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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Life Long

By Ronald L. Ruiz

Ray Lopez is on the run with a duffel bag full of cash. Both drug dealers and the police are after him. But Ray is not a criminal. His last brush with the law was over traffic tickets. Recently released from the hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, he is haunted by voices, auditory hallucinations, that frighten him and cause him to question his every move.

Ray’s journey from California to Laredo is perilous. Like so many Americans before him, he travels through unfamiliar territory with no clear way of knowing who will help and who will harm him. And he may well find himself on the wrong side of the border with a mind that has no borders.

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A New Dawn

By Sudha Balagopal

At forty-eight, Usha has never dated. Like all good Indian girls, she married the man whom her family chose. Twenty-three years after success-driven Raja brought her to Phoenix, he leaves her a widow. Alone and aching, she does the unthinkable—registers on a dating website. Through pitfalls and blunders, Usha navigates new territory, discovering what she wants from life and love....

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Once Without Dying

By V. M. Franck

Once Without Dying explores the unfolding friendship between Sheeawna, Akilah and Mali. As a child, when she overcomes death, Sheeawna, the protagonist, learns the extent of her religious mother's hatred for her. She survives the onslaught with Grampy's guidance and support, until his death when she is a teenager. For comfort, she begins an intimate relationship with Kevin, a boy her age. As a young talented adult Sheeawna is under Kevin's manipulation. Breaking free of him she finds a new love interest, only to be drawn in again by Kevin, until he can no longer escape his comeuppance. She meets Akilah after the house she and her husband, Halim, rent from Sheeawna's boss explodes. Halim dies. Sheeawna's college roommate Mali is raped by her boyfriend after they break up. The three women help each other through a variety of challenges, uncover their commonalities and discover love's finest nature. They embrace the fulfillment of an ancient legend symbolized by a powerful medallion handed down to Sheeawna from her Toltec grandmother. Three young women pursue a common purpose with Claire, a mystic; Rebekah, a female rabbi; her son Michael, a Zenist; Dakota, an elderly artist who follows Native American spirituality and Harry, who believes love is the way....

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Mourning Sham

By Kati Woronka

Maha and Leila have been friends for years, but they have not seen each other since they studied together at University of Damascus five years ago. As the war in Syria encroaches on their lives, and the lives of their families, they find solace in rekindling friendships from happier times. Together, they care for their own families while looking for ways to do more, sending food and clothing to families in Damascus who have lost their homes, then developing a global advocacy campaign for non-combatants who have been captured.

Mourning Sham is a tale of hope and renewed friendship in a context of war, conflict and drastic social change. It explores the role of women in political revolution and the growing role of technology in organizing and activism. Women around the world struggle to balance their duty to family and self, with their aspirations to serve their communities. Maha and Leila do the same, but in a context where the stakes are particularly high.  

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Crossover: A Shaman Thriller

By Leith Marek

This novel introduces an orphan who develops keen senses while exposed to nature for long periods of time. As he grows into manhood and finds helpers, he realizes he is on a very special journey that leads him to the beaches, mountains, and jungles of Peru. As his adventure proceeds, he is guided to a thrilling event.....

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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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The Magician of Lhasa

By David Michie

When novice monk Tenzin Dorje is told by his lama that the Red Army is invading Tibet, his country's darkest moment paradoxically gives him a sense of purpose like no other. He accepts a mission to carry two ancient, secret texts across the Himalayas to safety.

Half a century later, in a paradox of similarly troubling circumstances, Matt Lester is called upon to convey his own particular wisdom as a scientist, when Matt's nanotech project is mysteriously moved from London to a research incubator in Los Angeles.

Tenzin and Matt embark on parallel adventures which have spine-chilling connections. Tenzin's perilous journey through the Himalayas, amid increasing physical hardship and the ever-present horror of Red Army capture, is mirrored by Matt's contemporary, but no less traumatic challenges, as his passionate relationship with his fiancée, Isabella, and his high flying career undergo escalating crises.

It is at the moment when both Tenzin and Matt face catastrophe that their stories converge, spectacularly transforming our understanding of all that has gone before....

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Totem Lost

By James Hadman

While Copper Spirit copes with the death of her beloved father, his spirits appear to her. They tell her that to save her people she must become a shaman. These apparitions set her on a perilous path that unfolds in the wilds of Southeast Alaska and highlights the native Tlingit and Haida cultures and beliefs. Copper Spirit’s struggle to protect her people and their lands from the fateful arrival of the whitefaces drives her to ful fill her destiny....

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Oasis

By Quinn Quade

After a complete upheaval in her personal life, a young woman finds herself living in a small camper on isolated, unimproved property in Southern New Mexico. With no idea of her next step or what could possibly lie in her future, she is immobilized by despair and confusion; until she encounters her Mescalero Apache neighbors from a neighboring Indian Reservation.

She builds her new life on charmed property while learning about the fascinating culture of her new friends.

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It Is the People

By Pira Sudham

 

Thailand's premier author in the English language, Pira Sudham, is for the first time published in the ebook format. Best known for his novel Monsoon Country, this is an anthology of his short stories previously published in Tales of Thailand and People of Esarn. Who else could write about peasant life in Thailand’s poorest region apart from someone who had been born and bought up in that life? In It is the People are stories of hardship, land loss and the tourist sex trade to which so many of the young are drawn into.......

Pira Sudham was born in Napo, Burirum, Northeastern Thailand. He spent his childhood in the rice fields on the Korat Plateau, helping his parents and tending a herd of buffaloes. He went to Bangkok at the age of fourteen to be a servant to monks in a Buddhist temple where he was also admitted to a school. To support himself through high school and the first year at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, he sold souvenirs to tourists until he won a New Zealand government scholarship to study English literature at Auckland University and later at Victoria University, Wellington.

Pira Sudham’s literary works are concerned with socio-economic-political issues. Widely read and highly acclaimed, his books have given a powerful voice to the poor and the maligned people of Esarn.

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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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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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Sixth Precept

By Larry Ivkovich

In 16th century medieval Japan, Yoshima Mitsu, who is gifted with psychic powers, uses her prescient abilities to send her young attendant, Shioko, into the future. There, Mitsu believes Shioko will be safe from the purges of the maniacal w...arlord Omori Kadanamora, his warrior monks and his half-human, half-bestial Shadow-Trackers.

In present-day Pittsburgh, police Lieutenant Kim Yoshima is attacked by a creature out of someone’s twisted nightmare. In the aftermath of that terrifying struggle, Kim finds a young Japanese girl named Shioko, lost, confused and calling Kim “Mitsu” and her monstrous attacker a “Shadow-Tracker.”

Wayne Brewster dreams of the costumed hero, ArcNight. But more than that, he feels bizarrely connected to the fictional crime fighter as if ArcNight and his comic book world are real. And in all of his dreams, Brewster sees one constant, one face repeated over and over--the face of Kim Yoshima.

Empowered by a mysterious book, The Five Precepts to Enlightenment, Kim realizes her destiny is in the past. Using her own burgeoning powers, Kim, accompanied by Shioko and Brewster, travel by means of a temporal rift to feudal Japan. There they must assume different personas to fight Omori and creatures of Japan’s mythological world to fulfill ancient prophesy and modern historical fact. If they fail, history will be altered and the world will change forever.

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City of Sorrows

By S. L. Nadathur

Just turned nineteen, Diego is recently married, madly in love, expecting his first child, and completely unaware that his life is about to come crashing down around him. On a dark road outside Seville, this Gypsy’s life takes a tragic turn. He must find the courage to face death, the strength to survive it, and the power to hold onto his humanity while his mind and his will scream against it.

City of Sorrows is an emotionally intense story about how relationships can get complicated, and how life is not always the way we want it to be . . .

Under normal circumstances, they never would have met. Rajiv is an Indian immigrant, Andrés a wealthy Spaniard, and Diego a poor Gypsy from the Southside of Seville. On a dark road beside a sweetly-scented orange grove, the lives of these three men come crashing together. Andrés's anger leads to a tragic death, triggering Diego's uncontrolled rage and forcing Rajiv to rely on Gandhi's philosophies to negotiate his way through the underside of life. The choices these men make ripple outward, throwing not only their lives, but an entire city, into turmoil and change......

S.L. Nadathur is a widely-traveled writer, teacher, and self-proclaimed “outsider” from Connecticut who now resides with her family in Lajas, Puerto Rico. She loves teen drama and is a fan of the supernatural. After the writing is done you’ll see her relaxing with a good CW TV series, which will definitely have something to do with ordinary young people involved in extraordinary (and certainly supernatural) experiences. Late at night, you’ll find her blogging about the challenges of being different. By day, she writes fictional stories set in painfully real worlds. She especially loves young people on the edge of life.

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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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Watch the Documentary Film Here

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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Indian Shirt Story

By Heather Lockman

A Northwest brew pub, a historic house, trouble with the local American Indian community, and unexpected attention from the biggest country music star ever to come out of Nashville. It’s going to be a tough summer for Bess in the free-thinking, left-leaning, soy-eating, fish-loving town of Port Heron this year.

American mythologies collide in a novel that’s part love story, part modern politics, and part historical saga. Sharply observed but big-hearted, it's also a whole lot of fun......

Heather Lockman, born and raised in Seattle, is a fourth-generation Northwesterner. Her essays and articles have appeared in a variety of national publications, including American Heritage, National Geographic Traveler, and Architectural Digest. She once spent two years rescuing and restoring a landmark Northwest pioneer home and opening it to the public—an experience that provided the backdrop for her first novel, The Indian Shirt Story. Heather lives in a restored Craftsman bungalow near Puget Sound with her husband and a dog named Woody. She cooks at the local soup kitchen, conducts tours of the Washington State Governor’s Mansion, and—in defiance of Northwest stereotype—listens to country music. Mostly, though, she writes.

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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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Onna Rising

By Rei Kimura

With money and freedom, a growing pool of young, well-educated and ambitious Japanese professional women are no longer submissive, demure extensions of their menfolk. They are ready to enjoy life, and with power and position four women (onna) have formed a strong supportive bond. Their friendship has withstood romantic conflicts, the fast-paced, glitzy life of Tokyo, trials of the workplace and the insulting 'aninoko' label given to one of the four. Now sordid secrets from the past have emboldened a blackmailer, threatening the very foundation of the friends' bond.....

Rei Kimura is a lawyer with a passion for writing about unique events and personalities. She has adopted an interesting style of creating stories around true events and the lives of real people in a number of her books, believing that is the best way of making hidden historical events and people come alive for 21st century readers.

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