But the most important invention of all was the one that Miles claimed came from the mind of Thomas Edison himself--a machine that allowed one to speak with loved ones long passed. Smuggled out of Edison's laboratory, the blueprints were passed down to Miles, and he's been using them to protect Eva, her mother, Lily, and her brother, Errol, ever since.Then, one night when a storm is raging and the river is threatening to flood, the machine whirrs to life on its own. Danger, it says. You're in terrible danger. The next thing Eva knows is waking up on the side of the river and seeing her mother's grim face. Eva's father and brother are dead, their house has been washed away and an evil man is searching for them both. They need to hide.Eva changes her name to Necco--a candy she always loved--and tries to put everything in her past behind her as she adapts to her new life off the grid. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her mother disappears, she knows that the past is starting to catch up to her.What really happened the night of the flood? As Necco searches for the truth, her journey unites her with two women who are on desperate quests of their own. And as the trio follows the clues to solving the mystery of Necco's past, they discover that sometimes it's the smallest towns that hold the strangest secrets.

    Douglas McCombs is an accomplished engineer and recent widower driven to discover the truth of who he is by studying the people and places he comes from. After losing his wife to a battle with Alzheimer’s, Douglas is left devastated until a chance encounter with a sharp, compassionate librarian named Suzy Hamilton on the steps of the New York Public Library shakes him from the throes of grief. ​With Suzy’s help, Douglas takes up genealogy and begins an investigation into his Scottish lineage that takes the reader on a sprawling journey through time and the remarkable lives of Douglas’s ancestors—from legendary highland clan chiefs and American war generals to humble farmers and family men. As he traces his ancestry through the generations, Douglas manages to discover not only the roots he was searching for, but also a brand-new reason to be.

    Men and women from all walks of life are thrown together on what they call the “rock" or "Hell on earth." The story follows Molly as she adjusts to her new reality of living in a combat zone, learns the ropes of prison life, and realizes the many complexities of war. Born in Chicago, Molly barely out of her teens is an aspiring doctor who joined the Army Reserve pre-911, mainly to pay for medical school. She is a breath of fresh air in the hot, dusty, hell-hole the soldiers temporarily call home. Molly, with her battle buddy Osborne, a quirky seductress, work alongside active duty troops as MP’s (Military Police) stationed at a prison camp. The insurgents, assumed to have Taliban connections, some awaiting transit to Guantanamo Bay, often fall on the thin line between very scary and somewhat ridiculous. Molly’s life becomes a rollercoaster of fear, passion, pain, and boredom as she guards captured insurgents and she soon realizes that she too is a prisoner of the desolate, and unbearably hot prison. Molly becomes drawn to a quick witted, shameless soldier named Spc. Shaw to get through the long and mundane days of the prison. As her feelings for Shaw grow so does her loathing for the insanely handsome, yet robotic, Sgt. Beck. Sgt. Beck makes it clear on day one that Molly is unfit for the job. In his attempts to take her down he begins to see the true measure of her resilience, courage, determination and fiery temper. As Molly battles her 12-hour work schedule, sleep deprivation, camel spiders and a host of other obstacles while living in a combat zone, Beck, who is sleeping with Molly’s friend, entrusts Molly with a more personal side of himself. As Beck's guard lowers, so does Molly’s and their friendship becomes unbreakable. But when tragedy strikes Molly realizes that some people are not at all what they appear to be.

    An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness and beyond.The first part of Michael B. Koep's The Newirth Mythology-The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder and madness.Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: the fifty foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating? Or is it because one of his clients is dead, or his mentor has gone mad, or that his wife is leaving him? He can't bring himself to believe what he has been seeing. Insane things like a massive, searching eye. He sees it in the water below the cliff. He sees it in mirrors, on walls: a massive, crystal blue iris and fathomless pupil there in the center of his life, looking at him.To find the answer, Loche pens the recent events of his life into a book and leaves the work behind for his mentor Doctor Marcus Rearden to interpret. As Rearden reads he plunges into the harrowing depths of Loche's reality: his loss of a client, the discovery of an unknown past, an ancient conflict over possession of the human condition, the awesome reality of the gods walking among us, and the crimes of humanity invading the hope that lies beyond the grave.And along the way, Loche tells of unforgettable characters: the torn and manic housewife that teeters on the edge of sanity, and a depressed, swashbuckling swordsman that believes he is over six hundred years old, the stoned and prolific painter and his perilous work he must keep secret, and the beautiful business woman that abandons her life's work for a love she never expected.

    They search for a stable end game that balances the after-effects of climate change and dwindling natural resources against the needs of a ten-billion-plus population. Rudolph “Rudy” Dersch is the newly minted CEO of the world’s largest, multi-trillion-dollar corporate conglomerate. But the job comes with an unexpected twist - an invitation to join the Consortium, a small, secretive group of global select who effectively decide what’s best for the rest of humanity. How does Rudy’s struggle to reconcile business and family impact the world’s future? And who, if anyone, can break the Consortium’s iron grip on the status quo? ˃˃˃ Dark Matter, Asteroids and Mysterious Visions The answer may lie with Dr. Jonas Hanssen, a renegade physicist, who is close to unraveling one of the universe’s greatest mysteries and with a headstrong art curator, Monique, driven to find the meaning behind her increasingly compelling visions. From a life-changing moment in a crowded Singapore marketplace to the business end of an assassin’s gun, they face a power beyond any the world has ever seen. To survive, they’ll have to decipher the truth about dark matter - before the Consortium can achieve its ruinous end game.

    She is making an impact as a leader at a tech company, but after being passed up for multiple promotions, she finds herself at a loss for how to improve. Fate answers her in the form of a kind—and surprisingly direct—older man in a coffee shop. A well-respected CEO before he retired, David has deep and rich leadership knowledge. Emily needs direction, and David is the perfect mentor.Growing Influence offers readers both practical advice on how to develop leadership skills and a relatable account of one woman’s growth by applying the principles in the book. Unlike nonfiction business books or business memoirs, this story is a business fable that is both impactful and transformative.

    Remmy's life of constant schemes and pranks and a lifelong feud with classmate Jim Johnstone and the local oil drilling company proves consequential. This is a hoot."- Publisher's Weekly🏆 finalist for Glimmer Train's Fiction Open.PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS.AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off of the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"

    Growing up in 1960’s San Francisco as a young artist, Will finds himself at odds with his Nazi war criminal Grandfather and radical Jihadist mother. When Will’s mother spearheads a terrorist attack in San Francisco, the boy must decide if he is going to turn a blind eye or take part in an operation that can only result in the destruction of his own family. As the conflict within the family unit comes to a boil, Nazi hunter and Mossad spymaster Saul Greenbaum steps out of the shadows to recruit Will Hessler, and forge him into the agent that Mossad needs to defend the homeland. Can Will grow up fast enough to survive a clash with a PLO splinter group that has already buried several seasoned operatives from both the CIA and Mossad?

    Good thing his companion is a mysterious young woman with exceptional fighting skills. Too bad she has her own agenda.When Duncan decided to take a month off and travel around Europe, he never imagined where he would end up. Or when.He wakes up in a world utterly different than the one he knew—a world with no GPS signal and no internet connection. Struggling with the societal norms, injustice, and inequity of the time, Duncan reluctantly accepts the help of a beautiful young woman, Alana, and her father.With the threat of an attack looming over their heads, Duncan must use his knowledge of modern chemistry, physics, and cyber technology to stop an invading army and save an entire town along the way. Will he find a way to protect them and return home or die at the hands of the ruthless Celtic warriors?

    The shining jewel of this state-of-the-art line is a breathtaking visitors’ pavilion beneath the river.  Major dignitaries, including New York City’s Mayor and the President of the United States, are in attendance for the inaugural run, as the first train slowly pulls in. Under the station’s bright ceiling lights, the shiny silver cars gleam. But as the train comes closer into view, a far different scene becomes visible. All the train’s cars are empty. All the cars’ interiors are drenched in blood. As chaos descends, all those in the pavilion scramble to get out. But the horror is only beginning. High levels of deadly methane fill the tunnels. The structure begins to flood. For those who don’t drown, choke, or spark an explosion, another terrifying danger awaits — the thing that killed all those people on the train. There's something living beneath New York City, and it's not happy we've woken it up.

    As she matures into a resourceful teenager, she is unwilling and unable to stifle her desire for revenge. Reaching her breaking point she can no longer control the impulse to fight back and finally takes matters into her own hands.Having learned the art of hatred from her father and the mastery of manipulation from her mother, young Emma now sets out to make a better life for herself, leaving the memory of the abused child she had once been behind her. Hardened by the heartless brutality she encounters and the dangerous situations she must overcome in the course of her journey, she faces every challenge that comes her way in her quest for a normal life for herself and for those she loves.Finally a person emerges from within that guides her toward a better life until she learns of a secret that sets her on the path of ultimate redemption.**WARNING**18+ Readers Only. Graphic content and subject matter.

    The election of an authoritarian president. The sudden loss of his mother. A series of debilitating seizures. Now, as America descends into a nightmare, he’s shocked to discover the explanation for his seizures: He’s in the wrong universe.A drug trial promises to return him to the timeline where he belongs. With his family life strained, his job gone and tanks in the streets, he jumps at the opportunity. But what will he find on the other side?Take a reality-bending trip filled with surprises and second chances. Visit alternate timelines where life played out differently. Explore the roads not taken. Question the nature of fate. And find an answer to the biggest question of all: in a world that feels like it’s spinning out of control, what would it take for one person to make a difference?Now an international bestseller, Branches is at once a twisty cerebral drama and a deeply personal journey through fear, grief and redemption.First in a series.REVIEWS“Part dystopian, part all-too-familiar reality … walks an imaginative line between what we think we know and what actually is.” –Stories on Stage Davis“Lovers of alternate histories will find much that fascinates [in] this bold experiment in timelines and trauma.” –BookLife“I did not want to put it down, and I did not stop thinking about it after.” –Amazon review“A story of emotional discovery and depth that left me breathless by the last fateful word. … This is sci-fi with both brains and a heart. … Brilliantly insightful.” –BookBub review“The vivid imagery … and heart-pounding drama caused me to read this novel in one sitting.” –Amazon review“If you were a fan of Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, this is for you.” –GoodReads review

    I began the process without much enthusiasm and quickly got side lined by my new civilian life. Little did I realize that I wouldn’t re-visit my disability claims again until almost forty years later, when I watched President Barack Obama give a speech on the horrors of the Vietnam War. I’m still not quite sure what happened that day, but after listening to the president, I committed myself to investigate the causal link between my tactical pesticide exposures and the myriad health problems plaguing my life and the lives of many other Vietnam veterans. My post-service medical problems began mildly enough but soon balloned and were followed by more serious health issues. Every time I would ask one of my doctors what was causing my illness, I would usually get the answer, “I don’t know, but---.” When I began my research in 2012, I would learn that Agent Orange, along with several other military pesticides, were all very capable of impacting every biological system in my body and could actually be linked to many wide-ranging ailments for which many of my doctors could only say they weren’t sure of the cause. Despite the uniqueness of Vietnam veterans and the incredibly diverse range of hazardous chemicals to which we were exposed, the DVA insists on assessing our illnesses by using civilian epidemiological studies, resulting in appallingly inadequate standards for evaluating our toxic exposures during the war. During my years of research, I have quite literally reviewed thousands of studies and documents. The vast majority of those records came to the same inescapable conclusions as I eventually did at the end of my investigation. Low-level exposures to just the various known chemicals discussed in my book will attack living organisms on an undetected hormonal, genetic, and cellular/molecular level, producing covert systemic damage and alterations to immune, cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, and neurological systems of any human unlucky enough to be put in their path. Exactly how that damage and those alterations manifest depends on the several exposure factors which I discus in the book. Regrettably, I couldn’t go back over the last half a century to get a do-over or to have the war conducted differently. I couldn’t force our legislative or military leaders to make better decisions. I couldn’t rewrite the unpleasant history of the Vietnam War, with all the numerous negative impacts that war had on me and every other soldier, marine, or sailor who served the United States in South Vietnam and in the blue waters of the surrounding ocean. The very best I could do, almost a half century after the war, was to write an account of our betrayal and describe our exposures to the toxic pesticides and abhorrent conditions of the Vietnam War. All in the sincere effort to correct the present so that what occurred in South Vietnam will never happen again to new generations of military personnel, their families and their children and quite possibility their grandchildren’s children. The mountain of evidence presented in my book points to one common sense conclusion: Exposure to the tactical pesticides used in the Vietnam War were extremely injurious to the health of military personnel, as well as, the health of anyone else exposed to them. Despite all the facts, the government still places the burden of proof on veterans instead of taking responsibility for the mess they made during the Vietnam War or in the words of Dr. Jeanne Stellman, the Vietnam War is, "the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world."

    In his imagination, Mark is a heroic soldier, a surgeon, and a daredevil striving to live up to the ideals of the 1950s. When his family uproots from Queens, New York, to start afresh in Massachusetts, Mark finds refuge from loneliness in an unlikely friendship with an eccentric, wealthy, elderly neighbor who has shut out the world following a debilitating accident. Their mutual gift for conjuring up imaginary worlds to cope with reality which for Mark includes the confusing teachings of his Jewish faith leads them to push the boundaries between these two realms, exploring the fine line between love, imagination, and the existence of God."

    Thumbing back through the pages again, slower this time, I found it. It was about an inch thickness in… Mom’s handwriting… pages of it.When a woman linked to the supernatural, discovers her adoptive mother’s journal holds a cryptic mystery, she and her closest friends race to uncover a secret matriarchal society safeguarded by mystical unseen forces. What if Cancer wasn’t just an illness or evil sickness that took our loved ones? What if it’s something bigger—a sacrifice or choice to keep humanity safe—to keep the balance?Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is considered the 3rd cleanest city in the world and rated the 2nd highest quality of living of any big city in the Americas, but unless you’re Canadian you probably wouldn’t know any of that stuff. And it’s all very nice and well, but boring as hell.... That’s what four unsuspecting girlfriends thought, until their good friend Lynn Westlake came home to visit, and they found themselves in the biggest mystery and adventure of their normal boring lives.The Guard is the first book in the N. L. Westaway urban fantasy/paranormal mystery trilogy. If you appreciate brilliant urban fantasy or paranormal mysteries involving everyday people, you’ll love this entertaining three-part trilogy. Note; it is recommended that you read the books in order as the mystery is in three parts, and not individual stories per book.