When novice climbers Trevor and Gaspar attempt Mount Silenus they discover that inspiration from a famous book makes a poor substitute for experience. Accuracy is important on mountains, especially one darkened by legends of a prehistoric sloth — the Abominable Unau — and the indigenous people who make sacrifices to it. As the text bears less and less resemblance to the terrain, squabbles over its interpretation become a battle of faith vs. reason. Those are best fought on flat surfaces.

Why does a man climb a mountain? To taste the distilled essence of life, to glimpse the clandestine maneuvers of his soul, and because he believes everything he reads. For two high school teachers who skipped their climbing classes, a masterpiece advocating spontaneity over skill proves irresistible. Unknown to them, the reclusive author honed his technique scaling barstools and brooding over the unjust fame of Nietzsche. He ignored eyewitness accounts of the Abominable Unau for stylistic reasons. Stories about wrathful apparitions infesting a labyrinth of caves didn’t make the cut either.

During a quixotic journey in the general direction of the summit, Trevor and Gaspar join a scientist investigating paranormal activity on one of the plateaus. The book fails to warn about traps set by the mountain people to protect the sacred site from desecration. When they fall into icy catacombs they must confront the source of the legends to survive. Inspired by a disastrous attempt on Denali.

FALLEN HERO is about a man who seems to spend his life building bridges. Bridges between his unknown origins and his aspirations in life. Once he finds a tenuous link to his biological father Chris Squires cannot help but follow its path. Despite his misgivings he seeks out his roots.

FALLEN HERO is also about a man who is trying to reconcile the realities of war, and life, with his disappointment over his lost inner hopes for the dad he needed to find.

Two boys about to become teenagers: Christopher, born just after the end of World War Two, grows up in the UK; Fritz, orphaned by a bomb dropped on his German home in that same terrible war, befriended by a US marine. When Christopher discovers he was adopted he seeks to find his biological father. Fritz never gets the chance to grow much older and is found dead in the back of General George Patton's Cadillac at the end of the war.

Chris Squires is a confused man, constantly seeking his hero father-figure. The British baby boomer is surprised to find he has a connection with Fritz. Chris discovers the link through Jimmy Lucas, a GI veteran, who he believes could be his father. But his surprise turns to horror when he learns that Jimmy was involved in the death of both Patton and the boy.
Did he kill General George Patton, one of the greatest Generals of the twentieth century?
Did he kill an orphaned German boy at the end of World War Two?
If the answer to any or all of these questions is Yes! how will Chris cope with the rest of his life?

A confrontation creates further tragedy for Chris, for Jimmy, and for Walt - the man who had saved Jimmy’s life! Chris panics and retreats back to Britain, trying to forget the incident he caused in San Francisco. Although appearing to lead a mundane and respectable life, for years he is tormented by guilt. He still hopes to find his hero, a guide to some kind of inner peace. And then Walt re-enters his life bringing with him a new bridge!



 

This Great Blockbuster Trilogy of the So What! Stories has it all - Humour, heartache and criminal thrills and spills!
In Book One we follow the career of teacher Robert Jeffrey through the antics of his pupils - in and out of the classroom.
In Book Two we find Molly Pearson, Robert's student teacher, attempting to create a wildlife and nature garden with the help of her Year 7 kids, against dramatic odds!
In Book Three the reader has to keep up with ex-pupil detective Shantra as he pursues the desperate criminals who caused trauma and tragedy to the school community.

In THE COACH HOUSE newlyweds Marie and Richard Marchetti have the perfect life together in a quiet neighborhood of Chicago. Or at least it seems until Marie discovers his involvement in a corrupt underworld that compels her to run for her life. Fate draws her to Atchison, Kansas which she erroneously believes is a safe refuge and perfect place to start over. But Marie quickly learns that she has never been out of Richard’s purview, and while his threatening attempts to win her back cause angst and confusion in her life, it’s the discovery of her real father and his heritage that affect Marie’s life more than Richard ever could.

DAUGHTERS takes up with Marie preparing for the first visit with her father and his family. She worries about whether she will be accepted by them, how her life is about to change, and what she will learn about her own identity. A great deal happens during Marie’s visit, and in her search for peace and truth in her life, she quickly learns that disparate lives can converge and interact in profound and surprising ways.

The Blithedale Animal Shelter has just ended its annual holiday sale for dogs, and miraculously all but a handful of them have been adopted. An unexpected, welcome surprise for the employees and volunteers, and great news for the lucky pups who found homes. But for the dogs that remain—a high-strung Lab puppy, a three-legged Chihuahua, a Golden Retriever, a hard-luck Pit Bull Terrier; and a smart, old dog, it will be a lonely and cold Christmas Eve. The dogs’ favorite shelter employee, Ginny Collins is cozying up their cages and giving them some love before the shelter closes for the holiday. The sun is setting, but a night to remember is about to begin.

Apart from Love contains two threads, volume I and II of Still Life with Memories, woven together (along with two new chapters) around the same events in 1980, when Ben returns to meet his father, Lenny, and his new wife, Anita. It is then that he discovers a family secret.
My Own Voice (volume I of Still Life with Memories):
Ten years ago, when she was seventeen, Anita started an affair with Lenny, in spite of knowing that he was a married man. Now married to him and carrying his child, she finds herself condemned to compete with Natasha’s shadow, the memory of her brilliance back in her prime, before she succumbed to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Despite Anita’s lack of education, her rough slang, and what happened to her in the past, Lenny tries to transform her. He wants her to become Natasha.
Faced with his compelling wish, and the way he writes her as a character in his book, how can Anita find a voice of her own? And when his estranged son, Ben, comes back and lives in the same small apartment, can she keep the balance between the two men, whose desire for her is marred by guilt and blame?
The White Piano (volume II of Still Life with Memories):
Coming back to his childhood home after years of absence, Ben is unprepared for the secret, which is now revealed to him: his mother, Natasha, who used to be a brilliant pianist, is losing herself to early-onset Alzheimer’s, which turns the way her mind works into a riddle. His father has remarried, and his new wife, Anita, looks remarkably similar to Natasha—only much younger. In this state of being isolated, being apart from love, how will Ben react when it is so tempting to resort to blame and guilt? “In our family, forgiveness is something you pray for, something you yearn to receive—but so seldom do you give it to others.” 
Behind his father's back, Ben and Anita find themselves increasingly drawn to each other. They take turns using an old tape recorder to express their most intimate thoughts, not realizing at first that their voices are being captured by him. These tapes, with his eloquent speech and her slang, reveal the story from two opposite viewpoints. 
What emerges in this family is a struggle, a desperate, daring struggle to find a path out of conflicts, out of isolation, from guilt to forgiveness.
What’s in a name:
The title Apart From Love comes from a phrase used in the story:
After a while I whispered, like, “Just say something to me. Anything.” And I thought, Any other word apart from Love, ‘cause that word is diluted, and no one knows what it really means, anyway.
Anita to Lenny
Why, why can’t you say nothing? Say any word—but that one, ‘cause you don’t really mean it. Nobody does. Say anything, apart from Love.
Anita to Ben
For my own sake I should have been much more careful. Now—even in her absence—I find myself in her hands, which feels strange to me. I am surrounded—and at the same time, isolated. I am alone. I am apart from Love.
Ben

Do you like historical fiction about the 20th century, especially when it is tinged with romance and wrapped in a family saga? Then this series, Still Life with Memories, is for you.

Every dog deserves a forever home, and after being mistreated and given up several times, Wrigley has finally found his. The good-natured, smart mutt now spends his days as the house dog at SunRidge Assisted Living, comforting and doting on forty-five seniors. Wrigley has free run of the place—going where he senses he’s needed—but his preferred spot is beside his favorite resident, Marjorie Thompson.

A big shift comes to SunRidge when a cranky curmudgeon named Walter Kepsen moves in across the hall from Marjorie. Having arrived reluctantly at the urging of his son, Walter can't stand Wrigley or anything else for that matter. But a dramatic event is about to occur that will shake SunRidge, and make the old man see the house dog in a very different light.

Told in Wrigley’s voice, All That Ails You is an endearing story about the power of a dog’s love, when we need it most.

Ten years ago, when she was seventeen, Anita started an affair with Lenny, in spite of knowing that he was a married man. Now married to him and carrying his child, she finds herself condemned to compete with Natasha’s shadow, the memory of her brilliance back in her prime, before she succumbed to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Despite Anita’s lack of education, her rough slang, and what happened to her in the past, Lenny tries to transform her. He wants her to become Natasha.

Faced with his compelling wish, and the way he writes her as a character in his book, how can Anita find a voice of her own? And when his estranged son, Ben, comes back and lives in the same small apartment, can she keep the balance between the two men, whose desire for her is marred by guilt and blame?

Alan Sorenson is a pawn in the corporate world hanging by his fingernails financially. A road warrior living out of a suitcase; he leaves the family he adores each Monday morning. Alan's descent begins as he is fired from his job due to circumstances of his own making. Instead of facing his dilemma, he goes to ridiculous lengths to hide his failures from the family he adores.

Alan's quest to secure a new job in time to avoid ruining Christmas for his wife and two young sons begins badly and quickly turns surreal. He finds a temporary solution in a local business run by a peculiar old couple. Coerced into playing Mall Santa to atone for his latest transgressions, Alan discovers that he is not the only one with secrets as he is pulled into their world. A serendipitous relationship with the odd little old man provides him with a solution to all of his troubles.

With scant resources and deteriorating sanity, he must choose between leaving the world that led him to his current situation and joining the old man in a confederacy of philanthropy. If he can learn to trust his heart and the old man, a wonderful new life is his for the taking. Despite his best efforts to sabotage his own recovery, a magical happy ending awaits.

The Suit expands the Christmas myth to finally provide an explanation for the mystery of how Santa Claus makes it to all of those homes in a single night. This heartfelt tale combines humor, suspense and just enough Christmas magic to create a world where anything is possible if we rely on our human instincts and quit trying to please all of the wrong people.

"A page turning novel that explores the source of happiness"

The Blurb: Escaping the unbearable memories of his past, Guy Bismarck has buried himself in office work. A twist of fate shakes up his world. Layers of delusion and placation crack, ending his long dormancy. Fame, wealth, love, and beauty, of a greatness and vastness that could never have seemed possible, blossom. Will this lead to the happiness that long eluded Guy, or will the reality he had long hid from come back to haunt him, putrefying his world and sending him permanently back into the ground?

Bound Before the Morrow is a psychological novel that will lead you on an adventure. Its chapters are action packed, its style will please literary critics, lovers of suspense, and those looking for a more realistic modern romance.
If you have ever suffered from anger hid from the past and wandered what would happen if all your wishes came true, than this book is for you.

Klim’s collection of contemporary short stories, spans the United States and literary conventions: a chef preparing a condemned man’s last meal, an abused boy who learns to survive from his dog, a man who witnesses his life spilled upside down, a girl passing through several challenging lives, an engineer pushed outside the blueprint of his life, a husband and wife who shed all to rediscover each other... “Told with the light, deft touch and well tuned dialogue that Klim's readers will be familiar with from his novels—a variety of characters and situations for every taste.” -Thomas E. Kennedy, author of In the Company of Angels

The tanker left Valdez Alaska with a full load of crude oil for what started as a routine trip down to Washington State, until it entered the Puget Sound and the oil mysteriously vanished without a trace. The next day the Alaska pipeline is suddenly empty and oil fields start to go dry. Panic grips the nation when transportation of basic necessities cannot reach the cities, and the only clue is a dollar size crystal found in the empty tanker.

Can Alex Cave, an ex-CIA operative, solve the mystery before it’s too late? Or will our dependency on oil cause us to suffer the consequences of . . . Dead Energy!

Imagine feeling like an outsider. Now imagine feeling like an outsider in your own family.

Evanston, Illinois. Lee Oliver Winekoop is born into extreme wealth, but despite his near genius IQ, he doesnʾt have the resourcefulness to realize any of its benefits. His motherʾs passive parenting style and frequent absences from their lakefront mansion leave him in the care of nannies as a child even when sheʾs home, making Lee feel unwanted and alone. Further undermining his self-worth is his fatherʾs inexplicable contempt toward him. If Lee only knew why his parents disliked him so, he would fix whatever it was he was doing wrong, and remove the invisible barrier that keeps him from fitting in.

Lee wants nothing more than to be like his two older brothers—successful at everything they do, sons who make their parents proud—even if it means buying into the familyʾs philosophy that money is the answer to oneʾs success in life.

In the thick of Leeʾs discontent, his motherʾs favorite uncle dies and leaves him a sizable inheritance—an inheritance with some bizarre strings attached. But as soon as he tries to start using it to mold an identity for himself, his world is turned upside-down when he learns shocking family secrets—causing him to rethink who he is and where heʾs going.

In these twelve stories, you’ll meet a remarkable cast of complex, quirky characters tangled up in the limits they’ve put on their lives. Driven by love or loneliness, like the man in the title, they’ve boxed themselves in. Frank Tavares tells their stories with humor and compassion. And while the themes may be familiar--crumbling marriages, feuding neighbors, sparring business partners, and the endless searching for what might have been--here they become fresh, unpredictable, and surprising. This exciting debut collection from a first-rate storyteller will haunt and fascinate you long after you finish reading.

The events of a single night can change a life forever, as musician Daniel Whitman discovers when he loses his family and home.

Overwhelmed by grief, unable to find solace in his music or accept comfort from his friends, he flees up the California coast. Daniel thinks he’s leaving everything behind, but his journey will take him to the places and people that will help him find his way back.

The Day After Yesterday is a story of hope, friendship, and the redemptive power of music.

The twelve stories in Kate Blackwell’s debut collection illuminate the lives of men and women who appear as unremarkable as your next-door-neighbor until their lives explode quietly on the page. Her wry, often darkly funny voice describes the repressed underside of a range of middle-class characters living in the South. Blackwell’s focus is elemental—on marriage, birth, death, and the entanglements of love at all ages—but her gift is to shine a light on these universal situations with such lucidity, it is as if one has never seen them before.

In “My First Wedding,” a twelve-year-old girl attends her cousin’s Deep South wedding, where she discovers both mystery and disillusionment and, in the end, finds she’s not immune to her family’s myth of romantic love. In “Heartbeatland,” when a young woman’s husband dies suddenly, she refuses to sell his Jeep to an importuning gay neighbor. The more she clings to the Jeep—and to the memory of her beloved David—the more he becomes someone she doesn’t recognize. In “Queen of the May,” a former belle looks for ways to assuage her loneliness in her large new house in the empty Carolina sandhills.

After 30 rough years of adventure on the seas, Jake Thomas makes landfall in a new and quiet life in Oregon – only to discover that the past dies hard. The secrets he’s kept, even from himself, won’t stay buried.

Forty years earlier, a beautiful, young woman was murdered during Jake’s first voyage as a deck cadet on an American freighter. Her children, now grown, want answers only Jake can give. What really happened that terrible night? Did the wrong man go to jail?

In this riveting story-within-a-story, Jake’s peaceful routine in Portland, Oregon, stands in stark contrast to his days as a merchant seaman in Subic Bay, when he set off on a journey to discover his dark side. A journey that hasn’t yet ended.

Written in a style that compares to Joseph Conrad, Joseph Jablonski drew upon his own years of sea experience to craft a book that is as much a careful observation of human nature and a powerful condemnation of war as it is a suspenseful sea story.

Zobie Marsh hides the fearsome talent of prophecy. Young, poor and grieving the loss of her beloved Black Gram, she leaves home suddenly to avoid the advances of her mother’s latest boyfriend. Her decision to travel to South Carolina sets in motion Heavenscribe, a spiritual transformation devised by angels to aid a dying world.

Bel Petersen seems to have it all: ample means, a loving marriage and a rewarding family life. But she’s suffered through a year of unexpected deaths, and near-constant nightmares that portend the downfall of civilization. Now she’s visiting Health Presbyterian daily as Milly battles a relentless bone cancer sure to end their decades-long friendship in a matter of weeks.

One evening as Bel unlocks her car in the hospital’s parking lot, four ambulances stream toward the Emergency entrance. There’s been a horrific traffic accident. She’s shocked to discover one of the victims didn’t make it into an ambulance—and he’s bleeding out in the passenger seat of a high school student’s car. Bel sends the student running to the hospital for help, and tends to the grievously injured man.

His dying words will lead her to Zobie, and reveal the spiritual awakening they must undertake together. If they fail, The Dimming will consume every human soul on the planet.

Everything you never knew you wanted in a post-apocalyptic novel:

Wal-Mart residents enjoying a parking lot bonfire and sing-along.

Religious fanatics waiting for Jesus in Okeefenokee Swamp Park.

Sexed-up displaced youths enjoying each other in government-sponsored free-love communes.

References to an ungodly number of Broadway musicals.

And more. Much more. Except no ravenous zombies (sorry). Still...
It's no day at the beach when Hurricane Walter just about swallows Florida. And Walter is just the beginning, ushering in a world-wide disaster-filled era. But former reporter Mia Fine knows she doesn't have it so bad as she, her adorable doctor husband, and a quirky band of fellow travelers head for New York State. Because there's no place like home.

The Valkyrie Mandate tells a gripping, unforgettable story of peace and war, love and hate...and one man's struggle to defend what he knows in his heart to be right.

Justin Barclay holds an exalted position of respect and honor among the Asian community. He alone understands the complexities--and subtleties--of their culture. Now he is a man caught in the middle of a deadly conspiracy that will force him to choose--and to act. For in this fabled, exotic land where no one can be trusted, and where a people will die to preserve their way of life, a diabolical game of cat and mouse is about to be played out on a world stage.