Rise to Power

rise-to-powerDuring his last days David reflects on his life. For the first time ever he feels an urge to tell his own version, which is different than the official version written by the court historians. This is his opportunity to tell it all candidly.

Rise to Power is the first volume of the trilogy The David Chronicles.

Angels

angelsAngels presents a new genre, an illustrated short story for adults. Set in inner city Detroit, this is a tale of a family beset by the traumas of drug addiction, adultery, prison, violence as well as the joys of sexuality, love and, especially, children. The mother, desperate when he husband is sent to prison, becomes a stripper to support her two daughters, her angels. 
Both the story and the collage illustrations are done by Ann Pearlman. The images of both eroticism and violence are tasteful.

While writing, Ann sees scenes playing out in her mind’s eye. Combining pictures with the narrative was her way to share some of her images while words flowed. This is the first in a series of storybooks that contain the thrill of illustrations we loved in books as kids with narratives slated for adults.

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The Angel’s Covenant

The-Angels-CovenantChosen as the Keeper of Humanity I guide dying, and lost spirits home. In the quiet moments, I hear the whispered question, “Are you Shadow or are you Light?” Once I thought I knew the answer to that question. Now as I sit watching over this six-year-old girl, keeping the demons at bay, I wonder will I ever know the answer. 

As children, they teach us to lift up our shields of faith, that fear and worry gives the demons an opening. How do I do that when my shield is so heavy with the blood of those I left behind? They say my thoughts must solely rest in the Maker. The demons thrive on terror and pain; I have seen that first hand with the massacre of my family. The screams of the dead haunt me still. 

The tinkling of wind chimes fills the air, distracting Elina from her thoughts. It is never the same, the moment before death, and this is no exception. A soft glow begins to seep into the room and Elina smiles as she feels the velvety brush of the Angels wings as they pass. 

The Shadows come, drawn by the light of the child’s pure spirit. Elina stands becoming the warrior she was born to be. Her eyes meet his, her guardian and trainer the Archangel Malach. He never understood why his brothers chose to fall and break the Covenant, until he looked into her blue eyes. Trouble is brewing amongst the Angels. Some feel humanity is the problem, but he knows the truth. Elina is the only hope they have against the Dark angel, fore he is building an army bent on ruling Heaven and Earth.

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Rebel With A Gun

rebel-with-a-gunHe was fifteen when the Civil War started, nineteen when it ended. His parents were dead by then, their farm sold for the taxes. The girl he loved had married a boy he hated. Nothing seemed right.

So he headed for Texas with a disreputable old snake oil peddler and a beautiful blonde with a jealous husband and a dangerous secret that could get them all killed. 

Even though he had ridden with Quantrill and Bloody Bill, he was not like the others. Many of them were not the only bushwhackers who flourished during the war. Men just like them had waved the Union flag and used it to cloak their crimes, and now that the fighting was over not all of them would be content to lay down their arms and return to their former pursuits. Some, like their southern counterparts, would become outlaws. Many on both sides had never been anything else, and for them the war had just been a continuation of a life of lawlessness and violence. Now they would use the unsettled conditions in the wake of the war to camouflage their activities.

Of course, many would go west, especially to Texas. For years men had been going to Texas who were wanted or not wanted in other states. There was a well-known saying— “Gone to Texas.” It usually applied to men who had gone there a jump ahead of the law. 

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Phases: Mind of a Minor

phasesLife is a series of phases, you are born a child and then you grow out of it. Everyone goes through the same phases, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, senior citizen, and then death. What if you took those same phases and made them relevant to your life, your experiences, what would they be called? Well, for Olivia, it’s Easy Street, Sex, Maturity, and Relaxation. Olivia Denise Adams is at a stand still, desperately trying to decide how to approach the next phase in her life. She takes the time to reflect on her past phases and how they have affected her and her attitude towards men, sex, marriage, and her career. Follow Olivia as she drifts through her phases from the mind of her minor self!

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Seduced by Innocence

seduced-by-innocenceSecrets, deceit, betrayal. Paranormal powers that can give life as well as kill it. A timeless romance that will survive even the fires of Hell. The story of Rose and Derek is one that will keep you on the edge of your seat and make you believe in the enduring power of true love, even against all odds.

Forbidden Passions.
Deadly secrets.
A love that will stand against it all.

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Ill Wind

ill-windGabriella Berryngton is an unhappy and oppressed fourteen-year-old girl living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1683. She dreams of escaping her bitter, ambitious stepfather and sailing off into the unknown. 

Her dreams come true when her stepfather sells her into marriage. 

Aboard the Freyja, she is hopeful that her new life in the Dutch West Indies will be an improvement – a hope that dies when she is given a slave, Klara, and a whip. She discovers that her soon-to-be father-in-law is a ruthless slave trader in league with pirates, and her fiancé is cold, unfriendly and disinterested in Gabriella. She is little more than a vessel to provide the next generation of van Eckens. 

Largely ignored and desperately unhappy, she and Klara develop a friendship which makes life bearable – at first. Once married, Gabriella’s life takes a turn for the worse and she descends into a world of horror and abuse until tensions finally explode. Life will never be the same and she has no choice but to take fate into her own hands.

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To Catch a Salaryman

to-catch-a-salary-manMr. Yamamoto hates his job. He is a middle-aged Japanese salaryman who works for Hello Kitty. He particularly hates the fact that people get to come into his office and pitch him ideas for new Hello Kitty products. So, he finds other ways to amuse himself. When he’s not looking at porn on his computer, he’s making inappropriate advances towards his scatterbrained secretary. However, things begin to spin out of control when he meets a much younger girl and follows her all the way to the beach.

What emerges is an irresistibly ironic story of desire, deceit, and deception, a perversely magical romance set in the world of Hello Kitty and exotic Japan.

Vivien: A Modern Gothic Fairy Tale

vivienArrogant war hero, Captain William Thorpe crashes his car in the remote Scottish Highlands. He is rescued and taken to the mysterious and secluded Dungarvan Castle. When he recovers consciousness, he looks up at a sea of faces and sees the beautiful woman he is told is his wife. His desire for Vivien is only matched by his horror as he slowly realizes she is the voracious thing that haunts him and that he must defeat.

Set in 1925 in a romantic Scottish castle troubled by a Bean Shìth, taking the form of a beautiful dark haired woman. The story is reminiscent of Daphne De Maurier’s Rebecca and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla: an atmospheric setting with lots of mood, a dash of lust, a smidgeon of murder and a bunch of supernatural visitation.

Seduced by Innocence

seduced-by-innocenceForbidden Passions.
Deadly secrets.
A love that will stand against it all.

All my life I’ve been told that I will kill my first love. That the dark power I harbor within myself will destroy him.

Just like it’s destroyed others.

Witches take an oath to do no harm, but I broke that oath even as a child, and so I hide within the invisible walls of my strange coven, keeping everyone at a distance.

Until I meet Derek.

His magnetism draws me in even as I know I should run. But I can’t run, because I need him to teach me how to defend myself and others, so I don’t fall victim to the shifters out to terrorize my coven.

He can’t know my secret, and I can’t give in to the other need that’s growing between us, the one that heats me from within whenever we’re together.

But flesh is weaker than intention, and neither of us can fight the fates. If only we’d known the truth before taking that first bite of forbidden fruit.

Now it’s too late.

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The Belief in Angels

the-belief-in-angelsJules Finn and Szaja Trautman know that sorrow can sink deeply—so deeply it can drown the soul.

Growing up in her parents’ crazy hippie household on a tiny island off the coast of Boston, Jules’s imaginative sense of humor is the weapon she wields as a defense against the chaos of her family’s household. Somewhere between routine discipline with horsewhips, gun-waving gambling debt collectors, and LSD-laced breakfast cereal adventures, tragedy strikes with the death of her younger brother.

Jules’s story alternates with that of her grandfather, Szaja, an orthodox Jew who survives the murderous Ukranian pogroms of the 1920s, the Majdanek death camp, and the torpedoing of the Mefkura, a ship carrying refugees to Palestine. Unable to deal with the horrors he endures at the camp, Szaja develops a dissociative disorder and takes on the persona of a dead soldier from a burial ditch, using that man’s thoughts to devise a plan to escape to America.

While Szaja’s and Jules’s sorrows are different on the surface, adversity requires them both to find the will to live despite the suffering in their lives—and both encounter, in their darkest moments, what could be explained as serendipity or divine intervention. For Jules and Szaja, these experiences offer the hope the need in order to come to the rescue of their own fractured lives.

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Death in Black Holsters

death-in-black-holstersThey said Lorn Chambers packed death in his black holsters. But Chambers was a relic from the past, the last of the great gunfighters. All the others were dead or had hung up their guns, trying to change with the times. Chambers turned his back on the future and rode off into the western wasteland, looking for what was left of the past. What he found was some vicious killers from his own past. They had robbed and murdered his parents years before and planned to kill Chambers before he could kill them. 

Warning: Reading a Van Holt western may make you want to get on a horse and hunt some bad guys down in the Old West. Of course, the easiest and most enjoyable way to do it is vicariously—by reading another Van Holt western. 
Van Holt writes westerns the way they were meant to be written. 

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Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure

mrs-tuesdays-departureSECOND EDITION – FULLY REVISED AND EDITED!

A heart-wrenching historical novel spanning seventy years, two continents, and a an imagined story that holds the power to create a safe future for a young girl. This page-turning family saga soars to a breathtaking ending that redefines the meaning of love. 

When Natalie and Anna, sisters and life-long rivals, hide an abandoned child from the Nazis, their struggle re-opens a star-crossed love triangle, threatening their safety and testing the bonds of their loyalty. 

Hungary’s fragile alliance with Germany insured that Natalie, a best selling children’s book author, and her family would be safe as World War Two raged through Europe. The Holocaust that has only been whispered about until now becomes a terrible reality for every Jewish family or those who hide Jews. 

Beautiful but troubled Anna, a poet and university professor is losing her tenuous hold on reality, re-igniting a dangerous sibling rivalry that began in childhood. 

The streets of Budapest echo with the pounding boots of Nazi soldiers. Danger creeps to the doorstep where the sisters’ disintegrating relationship threatens to expose the child they are trying to protect. In one night, Anna’s rash behavior destroys their carefully made plans of escape, and Natalie is presented with a desperate choice. 

Interwoven with Natalie and Anna’s story, is Mila’s. The abandoned child whose future Natalie lovingly imagines in a story about an old woman named Mrs. Tuesday. 

Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure is an inspirational historical novel spanning two generations and exploring the un-breakable bonds of sisters.

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The Long Trail

the-long-trailThe long trail means death in the Old West. But it’s a long and dangerous trail that Ben Russell must follow in his search for the men who murdered his father. Then it’s that other long trail for the killers when they go down before his blazing gun—the long trail to hell. 
Van Holt’s hellbound gunslingers always send the bad guys where they belong. It just isn’t safe for them anywhere in the Old West anymore. 

Of course, the gunsters and punksters of our own time will feel a lot safer when the government disarms their victims and those who might be able to protect them if they weren’t afraid they would get in more trouble than the perpetrators. 

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Double Click

Double-ClickFans of the romantic hit Click: An Online Love Story will enjoy another voyeuristic dive into the lives of Renee, Shelley, Ashley, Mark and Ethan, as Double Click picks up with their lives six months later. Are Renee and Ethan soul mates? Does Mark ever go on a date? Has Shelley run out of sexual conquests in Los Angeles? Will Ashley’s judgmental nature sabotage her budding relationship?

Through a marriage proposal, wedding, new baby and unexpected love twist, Double Click answers these questions and more. Readers will continue to cheer, laugh, cry and cringe following the email exploits of Renee and friends.

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Click: An Online Love Story

ClickFast approaching her 30th birthday and finding herself not married, not dating, and without even a prospect or a house full of cats, Renee Greene, the heroine of Click: An Online Love Story, reluctantly joins her best guy pal on a journey to find love online in Los Angeles.

The story unfolds through a series of emails between Renee and her best friends (anal-compulsive Mark, the overly-judgmental Ashley and the over-sexed Shelley) as well as the gentlemen suitors she meets online. From the guy who starts every story with “My buddies and I were out drinking one night,” to the egotistical “B” celebrity looking for someone to stroke his ego, Renee endures her share of hilarious and heinous cyber dates. Fraught with BCC’s, FWD’s and inadvertent Reply to All’s, readers will root for Renee to “click” with the right man.

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I’m here to help

Im-here-to-helpIt had all seemed so right at the time, Sharon realized with a shudder. 

Long ago she had made a collection of tiny and innocent decisions that had precipitated a most profound and unpredictable outcome. 

Minutes ago her seventeen-year-old daughter, Renita had stumbled upon the subtle inconsistencies of her birth while completing some college applications. Now she waited reproachfully for Sharon to explain the discrepancies. 

It was clearly the time, Sharon brooded uneasily, when she would have to finally disclose to her daughter both the laudable good deeds and the lamentable oversights that had led them to the current situation. 

S F Chapman has cleverly crafted I’m here to help as a social commentary in the form of an often poignant literary novella.

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314

314WARNING: This book contains graphic content that may be objectionable to some readers. 

Alma Harper has been trying to forget what happened in Widowsfield 16 years ago. She has a good life as a music teacher now, and might rekindle her relationship with her one true love. However, the number 314 haunts her, and threatens to bring her back to the day that her brother disappeared. When a reporter shows up, just days before March 14th, Alma realizes that her past is coming back to haunt her. What happened on March 14th, at 3:14, 16 years ago? No one but The Skeleton Man can remember.

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Take Me Home

Take-Me-HomeWhen Josie Wolcott finds herself with an empty nest and another failed romantic relationship, she sets off in search of herself on a uniquely American adventure that takes the reader across the country. 

Leaving her New England home in her rearview mirror, Josie’s journey of self-discovery begins in South Florida where every day feels like a vacation. While enjoying the waterfront bars with their countless happy hours, she begins to question her relationship with alcohol and what it is she truly wants out of life. Determined to find her way, she decides to take on a new challenge at a fishing lodge along the Snake River in southeastern Idaho where she meets Dr. Andrew Radcliffe, a kindred spirit navigating his own way to happiness. 

From the Northeast to Florida and the great American West, Josie meets a cast of characters as varied and different as the landscape she travels through. With an adventurous spirit and a willing heart, she confronts her demons and past mistakes and dares to find happiness in the most unexpected of places. Will Josie, a lifelong wanderer, find the road that finally takes her home?

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An Embarrassment of Riches

An-Embarrassment-of-RichesWhen Ursula Barnett and her husband Jed win the Irish lottery, they think their troubles are over. But they are just beginning. Ursula coerces her Yank husband to retire in her hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, hoping to atone for her youthful sins as a collaborator with the IRA in the 1970s. At the first sniff of Ursula s lotto win, however, her chronically greedy sister-in-law Fionnuala Flood rallies the family against Ursula. 

Fionnuala’s life is a misery. She is married to a boozing fish-packing plant worker and raising seven seedy hooligans, from a convict son to an eight-year-old devil-daughter who will resort to desperate measures to secure the perfect Holy Communion gown. Between two part-time jobs, Fionnuala still finds the energy to put into motion plans which pit husbands against wives, daughters against mothers, the lawless against the law and Fionnuala against anyone fool enough to cross her path. 

Family saga and black comedy, love story and courtroom drama, An Embarrassment of Riches will take you on a journey to Northern Ireland and beyond, where Protestants and Catholics wage battle daily, and where crossing family with finance leads to heartache and hilarity, passion and tragedy.

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Red Clover

Red-CloverImagine feeling like an outsider. Now imagine feeling like an outsider in your own family. 

Evanston, Illinois. Lee Oliver Winekoop is born into extreme wealth, but despite his near genius IQ, he doesn?t have the resourcefulness to realize any of its benefits. His mother?s passive parenting style and frequent absences from their lakefront mansion leave him in the care of nannies as a child even when she?s home, making Lee feel unwanted and alone. Further undermining his self-worth is his father?s inexplicable contempt toward him. If Lee only knew why his parents disliked him so, he would fix whatever it was he was doing wrong, and remove the invisible barrier that keeps him from fitting in. 

Lee wants nothing more than to be like his two older brothers—successful at everything they do, sons who make their parents proud—even if it means buying into the family?s philosophy that money is the answer to one?s success in life. 

In the thick of Lee?s discontent, his mother?s favorite uncle dies and leaves him a sizable inheritance—an inheritance with some bizarre strings attached. But as soon as he tries to start using it to mold an identity for himself, his world is turned upside-down when he learns shocking family secrets—causing him to rethink who he is and where he?s going. 

Readers will find Lee?s reinvention of himself on his journey into manhood surprising; the roadblocks he confronts unnerving; and the cast of characters he befriends along the way both heartwarming and amusing.

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Divas of Damascus Road

Divas-of-Damascus-RoadEssence Bestseller

After being blamed for her baby sister’s death, Dianne Rucker swore she’d never come back to Dentonville, Texas. But her Aunt Gloria, who took her in after the accident, is getting remarried. Going back home means Dianne must face her own demons as well as a drug-addicted mother who is now falling even further into schizophrenia.

But Dianne isn’t the only one struggling. Her two cousins must come to terms with their own issues after having grown up in this dysfunctional family of women. And Aunt Gloria may be hiding the biggest skeletons of all.

The women must look to their faith in God as they attempt to turn their lives around like Saul on the Biblical road to Damascus.

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