The Scent of Bluebells


Pearl A. Gardner - 2013
    War is brewing and for many women like Amy, it would change their lives forever. Through the following five years of turmoil, Amy endures heartache and loss. Just as she is about to give birth, Jimmy, her husband, is reported missing in action and presumed dead. After more than a year with no further news of her missing husband, she slowly begins to enjoy freedom and independence like she’d never known before. The war continues with no news of Jimmy and she dares to love again. Will this new love survive the war? Will Jimmy be found?

Qaddafi's Point Guard: The Incredible Story of a Professional Basketball Player Trapped in Libya's Civil War


Alex Owumi - 2013
    Undrafted by the NBA, Owumi pursued his pro basketball dream overseas, eventually signing with Al-Nasr of Libya, a state-run athletic club privately funded by the family of then-Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi.Owumi's tenure with Al-Nasr was interrupted by the Libyan uprising and resulting civil war. Imprisoned in his Benghazi apartment for more than 2 weeks with no food, phone, Internet, or hope, Owumi wondered whether he would make it out of Libya alive. Despite his weakened condition and the dangers lurking in the city, he was able to escape Benghazi and flee the country. Smuggled to a refugee camp in Egypt, he was, much to his surprise, contacted by an Egyptian team seeking his services. And so, in a bizarre, storybook ending, Owumi finished the year by helping lead the team to an unlikely league championship, earning league MVP honors in the process.Qaddafi's Point Guard is a book about hope and longing, conflict (cultural, political, and military), and ultimately, triumph—to overcome obstacles and survive against the most desperate odds.

The River Widow


Ann Howard Creel - 2018
    Essentially trapped, Adah must plan an escape.But when she develops feelings for the one person essential to her plan’s success, she faces a painful choice: Will she choose to risk everything saving Daisy or take the new life offered by a loving man?

Embracing Quincy, Our Journey Together


Katie B. Marsh - 2013
    It shows you a naked glimpse into their personal lives, their travels and their mystical journey with their trisomy 18 baby Quincy.Embracing Quincy is full of stories of love, humor, psychic phenomena and mystical coincidences that will make even the most skeptical start to question their beliefs. This book will take you to far away lands as it weaves Quincy's story in and out of the Marsh's moves and travels and search for creating a sustainable farm on which to raise their family.This book non-judgmentally explores issues such as "pro life" versus "pro choice" abortion decisions, karma and reincarnation, the possibility of effecting miracles through quantum physics and the law of attraction, and the power of prayer in large numbers.Most of all, Embracing Quincy shows what a mother and father will do for the love of their unborn baby.If you liked Eat, Pray, Love and Expecting Adam, you'll love Embracing Quincy.

Indian Summer


C. James Brown - 2019
    He’s also out of his element. He’s just an ex-cop from a small New Hampshire town turned private eye, who finds himself looking for a murderer among America’s modern-day aristocracy in Greenwich, Westchester, and the Upper East Side. Earl doesn’t much like these people, their lifestyles, or their attitudes, and they don’t like Earl. Along the way, they’ll underestimate him, mock him, seduce him, and even try to kill him.

A Comedian Walks Into A Funeral Home


Dennis Kelly - 2021
    Highly recommend!"--Jim Gaffigan, Actor, Comedian, New York Times Best Selling Author"Comedy for the Dead. Talk about a tough comedy crowd ... An intelligent story that shines the light of laughter into the shadows of loss. It grabs you from the start and never let's go."--Louie Anderson, Comedian, Actor, AuthorVince Locker's life is tragic. His comedy act for the LaughCom competition has just bombed, ruining any chance of the cash prize he desperately needed. His life is in tatters; abandoned by his father as a child, an estranged wife, Jessica, who he seems to disappoint just by his mere existence, and living in his mother's house with his bipolar brother and facing foreclosure. As he stands on Smith Avenue Bridge, suicide seems the only option until he is unexpectedly rescued by an old school mortician named Truss. Vince meets another of Truss's rescues, Winona. Although beyond social norms, the trio seize on a quick cash fix that just might help Vince meet his child support demands--comedic tributes for the dead. The eulogies are hilarious and off the wall, sometimes disastrous and sometimes enlightening. They propel Vince into the dark underworld of the funeral industry, life insurance scams, savage politics, a kidnapping, the murder investigation of a destitute unclaimed young woman and threats to Jessica and his young daughter. As details of the murdered young woman are slowly revealed, Vince realizes that he has many ghosts of his own to put to rest.

Mayhem, Murder and the PTA


Dave Cravens - 2019
    When a key source vanishes on a politically toxic story, this single mother of three finds herself at the center of a media storm and out of a job. Ready to reset, Parker moves her family back to the rural town where she grew up. But a gossip-filled PTA, a tyrannical school principal and a gruesome murder make adjusting to the "simple life" anything but. Parker Monroe is about to chase the story of her lifetime...

The Girl Who Sees Angels


Jeffrey McClain Jones - 2020
    Even her mother doubted her as a child. Psychiatrists doubted her too. Psychics tried to recruit her to enrich and empower themselves. Now she’s thirty-two, living on her own, and sharing her secret only with her mother and a few friends.A threatening specter begins to visit her at night, and more than her sleep is at stake. She follows a friend’s recommendation to visit Detta Washington, a church lady who believes that Sophie does see angels and demons. Even if Sophie is skeptical about the labels Detta uses for what she sees, she comes to respect Detta and finds ways to use her gift to help others.When she helps free Detta from an incurable disease and releases two of her friends from creepy creatures shadowing them, Sophie starts to embrace her identity. But she still needs help with the ghoul that hovers above her bed at night. And that’s not the last enemy who threatens her in the dark.Anthony, Detta’s handsome son, helps Sophie understand his mother’s religious language, and he becomes convinced that Sophie is for real. After years of doubt and frequent commitments to mental hospitals, Sophie’s mother comes to trust her daughter’s visions as well.Recovering from a life of being condemned as a crazy person, Sophie finds new confidence. She is gifted. She is the girl who sees angels.

Now Lorraine Has Gone


Jeff Lowder - 2020
    Daniel Horvath's not-quite-ex-wife dies unexpectedly, a woman he has been avoiding for thirty years rings his doorbell-and flips his predictable life on its head. Can she help untangle the emotional and financial knots Lorraine left him tied up in?Will a young temptress at his clinic ruin everything?And...can a little French bulldog named Lylou help Danny discover the love and family he yearns for?

Spiritual Intercourse


Maximus Freeman - 2019
    Jump back into the passenger seat as you and Freeman navigate through a kaleidoscope of new trials, tribulations and joys of life. Buckle up!

Roppongi


Nick Vasey - 2012
    The novel follows the (mis)adventures of its travel-addicted protagonist Zack, and in that respect is similar thematically to Alex Garland's 'The Beach' or Gregory David Roberts' 'Shantaram.' Accordingly, the reader is viscerally transported into the surreal realms of Roppongi, as Zack attempts to come to terms with a series of life-changing events unfolding at rapid pace. In the process, the novel punches through the impossibly glamorous surface of Roppongi and plunges the reader deep into its seedy underbelly ... showing a disturbing side of Japan not often written about in the English language.

In Love and War: Nursing Heroes


Liz Byrski - 2015
    In the aftermath of the Battle of Britain, airmen filled a small Sussex town where pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe established revolutionary surgical and therapeutic treatments.For the child Liz Byrski, growing up in a small Sussex town, the burnt faces of these airmen filled her nightmares.In her late sixties, Liz returned to make peace with her memories and to speak not only with the survivors – known as the Guinea Pig Club – but with the nurses who played a vital and unorthodox role in their treatment, sometimes at a significant personal cost.

The Labrador Response


Melissa Crickard - 2019
    doctor must save her daughter from a genetically modified filovirus as the nation fights for access to healthcare. When she's not working in the Emergency Department at George Washington University Hospital, Dr. Sara Sullivan lives an adventurous life. But the chance at another vacation seems to diminish with each passing day when the dangerous Labrador virus begins spreading throughout the capital, devastating the African American population and escalating racial tension. As a biracial woman, Sara begins to fear for her and her daughter's lives when mortality rates continue to grow, with no cure in sight. After being forced into quarantine due to exposure to the virus, her fear becomes reality. Escape is no longer a consideration—it's the only way she can save millions of lives, including her daughter's. Sara's journey to find a cure becomes increasingly complex as she begins to unravel a conspiracy within the pharmaceutical industry and learns the disturbing truth about the disease's purpose.

The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil


Alisa Valdes - 2013
    Coronado Prep student Maria Ochoa, 16, is near death after crashing her car on an isolated stretch of New Mexico Highway 14 during a blizzard. When the only person to show up to help her is a teen gangbanger named Demetrio Vigil, Maria fears she’s doomed, until the young man manages, miraculously, to heal her nearly fatal wounds with nothing but the warm energy radiating from his hands. Maria is grateful for the help, and seeks to thank Demetrio by returning to the tiny ghost town of Golden, where he said he lives, to find him and give him a gift. What she discovers out about Demetrio along the way, however, not only defies logic and belief, but puts Maria’s very life in terrible danger.

Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga


Pamela Newkirk - 2015
    Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the nation and Europe.Spectacle explores the circumstances of Ota Benga’s captivity, the international controversy it inspired, and his efforts to adjust to American life. It also reveals why, decades later, the man most responsible for his exploitation would be hailed as his friend and savior, while those who truly fought for Ota have been banished to the shadows of history. Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Ota’s tragic life, from Africa to St. Louis to New York, and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his short life.Illuminating this unimaginable event, Spectacle charts the evolution of science and race relations in New York City during the early years of the twentieth century, exploring this racially fraught era for Africa-Americans and the rising tide of political disenfranchisement and social scorn they endured, forty years after the end of the Civil War. Shocking and compelling Spectacle is a masterful work of social history that raises difficult questions about racial prejudice and discrimination that continue to haunt us today.