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A Roof Over Our Heads and Food on the Table
Price range: $3.99 through $19.99Pat Kavanaugh wanted to major in English at Nutmeg State University. His parents persuaded him to major in accounting because it would be more practical than being a writer. At NSU, he met his roommate named Sean Donnelly. Both Irish-Americans, they became friends despite Sean’s troubling secret. Pat then becomes a cashier at Delacroix’s Grocery Store. After graduation, Pat continued working at Delacroix’s, but the chances of advancement are rather slim.
Pat then began a job search. Along the way, he moved to his own apartment, attended Sunday Masses at All Saints Church, became friends with another parishioner, and met a young woman. He also invested in a business that his parents felt was unethical. In the end, Sean was always there for him. -
The Noble Rebellion
Price range: $3.99 through $18.99Freshman Congressman Max Noble gave up his career as a magazine publisher to pursue a life of public service. A botched assassination attempt may have changed his mind. Excused from the arrogant President Cole’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, Max’s life is spared the murderous rage of a terrorist who declares himself the new “Sultan.” Armed with the United States’ military facilities, Sultan begins to govern the former democracy under Sharia law in a Taliban-like manner as the “Islamic States of America.” Despite having no legitimate claim to the presidency under the Constitution, Max is determined to do what he must to restore freedom to the nation.
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The Dark Shines Bright
Price range: $3.99 through $23.99Human beings fall into three distinct groups. There are those who spend the better part of their life playing by the rules and trying to do good while contributing to the betterment of their fellow humans. There are those who spend the better part of their lives breaking the rules and taking whatever they can from their fellow humans, no matter what the cost. Finally there are those who are neither good or bad human beings. They just live day to day, come what may.
The question is where did the rules come from that define what is good and what is bad?
The only thing for sure is that no matter how a person lives his or her life, everyone has one thing in common. Everyone who is born, one day must die. How did human life begin and what happens after it ends?
“The Dark Shines Bright” answers both questions in a carefully crafted, page turning story.
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Forgiven! Redeemed! Reconciled!
Price range: $3.99 through $11.99Paul Tanner, a stressed senior pastor who threw away his life. Sara Petersen, a pastor’s daughter who was gang raped. Zach Petersen, a young, traumatized husband who thought the worst. What do they have in common besides sharing some DNA? Peer into the lives of peo-ple who squander their spiritual heritage and see how their lives af-fect those around about them. Not everyone ends up in the pigsty, but everyone needs forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation. See what blessings can come from broken, shattered, and scarred lives. Yes, all things can work for good for those who love the Lord.
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A Reason for Living
Price range: $3.99 through $14.99It is the mid-1960s in Kingston, Jamaica, and the country is steeped in social, political, and economic inequities. Howard Baxter, the heir to a real estate empire, has no interest in seeking or managing wealth. Painting and deflowering Jamaican maidens are his passions. As he combs the streets looking for greater meaning in his pathetic life, it soon becomes apparent that Howard’s journey will not be easy. Bernaldo Lloyd, a member of the Baxter clan, is a medical student who is sensitive to the hopelessness of the Jamaican masses. Inspired by his close friend and Howard’s cousin, Ras Robin Pone, and their ties with the Rastafari movement that calls for social and economic equity, Bernaldo is determined to overthrow the corrupt government. As Howard, Bernaldo and Robin become influenced by The American Black Power and Civil Rights movements demanding equal rights for African Americans, the women in their lives both love and criticize them. But when revolution breaks out, Howard finally discovers a purpose for his twisted life that leads him in a direction he never anticipated. In this tale of love, passion, and self-discovery, three Jamaican men become caught up in a 1960s revolution that reveals injustices, oppression, and a purpose for one of them.
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Janine: Tale of an Abandoned Wife and Mother
Price range: $3.99 through $15.99Janine is left homeless and penniless when her husband deserts her. She is left to explain all his thefts and misdeeds as she loses her friends and status. All the while, she must protect her children as she builds a new life. When Janine discovers a way to recover some of her money, she resorts to wits and stealth. Many women are caught unawares by the deeds of their spouses. Not everyone is as eventually fortunate or brave as Janine.
Mark Eric Johansen is a retired bus mechanic. He began seriously writing when he had time to devote to retelling the events he had heard and seen. He is working on a chronicle of forty years in a diverse, racist, bewildering work environment. Mark and his wife have always lived in the Chicagoland area.
Janine is Mark’s first completed fiction piece.
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War Is Hell: A Tale of War And One’s Man’s Search for Meaning
Price range: $3.99 through $13.99This story is told by a soldier who was a part of the bloody war in Burma, the executive officer of a rugged group of American jungle fighters. He tells us in great detail what the war did to him and how he feels about taking another man’s life even to protect his own as he searches for meaning in it all…
World War II is winding down in the summer of 1945, but not for Major Jenkins and his band of Merrill’s Marauders. They have spent months combing the Burmese jungle for the notorious Japanese commander Colonel Maruyama and his troops. Major Jenkins, Captain Beltrans and what was left of their band were outnumbered two to one; so, they had to devise a plan that would overcome the odds. But after they settled the score with their enemy, they had to march hundreds of miles through the jungle back to their base near the Indian border. It was now August, and the war was over, but how would the local civilians living along the only trail out of Burma view the American soldiers?
Their journey back home was fraught with unexpected dangers and facing unplanned enemies through an unforgiving jungle. They had never been taught at West Point how to fight their new enemy.
After the war, Captain Beltrans is convinced that he should return Colonel Maruyama’s samurai sword to his descendants in Japan. However, what he thought would be a routine side trip to a modern country turned into a harrowing adventure in Japanese politics and a thousand-year-old culture. He ended up in an ancient Zen Garden in Kyoto wondering if he had done the right thing by killing enemy soldiers and civilians during the war. Does he get help from his deceased native grandmother?
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Spunky’s Special Friend
Price range: $3.99 through $13.99Spunky’s Special Friend is the adorable story of a friendship between a puppy and a butterfly. It has a wonderful moral message that we need in our world today. It shows how differences can bring us together, not keep us apart.
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The Devil In The Cave
Price range: $3.99 through $17.99When a World War II Veteran, Archibald Arthur, a United States Serviceman retired from active military duty in November 1943 after a grueling experience fighting the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska, he must battle to rebuild his civilian life and emerge from the ashes. The Post Traumatic Stress-Disorder was intense, but finding a job at the Anchorage Hotel in Downtown Alaska provided a safe haven for him to revitalize and start over. But when he met a vacationing young lady from Zagreb, Croatia at the Hotel, his world was turned upside down after a beautiful picnic with her in the foot of the Alaskan Mountains.
The Devil that must have killed her in the woods was too powerful, but he must face him to avenge her demise and, in the process, discovering it was far more complicated than he had previously imagined. It took years of living in the mountain foot, surviving bitter winters and learning for him to discover that the battle that he must fight was not only carnal, but spiritual as well. Deep inside the cave with his loyal dog, Gossiper, they came face to face with the Devil and that marked a new beginning for them both……
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The Angels of Opi
Price range: $3.99 through $15.99Seven Boys Held Captive for 11 years! When Daniel Ciarletta and his father, Pete, boarded a boat in 1947 bound for Italy, to visit Pete’s ailing father, they could not have known what awaited them. Everything changed for Daniel and the Ciarletta family. Daniel was abducted and taken to Opi, a rural mountain community that had survived for centuries by sheep herding until 1943, when retreating German soldiers seized all the boys and able-bodied young men as work prisoners. Daniel soon became a work prisoner as part of a devious plan by the citizens of Opi-including the local priest who had evidentially lost his “moral compass”- to abduct young foreigners to take the place of the men they had lost. With no idea of where he was or why, and unable to speak Italian, Daniel began working in the fields and plotting his possible escape. Meanwhile, back in America, the once happy and loving Ciarletta family began to slowly disintegrate under the burden of conflict, anger and guilt caused by Daniel’s mysterious disappearance.
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Impossible Beginnings: A Love Story
Price range: $3.99 through $15.99Merry Morehouse, a city girl carrying a life-crushing secret, is betrayed by a woman she believes to be her best friend. This friend backs out of a planned camping trip to the mountains at the last minute. Although she has never camped out before, Merry is set on being a big girl and decides to make the trip alone. Lost at night in these mountains with few people, she decides to go home. Turning around, Merry crashes vehicles with a man who recently lost his beloved wife to cancer.
Doc Adams, a disabled combat vet in danger of being fired from his job, who holds no romantic interest in another woman after losing his much-loved wife, becomes the crash victim. He lives alone on this desolate mountain that becomes the crash scene. Merry accepts his offer to sleep at his home but panics when he pulls off on the dirt road leading to this isolated place. Their vastly different beliefs quickly become the foundations for arguments concerning God, guns, law enforcement, and news media reports. Overloaded with fear and difficult memories from her teen years, Merry is terrified of what he might do to her. Her choices for the night narrow with no place to stay, no vehicle, no way to protect herself, and a cell phone that won’t work in these mountains.
After this rough start, they work to get along with each other, and Merry struggles to become accustomed to mountain life. False accusations take them to court where the charges are dropped. They get married. Merry’s father, a big-shot lawyer, causes problems during their wedding and is ushered out. He shows up at the reception and tries to take his family home. Shots are fired, and total bedlam ensues. -
Something To Crow About
Price range: $3.99 through $18.99This story is about a young crow who worries about his diminutive size and wishes he might be larger and prouder. Moe the Crow, feeling puny and tiny, turns to his mother. She gives him
the family history tracing Moe to a time when his ancestors ruled the earth as dinosaurs. The story changes Moe’s perspective making him believe that life’s best is what lies ahead. The book gives young people a perspective of how dinosaurs evolved and a new way they can look at the birds around them. This book provides entertaining rhyme, colorful pictures, a scientific story, and a reminder of the bond between parents and their young. -
Shifting Air: A Royals Quest
Price range: $3.99 through $13.99Could he ever have wanted this? Laithrum, the forsaken prince, is thrust from his unloving home and into war. At first, the call felt like insanity, but as he faces harrowing battles, and uncovers the long-buried secrets of his lineage, Laithrum realizes his importance. Back home, his half-sister Freyja is forced into a perilous journey. Violence shatters the palace walls, and Freyja is thrust into a fight for her life. But something stirs within her-a dark and untamed power that she cannot explain. As magic weaves itself deeper, the siblings grapple with the truth they were sheltered from-they had less control than they ever imagined. They are cast into a brutal world teeming with dragons, elves, and mystical creatures they once thought mere legends. Branded as “demons” by those who fear their powers, Laithrum and Freyja must choose: Will they embrace these accusations, or will they rise to challenge the tyrant pulling the strings from the shadows?
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The Other Wife
Price range: $3.99 through $15.99Janice Bordeaux is an American woman from New Orleans, who lives and works in Chicago. WANDA ARRINGTON AKOREDE Janice and her cousin Melinda share an apartment. They are both young and ready for love and marriage. Janice finds her true love when she meets a Nigerian name Olufemi (Femi) Adegoke, who is completing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Janice is employed at the University as an Administrative Assistant. They meet at an Africa party and romance blossoms. They become engaged and get married despite their cultural differences. Olufemi is from an upper class Nigerian family. He has lots of money and takes Janice on an extended honeymoon in Europe. They plan to settle in Nigeria afterwards. It is upon their arrival in Nigeria, that the other side of Femi is revealed. He kept from her the fact that he was already married. You see in their culture, it is legal to have more than one wife. But for Janice, this was culture shock! Devastated and distraught, Janice tries to live in their culture, rather than return home. Her love for Femi is very strong and she hopes that one day he will come to his senses and see that she is all the woman that he needs. But being faced with a very strong and male dominated country and living in a strange and sometimes overwhelming country, she finds it difficult to deal with her husband’s infidelity. She feels cheated. He should have told her about his other wife, and she
would never have married him. Omolola (Lola) is Oulfemi’s Nigerian wife. She waits two long years for him to complete his education and return home to her. She had not bargained on him marrying an American woman and bringing her home. She had planned to have a family and enjoy the fruits of his success upon his return to Nigeria. Instead she was forced to share him with Janice. Omolola knew that her husband has taken another wife before they arrived in Nigeria. It was part of their culture for a man to have more than one wife. Several of her relatives were actively living in polygamy. They tried to live together, each woman sharing their husband equally. But Lola was not satisfied with their arrangement and schemes to have Olufemi to herself. She uses any means at her disposal including juju (witchcraft). While Janice who is innocent in this is losing the battle to maintain her marriage. Consequently, Janice catches Olufemi and Lola in bed together and decides that she had had enough of their culture and polygamy and leaves for America. But she takes with her their unborn child; she is several months pregnant. So the tie is binding. -
Sam Larsen Mysteries
Price range: $3.99 through $12.99Detective Sam Larsen is faced with her most challenging case when a murder in her jurisdiction appears to be related to an unsolved case she faced many years earlier in another state. Adding insult to injury, it appears that the cases have another very personal and heartrending twist that involves a person she loves.
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Whose Coffee Is It?
Price range: $3.99 through $10.99I met June Seese in a class on writing fiction. As a teacher, one of my biggest kicks was that moment when the writers first read something they’d written. It was a nervous time-many writers shaking inside, for the first time showing their work to strangers, sympathetic, but nonetheless, strangers. June was remarkable. What has flowered since was already sturdy, strong distinct. She read with a confidence that moved beyond the personal, a faith outside herself in the certainty of her work. Here was a writer who had risen to that essential power where her work becomes necessary to her, a gift as sure and heedless as her pulse. She was right on track, and would move, beyond discouragement or criticism or even appreciation, into the strength, that difficult ease that’s the mark of a writer who will continue regardless, achieving an undeniable, unmistakable voice.
What makes a writer? Originality, a delighted care for language, a commitment to push words into new music and finally into pure emotion. June has these gifts-and her writing’s strengths- toughness, speed, lyricism, observation acuity and, ultimately, a compassion that’s never unsteady, never weak-make her the best kind of writer-impatient, hip, timely and transcending.
-Paul Evans, Editor, Southline Press