Friday Featured Spotlight ~ Red Adept Publishing & Harvey Chute

Red Adept Publishing has been in business for over a year. They have 15 books out and several more to come before 2014. RAP publishes most genres, so there is something for all readers. The focus is on publishing quality books.

Author Harvey Chute

     Harvey Chute grew up in the Fraser Canyon village of Lytton, British Columbia – a town rich in native culture and colonial gold rush history. 

     In his high school and university years, Harvey spent his summers guiding whitewater raft trips on the Thompson and Fraser rivers.

     He works as a program manager for an Information Technology consulting firm. Harvey also created the web’s largest independent Kindle user forum, KindleBoards.com, which is popular with both readers and authors.

     Harvey lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife, three daughters, a lovable golden retriever, and a stern cat. He enjoys walking mountain trails, learning blues guitar, and being surrounded by great books.

     Harvey’s previously published works include five technical guides in the “For Dummies” series by Wiley Inc.

Harvey's Blog

Title ~ Stone & Silt

Author ~ Harvey Chute

Publisher ~ Red Adept Publishing

Published ~ 26 August 2013

Genre ~ YA/Historical/Mystery

*Book source ~ Many thanks to Red Adept for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

My Rating ~ 4 bites and a nibble out of 5

Nikaia Wales is a 16-yr-old girl living in the 1860s during the gold rush of British Columbia. She is half white and half native Indian and it’s not easy growing up a ‘mixed breed.’ But she has her family and her friends. Especially her friend next door, the quiet Chinese boy Yee Sim. She and Yee Sim go off into the woods every chance they get to play the Hunt game. That’s where Nikaia tracks animals and shows Yee Sim how to do the same. But one day when out tracking they find a satchel of gold nuggets and Nikaia overhears a disturbing conversation between two men about it. When one of the men comes up dead and her father is accused of the murder, Nikaia needs to do everything she can to clear her father’s name.  Though he doesn’t blame her for the ensuing problems, Nikaia feels it’s all her fault because he would never have been accused if she hadn’t been getting into Mischief, if she had stayed where she was supposed to be. With the judge soon to arrive on the sternwheel, time is running out. Nikaia needs to solve the mystery before it’s too late.

I’ve always been up front about how I dislike the subject of History. Put a History book in front of me and I’m bored out of my skull. However, you wrap History up in an excellently told fictional tale and I’m enthralled. This book has a lot of history about the Gold Rush, how people lived in the 1860s, British Columbia and different cultures. Was I enthralled? Hell, yes! Why? Because it has what I so need to make History an exciting and readable subject, historical facts weaved expertly into a fictional tale.

The beginning was a little bit slow (though still fascinating) as I learned about Nikaia and her family (dad, mom, 14-yr-old sister Klima) and her day-to-day life, but as soon as she and Yee Sim stumbled across the gold it picked right up and galloped to the end. All-in-all an excellent YA Historical Mystery.

Purchase Links

Amazon | B&N | Kobo

My Past Red Adept Reviews

• Life After Dane by Edward Lorn
• Lay Death at Her Door by Elizabeth Buhmann
• First by Chanda Stafford
• To Katie with Love by Erica Lucke Dean
• Rebel Elements by Jasmine Giacomo
• Blood Echo by Melissa Simonson
• Oracle of Philadelphia by Elizabeth Corrigan
• Hope for the Wicked by Edward Lorn