2021 Top Notable Indies

Orthicon

By David Perlmutter

The United States government discovers, to its horror, that the creatures featured in animated cartoons are not fabrications but real beings.

Fearing the social and political consequences of the discovery being made public, they proceed to exile them off Earth to another planet.

However, things do not go according to plan…

Porno Valley

By Phillip Elliot

It’s the year 2000 and 78-year-old Mickey O’Rourke has been a Los Angeles PI for a very long time. He’d thought he’d seen it all until the disappearance of porn star Jeffrey Strokes sends him from the sex-filled studios of the San Fernando Valley to the desperate streets of Compton where Mickey’s final case becomes his biggest test.

Flash back to 1998 and struggling hair salon employee Jemeka Johnson, suspecting boyfriend Ray-Ray of infidelity, follows him one night from their East Compton home to what turns out to be a drug deal gone sour where a twist of fate finds Jemeka tossed onto a dark and dangerous path-one that offers huge reward for someone bold enough to seize it.

Meanwhile, in 1999, tired of robbing small-town diners and shooting bad dope in filthy motel rooms, newlyweds Richie and Alabama return to LA in search of the perfect score. Paths cross and past meets present as bad decisions hurtle toward worse consequences-and no one will ever be the same.

Fedor

By Brant Vickers

“You can’ throw too much style into a miracle, and you my friend are a miracle,” Mark Twain says to Feodor Adrianovitch Jefticheff, also known as Jo-Jo The Dog Faced Boy. Fedor lives, travels, works, and loves among the haunting cast of performers in the Black Tent Sideshow of P.T. Barnum’s Circus in the late 1880s. Fedor not only survived, but also profited by being a memorable and unforgettable human curiosity. Along with being an intelligent and avid reader of Tolstoy, Twain, Alcott, and Melville, he has remarkable interactions with a myriad of these and other world-renowned characters, one being Nicholas II the Russian Tsarevich.

This proves that more than just being a “sideshow,” there was a lot of individuality and heart to this “dog-faced boy.” Fedor is a magnificent fictional account… one that will appeal strongly to your intellect and emotions. The novel shows us something new, making us feel – the ever-shifting dynamic between resignation and hope. Richly authentic, dramatic, beautifully written, and always thoughtprovoking, Brant Vickers tells Fedor’s story in an epic account of this young man’s extraordinary life.

Those Darn Stripes

By Tyrel Stripes

In the fall of 2008, Tyrel Nelson returns to the United States after teaching English in Ecuador for a year. Although living overseas was quite an adjustment for the Minnesotan, the months to follow (mostly spent around his stomping grounds) bring on life changes far bigger than anything he had encountered in South America. Fortunately, his pop and confidant, Jay, is there to guide Tyrel through his depression in the Great Recession, which is not only caused by a stretch of joblessness but also exacerbated by the breakup with his longtime girlfriend.

The days slowly start to look brighter for the writer nevertheless. He unexpectedly finds love again. He eventually finds work that is meaningful. Just when he turns the corner, though, Nelson runs into another awful trot: he learns his best friend is going to die.

Those Darn Stripes captures an intimate and intense period which precedes and succeeds the death of Ty’s father. Using his bond with nature—a connection he learned from and shared with his dad—the author pictorially sets the scene of each vignette, taking his readers to meet memorable gals and gents, on foreign jaunts, to old haunts, and through moments that continue to haunt him.

Travels and Tribulations

By Tyrel Nelson

In the spring of 2020, Tyrel Nelson lost his mother. And he lost his job in the summer. Isolated by the pandemic and hamstrung by agony, he felt forgotten by the world as it marched on. Unhappy, uneasy, and unemployed, he began picking himself up by putting down his thoughts on a yellow legal pad.

Battling through his bereavement on paper proved to be cathartic. But he needed more – a writing project he could sink his grief into. So he sorted through many of the narratives he had composed over the last dozen years. Reflecting and reexamining his existence, Tyrel brainstormed what to do with the pieces which pulled at him the most. A compilation describing significant individuals, places, and moments during the past decade-plus started to take shape.

Travels and Tribulations is an emotional and chronological collection of vignettes, which commences in 2008 and concludes in 2020. While readers follow him on excursions in North, Central, and South America, they also accompany Nelson to the peaks and valleys of his personal life. Profoundly impacted by the deaths of both his parents, the author guides the audience through his anguish, depicting reminiscences and regrets as he openly tries to make sense of everything.

A Few Words about Words

By Joe Diorio

Penned by a writer who had to teach himself the rules of English grammar, A Few Words About Words offers an accessible approach to understanding the English language. In a world dominated by countless media outlets, written communication is king. Writing “your” when you mean “you’re” and “there” when you mean “they’re” can make the difference between getting or not getting new business. A missing comma can result in a PR catastrophe, and a well-written line can be remembered for generations. And yet, many native speakers struggle with the English language. Spawned from the widely-circulated and beloved newsletter of the same name, Joe Diorio’s A Few Words About Words blends quick-witted anecdotes from more than 30 years of newsletter entries that highlight the common, uncommon, and surprising grammar mistakes most English speakers make. For anyone who has ever wondered whether “also” should follow or precede the verb; if there’s a difference between ‘preventive’ or ‘preventative’; or whether the Oxford comma is as important as everyone says it is, this book provides relief for many common grammar anxieties. Humorous, enlightening, and completely comprehensible, A Few Words About Words will be the go-to grammar guide you pick up and can’t put down.

The Dark Descent

By Kimki Kita

An aspiring university student whose only wish is to be normal is forced to cope with debilitating anxiety and depression. After the loss of her grandmother, Kokoro will face the biggest challenge of her life: psychosis.

Based on true events, this autofiction will spiral you down the path of a mentally ill twenty-year-old in Southern Ontario, Canada, who has to fight for her sanity.

When I Got Drunk with My Mother: Poems about Growing Up Southern

By Shelley Townsend-Hudson

The poet behind these powerful, nostalgic poems grew up in a house at the foot of Hibriten Mountain in North Carolina. These richly sensual and accessible poems display the awesome and sometimes fearful beauty of life in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1950s and ‘60s, as the author tackles such topics as nature, family, God, the polio epidemic, race relations, friends, aging parents, and the kind of villains and saints who can only be found in small-town America. This is a far cry from from Andy of Mayberry, but it is as true to the bone as poetry gets.

Jack the Giant Killer: Southern Retellings of the World’s Oldest Stories

By Robert Hudson

Everyone is familiar with Jack and the Beanstalk—well, this rollicking collection presents twelve all-new stories about Jack the giant killer. The stories are adapted from the great trickster and hero tales of ancient literature—from Sumer, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Rome, Chine, Japan, and elsewhere—and retells them as Southern “neofolktales” in which the ever-unconquerable Jack prevails over bullies, demons, ghosts, and, of course, giants. This sometimes suspenseful. sometimes hilarious, and always entertaining book is a tribute to the Jack Tales by classic American folklorist Richard Chase. The appendix includes a bibliography, a biography of Richard Chase, a scholarly afterword explaining the history of Jack tales in English, and annotations to each of the stories.

Book Endings

By Syntell Smith

Robin Walker is not used to the quiet life. As a library clerk at the 58th Street Library in Manhattan, the disruptions come from office politics. But when Robin’s grandfather, Jon Walker, is found collapsed on Robin’s living room floor, Robin must brace himself for the worst. As he reaches out to family members, he holds onto slim hope that his grandfather will somehow come through.

Robin tries to find solace in his co-workers. But when his supervisor Sonyai Yi is locked in a private battle with head librarian Augustus Chavez, loyalties are tested. He’ll soon realize its not easy knowing who to trust, especially when his job could be on the line. As the days grow long and his grandfather’s time dwindles, Robin is suddenly energized when he dates Shinju, a beautiful Asian woman he saw months ago. When this motley crew of characters finally comes together, a sudden departure leaves the library in a different place.

In this thoughtful sequel, life is what you make of it. Like books borrowed from the library of the universe, we’re only here until we must be returned to the earth… because our time is borrowed.

Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner

By Gerald Everett Jones

A lonely widower from Los Angeles buys a tour package to East Africa on the promise of hookups and parties. What he finds instead are new reasons to live.

Aldo Barbieri, a slick Italian tour operator, convinces Harry to join a group of adventuresome “voluntourists.” In a resort town on the Indian Ocean, Harry doesn’t find the promised excitement with local ladies. But in the supermarket he meets Esther Mwemba, a demure widow who works as a bookkeeper. The attraction is strong and mutual, but Harry gets worried when he finds out that Esther and Aldo have a history. They introduce him to Victor Skebelsky, rumored to be the meanest man in town. Skebelsky has a plan to convert his grand colonial home and residential compound into a rehab center – as a tax dodge. The scheme calls for Harry to head up the charity. He could live like a wealthy diplomat and it won’t cost him a shilling!

Harry has to come to terms with questions at the heart of his character: Is corruption a fact of life everywhere? Is all love transactional?

Surviving Chaos, How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar

By Harold Phifer

For more than fifty years, Harold Phifer’s childhood living conditions remained a secret, even from those who thought they knew him best. No one knew about his past growing up with a mother who suffered from mental illness; a greedy aunt; a mindless and spoiled older brother; an absent father.

It wasn’t until an explosion in Afghanistan that his memory was blasted back into focus. This book is the result of a long, cathartic chat witha stranger at a beach bar, where Harold finally found some peace.

A Mistake Incomplete

By Lorenzo Petruzziello

A neo-noir caper set in modern-day Milan.

An incompetent thief makes another attempt at burglary. A hopeless bartender struggles to manage her last patron. The pair reluctantly work together to figure out why a man they presumed dead may have returned, while a lonely tourist inadvertently gets in the way.

First Course

By Jenn Bouchard

When four life-altering catastrophes hit in just one day—including the loss of her parents in a tragic plane crash—twenty-four-year-old Janie Whitman retreats to her family’s summer house in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Here she tries to provide stability for her older sister Alyssa and two young nieces by cooking them amazing food. Through a mix-up with the alumni office at her parents’ alma mater, Janie meets a young high school guidance counselor named Rocky at a volunteer event, and their fast-tracked romance helps Janie to see possibilities beyond the life she had known just a few weeks prior. But with her ex-boyfriend (and former boss) making overtures beyond her wildest dreams, as well as Alyssa’s estranged husband willing to do whatever it takes to win her back, the Whitman sisters are faced with big decisions. Despite the obstacles in their way, when Janie and Alyssa are tasked with establishing a lasting memorial for their parents, they just might find the second acts they are seeking.

Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel

By Alice McVeigh

Sixteen-year-old Susan Smithson – pretty but poor, clever but capricious – has just been expelled from a school for young ladies in London.

At the mansion of the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she attracts a raffish young nobleman. But, at the first hint of scandal, her guardian dispatches her to her uncle Collins’ rectory in Kent, where her sensible cousin Alicia lives and “where nothing ever happens.”

Here Susan mischievously inspires the local squire to put on a play, with consequences no one could possibly have foreseen. What with the unexpected arrival of Frank Churchill, Alicia’s falling in love and a tumultuous elopement, rural Kent will surely never seem safe again…

Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel brilliantly captures Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as a young lady.

The Parables of Sunlight

By Margaret Dulaney

Creative nonfiction.

A memoir of a neglected farm, an abandoned and injured horse, and the prevailing resilience of hope.

Written by the principal writer and spoken word artist Margaret Dulaney of Listen Well. A spoken word website exploring open faith ideas through story and metaphor.

Camille

By William Graney

In the year 2076, the members of a secret society fulfilled a sacred mandate when they departed the earthly realm. One person, Camille Lyons, stayed behind to pave the way for the next incarnation of the society. Camille was a search and rescue officer in the Coast Guard, a wilderness guide, and she is a staunch defender of the small town of Mountaintop.

Now in her fifties, Camille has been waiting for signs that the new society will emerge as she protects her town from marauding zealots. The first indication that the secret society (La Soci.t. de la Fronti.re Ouverte) may be reforming occurs when Camille has an encounter with Simone, a woman with genetic links to previous society members. When former residents with societal connections return to Mountaintop, Camille tries to put the puzzle pieces together as she wonders, why now?

The novel follows Camille’s growth as she tries to distance herself from a troubled past and find a new love interest in an environment of extreme paranoia. In addition to the challenges in her personal life, Camille must also introduce the new society members to ancient legends, a mystical crystal cave, and present them with an awareness of alternate realms. Her ultimate goal is to witness the return of democracy and the end of wide-spread hatred and violence.

Watkins Glen

By Eleanor Lerman

In Watkins Glen, Susan, a woman in her sixties, finds herself caring for her estranged older brother (Mark) who has Alzheimer’s. After a life spent in New York City, Susan has moved upstate to Watkins Glen where she takes her brother to live—temporarily, she thinks. In the throes of his illness, Mark has developed Acquired Artist Syndrome, a rare but not unheard of symptom of dementia whereby people who have never picked up a paintbrush suddenly become obsessed with the art. In Watkins Glen, Mark also becomes possessed by the idea that there is a Loch-Ness like monster living in nearby Seneca lake and he begins painting the creature. When a stormy season brings mudslides and floods to the region, Mark becomes fearful that dredgers brought in to clear the lake after the deluge are a danger to the lake monster, and he wanders the shoreline looking for the lost and possibly injured creature that his sister knows does not exist. Later, when Mark, beset by the increasing confusion brought on by his illness, walks off with a little girl that he mistakes for his sister when she was a child, there is a real possibility that Susan won’t be able to save him from the consequences of this otherwise harmless outing into the past. What she decides to do mirrors the decisions that many people have to make as they get older: give up, give in, or use the strength of love, memory and imagination to find a way to carry on.

Defying the Ghosts

By Joan Marie Verba

Thrown out of the house by her mother on her eighteenth birthday, Charlene Griffin needs a place to live. Her attempts to find housing fail time after time until she learns of a haunted house. The owner has agreed to give the house away to anyone who can stay in the house overnight. Many have tried and failed, claiming the house has homicidal ghosts who tried to kill them.

Nonetheless, as Charlene becomes more and more desperate for somewhere to stay, she goes to the owner and arranges to stay overnight. Even though Charlene thinks she’s prepared, she finds that the ghosts are determined to get rid of her by any means necessary. Equally determined to stay, Charlene finds she’s in the fight of her life to last until dawn.

Light of Ganymede

By Peter C. Greene

Jee thinks she’s a normal 1950’s teenager until her strange uncle proves that she’s not even human. At the age of seventeen, he takes her to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the world of her birth. There, Jee is welcomed as the “Glasśigh”—a princess-like figure, the first and only direct descendant of her nation’s two founding families. She plunges into a life of world-wide celebrity, excessive privilege, complete adoration, and unlimited wealth. In this alien but stunningly beautiful world, her every whim is gratified with dizzying speed. What more could anyone want?

But affluence and entitlement can’t silence the tiny voice of doubt growing in Jee’s heart. The wealth that makes her new life so splendid has been torn from the downtrodden castes beneath her. From her comfortable seat atop the social pyramid, Jee becomes aware of the people being crushed beneath the weight of appalling injustice, discrimination, and oppression.

Now, she must make a choice: accept the costs of her pampered birthright, or risk her life by using her position to ignite a revolution aimed at destroying a powerful thousand-year regime of cruelty and despair.

Sparrows and Dust

By Zilka Joseph

Is this the bird way? Where is home? What is the fate of wanderers? Have we all been “elsewhere”? Will truths be revealed to us in the end?

In this finely tuned chapbook, the poet uses free verse and form to sing her stories, her history, her geography, her experience as an immigrant who finds rest after loss and upheaval with imagination and passion. With deft use of imagery, language and the senses, she travels and shape-shifts. She weaves in science, mysticism, imagination and myth. We fly from India to Michigan and back, from this world to other in-between states where memory, death, loss, the present, the search for home and the self all sing through several voices, and become a miniature symphony.

As Attar tells us through his bird characters in his allegorical rendering of Sufism— “the way is long” so we must persevere to find the truth. We are but “water mixed with dust”. The bird-soul can only rest briefly, then it must move on.

A Heart Full of Whiskey

By Raquel J. Lesser

She’s all alone; lost. She drinks her problems away. She hides herself with makeup. Hanging out with friends she would never hangout before. Going to clubs and getting lost in the music and hooking up with strangers. She’s a girl she never thought she would become.

She fell apart and It’s all because of Vince. Before Vince she was a straight A student. She was a dreamer but now what is she? She reminisces the past searching for hope. She’s losing her mind all because she is keeping one little secret; hidden and it all has to do with Vince.

So what is that secret she is hiding and can she get herself back together?

Briarwood Girls

By Mariel Gates

Aubrey’s life has unraveled. She is about to enter a women’s rehab facility for the first time in an attempt to put the pieces back together. Aubrey is prepared for the mantras and platitudes she has heard about in twelve step programs but she is not prepared for the women she’ll encounter and the truth about her own addiction.

Addiction is a lonely disease. It makes us lie to ourselves. Can she face the person she has become? Are rehab facilities really what we think they are?

Faron Goss

By Diane Lechleitner

When the body of Alison Goss washes up on Menhaden Island, in the Gulf of Maine, the working-class fishing community of hard-hewn ways and salty perspectives is faced with handling the future of her unusual son, Faron. They soon discover how different he is, in strange but endearing ways, including his fascination with moths and his stunning artistic talent.

Bound together by weather and sea, Menhaden neighbors with good hearts and blunt opinions overlook Faron’s peculiarities. But their nurturing embrace cannot completely erase his troubled past, which eventually morphs into a life-changing event and forces him to confront lingering memories.

Faron faces that which haunts him, works as a sternman on a lobster boat, and paints in his studio. When he meets a bird-watching woman who has returned to Menhaden to live in her grandparents’ house, his life takes another unexpected turn.

Through the Waves a Steady Path

By Patrick Garry

Reilly has nowhere to go. Her mother is selling the house, her ex-boyfriend is painting her father’s condo, and she has been expelled from high school, just weeks before graduation. In a moment of desperation, she remembers a goodbye letter left on her bedroom dresser five years ago by her father’s girlfriend at the time, Elaine Connor. So Reilly drives into the city and knocks on the door of Elaine’s house.

Elaine has tried to change her life since her time with Reilly’s father. Back then, Elaine was a detective in the Minneapolis Police Department and living a lifestyle barely different from those of the criminals she arrested, hitting bottom when her son died in an accident. In an effort to reform her life, or maybe as an act of penance, Elaine quit the police force and moved back to the neighborhood of her youth, two houses down from her contentious mother. She now works in the campus security office of a large university.

Grim Honey

By Jessica Barksdale

In the poetry collection Grim Honey, the poet’s past comes alive like a Faulknerian ghost as Barksdale grapples and attempts reconciliation with time’s wounds. But through this sifting of hard memories, there are undercurrents of pure joy at being able to witness experience in all its blood and grit, the broken as well as the whole. It is this love of the world in all its gory realness that illuminates the apt title of the collection. Though we may not invite the grim realities of the world, we can find soothing in their sweetness. Grim Honey is an indispensable book. If we can take any honey from these past two grim years, it is that we have been given a necessary space to uncover our own life’s movements through time. Through Barksdale’s own recollections and reckonings, we are prompted to examine our own lives, sans blindfold. If there is a lesson in this collection, it is that we can hold each experience dear. This book reminds us that what is bitter is sweet, and only when we acknowledge and hold space for our blunders and impasses can we move forward.

Although alarmed by Reilly’s sudden appearance, Elaine takes her in, just as she did Owen and Nathan – two ex-cons living across the street in a partially renovated house Elaine bought specifically for that purpose.

Vicarious

By Rhett C. Bruno

In High Earth, entertainment is everything. Virtual worlds, hyper-realistic simulations, endless streamable content—there’s something for everybody. You don’t ever have to leave your home.

For Asher Reinhart, nothing compares to Ignis: Live, a reality show that pushes human beings to their very extremes. As a volunteer director, he closely monitors the lives of those living on an Interstellar Ark who falsely believe they’re the last of humanity out searching for a new Earth.

Mission is the show’s brightest young star. Born in hiding, her intelligence and near-perfect genetics have allowed her to rise up the ranks faster than any before her. But now that it’s her turn to provide for the Ark, everything changes…

With Mission’s life placed in danger in order to boost ratings, Asher must choose between protecting the show he’s dedicated his life to, or the woman who has been the focus of his attention since the day he was born.

Chosen to Fall

By Emmie Hamilton

Faria Agostonna, heir to the Queendom of Anestra, is tired of hearing about the Fates. That she must follow her Destiny. That it is already Chosen for her. Knowing she needs to be lifebonded in an archaic Elven ceremony makes it even worse. But when a darkness invades her land and threatens her people’s existence, Faria must figure out what sacrifices will need to be made and how far she will have to go to choose what is right for her people, even if it means ignoring the needs of her heart.

Nellie, a teenaged shapeshifter banished from Earth, spent years living in Anestra disguised as a human. After whisperings of a Warlock rebellion begin to surface, Nellie is recruited by Queen Amira to do whatever it takes to protect Faria – no matter the cost. Grappling with the risk of revealing her true nature, Nellie must come to terms with the depths she will travel to prevent the Final Battle and whether she has what it takes to protect her best friend, even if it means revealing the truth of her deception.

Spurred by their rebellious nature, both girls discover the truth of a lost prophecy, face the betrayal of those closest to them, and discover how many pieces of themselves they are willing to surrender to the dark magic that calls to them to save not only their home, but all connected to it.

Why Can’t Somebody Just Die Around Here?: A Story of War, Deprivation, Courage, Perseverance, and Triumph

By Gerhard Maroscher

A true story of a Romanian family’s miraculous survival of WWII, becoming refugees, fleeing their homeland, starving after the war, and coming to the USA to live the American Dream.

Life was full of promise for the young Maroscher family. Gustav was a teacher; Helene was busy rearing two boys and managing their small farm. WWII changed everything. While Gustav fought the Russians on the Eastern Front, Helene fled the advancing army to her sister’s house in Germany. To reunite the family, Helene and her sons made a dangerous nighttime border crossing from communist East Germany to the West. After being reunited in West Germany they faced discrimination and hunger.

The family immigrated to the USA and embraced the freedoms and opportunities of America. Gustav became an engineer working on the Moon Shot. Helene became an independent businesswoman.

Whisper

By Tracy Bilen

After her friend Samantha is murdered, seventeen-year-old Olivia is the only one who still hears her voice.

Years ago, Jacob closed his eyes. In a park. Playing hide-and-seek. His little brother is still missing. And Jacob’s mom is the FBI agent who couldn’t find him.

Now Jacob has dreams he can’t explain. And draws faces of those about to die. In a town terrorized by a serial killer, Jacob meets Olivia. Sparks ignite.

Until the voice in Olivia’s head echoes the warning in Jacob’s dream…

You’re next.

Slip on through Cielo Drive

DENNIS WILSON is about to make the biggest mistake of his life!

Forty-Two year old history teacher KEN CLAYBOURNE has the chance to change history. He has slipped back to 1960s Los Angeles and meets The Beach Boys drummer and devises that it is his mission to save him. With the help of two of his top former students KASS and DARBY, they are out to stop Dennis innocently from picking up two hitchhikers. They fail, and now Dennis has fallen under the hypnotic spell of CHARLES MANSON. A gruesome course of history has been set which will end with the TATE-LABIANCA murders. Ken, Kass and Darby must regroup to stop Manson and his FAMILY, no matter the sacrifice. Throughout this time, we follow the group as they ‘slip’ back and develop their plan. The story proceeds through the next twelve months on specific dates where different takes happen on real life events.

The story takes a turn after the events of AUGUST 9th, 1969 where the group save the initial intended victims. However, they unwittingly become targets themselves. Ken, Kass and Darby enroll the help of the BLACK PANTHERS to set up a final showdown with the Family.

A River for Gemma

By Debra Whiting Alexander

Miracles abound in Sugar Creek, a smalltown nestled near the horse trails and hazelnut orchards of Oregon’s lush countryside. It is here, where twenty-six-year old Gemma Porter lives a vibrant life chasing her dreams.

But Gemma is underestimated by a world that pigeonholes her as “intellectually disabled.” While the naysayers and bullies only see Gemma’s limitations, her beloved grandmother sees the heart of a genius–and a soul of divination. When Gemma’s longing to be a mother collides with her grandmother’s hidden past, three generations of Porter women are put in peril.

A harrowing adventure unfolds into a heroic quest to save their lives. As Gemma’s bravery is tested, she will need to prove that regardless of age or intellect, a mother’s love knows no bounds.

Living Dolls and Other Women

By S. Montana Katz

In our era of #MeToo and fresh attempts to break the gender biased holds on our culture, a portrait of gender bias in the art world offers a microcosm of the pervasive challenges to achieving equality. Living Dolls and Other Women provides a fictionalized account of that world set against the pervasive sexual harassment in every corner of urban daily life. Set in the late 1980s, with New York City in the middle of a real estate crash, Living Dolls and Other Women chronicles the lives of five urban women as well as an activist organization comprised of women in the art world, the Living Dolls.

Living Dolls and Other Women is an urban drama, chock full of action: crime, mystery, culture, and romance. The book takes on the contemporary issues of sexual harassment and discrimination, artistic merit, feminism, family values, and sexual preference. It delves into the main characters’ lives and traces dramatic and personal transformations of each. The comical yet dead serious antics of the Living Dolls thread through the novel as the backbone of the book.

Zelda Blair

By Jane Foster

The story of Zelda Blair explores the denial a victim of domestic abuse goes through before finally breaking away.

Zelda is the youngest of eight children. Her mother is an American Literature professor, her father the NY police commissioner. We meet her as the mother of four young children, living in San Francisco. Her husband Nick Blair is a rising star in the financial industry. Through her mother, Zelda meets a Stanford English professor who befriends her and plays a big role in waking her up to the danger her husband poses for her and her children.

Although Zelda is trapped in an abusive marriage, she navigates through a life in which appearances are everything. For a period, she thinks her close friend Brooke is having an affair with Nick. Fortunately, she does not confront her and finds that the real problem is a financial scandal involving Nick.

Zelda returns to her parent’s house with her children. She finds it hard to admit to her feelings of shame, confusion and intimidation. We see her struggle with the emotional contradiction of loving a husband who attacks her physically with increasing hostility.

These Walls Between Us

By Wendy Sanford

A founding author of Our Bodies, Ourselves—a classic on women’s health and sexuality—Wendy Sanford has turned her sharp mind to her own life as a white woman in today’s world of race and class inequities.

In These Walls Between Us, Sanford tells a story, at once profoundly intimate and powerfully political, of her sixty-five year friendship with Mary Norman, whom she met as a Black domestic worker in her privileged white family when both were in their teens. Coming of age within the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Sanford becomes a feminist, a lesbian and a Quaker, and begins to face her biases around class and race. As she reckons with the impact of her white skin privilege and training in “the habits of dominance,” she learns to see Ms. Norman more fully and to become a more dependable friend.

Bugs, Weeds, and Water

By Evangeline Greene

Zoey Starling has no idea what it means to be normal. Everything she touches has a taste, and her father’s identity is a town secret.

Her sisters have issues of their own. While it’s a struggle for Celeste to connect with the world, Ruby, who has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t seem to worry about anything.

Orphaned at birth, the fourteen-year-old triplets live with their aunt in rural Leamington, Ontario, steps from Point Pelee National Park.

From their little cottage on the lake, they mark the seasons by the yearly migration of captivating birds that pass through the park. Despite an almost idyllic childhood grounded in Aunt Flory’s home-cooked food and family values, Zoey struggles to define her identity in a community where the Starling family is the subject of gossip and speculation.

But secrets run deep in the small town, and the triplets aren’t the only ones with something to hide…

By observing the people around her, Zoey discovers that the truth isn’t always straightforward and different perspectives shape the world.

On the Way to Birdland

By Frank Morelli

Self-proclaimed teenage philosopher Cordell Wheaton lives in a sleepy, southern town where nothing ever happens; not since his hero, jazz musician John Coltrane, left some seventy years earlier to “follow the sound.” Cordy’s life has been unraveling since the night his father and his brother, Travis, exploded on each other. The night Travis’s addiction transformed him from budding musician into something entirely different. The night Travis took his saxophone and disappeared.

When Cordy’s father falls ill, the sixteen-year-old vows to reunite the Wheaton family. He embarks on a modern-day odyssey with forty bucks in his pocket and a dream to find his brother and convince him to be Travis again—by taking him to a show at Birdland Jazz Club in New York City, and reminding him of the common bonds they share with their legendary hero. Cordy’s journey is soon haunted by ghostly visions, traumatic dreams, and disembodied voices that echo through his mind. He starts to wonder if the voices are those of the fates, guiding him toward his destiny—or if he’s losing his grip on reality.

Heartstrings

By Marjorie Lin Kyriopoulos

“It all began when I opened up a box of my mother’s treasures and found photographs of my Aunt Wanda, along with a newspaper clipping from October 17, 1948. “Young S.L. Matron, 23, Killed in Rifle Mishap.” I wanted to know more about my aunt. My search took me down a winding road that led to my grandmother, my mother, and myself.” —Marjorie Lin Kyriopoulos

Heartstrings is a deeply personal and compassionate memoir that chronicles the history and lives of the author’s Greek-American family in her own creative way. Based upon actual events and interviews with family members, she explores how tragic events can have a ripple effect on past, present, and future generations in surprising and unexpected ways. From stories about immigrant experiences in the early 1900s to the writer’s personal journey of growth through the tumultuous and radical changes of the 1960s up to now, this book is a reminder that the past is deeply rooted in the present. Through stories, poetry, and photographs, the author illustrates how trauma is often carried unconsciously from parent to child, and into the future. Brilliantly written, HeartStrings will send you on a path to find meaning in your own family’s stories.

The Baseball Widow

By Suzanne Kamata

When Christine, an idealistic American teacher, marries Hideki Yamada, an aspiring Japanese high school baseball coach, she believes that their love will sustain them as they deal with cultural differences. However, Hideki’s duties, and the team of fit, obedient boys whom he begins to think of as a surrogate family, take up more and more of his time, just as Christine is struggling to manage the needs of their multiply disabled daughter and their sensitive son. Things come to a head when their son is the victim of bullies. Christine begins to think that she and her children would be safer – and happier – in her native country. On a trip back to the States, she reconnects with a dangerously attractive friend from high school who, after serving and becoming wounded in Afghanistan, seems to understand her like no one else. Meanwhile, Daisuke Uchida, a slugger with pro potential who has returned to Japan after living abroad, may be able to help propel Hideki’s team to the national baseball tournament at Koshien, fulfilling Hideki’s ambitions and securing the futures of his players, some of whom come from precarious homes. Hideki must ultimately choose between his team and his family.

In the Aftermath

By Jane Ward

When David Herron—overwhelmed and despairing, his family’s business and finances in ruin due to the bursting lending bubble of 2008—takes his own life one chilly spring morning, he has no idea the ripple effect his decision will set into motion.

Two years later, his widow, Jules, is now an employee of the bakery she and David used to own—and still full of bitterness over David’s lies. Their now-teenage daughter, Rennie, resents her work-obsessed mother, and is convinced she’s to blame for her father’s death. When Denise, the former police detective who worked David’s case, catches sight of Rennie at her sons’ school, she becomes obsessed with attempting to right the wrongs she believes she perpetrated two years earlier.

And as all this unfolds in Boston, Daniel, the guiltridden young man who, in his old life as a banker, helped create the circumstances that led to David’s suicide, continues to punish himself for his sins by living half a life, never staying anywhere long enough to make friends or build something lasting.

Ultimately, each of these very different people—all of them tied together by one tragic event—must learn in their own way how to say good-bye to the past and move into a brighter future.

Soul Seeker

By Kaylin McFarren

Crighton Daemonium arrives in the peaceful town of Lochton, Illinois, searching for wicked souls to add to his count. Benjamin Poe, a devoted husband, father, and firefighter, finds himself in a battle of wills against this evil, manipulating demon, while protect his only son. Ultimately, Poe is tricked into committing murder and Crighton is rewarded with the soul he was sent to retrieve.

Following Poe’s execution, Crighton continues his dark malevolent duties, until he’s kidnapped by members of The Sovereign Sector. This group of scientists, notorious for experimenting on supernatural creatures, forces Crighton into a soulmate relationship with the very angel he was sent to capture for the king of Hell, Lucifer.

With secrets revealed, darkness rules and loyalties shift. The demonic soul-seeker soon becomes the target of Lucifer’s revenge, and his journey to redemption and freedom–or eternal enslavement– begins.

Escaping Mercy

By Sam Polakoff

150 years in the future, hundreds of millions are homeless and the sick are forced into a euthanasia program called Mercy. Global leaders fiercely debate population control versus keeping people healthy.

When world-famous marine biologist, Dex Holzman learns about Aeternum, an ancient civilization at the bottom of the Coral Sea, he discovers a secret with the power to alter the trajectory of the planet. With the help of Cam Atkinson, a civil rights attorney, Dex travels a deadly path in his attempt to solve the world’s most ominous dilemma. Along the way, he uncovers a maniacal world leader’s vengeful plot to shed population and restore the Earth to its former glory.

Ophelia’s Room

By Michael Scott Garvin

A BRUTAL MURDER HAS TAKEN PLACE. The God-fearing citizens of the sleepy midwestern town believe evil has taken root.

A young married couple, Charlie & Delia Mull, are left to pick up the shattered pieces of their broken lives following the unspeakable tragedy. Townsfolk whisper from church pews that pretty Delia Mull has brought the misfortune upon herself – a cursed family legacy. Other locals believe the horrific crime is merely another sign of a violent and godless age.

A mysterious woman has rented the house six doors down. Betty Malcomb is the new teacher at the high school. Folks are suspicious of the outsider. Why has Betty traveled to their peeling little town? What would make her stay?

Located in the middle of the remote Kansas prairie sits the state penitentiary. Imprisoned in a concrete cell, a lone madman silently awaits his opportunity to complete his unholy calling. Best-selling author Michael Scott Garvin has released this riveting, genre-bending masterpiece. Equal parts — suspenseful story-telling and an in-depth character study on loss & forgiveness.

Her Scream: Redo

By Sheryll O’Brien

College-aged women in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York are targets of a serial rapist known as REDO.

Police departments from Syracuse to Geneva join forces to find the sadist who rapes his victims, not once, but twice. Detectives Matt Cambridge and Ray Chase of the SPD Sexual Crimes division lead the charge to find the man who’s raped and roamed for years.

Cambridge takes to the road to process clues.

Chase sticks close to home and plays a hunch.

They both find threads to pull – but only one detective will live long enough to prove the identity of REDO.

Hotel Bars and the Art of Being Conscious

By August Delp

Consciousness, experience & existence, friends & lovers, alcohol, meaning, life’s journey—all the good stuff—are rolled together in this idea-driven Gen X coming-of-middle-age story.

After dropping off her only son at a Swiss boarding school, independent and self-sufficient Daisy becomes a hotel bartender in order to pursue experience and search for meaning, looking to explore life’s next stage. She befriends Coop, an advertising executive and bar patron, who is also a recent empty nester. Together, they attend a consciousness conference at which Daisy reconnects with Bianca, a neuroscientist and Daisy’s college roommate from many years prior.

The brilliant and hyper-connected Bianca, once a rising star in the neuroscience world, has semi-secretly worked on the development of mind control drugs for the last two decades. She is recruited by a billionaire software mogul to help free his niece from a Japanese cult.

In parallel storylines, Bianca battles the cult and Daisy undertakes a backpacking pilgrimage to find meaning. The intertwined plots explore the nature of consciousness and its implications for the human experience.

The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked

By David Benjamin

Through the telling of his own madcap childhood, David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of countless untamed boys who grew up in Middle America in the 1950s. Whether he’s stalking frogs through the bogs of Tomah, Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, or sneaking into the theater to watch Saturday afternoon Westerns, Benjamin is the kind of little kid who eagerly would have fallen in with the redoubtable Tom Sawyer.

His tales–including one about a truly sorry incident with Snappy, the snapping turtle, and another about a run-in with a particularly fiendish squirrel–are by turns hysterically funny, caustic, aggrieved, and movingly sincere.

Traversing the nooks and crannies of kidhood, from ballfields to swimming holes, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked captures a moment in twentieth-century American life, as Benjamin magically recalls the myriad scrapes, intrepid adventures, and wanderlust that once made childhood such an exhilarating enterprise.

The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked

By Roger W Stark

Young lovers trying be be a family, but duty called, interrupting them.

He answered. She, with child was left behind.

The war did end, but he never returned.

“They Called Him Marvin” is a history. A history of war and of family. A history of the collision of the raging politics of a global war, young love, patriotism, sacred family commitments, duty and the horrors and tragedies, the catastrophe that war is.

They Call Him Marvin

By Roger W Stark

Young lovers trying be be a family, but duty called, interrupting them.

He answered. She, with child was left behind.

The war did end, but he never returned.

“They Called Him Marvin” is a history. A history of war and of family. A history of the collision of the raging politics of a global war, young love, patriotism, sacred family commitments, duty and the horrors and tragedies, the catastrophe that war is.

Winds Across Beringia

By Benjamin H. Barnette

Nearly 15,000 years ago a daring young Mammoth Hunter named Harjo sets out on a life-changing journey across the now inundated ancient land bridge that once interconnected Alaska and Siberia called Beringia. He is bound for the land of the Sea Mammal Hunting people on the coast of the Bering Sea. There he encounters a beautiful, mysterious, servant girl named Onna; the likes that no one had ever seen before or imagined existed. She was taken captive from an unknown land far to the west across the great massive glaciers that all believed were impassable.

Together they began an incredible adventure to return to Harjo’s people and his river valley homeland within interior Beringia. The sage continues and tells the story of their life long relationship thorough many wondrous escapades, harsh desperate struggles, and intimate romance within the back drop of the lost land of Beringia—a wondrous world that was once bursting with breathing taking sights and sounds and teeming with exotic astonishing animals but equally an unforgiving perilous environment.

Harjo’s people, the Mammoth Hunters, and other prehistoric inhabitants of Beringia are destined to be the ancient ancestors of all Native peoples of North and South America.

Tripping Past Om

By Shelby Cochran

Jemma, engulfed in self-loathing from a failed romance and boredom from caring for an autistic brother, plunges herself into a dangerous relationship with a head, a proselytizer of LSD. He soon controls her through the drug and her own false perceptions. She emerges into a life of drugs, sex, and violence. The escapades she experiences, both literally and symbolically, roller coast Jemma into self-awareness. She finds that Om (blessedness) is neither out nor in but who and what she is.

Tripping Past Om sensually and lyrically pays tribute to the quest for spiritual and personal value in the postmodern world.

Union Made

By Eric Lotke

In Union Made, a fast-paced romance with a political edge, Pac-Shoppe department store employees are fighting for union representation. The novel reveals the tactics, strains, and risks of mobilizing a multiracial group of workers to stand together against a merciless management holding them down.

With a strong female lead and a gripping labor campaign that explores union organizing from the inside, Eric Lotke puts the reader in the shoes of Catherine Campbell, a labor organizer, and Nate Hawley, an accountant whose company is planning a hostile takeover of Pac-Shoppe, the company she’s trying to organize. There are sparks between the union activists and the company’s dirty tricksters, and sparks between Catherine and Nate.

As Catherine’s campaign falters in the face of Pac- Shoppe’s illegal hardball tactics, Nate’s sympathy for the workers and his fascination with Catherine grow. Can the lonely accountant interest the determined labor organizer by sharing evidence of Pac-Shoppe’s dirty tricks? How much trouble will he be in if he reveals corporate secrets to the union? Find out in this touching love story wrapped in a contemporary labor battle.

Stay Safe

By Sheryll O’Brien

Law enforcement professionals from across Upstate New York are asking themselves a terrifying question: Is a twisted psycho serial killer avenging the death of REDO the serial rapist who scarred his victims and his community for decades? Tragically, the answer is yes.

Investigative teams: Kelly and Sanchez, Ridley and Delgado, and Vela and Plank need to find out how the two men are connected – and the only way they can accomplish that is to pull a lot of Twisted Threads.

Gone Before Glory

By Stephen G. Yanoff

Award-winning historian Stephen G. Yanoff illuminates William McKinley’s remarkable life and tragic death in this highly acclaimed work, as the small-town lawyer and Civil War officer rises from obscurity to reach the highest office in the land. GONE BEFORE GLORY brilliantly charts the turbulent beginning of the twentieth century, and the anarchist activity which led to President McKinley’s assassination. Though the story of the McKinley administration has been told many times, this is the rare version that conveys the true motivations of the participants and reveals the interconnected paths that led to the tragic death of the 25th President of the United States.

A spellbinding tale of immense importance for those who enjoy American history. Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written by a born storyteller. — Renegade Reviews

Expedition to Mystery Mountain

By Susanna Oreskovic

What’s it like to be an intrepid explorer . . . and a woman? Expedition to Mystery Mountain is a come-along adventure of a city-dwelling woman who, with five fellow climbers, re-enacts the 1926 exploits of fearless trailblazers and pioneering Canadian mountaineers Don and Phyllis Munday.

The team’s ambitious mission: to recreate the Mundays’ route to Mount Waddington, the highest peak of British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, outfitted with vintage hobnail boots, fifty-pound wood-frame packs, and only antique ice axes for safety. Is the one woman in the crew prepared to endure the hordes of mosquitoes, the grizzly bears, the thickets of devil’s club, and the other dangers on the List of Doom?

The way forward is uncertain. Fear is not. Her mantra: “Just keep going.” To push on, she’ll need to find inspiration in Phyllis Munday, a badass woman of courage, good humour, and old-fashioned grit. She’ll have to come to terms with her fear of not being good enough—even when the path ahead is only more arduous. She’ll be unstoppable if she can trust herself in the face of uncertainty and unleash her inner wild woman.

Dear Heroin: A Memoir of Goodbyes

By Linda Morrison

Dear Heroin: A Memoir of Goodbyes is a powerful book that tells the story of Linda, her son, and the fight to save him from his heroin addiction. Linda walks with her son through his darkness and her own, with nights filled with fear as he relapses time and time again. When he dies by suicide, one horrific journey ends and a new one begins: an unending journey of loss whose pain has no words. A journey no mother ever plans to undertake.

But with the support of God, family, and friends, Linda finds something she desperately needs: hope. Within that hope, she finds the strength to persevere and discovers a vibrant richness she didn’t possess before. Linda becomes a beacon of light for others, especially parents walking this same path.

Dear Heroin is an inspirational tale of life, death, and finding new life again.