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.

Get It Now

Beach Space

By Lee Ducote

Normally, when seniors settle into Cedar Branch Retirement Community, they begin a simpler and slower pace of living. Not this group! For Jack Goslin, Karl and Betty Rutherfurd, and the Stevens Sisters, nothing is simple or slower after moving into the number-one retirement community in the South. As a neighboring resort battles over the beach property, our eccentric group of seniors wages war on its uptight and controlling manager, and given the green light for residents to enjoy private golf carts—well, things just get even crazier for Cedar Branch manager Derrick St. Clair.

From the new, exotic fitness instructor to Violet’s secret winery, Jack’s pimped-out golf cart, and a host of other new issues for its director, CBC continues to build a reputation as the most interesting retirement community in the South. If you are looking for a place to retire, settle down, or witness bizarre fiascos, stop by Cedar Branch. Who knows—you just might make it home!

Get It Now

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.

Get It Now

Ralphie's Account of Planet Earth

By Stephen Parato

A Cosmic Superbeing Comes to Earth as a Dog

Ralphie is a dog. But there's much more to it... Dogs are not just dogs. They're actually multi-dimensional superbeings performing a reconnaissance mission on humanity.

What Ralphie discovers confuses him, amuses him and touches his little canine heart. This is Ralphie's Account of Planet Earth.

Get It Now

Tread Softly in My Head

By Adrian Sturgess

A woman has gone missing and the police have a suspect. They call on the services of Dr Catherine Paradine, a young psychologist, to question him. She has the singular virtue of being a telepath with a native ability to read and project emotion. It seems, therefore, that obtaining the information the police require should be fairly simple. Presumably?

Get It Now

Unbroken Beings

By Kristina Circelli

Evangeline Frost had a plan, once. Attend a prestigious art school, become a renowned painter. It was a dream she shared with her father, one that was ripped away in the car accident that claimed his life.

At California’s Kindred Hides Wildlife Preserve, Evangeline thought she had finally grieved for her father and moved on. But now, halfway around the world in Zambia at a new sanctuary for animals, Evangeline finds herself haunted by old memories … and a promise she has yet to fulfill.

Nightmares plague her dreams. Caster’s flirtations confuse her. And when poachers invade the preserve, they leave behind a devastation that threatens to break her apart.

Now Evangeline lives for a different dream: to save the lives of every animal who calls the preserve home, no matter the cost. A crusade that strains her budding relationship with Caster, a mission taking her further away from dreams of the past ‒ and gives her an orphaned elephant calf to call her own.

Evangeline Frost has a new plan. Protect the preserve and keep a promise that will finally heal her heart …or put her very life at risk.

Get It Now

Writing Trash and Hunting Buffalo

By Jay Williams

What happens when you turn into the thing you most abhor? "Writing Trash and Hunting Buffalo" tells of a man who reports on the glitter set he despises, but through several tragic events that catapult him into the limelight, soon becomes similar to them. Can this conflicted man survive the constant struggle for his soul and the incessant barrage of corrupt lifestyles of the Hollywood elite?

Get It Now

Rainbow Patrol

By Stella Knoxville

Find out how Bernadette was indoctrinated into the ancient super-secret organization known as the Rainbow Patrollers. From her first encounter with Rainbow Mojo shamans to her nude wilderness questing to her bizarre animal encounters, this raunchy and hilarious parody novel will keep you bewildered and amazed....

Get It Now

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....

Get It Now

Next Therapist Please

By Laurie Finkelstein

Blessed with anxiety, depression, and OCD, Janie Weiss has seen her fair share of therapists throughout her life. So many, she doesn’t even refer to them by name, only by number. Some have helped her, some have not. But she has learned from all of them.

Years after her last therapist, #6 to be exact, Janie finds herself widowed and navigating a new life filled with old and new anxieties. She loves expressing herself through her art, but she’s wondering if she’s ready to move on in her personal life.

From Janie’s cottage on Balboa Island to the Doc’s home in Palm Springs, follow Janie on her quest for health and happiness as she recalls each therapist that came into her life. Grab a cocktail, make a toast, and enter Janie’s world in this humorous, heartwarming novel.

Get It Now

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....

Get It Now

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.

Get It Now

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.  

Get It Now

Getting Rid of the Macons

By Christopher T. Banks

A young couple from Albuquerque, Joe and Ellie Lawrence, arrive at their new home in very rural Eastern Oregon to find the former renters still in residence and firmly entrenched. When the Lawrence's develop strategies to get rid of them they soon find that moving amongst the Macons is like working in quicksand, the more that you move the deeper in you sink....

Get It Now

Sierra Girls

By Richard Ewald

Follow Gabriel Quinn as he hunts down the serial rapist who kidnapped his daughter. When Michelle disappears from her quiet neighborhood, the police find no evidence and seem to give up immediately. Her father believes Michelle is still alive, but he knows that her time is short. As her dad searches for her, Michelle seeks an escape from the broken down house in the mountains where she is trapped.....

Get It Now

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.....

Get It Now

Out of the Shade

By Thea Gilich

Manda’s husband Steve regards her sketches mere bits of paper and has no qualms in burning them. Devastated she feels she’ll never be able to draw again. Yet, lacking something to do in the new flat in Mission Bay, she is soon drawn back to her old passion. Slowly her life changes as her passion turns to obsession she finds she no longer wants to fit the mold of everyone’s expectations. Her rebellion widens the rift between her and Steve and divides family and friends as they take sides. This is an artist’s journey, and the story of a woman’s growth to emancipation.

Get It Now

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....

Get It now

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....

Get It Now

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.

Get It Now