair on April 27, 2023

    I absolutely loved this short mystery. Jayden is a young artist, daughter of a world-famous artist, who is infuriating everyone—father, boyfriend, and the snooty parts of the artworld—by pursuing her love anime and manga rather than the realist work that has made her father wealthy. Her boyfriend is a pompous ass who also looks down on her art as not being respectable, but seems to stick with her because of the connection this gives him to her father. He’s a controlling SOB who the reader will decide within a page or two needs to be dumped. He drags Jayden to an elitist party with his friends where she’s verbally abused by one of the women before leaving early on the excuse of not feeling well. Her boyfriend is more than happy for her to go. Next morning, she discovers right outside of her building a dead woman. It will not surprise the reader that this is the woman who was rude to her the night before, but it surprises the heck out of Jayden. The cops almost immediately decide that Jayden is the killer based on the information (also a surprise to Jayden) that her boyfriend has been in a long affair with the woman. (Presumably, the boyfriend is a suspect too.) So, Jayden is smack in the middle of a murder investigation, naively clinging to the idea that since she’s innocent the cops will quickly move on to another suspect. She’s not investigating the case, but she does stumble across a couple of clues while the cops continue to harass her. I really like the development of the mystery. I identified the culprit quickly and even got the motivation right, but it was totally within character for Jayden to be slower on the uptake. She’s not dumb, but she’s also not particularly cynical. It’s a good mystery with a very satisfying conclusion.
  • Darkened Streets on May 02, 2023

    There are no werewolves or vampires in this intriguing monster story. Instead, Phillips gives his reader a unique creature that causes a genuine threat to the community. After the creature escapes secret army custody into the nearby community, three young college students find themselves trying to figure out how to protect their town. They’re not getting much help from the army which is more interested in preserving the secrecy of its screwup then it is in saving lives. The creature has a strange power over electricity which made it very interesting. I wasn’t sure how they were going to defeat the monster, but I liked their ultimate solution.