Aggie Prejean has stepped into her worst nightmare. Her two granddaughters have disappeared, and the only clue she possesses is a forgotten laptop. A tragic end is imminent, and with little money and resources, she feels helpless to save them. Desperation drives this lionhearted Cajun to risk everything to cross paths with Richard and Lottie DuMonde, two of the wealthiest and most connected people in New Orleans. Certainly, once they hear her story, they will help. But what Aggie doesn't foresee is the dark world she's about to set foot in, or the dangers accompanying the rescue needed to bring her girls home. 100% of the authors proceeds from the sale of this book (and the film) have been donated to Trafficking Hope www.traffickinghope.orgCAGED NO MORE is Book One in the Caged No More Trilogy. CAGED NO MORE is the 2nd edition of the novel originally titled CAGED.

    James Melville-Ross, their father, tells of how the twins not only survived—despite being given the last rites as babies—but also thrived. From the dramatic first few months of the twins’ lives—when Alice suffered a heart attack when only a day old, and Thomas’s lungs filled with blood, leaving him only 20 minutes away from death—Two for Joy reveals the path that James and his wife Georgie have followed as parents to two severely disabled children. After the initial anger came the sheer hard work: the sleepless nights; the hospital dashes; the curious stares and unwelcome comment from strangers. But slowly came acceptance and, eventually, celebration of the joy that the medical marvels Thomas and Alice—now happy and energetic ten year olds—have brought to their lives. Finally they understood that disability might have turned their world upside down, but that it has also provided rewards beyond anything they could have imagined. This story is for any parent experiencing the shock of having extremely premature babies or coming to terms with having a child diagnosed with a disability. More than that, this story will change people’s attitudes to disability, and show that love and true happiness can be found in even the most challenging of circumstances.

    Disenchanted with city life, international celebrity Fly, returns to the island of his birth to find stability of mind in a natural environment. Eventually, he is traced by his manager, a man determined to involve Fly in a cunning scheme that would convert that peaceful haven into a leisure complex for the mega rich, a development that would turn the gentle island into a glittering millionaire's bauble. Can Fly and his peaceful community defend their island and their lifestyle from the treacherous mind of his manager?

     *** Green Fields #1: Incubation If the zombie apocalypse happens tomorrow—how would you spend your last day? All Dr. Brianna Lewis wants is a cup of coffee. Coffee, to make slaving away in her cell culture lab at Green Fields Biotech a little more bearable on a Friday afternoon when everyone is home already. What she doesn’t count on is a group of terrorists blowing up all the entrances to the building and taking her and a select few others hostage. Bree soon finds herself conflicted. Not only does she know their charismatic leader. She also starts to suspect that there is a lot more to this than the hunt for an illegal bioweapon—a virus that could potentially kill millions in just a few days—particularly as there is currently a flu epidemic raging across the country, and reports about violent behavior among the afflicted are getting more and more alarming. Green Fields #2: Outbreak With nowhere left to run—where will you go? Most of the world’s population is either dead or dying from a virus that looks a lot like the one Bree and Nate tried to destroy—and not all of them remain dead. Chased by hordes of zombies, they flee the city with what remains of their merry band of miscreants. But even when most of them survive the first day, they are far from safe—because there is no safe place left. The fight for survival forces them to become resourceful, and soon they realize that the undead might not be their only problem. In this new world, it’s each man or woman out for themselves—and just because someone has a pulse doesn’t necessarily mean they make a good ally. Yet there is hope—a bunker in Wyoming, outfitted with weapons and food, and above all else, defensible shelter for the winter. Can they survive the two-thousand-miles trip across the country with nothing but the clothes on their back and what they can scavenge along they way? This is not the kind of challenge that Bree ever imagined she would have to face, but she’s determined to survive—even if that means to learn how to on the job. Green Fields #3: Escalation Is anybody out there? After a long winter spent hunkering down in Wyoming, Bree, Nate, and the gang are back on the road. The harsh temperatures up in the northern regions might have decimated the undead scourge somewhat, but soon they have to face reality: it’s not just zombies that are out there to hunt people down and kill them. For humanity to have a fighting chance to rebuild a semblance of civilization, everyone will have to work together—and resources are scarce. Someone will have to go out there and face the danger—and maybe find out what happened to the undead that were smart enough to flee the cold. Only the strong and smart have survived, making everyday life just a little more deadly for everyone.

    Married for three years, Mona-Lisa and Corey face normal, everyday marital issues. But with a past like theirs, normal can spiral out of control at any second. Will they be able to hold things together or will Mona revert to her old ways?

    That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July.Trond’s friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning would turn out to be different. What began as a joy ride on “borrowed” horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day—an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys. Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.

    She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.If she can keep up the ruse, that is. Serving as a lady's maid in the household of Andrew Carnegie requires skills he doesn't have, answering to an icy mistress who rules her sons and her domain with an iron fist. What Clara does have is a resolve as strong as the steel Pittsburgh is becoming famous for, coupled with an uncanny understanding of business, and Andrew begins to rely on her. But Clara can't let her guard down, not even when Andrew becomes something more than an employer. Revealing her past might ruin her future -- and her family's.With captivating insight and heart, Carnegie's Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie's transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world's first true philanthropist..

    From his own birth and childhood on the streets of Dublin to his role as soldier (and lover) in the Irish Rebellion, Henry recounts his early years of reckless heroism and adventure. At once an epic, a love story, and a portrait of Irish history, A Star Called Henry is a grand picaresque novel brimming with both poignant moments and comic ones, and told in a voice that is both quintessentially Irish and inimitably Roddy Doyle's.

    Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

    Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic, and her newly adopted Indian child, and about their son, who has been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job. A series of tragic events bring these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone’s life.  In her gripping new book, Jennifer Vanderbes masterfully lays bare the fraught lives of this complex cast of characters and the lengths to which they will go to protect their families. Strangers at the Feast is at once a heartbreaking portrait of a family struggling to find happiness and an exploration of the hidden costs of the American dream.  Published to international acclaim, Jennifer Vanderbes’s first book, Easter Island, was hailed as “one of those rare novels that appeals equally to heart, mind, and soul,” by the San Francisco Chronicle. In her second novel, this powerful writer reaches new heights of storytelling. This page-turner wrestles with the most important issues of our time—race, class, and above all else, family. Strangers at the Feast will leave readers haunted and deeply affected.

     For the contestants, this publicity gimmick represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a fresh start, a chance to break records, and to prove themselves in an unlikely test of endurance. It pits the patience of an elderly night watchman against the youthful vigor and carefully cultivated stamina of a high school track-and-field star. It sets a single mother who spends her life on her feet against a down-on-his-luck Mensa member who tells anyone who will listen that he's got the whole thing figured out. As the days and nights unavoidably carry on -- and big talk and clever strategies backfire -- the contestants' true colors come through in unexpected twists. At once lyrical and suspenseful, and by turns poignant and hilarious, Show of Hands and its all-too-human characters are ultimately unforgettable.

    Glassblowing is the lifeblood of the Republic, and Venetian mirrors are more precious than gold. Jealously guarded by the murderous Council of Ten, the glassblowers of Murano are virtually imprisoned on their island in the lagoon. But the greatest of the artists, Corradino Manin, sells his methods and his soul to the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, to protect his secret daughter. In the present day his descendant, Leonora Manin, leaves an unhappy life in London to begin a new one as a glassblower in Venice. As she finds new life and love in her adoptive city, her fate becomes inextricably linked with that of her ancestor and the treacherous secrets of his life begin to come to light.

    John’s, Maureen is the second-youngest daughter of a bitter and angry mother and a beaten-down father who tells the best stories (but only when he’s drunk). If life at home is difficult, then school is torture, with the nuns watching every move she makes. But Maureen wants a bigger life. She wants to go to sexy, exciting Montreal and be part of Expo 67, even if it means faking her way into the school choir.Finally achieving her goal of reaching Montreal, Maureen escapes the vigilant eye of Sister Imobilis and sneaks away, and over the course of a few hours, one humiliating encounter with a young Leonard Cohen and a series of breathtakingly bad decisions change the course of her life forever.A riotous and heart-rending journey from St. John’s to Montreal and back, Mary Walsh’s dazzling debut novel is darkly hilarious but also paints a very real portrait of the challenges of being young and female and poor in 1960s Newfoundland. Crying for the Moon explores the many ways in which one day can reverberate through a lifetime.

    Easy prey, too, for the violent gangs and people-smugglers who thrive in the crumbling world where 'King Death' reigns supreme.The father's world went to hell two years ago. His four-year-old daughter was snatched from his garden when he should have been watching. The moments before her disappearance play in a perpetual loop in his mind. But the police aren't interested; amidst floods, hurricanes and global chaos, who cares about one more missing child? Now it's all down to him to find her, him alone . . .

    Anna and Kyle quickly fall for each other, as they are both adventurous, fiercely independent, and in love with the raw beauty and solitude of Alaska. To cement their relationship, they agree to become caretakers of a remote lighthouse perched on a small rock in the middle of a deep channel—a place that has been uninhabited since the last caretaker mysteriously disappeared two decades ago. What seems the perfect adventure for these two quickly unravels, as closely-held secrets pull them apart, and the surrounding waters threaten uncertain danger. A psychological thriller set against the rugged landscape of coastal Alaska, Point of Direction is an exquisite literary debut.