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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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BABY SIS AND ME
Price range: $3.99 through $18.99A perfect story for little ones learning about family, pets, and the special things that make their world feel like home, from the loving bounds that bring them together to the small details that make each day feel bright and exciting.
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My Journey with the United Nations and Quest for the Horn of Africa’s Unity and Justice for Ethiopia
Price range: $3.99 through $22.99The book is focused on vital issues for the institutional development of various countries including human settlements as well as the need for cooperation and mutual support of the countries in the Horn of Africa plus the achievement of the justice required by Ethiopia for the huge war crimes perpetrated by Fascist Italy with the Vatican’s complicit support.
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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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The Road from Money: The Journey Continues PART 3 (1956 – 1968)
Price range: $3.99 through $16.99The Road from Money, The Journey Continuous, part 3. Join Estella as she continues her path to success during the joyous and turbulent times of the 1950’s and ’60s; including the Korean and Vietnam War, the beginning of the space age, ongoing civil rights demonstrations, and assignations of key civil rights and political leaders. All set in the background of Chicago’s Bronzeville and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Watch Estella as she accumulates several apartment buildings, and experience the music, movies, culture and racial dynamics of the era.
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The Road from Money: The Journey Continues Part 2 (1937 – 1955)
Price range: $3.99 through $16.99The Road from Money, the Journey Continues (Part 2) 1937 – 1955, Estella arrives in Chicago from Money, Mississippi, during the Great Migration north for millions of African Americans. She leaves behind the Jim Crow South and the cotton fields to the promise of a better life in the north. Seeing the vast difference between a big city and a small rural town, Estella finds it both exciting and challenging. With her family’s help, she settles in to find new friends, romance, and employment during World War II. She soon realizes that racism is not just in the South; it exists everywhere. Like thousands before her migrating north, her strength of character and perseverance paves the way for her success and enduring spirit. Set in the backdrop of Chicago’s Bronzeville community, the Harlem of Chicago, the reader will feel the beat of the city’s nightclubs on South Park Avenue, the sound of church choirs, the dangers of a big city, and the emotions of a nation at war. Estella experiences a new world with the coming of the television age and the beginning of the civil rights movement. She and her family find love, discrimination, and opportunities. They live and work together to overcome the obstacles placed before them.
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The Arkansas Traveler
Price range: $3.99 through $7.99Reliving his masterpiece.
Dive into a journey of creativity and humor as one man turns life’s challenges into unforgettable poems. Discover how a little wit can change everything. This book shows how laughter, poetry, and resilience can transform even the toughest of times.
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Warriors of the Deities: Orisha Bloodlines
Price range: $3.99 through $34.99This book is a tribute to the ancestors who walked before us and the power that still flows through our blood.
It is fiction, yes-but it’s also truth, myth, memory, and resistance. To read this is to reclaim something forgotten.
This story isn’t just meant to entertain-it’s meant to awaken.
As you journey through the Yoruba land of Ilaro, ask yourself:
What traditions are worth fighting for?And what truths are you brave enough to reclaim?
Myth meets memory.
Bloodline meets destiny.
And silence meets revolution.
This is not just a novel. This is a calling.
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Red and the Egg Pie
Price range: $3.99 through $12.99Red is best friends with her Granny. Red also loves visiting friends, and her granny reminds her to mind her manners. What happens when Red doesn’t listen? Join Red as she realizes that learning a lesson doesn’t always taste good.
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Not For Women Only: Short Stories for a Lazy Day
Price range: $3.99 through $14.99Zygier’s first book, Not-For-Women-Only, Short Stories for a Lazy Day is written for people that can sit somewhere quiet with a cup of coffee or tea, OK, maybe with a glass of wine, and read. Though the title might suggest that only women can or should read it, doesn’t mean men can’t. The stories might also imply that it’s only subject is a woman and a man
bumping into themselves on a street corner, though that’s not a bad idea, it’s really much more than that. Yes, they do meet, otherwise what is the point? So, yes, they do meet in a street, on an elevator, parachuted into Afghanistan with a special force’s unit to a young woman that feels that she should have the same equality as men in Victorian England and dresses like a man then finds herself in love with an aristocrat that thinks it’s his sister and both end up in India. Since Zygier had a stint in the army, he takes that thought in many ways. Some sad, some funny and some serious. Such as an officer in Afghanistan that saves a female reporter from a sniper to a General that doesn’t want to get involved with women till he’s stuck on a plane with one. Though this is Zygier’s first book, he started to write as a hobby and later joined a writer’s group. There he was encouraged to put some stories together and publish them. -
A People Set Apart
Price range: $3.99 through $26.99When chance, the flamboyant scion of a well-to-do family, makes it to the United States from his war-torn Biafra, it doesn’t occur to him that life isn’t going to be the same as it is in his homeland.
But he learns fast. And by sheer will and personal grit, he is able to bulldoze his way in his new abode. Turning adversities into advantage he develops one of the most enduring relationships ever imagined. Turnkey, his nemesis turns friend, and over a short period of time, that metamorphosis yields an instant result. Chance schools him to change course and makes him to understand that he can buy himself out of the box seemingly reserved for him and his ilk that will place him in low level of society’s cadet in perpetuity. Having seen the light, they hit the ground running. Their friendship bossoms, and Chance becomes his greatest confidante.
When Chance offers to take him and a group of his American friends to his homeland of Biafra, a country remembered in flashpoints of war and pillage and destruction, and man’s inhumanity to man, Turnkey is there to defend his friend and dispel all erroneous notions of a people he hasn’t met except one man.
Biafra, plundered since time immemorial, and thought dead, has risen from the ashes of pillagery by dint, and indefatigable spirit of her irrepressible people to hoist her flag in the firmament for all to see. In Biafra, Africa is unbound.
Turnkey, a fortuitious child, and even luckier than a cat with more than nine lives, doesn’t leave anything to chance. Like his father, he toils from a young age knowing where he’s coming from but also with an eye to where he’s heading to. Yet, it’s him that the mighty God has had his path cleared before him.
And when fortune smiles on him owing to a huge bequeathal of his granduncle, it’s to Chance that he turns to, and it’s in his friend’s homeland that he chooses to invest his largesse because he wholeheartedly believes that they’re a people a set apart in spite of the challenges right and about them.
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VieVie La Fontaine
Price range: $3.99 through $12.99When I first published this book in 2018, wars raged in various parts of the world, just like today. Hourly, we were allowed to follow the horror and depravity as it unfolded. On June 14, 1940, during World War II, Germany invaded Paris, marking the start of the German occupation. At that time, there wasn’t the ease of news delivery at citizens’ fingertips. Instead, acts of bravery that we seldom consider occurred. Despite the possibility of severe punishment, the underground press distributed newspapers to offset the Vichy and German propaganda. Often, coded messages relayed instructions to members of the Resistance. An attempt to distribute and obtain daily news was itself a death sentence if found out. Yet, the spirit of the oppressed was undaunted.
VieVie La Fontaine is the story of two souls drawn together by a force they couldn’t comprehend.
Facts are intertwined with Fiction as this tale of incredible bravery unfolds. Maybe, there existed a Mark and VieVie. We may never know, but I offer VieVie La Fontaine in honor of the strength and determination of so many. -
The Junk Drawer: A Place for Our Dreams
Price range: $3.99 through $8.99The Junk Drawer: A Place for Our Dreams introduces us to two groups of teens growing up in Memphis, TN, in the late sixties. One group is black and the other white. Their initial meeting almost ends with devastating consequences, but the hopes and dreams of these teens are put to the test in an effort to bring about racial reconciliation following the death of Dr. King and the violence that follows. This story is tempered with the unforgettable good times of Washington Park in North Memphis. Rickey Alan Smith demonstrates that every person, even in war-ravished Vietnam, has dreams. No obstacle can stand in the way of true love. The Junk Drawer shows just what we should do to keep our hopes and dreams alive.
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Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly
Price range: $3.99 through $9.996 to 7 different ISBN’s find their ways together, beelined, balanced with smith words of wills, wishes, & whim afloat upon the age of eyes where we all shall begin.
To the poetic spirit within us all,
to clear the paths of positivity,
with a fullness of futures whom gather no uncertainty. -
Secret Lovers
Price range: $3.99 through $10.99Samantha, a successful business owner, welcomes a new employee. She finds herself stuck between two lovers and things go from good to bad. In the end, Samantha finds herself choosing between the new employee or her high school sweetheart
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Gunfighter Jake: The Most Unusual Gunfighter the West Has Ever Seen
Price range: $3.99 through $15.99“My husband has been an avid Western fan and horseman all his life. He wanted to write a Western that was completely different from the typical ones, and he succeeded in doing so with this book. His main character, Jake, is unlike any character that has been portrayed in Western movies or novels. What makes the gunfighter unusual is not only that he is the fastest on the draw that ever lived, but also that he has a unique way of handling those who try to make a name for themselves by challenging him to a gunfight, making them realize they wouldn’t have a chance. This book contains many stories about Jake’s life, as well as other interesting characters. The last story in the book is about a woman seeking revenge. Jake teaches her how to use a gun and become a deadly fast draw. He then helps her get her revenge. This story is both interesting and exciting, and the method she uses to seek revenge is unusual and unlike any story ever told.”
– Patricia, wife of the author