The Talented Miss Farwell


Emily Gray Tedrowe - 2020
    Dressed in couture YSL, drinking the finest champagne at trendy Balthazar, Reba, as she’s known, is the picture of a wealthy art collector. To some, the elusive Miss Farwell is a shark with outstanding business acumen. To others, she’s a heartless capitalist whose only interest in art is how much she can make.But a thousand miles from the Big Apple, in the small town of Pierson, Illinois, Miss Farwell is someone else entirely—a quiet single woman known as Becky who still lives in her family’s farmhouse, wears sensible shoes, and works tirelessly as the town’s treasurer and controller. No one understands the ins and outs of Pierson’s accounts better than Becky; she’s the last one in the office every night, crunching the numbers. Somehow, her neighbors marvel, she always finds a way to get the struggling town just a little more money. What Pierson doesn’t see—and can never discover—is that much of that money is shifted into a separate account that she controls, “borrowed” funds used to finance her art habit. Though she quietly repays Pierson when she can, the business of art is cutthroat and unpredictable. But as Reba Farwell’s deals get bigger and bigger, Becky Farwell’s debt to Pierson spirals out of control. How long can the talented Miss Farwell continue to pull off her double life?

Freedom (America, #2)


Mike Bond - 2021
    Daisy starts her PhD in brain research, and Tara battles heroin as her rock band reaches stardom.Troy is soon caught up in mind-numbing combat in Vietnam, while Mick returns to the States to lead the antiwar effort. Tara’s band signs a Motown contract amid the Detroit riots. At Stanford, Daisy expands her study of the human brain under LSD and other mind-altering drugs. Troy falls in love with a Vietnamese teacher and is slowly losing faith in the War.Freedom ends the night before the Tet uprising in Vietnam that will change the War, and trap Troy and his beloved in the fires of hell.

Perfectly Impossible


Elizabeth Topp - 2020
    An artist at heart, Anna works a day job as a private assistant for Bambi Von Bizmark, a megarich Upper East Side matriarch who’s about to be honored at the illustrious Opera Ball.Caught between the staid world of great wealth and her unconventional life as an artist, Anna struggles with her true calling. If she’s supposed to be a painter, why is she so much more successful as a personal assistant? When her boyfriend lands a fancy new job, it throws their future as a couple into doubt and intensifies Anna’s identity crisis. All she has to do is ensure everything runs smoothly and hold herself together until the Opera Ball is over. How hard could that be?Featuring a vibrant array of characters from the powerful to the proletarian, Perfectly Impossible offers a glimpse into a world you’ll never want to leave.

Born by the River: The true story of a young girl growing up along the Mississippi River during the summer of 1963


Jenness Clark - 2016
     Born by the River is Clark’s account of her nine-month trip around the river to visit extended family, all connected by marriage but markedly different in culture, class, and traditions—circumstances certain to provoke discord. A coming-of-age story set in a time and place deeply divided, Clark’s memoir explores her family’s past, referencing the area’s history from 1820 to 1964. The region acts as a conflicted backdrop, threatening the hopes, the dreams, and the American way of life for the author’s family. Alternating in viewpoint between the reflections of the adult Clark as she looks back on life and her stirring impressions during the time of her river journey, Born by the River is an inspirational memoir lifted from family destruction and the prejudices of a socially divided region.

Destiny of Shattered Dreams


Nilesh Rathod - 2016
    It is also a moving portrayal of the fallibility of love.Ambition, passion
and raw courage are Atul Malhotra’s key aides to realizing his dreams as he learns the art of gambling for high stakes. What follows is a game of treachery, infidelity and murder.The book lays bare the sordid corporate-politico nexus that compels this once middle-class boy to deftly learn the ropes and negotiate a world where dirty deals and power plays can make or break lives, where one wrong choice could be fatal.A tale of yachts and hidden Swiss accounts, sordid affairs of lust, intrigue and exhilarating highs, Nilesh Rathod’s Destiny of Shattered Dreams is also the story of innocence forever lost.

Milady


Laura L. Sullivan - 2019
    A target for antipathy, a name whispered in fear or loathing.I don't need you to like me. I just need to be free.It's finally time I tell my own story. The truth isn't tidy or convenient, but it's certainly more interesting.

A Hundred Sweet Promises


Sepehr Haddad - 2021
    Petersburg, Russia, in 1913. On the eve of World War I, Nasrosoltan embarks on a journey from his homeland, Persia, to study at the renowned St. Petersburg Conservatory in pursuit of his musical legacy. During this time, through a series of events beyond his control, he becomes acquainted with the Russian royal family and falls in love with a princess. Nasrosoltan suddenly finds himself in a battle between head and heart while being carried forward on a wave of destiny toward an uncertain future.

Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot


Rebecca Rosenberg - 2021
    Twenty-year-old Barbe-Nicole inherited Le Nez (an uncanny sense of smell) from her great-grandfather, a renowned champagne maker. She is determined to use Le Nez to make great champagne, but the Napoleon Code prohibits women from owning a business. When she learns her childhood sweetheart, François Clicquot, wants to start a winery, she marries him despite his mental illness.Soon, her husband’s tragic death forces her to become Veuve (Widow) Clicquot and grapple with a domineering partner, the complexities of making champagne, and six Napoleon wars, which cripple her ability to sell champagne. When she falls in love with her sales manager, Louis Bohne, who asks her to marry, she must choose between losing her winery to her husband, as dictated by Napoleon Code, or losing Louis.In the ultimate showdown, Veuve Clicquot defies Napoleon himself, risking prison and even death.

Blame It on the Mistletoe (Sweet Plains, TX #2)


Marina Adair - 2021
    . . To claim his slice of the family ranch, Texas Ranger Noah is forced back to Tucker’s Crossing. All he expects to find is a tractor load of painful memories—until a holiday storm, a power outage—and perhaps the magic of Christmas—deliver him to rescue an intriguing woman named Faith. But just who’s rescuing whom?Previously appeared in the anthology Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy

Sleepless


Romy HausmannRomy Hausmann - 2020
    After being released from prison, she's wanted nothing more than to live a normal life: nice flat, steady job, even a few friends. But when one of those friends, Laura von Hoven--free-spirited beauty and wife of Nadja's boss--kills her lover and begs Nadja for her help, Nadja can't seem to refuse.The two women make for a remote house in the woods, the perfect place to bury a body. But their plan quickly falls apart and Nadja finds herself outplayed, a pawn in a bizarre game in which she is both the perfect victim and the perfect murderer...

Rain Girl


Gabi Kreslehner - 2010
    Summer is for growing, not for dying. So when the body of a beautiful young woman is found on the autobahn, dressed in a glittering party dress and bathed in June rain, Franza is determined to give her justice.Revealing victims’ hidden lives is part of the job, but as Franza and her partner, Felix, peel back the layers shrouding the girl’s disturbing past, darker mysteries emerge. Everyone has something to hide—even Franza, who must face her own secrets to reveal the truth.

I'll Eat When I'm Dead


Barbara Bourland - 2017
    They're smart, stylish, and sophisticated, even the one found dead in her office.When stylish Hillary Whitney dies alone in a locked, windowless conference room at the offices of RAGE Fashion Book, her death is initially ruled an unfortunate side effect of the unrelenting pressure to be thin. But Hillary's best friend and fellow RAGE editor Catherine Ono knows her friend's dieting wasn't a capital P problem. If beauty could kill, it'd take more than that.When two months later, a cryptic note in Hillary's handwriting ends up in the office of the NYPD and the case is reopened, Det. Mark Hutton is led straight into the glamorous world of RAGE and into the life of hot-headed and fiercely fabulous Cat, who insists on joining the investigation. Surrounded by a supporting cast of party girls, Type A narcissists and half- dead socialites, Cat and her colleague Bess Bonner are determined to solve the case and achieve sartorial perfection. But their amateur detective work has disastrous results, and the two ingenues are caught in a web of drugs, sex, lies and moisturizer that changes their lives forever. Viciously funny, this sharp and satirical take on the politics of women's bodies and women's work is an addictive debut novel that dazzles with style and savoire faire.

The Bug Hunter


Ken Davenport - 2019
    And only one man can stop it. The year is 2026 and up and down the Eastern seaboard of the United States a virulent toxin is killing people. What was initially believed to be food poisoning turns out to be a terrorist attack using genetically modified insects to poison the American food supply. For Gabriel Marx, news of the poisoning is eerily familiar. A Marine Corps veteran and trained viticulturist, Gabriel is now working as a vintner at Landmark Estates Winery in California, but was once part of a secret CIA effort to use insect vectors to destroy the Afghan Taliban’s poppy industry. He’s long feared that genetically synthesized toxins delivered by insects could be used as a terror weapon. One day a stream of black SUVs carrying the Secretary of Homeland Security shows up at the vineyard, and Gabriel is recruited to help the government respond to the attack. He is drawn into a complex web of rogue scientists with links to ISIS and Chechen terrorists, and discovers that an even more devastating attack is imminent. Merging cutting-edge synthetic biology with global politics and international terrorism, The Bug Hunter is both thriller and cautionary tale of how advances in technology can be used to turn nature itself into a devastating weapon.

Baseball Dads


Matthew S. Hiley - 2014
    He’s had enough. He’s done with people living life wrong. You’ll do it right, or he’ll bury you under the bases at the ballpark where he coaches. It’s just that simple.Tired of poor decisions being made all around him, from the politics of player positions on his son's little league baseball team to the philandering of his wife in his own bedroom, Dwayne decides that breaking is better than bending. What follows is a wild ride full of carnage and revenge, led by a man who will stop at absolutely nothing to bring honor back to his family, his community… and children's baseball.Baseball Dads is a pitch black comedy in which one man takes on the duty of bludgeoning honor back into a sometimes dishonorable world.

Driving Jarvis Ham


Jim Bob - 2012
    Jarvis may be an all-round irritant, but he's harmless & deep down he's got a heart of gold. As his oldest (& only) friend reflects on his life with Jarvis Ham, he wonders what it would have been like if they had never met.