*Named a 2015 Best ReadsA Song for Bellafortuna is an inspirational Italian Historical Fiction novel concerning a young man’s desire to free his Sicilian village from the domination of one family’s long reign. For years, the beautiful, yet secluded, hilltop village of Bellafortuna, Sicily, was a great producer of wine and olive oil. The entire village prospered. However, after the arrival of the Vasaio family, production dwindles and the villagers soon find themselves in crushing debt to the Vasaios. Only one family in the village remains outside the control of the Vasaios, but the reason haunts Antonio Sanguinetti every day of his life. Antonio is determined to erase this legacy by offering financial and emotional support to his fellow villagers. He introduces them to the choral song from Verdi’s opera, Nabucco, which becomes the rallying cry for the villagers and offers them hope for a better life. When Antonio’s only son, Giuseppe, discovers his family’s past, he becomes determined to take on the Vasaios and remove them from power. Led by the young Giuseppe, a plan is hatched that could result in either complete freedom for the villagers, or if it fails, forever solidifying the Vasaios’ control. Find out what happens in A Song for Bellafortuna, a sweeping epic historical fiction tale of love, drama, sacrifice, and redemption, set among the beautiful landscape of Sicily. The novel has been called lyrical, intelligent, majestic, magical, powerful and compelling. Here are some advance reviews. "Vincent B. LoCoco writes a heartwarming piece of historical fiction . . . He captured the essence of the Sicilian culture, especially regarding the value of ancestry and music . . . A Song For Bellafortuna is a beautiful tale of antiquity." – Readers Favorite 5 Star Review "The book was a joy to read. It is a wonderful story, told in a magical way.” -Cavaliere Ufficiale Aldo Mancusi, President of the Enrico Caruso Museum of America in New York "An inspiring story of an Italian village threatened by commerce and saved by opera." -John Biguenet, author of The Torturer’s Apprentice and Oyster Categories: Historical Fiction Italian Historical Fiction Historical Romance European Historical Fiction Christian Historical Fiction Christian Historical Fiction Romance Opera Music Historical Fiction Biographical

    Taken in by an aunt bent on ridding herself of this unexpected burden, "Baby" Teegarten plots her escape using the only means at her disposal: a voice that makes church ladies cry and angels take notice. "I'm gonna sing jazz up to New York City," she brags to anybody who'll listen. 'Cept that Big Apple--well, it's an awful long way from that dry patch of earth she used to call home. So when the smoky stages of New Orleans speakeasies give a whistle, offering all kinda shortcuts, Emily soon learns it's the whorehouses and drug joints promising to tickle more than just a young girl's fancy that can dim a spotlight . . . and knowing the wrong people can snuff it out. Jazz Baby just wants to sing--not fight to stay alive.

    Agrippina, the emperor Claudius' niece, reads in the stars that someone born in Alexandria on July 19, 32 AD, is destined to help raise her son, the future emperor Nero, to the throne of the Caesars. This fated young man is Epaphroditus, a library slave and the book's narrator, who at the age of 16 is taken by force to Rome to serve young Nero. Epaphroditus becomes Nero's confidant as the art-obsessed Caesar dreams of an age when music rules the world. After Nero performs his musical spectacles in public, apocalyptic Christians-believing him to be the antichrist-set Rome afire. Revolutionary unrest strikes Rome, a fiery comet makes a foreboding appearance, and the young emperor makes a concert tour of Greece as enemies sprout like Hydra's heads. Epaphroditus, fortified by the return of his faith in astrology, discovers that he, Nero's protector, is fated to kill his Caesar. Author Humphry Knipe's brilliant historical novel shakes the rafters of conventional belief about Nero and his Rome and the ancient science of astrology.

    The daughter of Holocaust survivors, her childhood in the cramped intimacy of south Tel Aviv is shadowed by her parents’ unspoken wartime experiences. But when her father passes away, the closed book falls literally open. Vanesa decides to unravel the mystery of the diary she has received, and strange symbol in it, at all costs.Set against the backdrop of the Jewish Museum of Prague during the Nazi occupation - Adolf Eichmann's "Museum of an Extinct Race" - Galerie is fast-paced historical fiction in the tradition of Tatiana De Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key. From Jerusalem’s Yad V’Shem Holocaust research center, to the backstreets of Prague, and into the former “paradise ghetto” of Theresienstadt – Vanesa’s journey of understanding will reveal a darker family past than she ever imagined and a secret kept alive for over half a century.

    During and after dinner he had nothing to excite him save the receipt of a letter which somewhat annoyed him, and that his wife consumed rather more wine than he considered to be good for her health. Immediately after retiring to his room he was seized with symptoms of irritant poisoning, and despite every effort made on his behalf, he succumbed to its effects. An inquest was held, which vexed the minds of the Coroner’s jury to a degree without precedent in Coroners’ Inquest Law, and an open verdict was returned. However, the matter will not rest there, for after questions in Parliament, a second inquest has been called under suspicion that Mr Charles Petrie was murdered. * * * Who poisoned Charles Petrie? Dr James Collymore, a man familiar with poisons, a man harbouring a dark secret that, if exposed, would ruin his career; Florrie, the maid who supplied Charles with his bedtime drink; Bert Kemp, a disgruntled groom, who used poisons in his work, who four months previously had predicted Charles’ dying day; Mrs Jennet Quinn, a lady’s companion with a deep knowledge of poisons, and a deep fear of dismissal; or Grace Petrie, Charles’ wife of four months, a woman with a scandalous past, a woman shunned by polite society. With crowds flocking to the courtroom and the shadow of suspicion falling upon Grace in the shape of the hangman’s noose, could dashing young advocate, Daniel Morgan, save her?

    Normally obedient Bess rebels and wrests from her father a year to find a husband more to her liking.Edmund Wyard, a taciturn and scarred veteran of England's campaign in Ireland, is attempting to ignore the pressure from his family to find a suitable wife as he prepares to join the Earl of Leicester's army in the Netherlands.Although Bess and Edmund are drawn to each other, they are aware that they can have nothing more than friendship. Bess knows that Edmund's wealth and family connections place him beyond her reach. And Edmund, with his well-honed sense of duty, has never considered that he could follow his own wishes.With England on the brink of war and fear of Catholic plots extending even into Lady Allingbourne's household, time is running out for both of them.  B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree - 2018

    Then Victoria, a beautiful English noblewoman, and her hulking manservant, Block, break him out of jail.Victoria’s father, a famed archaeologist from London, disappeared while searching for the lost temple of the bloodthirsty Aztec god Xipe Totec and she needs Ace's help to find him.Follow along as Ace and his new companions blaze a trail across the Old West. Along the way Ace tangles with everyone from Wyatt Earp to Geronimo and finally journeys into the depths of the mighty Sierra Madre Mountains to a temple wreathed in mystery.

    He longs to escape the political turmoil surrounding the labor struggles of the striking fieldworkers that infests his small ag town. Ever since his father, a grape grower, died under suspicious circumstances ten years earlier, he’s had to be the sole emotional support of his mother, who has kept secrets from him about his father’s involvement in the ongoing labor strife.With their property on the verge of a tax sale, Jack drives an old combine into town to sell it so he and his mother don’t become homeless. On the road, an old friend of his father’s shows up and hands him the police report indicating Jack’s father was murdered. Jack is compelled to dig deep to discover the entire truth, which throws him into the heart of the corruption endemic in the Central Valley. Everything he has dreamed of is at stake if he can’t control his impulse for revenge.While Jack’s girlfriend, the intelligent and articulate Ella, warns him not to so anything to jeopardize their plans of moving to L.A., after graduation, Jack turns to his best friend, Adrian, a star player on the team, to help to save his mother’s land. When Jack’s efforts to rescue a stolen piece of farm equipment leaves Adrian―the son of a boycotting fieldworker who works closely with Cesar Chavez―in a catastrophic situation, Jack must bail his friend out of his dilemma before it ruins his future prospects. Jack uses his wits, his acumen at card playing, and his boldness to raise the money to spring his friend, who has been transformed by his jail experience.The Road to Delano is the path Jack, Ella, and Adrian must take to find their strength, their duty, their destiny.

    Shan Hai Gaaru". This 2011 U.S. edition features an excerpt of the author’s WNYC Leonard Lopate Essay Contest-winning new novel "Memoirs of a Eurasian". In the post-Cultural Revolution Shanghai of 1984, university senior Sha-fei Hong longs to study in the U.S. for graduate school, ostensibly to pursue the American Dream, but partly to escape her sexually-harassing Communist cadre stepfather. She meets the visiting Chinese-American businessman Gordon Lou, who has political ambitions and ties to the Chinatown underworld in the U.S. He takes Sha-fei to the American Consulate in Shanghai to look into studying in America. There, Sha-fei meets the intern Edward Cook, a young, Caucasian American lawyer who has a strong preference for all things Asian. Within a year, these three people of entirely different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds cross paths in New York. Value systems and self-interests clash. The curtain falls on a dramatic stage of ambition, sex, intrigue, and murder.

    Somehow, it just happened. And wasn't it all Lady Charlotte's fault anyway?Now Olivia's position as assistant chef at Pullman's elegant Hotel Florence is dependant upon her keeping her secrets. And sometimes lies have a way of leading to other lies. Should Olivia admit her real past and accept the consequences or keep quiet in order to preserve her comfortable new circumstances?Deception seems to be part of everyday life in the company town of Pullman, Illinois, where the grand Pullman Palace Car is manufactured. Samuel Howard, Olivia's friend and the town manager, seems to think everything is fine, but Olivia observes something quite different. Could it be that Olivia is not the only one harboring secrets?

    Aisling, despite her best efforts has failed to become the seer her mother desired, so when her mother dies leaving her alone, she departs Ireland for Wales to be with her brother, Cormac, at the royal court at Gwynedd. There she finds he is joining Prince Madog's voyage to the western lands in order to escape the threatening war. After Madog refuses to let her come with them she stows away, desperate to remain with her brother. A terrible storm arises and she is tossed overboard by a resentful Welshman and washes up on the shores of the Gulf Coast. Caxna, a Tlingit trader and former shaman, finds her and reluctantly agrees to let her join him on a trading journey to the Mayan city of Xicallanca, and later Etowah (in modern day Georgia) in the hopes she might find Madog and her brother. Caxna must succeed in this trading journey in order to free his clan but with Aisling along everything changes ....Gleeson leaves us with a memorable and poignant love story and a vision of a wonderful culture, unique in my experience of literature. Karen Charlton, author of 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh' and 'Catching the Eagle' The underlying sexual tension is all the more powerful for the beautifully restrained writing, which makes the slightest touch electric; a medicinal massage becomes a moment of physical communion.... This is what Kristin Gleeson does best; portraying different cultures and showing how humanity can cross them. Jean Gill, author of 'Song at Dawn' and 'Bladesong'

    This collection-- dazzling, diverse, sophisticated-- demonstrates the enormous range of her talent between two camps-- alongside such contemporary issues as mortgage debt and medical error.

    But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.Thus begins an epic, reckless, and terrifying five-year journey of escape for Enjeela, her siblings, and their father to reconnect with her mother. In navigating the dangers ahead of them, and in looking back at the wilderness of her homeland, Enjeela discovers the spiritual and physical strength to find hope in the most desperate of circumstances.A heart-stopping memoir of a girl shaken by the brutalities of war and empowered by the will to survive, The Broken Circle brilliantly illustrates that family is not defined by the borders of a country but by the bonds of the heart.

    Two thousand years later, after a suspicious landslide near Lanzhou, a low-level bureaucrat searches for a missing colleague. A thirteenth century Franciscan monk, traversing the Silk Road, begins his extraordinary deathbed confession, while five hundred years earlier, a grieving Chinese poet is summoned to the Emperor's palace. In a series of delicately interlaced stories, Sam Meekings' richly poetic and gripping second novel follows the journeys of characters whose lives, separated by millennia, are all in some way touched by the mysterious Book of Crows - a mythical book in which the entire history of the world - past, present and future - is written down.

    Without the money, her mother can't receive medical care and her sister will be destitute. But Noah Brenin needs to sail his cargo to England before the war commences in order to prove his worth to his father and make enough money so he won't have to marry at all.Defying his father's wishes, Noah loathes the idea of marrying a woman he finds plain and pompous. Marianne wants nothing to do with the rogue who taunted her as a child, yet she must convince him otherwise or her mother will die. But when Noah walks out on their engagement party, Marianne chases him down and ends up on his merchantman out at sea. The situation worsens when Noah's ship encounters a British man-of-war and the couple are impressed into the British navy. While a young lad's prophecy of destiny looms over them both, Marianne and Noah are forced to face their darkest fears as they desperately try to find a way to escape and fulfill their destinies-destinies that could change the course of the war and history forever.