Thwala

By Eve Clayton

THWALA - the abduction and forced marriage of a young girl to an older man in South African tribal custom... But could it also be a metaphor for the way in which colonialists took possession of the virgin nations of Africa, lusting after the mineral gifts of the soil, the possession of pristine countryside and innocent souls to be exploited in their quest for power?

This love story across the divide of age and colour, an older white farmer to a beautiful young Xhosa girl, set in the last days of apartheid, bears testimony to so many South African lives, twisted by the ruthless hand of political imperatives. It takes the reader into the mysterious and powerful world of Xhosa culture: thwala; igqira, the diviner; ceremonial marriage;circumcision, and the way in which these sacred institutions have been eroded by the ambivalent influence of Western values.

Can the meeting of these powerful forces really create the rainbow nation that South African people so deeply desire?

Follow the lives of Nosuthu Stokwe and Andrew Christy from the awe-inspiring rural South African countryside to the urban sprawl of Kayelitsha and the metropolis of Cape Town, to try and appreciate the complexity of the challenges faced by South African people today.

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Easter Water

By Sara Lee Burke

Girls born first are unlucky. If they are born into poverty and addiction, they are unluckier still.

Easter Water is the story of a firstborn girl, forced to grow up too soon and sacrifice too much.

Hilma spends her days in a logging camp kitchen taking care of her younger siblings. Her parents, exhausted by long days filled with hard work and consumed by their own problems, have little left for their children. But there are angels among us, and Hilma finds them.

Henri and Helen provide a refuge, until jealousy and anger put an end to it. Clairvoyant Sister Nicole allows Hilma to claim as her own, some surprisingly prophetic visions. And Cook is her champion, insisting she get the only thing she has ever dared to want.

The devastation of the Great Depression and fear of impending war compound the family’s struggles, as they try to survive in the lumber camps of Quebec and small town Northern Ontario.

Torn between protecting those she loves and saving herself, Hilma makes a heartbreaking decision, and comes to understand we make our own luck.

Easter Water is rich in the history of the period and the nostalgia of life far removed from the way we live today. It is a funny and touching look back, with lessons about courage and faith to guide our looking forward.

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Coming To Astoria: An Immigrant's Tale

By O. M. Kiam

Why do children growing up together in the same household turn out so completely different? How can a child raised in a family of twelve be so lonely?

Coming to Astoria takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery which is humorous, entertaining, and educational. This is a fascinating human interest story filled with poignant memories about growing up alone in a large family.....

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Disenchanted

By Victoria Kilbury

As a child in Saudi Arabia, Nabila knew no other life than that in which she lived, a society where women had no rights. Females could not attend school, pursue careers unless sanctioned by the government, drive cars, or choose their husbands. From birth to marriage, women in Nabila’s culture remained under the control of males: a father, a brother, or a husband.

As a young bride, Nabila moved with her new husband to the United States, where he pursued a college degree, and where Nabila’s world was opened to endless possibilities. Though the move was temporary, Nabila was enchanted and she knew she would return. Disenchanted: One Woman’s Journey for Indepen­dence from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is Nabila’s story of trying to find happiness and fulfillment in her homeland, but ultimately, having to sacrifice family for freedom......

(A 2013 USA Best Book Award Finalist.)

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Snooze

By Sol Luckman

From acclaimed author Sol Luckman comes Snooze, the riveting, coming-of-age tale of one extraordinary boy's awakening to the world-changing reality of his dreams. Join Max Diver, aka "Snooze," on a mesmerizing quest to rescue his father, astronaut Thomas Diver, from a fate stranger than death in the exotic, perilous Otherworld of sleep.

An insightful look at a plethora of paranormal subjects, from Bigfoot to levitation to telepathy and beyond, Snooze also shines as a work of literature featuring iconic characters, intense drama, breathless pacing, and a steady stream of offbeat humor that will stir you wide awake!
Snooze received an Honorable Mention in the prestigious 2014 Beach Book Festival Prize competition.....

Sol Luckman is a prolific visual artist and critically acclaimed author of fiction and nonfiction.

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Dreams in the Medina

By Kati Woronka

From the heart of Syria, Dreams in the Medina is a coming-of-age tale which explores the aspirations, passions and tragedies of a group of young Syrian women, who on the surface seem to have nothing in common but who are brought together in the deepest of bonds as they study and live together at the University of Damascus.

School, sisters, cooking, cleaning… these were the most exciting activities of Leila’s childhood in a village in Dera’a, in southern Syria. She grew up expecting that her parents would eventually choose a nice local boy for her to marry, which would define the rest of her life. When Leila was accepted to study English Literature at the University of Damascus, everything changed. A whole new world opened to her through the literature she was reading, and then she started making new friends. Roxy, a fiery young woman who had married a wealthy man without telling her family. Huda, who was ready to sacrifice absolutely everything for her career. Maha, who seemed to have it all. And Ahmed, who swept Leila off her feet. As her world expanded, Leila began to believe that she, too, might write her own destiny......

Kati Woronka is an academic and world traveler. She first moved to Syria in 2001 and quickly fell in love. While Syria may be her first love, she has traveled extensively around the world doing what she likes to call CulturTwining - interacting with people of different cultures - and discovering great stories. She has lived in Kosovo, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Timor Leste, USA and Brazil.

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Under the Rock

By Randi Barlow Pappa

Under a crisp autumn sky in the Appalachian river town of Cold Spring, Ohio, the long and not-so-long held secrets of the Goodlander and Cutright families have begun to unravel, tumbling out of hearts pried open by events leading up to the betrayal of little Sharda Cutright’s youthful naïveté.

The arrival in Cold Spring of boyish and chronically handsome Finn Decker—a drifter of sorts, toting little more than a change of clothes and a guitar—triggers the release of family secrets and becomes a catalyst for both personal and family redemption.

Under the Rock is a richly colorful, authentically told family saga. Although it describes a time and a culture—the edges of Appalachia in the post-depression mid-1900′s—that are now mostly a distant memory, its powerful messages of innocence, betrayal and forgiveness are as timeless as the steady flow of the Ohio River.......

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Janapar: Love, On a Bike

By Tom Allen

It was the start of a brand new life, but Tom Allen’s bicycle journey round the world takes an unlikely detour when he falls in love with an Iranian-Armenian girl. Written alongside the award-winning documentary film of the same name, Janapar is an honest and life-affirming true story of finding what you’re looking for when you least expect it.

At the age of 23, Tom Allen quit a perfectly good career in IT in favour of a life of penniless, wandering itinerancy. He set off with a three-wheeled bicycle, a tent and a video camera, leaving his Midlands home with a madcap idea to cycle round the globe. Fate, however, had other ideas, and eight months into his ride, alone in mountains during a bitter Caucasian winter, he met Tenny -- the girl who would change the course of his journey and then his life.....

Tom continues to write and travel as a full-time occupation. He still has no fixed abode.

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Chasing Grace

By Carol Costello

Cathy Callahan runs away at age ten to escape her mother’s abuse and find God, whom she first met in a Chicago public park when she was six. The next thirty years are a series of funny, brutal, and uplifting adventures that pit her humor and strength against the rage and confusion that make her reckless, desperate, and blind to gray areas.

Cathy searches for love, healing, and wholeness in all the wrong places from Chicago’s North Side to Montana, to Reno, to San Francisco. In the Catholic Church’s byzantine system of salvation and ruler-wielding nuns. In a bakery/brothel run by Mollie, the brassy older woman who “adopts” her. With a good-looking, half-naked guru hawking “I AM Oneness.” With Spirit in the High Rockies and marriage to a sexy, dangerous cowboy. In too much Scotch. She finally stops running and retraces her steps to Chicago, where she faces her demons and finds unexpected grace in the last place she thinks to look.

Chasing Grace is a raw, humorous look at spiritual coming of age, at unconventional ways to heal deep emotional wounds, and at finding greater purpose in surprising places despite desperate odds......

Carol Costello has made her living as a freelance writer for forty years. She has worked as an investigative reporter in Chicago, a freelance acquisitions and developmental editor, a ghostwriter or book doctor of some 30 books. Carol is a student of meditation and the Vedanta, and a hiker. She lives across the street from the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco and speaks around the country on selling as service, creativity, and self publishing.

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Where Wolves Dream

By Armand Nassery

In the mystical setting of the fictional town of Balluria, Iraq, Salam and his best friend Hamid spend their days together with their peers of young boys and girls listening to mesmerizing stories, legends and myths told by a childless and mysterious gypsy, Barrya. Acting as a surrogate mother for the local children, Barrya reveals the secrets of the mystic town. As young teenagers, Salam, Hamid and Hamid’s sister Amel form a special bond through poetry and love songs, but the relationship is not strong enough to keep Salam in Balluria. At the age of 17, he leaves for America to study medicine.

In America, Salam turns his back on his old life, family and history to start anew. Even as the Gulf War and the long years of the harsh embargo tear the lives of his family and friends apart, he ignores their letters. Salam marries and becomes a successful artist, acting as if his life in Balluria never happened, until the events of 9/11, the War on Terror and later the invasion of Iraq send his world spiraling downward. He opens the old letters and begins to relive the past.

Salam returns to Iraq after 2003, hoping to come to peace with his past and the family he left behind. He finds a mirage of Barrya, who attempts to heal him by revealing secrets hidden in the history of his homeland. The man who never felt quite a part of either country, or understood his existence as a citizen of two countries and two worlds, learns to be comfortable with himself while coming to terms with his past and starting to believe and see the hope in the future.

Nassery hopes that his novel reflects Iraq’s past and present realistically while providing readers with a glimpse of what life is like for immigrants in the United States. He depicts the struggle between desires to start a new life and the memories of a painful past and history of a country long held in the darkness of war and violence.......

Armand Nassery is an Iraqi-American author and independent filmmaker who was born in a remote rural area near the marshes of the province of Dhi-Qar. He is the middle child of eleven siblings. His father chose to live in the outskirts away from other people due to his extreme independent nature. Armand grew up in a setting that is close to many of his depictions in his novel. He recalls that period as, “… a detached parallel universe between realty and myth.”

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Finding Arun

By Marisha Pink

If you live your whole life being who everybody else wants you to be, how do you know who you really are? Nineteen-year-old Aaron Rutherford is already reeling from the loss of his mother, when the unexpected revelation of a dark secret from her past changes his world forever.

Forced to question everything that he has ever believed, should he simply follow the path that has been laid out for him, or will pursuing the truth help him to find what has always been missing?

As the tangled web of lies unfolds and uncertainty takes over, a startling chain of events are set in motion that will see Aaron make the journey of a lifetime to discover not only who he really is, but ultimately who he wants to be......

Marisha Pink is a rat race escapee turned author and entrepreneur. Born and raised in London, from a young age she had an unhealthy obsession with books and always dreamed of one day writing stories with the magic and power to take readers on a journey. After five years of working in advertising and marketing, in September 2012 she decided that it was finally time to take the leap. Backpack in hand, she left everything behind to travel around Southeast Asia and complete her first novel, Finding Arun. She’s been on a mission not to live life by the book ever since.

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Helga: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany

By Karen Truesdell Riehl

When the author met her in 1977, Helga was an elementary school librarian, a 1948 German immigrant. Asked about her experience during the war, Helga quietly revealed she had been a "Jugend," a member of Hitler's child army, "trained to revere and obey the Fuhrer." When Riehl asked how children were recruited, she replied, "Clever seduction." Helga's seduction begins with an invitation from Hitler she cannot refuse. The ten-year-old is ordered to attend weekly meetings of the Hitler Youth movement. Lies and tasty treats are employed to entice her allegiance to the Fuhrer. Helga is sent away to Hitler Youth training camps as the war draws nearer her home in Berlin. She is caught between loyalty to her family, suffering under Nazi rule, and loyalty to the Fuhrer, who keeps her safe and well-fed. Helga's gradual disillusionment, followed by her harrowing escape home, is a powerful coming-of-age story of a young girl's survival of Nazi mind control.

Karen Truesdell Riehl's writing achievements are remarkable, given her lifelong battle with dyslexia. She was unable to read until the age of ten. Her published works now include a memoir, Love and Madness: My Private Years with George C. Scott, telling of her 30-year hidden liaison with the international film star, five novels, eight plays and a radio comedy series, The Quibbles. Her children's play, Alice in Cyberland, was an award winner in the National Southwest Writers Contest.

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