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The Fifth Daughter of Thorn Ranch

by Julia Brewer Daily

Emma Rosales is the heiress of the largest ranch in Texas—The Thorn. All the responsibilities of managing a million acres now fall into her fifth-generation hands. A task Emma could handle with her eyes closed…if The Thorn were any ordinary property. The Thorn is home to many things. Clear, cloudless skies. Miles of desert scrub and craggy mountains. A quiet disrupted only by whispers of the wind. And an ancient web of secrets that won’t let Emma out alive without a fight. The Fifth Dau... more

Of All Faiths & None

by Andrew Tweeddale

In 1910 the architect, Edwin Lutyens, receives a letter from Sir Julius Drewe for the commission of a castle on Dartmoor – Castle Drogo. As the world rushes towards the Great War, Lutyens designs for the wealthy tea baron a castle that is singularly out of step with its time. Over the next seven years the Drewe family and the Lutyens family are drawn to castle where their fates are inseparably linked. The novel provides a vivid portrait of two families on the precipice of a changing world. ... more

Briarhill to Brooklyn

by Jack Bodkin

Briarhill to Brooklyn is a work of creative nonfiction, in which I tell the story of my Irish family’s journey from Galway on a coffin ship named Cushlamachree. The family—John and Eleanor Bodkin, and seven of their children—began their journey on St. Patrick’s Day, 1848. Their destination was Brooklyn. The main characters in my book are real people—and the locations, events, and timelines are generally historically accurate. Some of the book is fact, but much of the story is fiction. The ... more

FIRE MARKER MAN

by Andrew Flower

1869: In his prison cell in The Tombs, Robert Gillian has countless days to reflect upon his story, a journey which began years earlier, the time of the Great Hunger in Ireland. So destitute that burying his young twins in rented coffins was the best he could afford—their bodies re-interred in burlap sacks in the middle of the night—he knew he must take his landlord’s offer: paid passage to America for the rest of his family. Life in New York City was difficult in its own way—for kind and ... more

Delusion of the Collar and the Key

by Alexandria May Ausman

The victory over her oppressors and bullies cost Psycho dearly. She is the target of her guardian’s sexually sadistic daughter. No one is coming to help the troubled teenager as Psycho’s deepening symptoms of schizophrenia and lack of a support system endanger her. The cruel Julie’s constant manipulations, assaults, lies, and withholding of the necessary medications to control Psycho’s mental illness, lead to the creation of a dangerous delusion. Will anyone believe Psycho’s unbelievable tale be... more

Be Kind, Be Forgiving

by JAMES BUCHANAN

Be Kind, Be Forgiving are quirky stories written for quirky people. They live on the page with a certain guileless charm while poking fun and taking simple pleasure in our meanness, pettiness, sensuality, despair, and, sometimes, our niceness. If you like the stories of Diane Williams or David Sedaris, then Be Kind, Be Forgiving is well worth a try.

Many Are Invited

by Dennis Cuesta

A housewarming party ends in tragedy. . . Steve Galanos, a native Midwesterner, reflects on his time in Northern California during the 1990s, a time when the two-digit year emerged as the Y2K problem, the burgeoning Internet fueled the expansion of the New Economy, the dot-com bubble created unseen prosperity and real estate frenzies. Yet it’s a housewarming party, held in late 1999, that affects him the most. ... more

Something Decidedly Oddd

by Lesley A

SOMETHING DECIDEDLY ODDD is set in the fictional Somerset town of Hegley. It is the story of RUBY’s journey to self-realisation and acceptance. It’s ten years since her husband died when she was seven months pregnant. She thinks she’s moved on and her life is in good order, but as she lurches from choir to yoga, to Zumba and teaching French, to work deadlines and taking her son, BEN, to and from school and Cubs and clubs, she makes sure she doesn’t have a free minute left unaccounted for. No mat... more

Papa on the Moon

by Marco North

What happens to the dreamers and the hard-luck cases, the washed-up lovers and the wild-eyed children when life gets messy?

Here is a novel-in-stories with a structure as raw and unexpected as the characters who inhabit it. Paul, the child of an ostracized Jewish pig farmer, searches for meaning in the most unexpected places— from the bottom of the local swimming pool to the galley of a Navy battleship. Along the way, we crack open the private lives of his parents before and after... more

The Tyranny of Desire

by Morty Shallman

PUCHY MUSHKIN is a big dreamer and an even bigger loser whose spectacular failure as a human being is exceeded only by the enormity of his penis. Think Seinfeld’s George Costanza without the “shrinkage.” In the depths of his despair, Puchy has an epiphany: could the endless series of screw-ups that define his existence be the result of his overwhelming desire for the success he believes is his birthright? To test his theory and, hopefully, change his fate, Puchy vows to bani... more

Splendide Mendax

by Zephyr Dorsey

Visualize our world as it was 2019. Now imagine that a nation, say, one of the world's superpowers, in the attempt to protect itself against the next SARS outbreak, accidentally creates a worldwide plague. Imagine also that the plague-causing nation attempts to cover-up its mistake. And then envision the world's elite assisting in that cover-up. Too impossible to imagine?

It won't be after you read Spendide Mendax by Zephyr Dorsey.

I Touched the Moon: A Tale of Abduction and Redemption

by Sila Long

On November 5, 2011, a gang of armed robbers and human traffickers moved door-to-door shooting, hacking, raping, and abducting members of a small village outside the state of Zamfara, northwestern Nigeria, to avenge the killing of their comrades by local vigilante groups. This horrific attack killed nineteen villagers, left a bloody trail of mutilated victims, and girls snatched from their families. The plight of one girl's remarkable journey after being abducted from her home and bearing witnes... more

Empire Builder

by Edward Sheehy

Empire Builder is the name of an Amtrak train route that stretches from Chicago to Seattle. Empire Builder is also the moniker bestowed upon James Jerome Hill, a railroad baron in the Gilded Age, who proselytized the gospel of Commerce and Christianity. The opening prose stream explores the historical and literary roots underpinning the philosophy of capitalist expansion and exploitation and its impact on Indigenous populations through absurdist conversations with figments of the traveler’s im... more

Hey Jude

by Kathleen Stone

In 1985 eighteen-year-old Jude Hastings loses her deaf twin sister to a brain aneurysm. A year later her longtime boyfriend dumps her for taking too long to grieve. Jude’s relationship with her parents is more volatile than ever because she’s the child who lived. The next four years see Jude on a path of destruction, leaving a trail of alcohol-induced nights and a laundry list of nameless men in her wake. Love simply doesn’t exist in her world. Until she meets Shea Sullivan, an unreachable four-... more

Lester Lies Down

by James Ladd Thomas

Lester Gordon is an odd man, just like everybody else. He’s on the lower end of the spectrum, just like so many others. He falls in love and marries his next-door neighbor. They create a family with three children. All seemed right with world for this peculiar man. After cancer takes his wife, he finds himself adrift, wondering if he’ll ever regain his purpose in life without his wife and the mother of his children. He decides to sell his family’s car wash business and become a hospice nurse. He... more

The Fountain (Second Chance Book 1)

by John A. Heldt

Three elderly, unfulfilled siblings gain a new lease on life when they plunge into a fountain of youth.

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