Oh, That I Had Wings


Sarah Pawley - 2009
    Whether by listening to his Grandmother's fortunes, or from hearing the distant call of a train whistle, he has always known that fate has more in store for him...more than being just a poor man's son. In the summer of 1917 the Great War calls him away, setting him on a path of tragedy and romance that will lead him to discover his true place in the world.

Flings and Arrows


Debbie Viggiano - 2012
    Steph thought they were soulmates. Until recently. Surely one’s soulmate shouldn’t put Chelsea FC before her? Or boycott caressing her to fondle the remote control? Fed up, Steph uses her Tesco staff discount to buy a laptop. Her friends all talk about Facebook. It’s time to get networking.Si is worried about middle-age spread and money. Being a self-employed plumber isn’t easy in recession. He’s also aware things aren’t right with Steph. But Si has forgotten the art of romance. Although these days Steph prefers cuddling her laptop to him. Then Si’s luck changes work wise. A mate invites Si to partner up on a pub refurbishment contract.Son Tom has finished Sixth Form. Tom knows where he’s going regarding a career. He’s not quite so sure where he’s going regarding women and lurches from one frantic love affair to the next.Widowed neighbour June adores the Garveys as if her own kin. And although 70, she’s still up for romance. June thinks she’s struck gold when she meets salsa squeeze Harry. He has a big house and bigger pension – key factors when you’ve survived a winter using your dog as a hot water bottle. June is vaguely aware that she’s attracted the attention of fellow dog walker Arnold, but her eyes are firmly on Harry as ‘the catch’.

But then Cupid’s arrow misfires causing madness and mayhem. Steph rekindles a childhood crush with Barry Hastings; Si unwittingly finds himself being seduced by barmaid Dawn; June discovers Harry is more than hot to trot; and Tom's latest strumpet impacts on all of them. Will Cupid's arrow strike again and, more importantly, strike correctly? There's only one way to find out....

Four Widows


Helen MacArthur - 2011
    Dead husbands. Unfinished business.When did deception and disappearance suddenly become so fashionable?When Lori Walker discovers her husband's death wasn't an accident her darkest fears come true: the man she married was her greatest love and her biggest mistake.Lori is thrown a lifeline when she forms a tight friendship with other widows who share their own stories highlighted with humour, heartache and mysteries. Questions are raised, answers are challenged and trust falls to pieces. Emotional drama with suspense and intrigue, Four Widows explores the intricacies of love—its greatness and its acute complications.

Reading Between the Lines (Between the Sheets Book 4)


Serenity Woods - 2021
    Darcy, life is never going to be simple… Tess Barker is having a rough time. She enjoys giving tours of the Northland of New Zealand, but her endometriosis makes the long days a challenge, and now she’s gone and insulted one of her best friends by mistake. She’s secretly liked Finn Brennan – the gorgeous Mr. Darcy lookalike – for years, but he’s never made a move on her, and now not only has she hurt his feelings, but they’re both interviewing for the same job – #awkward. Finn likes his position in the Education Department at Waitangi, but recent events have made him restless, and he’s ready for a change. The move to Exhibitions Director at a museum in Christchurch might be just what he’s looking for, but he’s up against the younger, dynamic, beautiful Tess. When she apologizes for upsetting him, a kiss is a natural way to prove there’s no hard feelings. They agree to work together on their presentations for the interview and to let the best man – or woman – win. Time spent together soon reveals a sizzling attraction that turns into deep passion. Things come to a head on their return to the bay, when Finn realizes he can’t escape his past troubles if he stays. But it’s only when Tess falls ill that he has to make the ultimate decision to fight or fly.

The Ragtime Kid


Larry Karp - 2006
    It’s destiny calling. Asking for ragtime lessons, he’s told, “No, Ragtime is colored music.” So Brun runs away from the family farm to Sedalia, Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun doesn’t expect is to trip over the body of a young woman. He thoughtlessly picks up a couple of items before he rushes away from the murder scene.When Edward Fitzgerald, a man who befriended Brun his first night in town, is arrested for the woman’s murder, Brun is certain he’s innocent. But if the boy shows anyone the things he pocketed at the scene—things he now knows belonged to Scott Joplin—he’ll point the finger at the composer...and himself. Brun decides to get Fitzgerald, Joplin, and himself off the hook by finding the real killer, but for that he eventually needs some help from Dr. Overstreet, the alcoholic town mayor; and John Stark, a man pushing sixty, who’s been employing Brun at his music store.Sedalia is rife with suspects, some of them opportunists bent on stealing Joplin’s music. And then there are the girls and women—mysteries to Brun—like a teenager seized with religious fever, a couple of mischievous prostitutes, and an attractive, ambitious young woman with a hint of scarlet in her past, who further complicate his pursuit of the killer.

The Berlin Tunnel--A Cold War Thriller


Roger L. Liles - 2018
    During the Cold War, a more monumental effort was made by America and her allies to intercept and exploit Russian and communist countries communications. In the mid-1950s a tunnel was built by British MI-6 and the CIA which tapped into a buried communications cable in East Berlin. They successfully intercepted and exploited East European and Russian communist communications for over a year. Suddenly, in 1956 the tunnel was “discovered” by the Russians, denying the allies this exceptionally valuable intelligence source. This novel, The Berlin Tunnel is a fictional account of how a second tunnel might have been built between East and West Berlin. It is a thriller which takes the reader into the super-secret world that the author occupied fifty years ago. Every scene in The Berlin Tunnel could have happened. The time—1960-1961, and the place—the Divided City of Berlin have been faithfully recreated using extensive research and the author’s personal experience. Young American Air Force Captain Robert Kerr arrives in a divided Berlin awash with spies who move freely between the East and West. His task—build a TOP SECRET tunnel under the River Spree into East Berlin—tap into highly classified communications links between civilian and military leaders in Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries. The knowledge gained from this source will help America’s leaders to manage an imminent confrontation between the East and West over Berlin, perhaps even prevent World War III. At all costs, knowledge that the tunnel is being built must be hidden from the Russian KGB and the East German Stasi as well as our closest allies—the British and French. Only those involved in its construction can be allowed to know of the existence of the tunnel. Love couldn’t have found him as a worse time. Soon after he arrives, Robert falls for a German girl, Anna Fischer. It is spy verses spy as the dreaded East German Secret Police—the Stasi use every means possible to determine what Robert and his construction crew are doing in Berlin. But it is Anna, who is often caught in the crossfire between the Americans and the Stasi. The conclusion of the novel centers around events that focuses the attention of the world on Berlin. First, the Wall is closed, trapping 19 million East Germans including Anna’s entire family behind the Iron Curtain. A few months later, the world held its collective breath when the Berlin Crisis occurs—High Noon at Checkpoint Charlie—the only time in the Cold War when Russian and American tanks faced each other. Robert and Anna are caught up in these momentous events as they try to free her family and survive in a very dangerous city.

THE SECRET OF WATTENSAW BAYOU


M.E. Hubbs - 2013
    . . Thirteen year old Ephraim Wright suffers the depredations of war along with the white family who reared him. Raised with the family since he was two years old, he is never once required to call Jonathan Wright, his benevolent owner, "master." His speech, manners and outlook on life are more akin to his white "siblings than the other slaves in the community who chide him for being a "pet" and "talkin' like white folk." He is stranded between two worlds; that of free whites, and of enslaved blacks. His life is irreversibly changed when Confederate conscript officers take the family's oldest son at gun point and a bushwhacker gang guns down Jonathan Wright. The law forbids a slave to touch a firearm, because a “negro with a gun is a nervous thing to white folks.” But where his family is concerned, Ep is never one to care about what the slave laws say. By seeking to send men to hell, will Ephraim send himself there as well?Advance Praise for The Secret of Wattensaw BayouWhile reading the book my feelings of anger and resentment toward the institution of slavery and those who fought to protect such rights were sometimes overwhelming and required me to take a deep breath. Nevertheless, the story from a historical perspective, although it was a work of fiction, was masterly woven and I found myself with the urge to continue reading. . . The book is well written and the author provides a fascinating glimpse into the everyday existence of many Southern families during the Civil War. Commander Harold Barnes (US Navy, retired)

Imaginary Friends


Darren Pillsbury - 2007
    It was a normal Christmas Eve until Jeff Tanner's youngest son Davey snapped a turkey wishbone and made a crazy wish. Now Jeff thinks he's gone insane, because he sees strange things that no one else can - bug-eyed babies, walking teddy bears, and tiny freaks galore. What's worse, they don't like him. At all. Now Jeff has to figure out why they're angry, and quick, before his life is ruined by a million, invisible IMAGINARY FRIENDS.

Brings the Lightning


Peter Grant - 2016
     Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed West with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can't forget. When you can’t go home again – go West!

Impossible Dream


Gemma Jackson - 2018
    They are placed in the home of Captain Charles Whitmore but soon discover that the household is in turmoil. Charles, hoping to amass a fortune, is preparing to set off on a long sea voyage, deliberately leaving his wife Georgina almost penniless to fend for herself and the servants. Georgina, who has been desperate to break free from a life of violent marital abuse, is relieved that he will be gone for some years, but nevertheless the future is frightening. Then help comes from an unexpected quarter. An organisation that helps women escape lives of abuse or genteel poverty makes Georgina an offer. They propose that her house should become a school designed to train such women to seek employment in the American West. The very idea is at once shocking and appealing. Can Georgina step into the unknown and lead the women under her care into the future? The orphan maids listen and wonder. Can they too dare to dream of a better life for themselves?

A Larger Universe


James L. Gillaspy - 2010
    The kidnapping of Tommy (and his cat) begins an adventure among the stars, a coming of age story entangled with computers, faster-than-light travel, a dying civilization, and an ancient evil.On board the five-thousand-meter starship, he meets a crew of humans, descended from peasants, priests, and soldiers taken from Earth a thousand years before. He soon learns that all are slaves to the seldom-seen aliens inhabiting the upper third of the ship. His first months are spent in mindless work that he later learns is meant to domesticate his “feral” nature.Eventually, he is introduced to the reason for his kidnapping: Tommy is expected to replace the ancient and failing computers on the ship with computers taken from Earth, beginning with the long-dead missile controller, without which the ship is defenseless. After the new missile controller, with Tommy as its operator, successfully defends the ship against attack, his “benefactor,” one of the alien Nesu masters, directs him to replace the environmental and navigation computers. This work leads to revelations that the star drive is from still another alien group -- called the Guardians by the Nesu -- who, fifteen hundred years before, destroyed the Nesu home world and now block all scientific advancement in the local arm of the galaxy.Tommy’s determination to return to his family expands to include returning all the human slaves to Earth, using his control of the computers that now run the ship. With the help of a Nesu mathematician, will he also find a way to free the Nesu from their enthrallment by the Guardians and protect the Earth from the fate of the Nesu home world?

The Red Cotton Fields


Michael D. Strickland - 2003
    The story begins on a Georgia plantation in the year 1850, ending on the gold fields of Australia in the year 1884. This is a story surrounding three southern families (the plantation owners, the plantation overseer’s family, and a Negro slave family) leading up to and including the Civil War. Readers will experience the demise of a southern plantation and follow two of the plantation’s previous occupants (Bart Royal, the white overseer’s son, and Reiner Washington, an escaped slave) as they rise to become two of the richest men in the world. Also, The Red Cotton Fields is a classic love story between the plantation owner’s daughter, Holly Ballaster, and the overseer’s son, Bart Royal. The Red Cotton Fields is destined to become a classic. Read it and you will understand why.

Who Got Liz Gardner


Elizabeth Allen - 2009
    There she witnesses a testosterone-laden discussion and a much unexpected question, "Does anyone know who got Liz Gardner?" The sheer irony that she would be a topic of this world wide circle jerk on her one and only visit catapults her into a graphic and relentless exploration of her life's journey--with all the erotic, tragic, and hilarious affairs, lessons, and detours that inevitably led to the one "who got her." Did she make the same desperate mistakes as her mother, or worse? Was she destined to become her mother?Her journey takes her from Florida to New York to California with a spicy layover in Denver. She grows and evolves from dealings with divorced parents, abortion, love triangles, infidelity, confused intentions, homeless junkies, aliens, vegetarians, stalkers, past life lesbians, ghosts and angels. Oh, and men. Definitely men. Who Got Liz Gardner is a complete meal with flavors, textures and ingredients reminiscent of "50 Shades of Grey", and "Sex and the City" combined with a dash of "Fear of Flying". Readers who enjoy feasts of this caliber will want to indulge in this extraordinary repast and encourage others to take a taste! However, be warned - while some like it hot, this meal hits the top of the Scoville scale. Muy caliente!

Trio of Horror: Three Tales from the Holocaust


Cathlene Smith - 2009
    Each is a prize winner! Fictional short stories based on true life events. The book is approximately 100 pages. The stories, while containing fictional characters reflect the true, heroism of the time and era of the Holocaust.The uprising of the Lodz ghetto, a rare romance in a concentration camp and the Sobibor escape are captured in this book. Different perspectives and gripping horror from real life accounts. A must read.

Legacy of Hunger


Christy Nicholas - 2015
    The night her family’s hotel burns to the ground, Valentia knows she can no longer wait. Risking a perilous Atlantic voyage, she heads to Ireland to discover her heritage.But the journey exacts a terrible toll, and her health deteriorates. Struggling to navigate a new country, cope with the desperate poverty, and untangle a complicated web of family secrets, Valentia fears she’ll never find the brooch in time to save her sanity—until she discovers a clue which sends her on a desperate trek across the Irish countryside, despite the dangers.As the clock ticks down, her grasp on sanity slips through her fingers, forcing her to fight for a centuries-old legacy or lose everything.Legacy of Hunger is the first book in The Druid’s Brooch Series. If you like strong female characters, heartwarming relationships, and a touch of fairy magic, you’ll love Christy Nicholas’ historical adventure.Buy Legacy of Hunger now to delve into the magic of Ireland’s past.