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Pekolah Stories

by Amanda Bales

A linked story collection centered on a rural community evicerated by economic collapse and steeped in a bigoted and unforgiving religion. From orphaned children to burned-out dreamers to conversion camp survivors, these stories reveal the desperate hope of people in a place where hope is a hard weight to carry.

White Man's Graveyard

by Sarah Angleton

Annie is a no-nonsense Pennsylvania teacher whose hunt for a home and family of her own inspires a commitment to the abolition movement. Sylvanus, the baby brother she helped raise, is an adventure-seeking physician who finds purpose on his way to Western Africa in support of the controversial colonization effort which seeks to establish a safe-haven for former US slaves in the colony of Liberia. In the decades leading up to the American Civil War, the siblings find themselves on opposite si... more

Emma's Tapestry

by Isobel Blackthorn

Emma’s Tapestry tells the story of a German-American private nurse coming to terms with her husband’s disappearance. She sits at the bedside of Jewish heiress Adela Schuster who reminisces over her dear friend Oscar Wilde. It’s 1939 and war has been declared. Terrified her true identity will be discovered and she’ll be interned, Emma destroys all her papers. In 1914, Emma struggles to fit into the colonial lifestyle of Singapore with her export-manager husband Ernest. War is declared. Emma is ... more

The Rape of Persephone

by Monica Brillhart

Crete, 1694 BCE. They call her Kore, nameless term for girl. But Kore is no mere girl. She is the blossoming daughter of Demeter, High Priestess of Knossos, and Zeus of Olympus, famed liberator who led the Titan War. Stripped of identity at birth, Kore was sworn to the gods as a virgin priestess. When Kore vanishes amidst the turmoil of a quaking earth, Demeter launches a desperate search for a girl who does not wish to be found. For Kore has not vanished. She has escaped. Her quest for... more

GOLD!—The Kincaid Saga

by Thomas Greenbank

GOLD! is an 80,000 word novel that would appeal to fans of gritty family saga/drama. It is set against the backdrop of the Western Australian gold mining industry, circa 1975-2005. The central character, Malcolm Kincaid, is a ruthless and self-centred businessman who runs roughshod over friends and family alike in his pursuit of wealth and power. When he allows the pollution of an Aboriginal settlement’s water supply, however, he faces justice of a kind he could never imagine. The story b... more

Portrait of a Woman Madly in Love

by Boman Desai

Farida Cooper is too shocked by her husband's treachery even to talk about it, but in hiding her shame succeeds only in denying the damage to herself and making casualties of others, among them an infatuated 17-year-old boy. Farida is vivacious, intelligent, beautiful, talented, rich, spoiled, and selfish, but her life is hardly as rosy as it appears. Her father's affairs render her mother frigid. Her saving grace is her Kaki with whom she lives after her sixth birthday, but this also heightens ... more

The Quarry Bank Runaways

by G J Griffiths

In the early 19th century, when it was the policy of many of the poorhouses and workhouses to deter paupers from applying by making the conditions inside harsh and unpleasant, two boys set out on a journey to Hackney Workhouse in London. Their starting point was in the pleasant Cheshire countryside, where they were apprenticed to the cotton mill built by Samuel Greg in 1784. Children as young as nine would be employed there as scavengers, piecers, mule doffers or can tenters. These jobs could... more

Breaking Lucky

by Bruce Mitchell

Danny ‘Lucky’ Thornton cursed his middle name. Born in 1895, asthma almost killed him when he was four, but he survived to be among the first volunteer lifeguards on Sydney’s Coogee Beach. Danny’s sister Cath dreamed of becoming a doctor at a time when they told women to ‘know their place’. She didn’t listen, and broke through the walls of prejudice to graduate from Sydney University the only woman in her class. Danny came home from the war with a crippling wound and a shattered mind. Cath st... more

Wide Sky People

by Bruce Mitchell

Wide Sky People – Volume 1 of the Thornton Series Wide Sky People is the journey of the Thornton family from Ireland to Sydney, over the fabled Blue Mountains to the town of Orange in Central Western New South Wales. The story starts in the 1840’s when Mick and Cate Thornton and their two boys survive four months at sea to encounter false arrest, bushrangers, crooked cops, working the land and a devastating bushfire, to name just a few. Their sons Michael and John take us on a journey thr... more

Father War

by Thomas Doherty

Young John Spenser sets out to follow in the footsteps of his missing father - duty, honor, country - only to discover decades later that coming face to face with a flesh and blood idol can have dreadful consequences -- for him, his idol, and the woman both men left behind.

Hula Girls

by Eric B. Miller

Claudia Wyler is a young navy wife living in Hawaii in 1941, striving to be the perfect helpmate to her ambitious husband. She believes devoutly in the dictates of “The Housewife’s Pledge” and embraces the gender roles, social mores, and cultural norms of pre-feminist America. She seeks guidance in The Newlywed Cookbook and Woman’s Home Companion, and finds solace for her failings in the weekly delivery of Life magazine.

Spanning wartime Hawaii to mainland Americ... more

If Only

by Matthew Tree

In Saint James' Park, London, the police apprehend a young man who is carrying a bag full of high explosives in one hand and a collection of letters sent to his grandfather by the writer Malcolm Lowry in his inside pocket. In the course of the following interrogation, we discover the strange past and secret phobias of the detainee, and the emotional link between his actions and the Lowry letters. (The book's author really did have a grandfather to whom Lowry wrote on a regular basis).

Terriers in the Jungle

by Georja Umano

Small and clever California street dogs, Roxie and Romeo, get adopted by a wildlife conservationist. The two adore each other, their home, and their mom Kate. But Kate decides the family will move to Kenya to help save endangered elephants. The dogs must now learn to survive in the midst of wildlife, dangerous people, and challenging circumstances. Told in their own words and based on real-life experiences.

Leah's Legacy

by Cara Skinner

The week before her graduation from the University of Texas, Caitlin Rhodes goes with her mother, Leslie, to the small community of Friendship to clean its little country church for her family's annual Memorial Day celebration. While cleaning the pulpit, she makes a startling discovery; an ancient scroll that provides a totally new perspective on the life and teachings of Jesus. This fantastic discovery soon leads Caitlin and Kyle, her boyfriend, on an exciting and dangerous adventure throug... more

John the Angelic: A Chronicle of Pope Joan

by A.P. Andes

Set in the ninth century, John the Angelic, Volume I of A.P. Andes’ genre-bending quartet, The Latecoming West, explores one of history’s most egregious omissions, excised from the record with cold precision: the brilliant, willful woman, Pope Joan. After her father's murder and the loss of their home at sixteen, she adopts the dress and mannerisms of a young man to enter the monastic life, meeting in the process a count who will become her mentor, lover, and closest companion. The book and the... more

The Freed Church Boy

by Lloyd Johnson

Caught in a mid-life crisis, Lawrence Greene finds himself abandoned by his family and burned by his faith. However, when his religious mother returns, begging for reconciliation, can Lawrence find it in his heart to forgive her, and heal his spiritual wounds? And when an opportunity for a relationship comes knocking, will he feel worthy of a chance at love with the man of his dreams?

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