A gripping, openhearted novel about family, reconciliation, and bringing closure to the secrets of the past.
Early into the tempestuous decade of her thirties, Rae Langdon struggles to work through a grief she never anticipated. With her father, Connor, she tends to their Ohio farm, a forty-acre spread that itself has enjoyed better days. As memories sweep through her, some too precious to bear, Rae gives shelter from a brutal winter to a teenager named Quinn Galecki.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2022 Best Book Awards
Ryan Bell is your typical millennial: surviving on a diet of wine and Netflix, woefully single enough to qualify for cat-lady membership, and renting from a seventy-something Tinder-swiping landlord-turned-bestie. But underneath her chipped-off manicure lies a green thumb that has created miraculous flowers capable of saving mankind from cataclysmic climate change. There's one problem: Only Ryan can grow them.
An unusual audience comes to an unorthodox conclusion: Ryan is the heir of the Greek god Artemis.
Although Ryan thinks these strange, toga-wearing folks are one kalamata olive short of a Greek salad, she reluctantly enters a hidden world where the Olympians are real and magic flows freely (plus a generous serving of Greek hunks). Talk about one epic identity crisis. Magical demigod or not, the fate of civilization—both mortal and godly—now rests on Ryan's shoulders.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2022 Best Book Awards
A man on the brink of insanity traverses present-day and Renaissance Venice to save his soul mate from eternal purgatory.
The world’s largest oil painting. A 400-year-old murder. A disembodied whisper: “Amore mio.” My love.
Nick and Julia O’Connor’s dream trip to Venice collapses when a haunting voice reaches out to Nick from Tintoretto’s Paradise, a monumental depiction of Heaven. Convinced his delusions are the result of a concussion, Julia insists her husband see a doctor, though Nick is adamant the voicewas real.
Blacking out in the museum, Nick flashes back to a life as a 16th century Venetian peasant swordsman. He recalls precisely who the voice belongs to: Isabella Scalfini, a married aristocrat he was tasked to seduce but with whom he instead found true love. A love stolen from them hundreds of years prior.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2022 Best Book Awards
Set authentically in the High Sierra, The Trail is a moving story showing how nature helps us find what's missing in our lives.
More than a hiking novel, The Trail is fused with humor, philosophy, and trail lore. Woven in is a back story detailing the origins of the John Muir Trail: a 211-mile trail spanning the rooftop of the Sierra Nevada from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2022 Best Book Awards
In the summer of 1857, the Devil visited Titusville, Pennsylvania and was greeted by an exorcist with a drinking problem and a bad attitude. This is his story:
For the low price of five dollars, Dexter “Dex” James will exorcise your demons: the demon of lust, drink, and gluttony. Unfortunately, he’s new in town, and few people take him seriously. The ones that do, don’t have a dime to spare. Desperate for money, he elicits help from a boy named Boo and a beautiful woman, named Miss Leslie—she’s half his age and a prostitute, but Dex is smitten.
After performing a supposed miracle, Dex becomes the talk of Titusville. His billfold and ego grow with each exorcism. Only Miss Leslie’s love could make him happier. However, when an evil entity threatens a young girl, Dex must make a choice: take the coward’s way out or stay and fight?
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2022 Best Book Awards
Unfettered Journey follows Joe, an AI scientist, as he pursues the secret of AI – and his own – consciousness. He travels to a small college to escape life’s frenetic pace and to find answers. But a mysterious woman on a personal mission interrupts his search. Fighting unjust forces, they are caught up by a malevolent plot. Their struggles against machines, men, and nature test the resilience of the human spirit.
Set in a richly imagined near future, this is a cross-genre novel combining thrilling action, adventure, and a love story. It traces an epic journey – from inside the human mind to the vastness of space, from AIs battling in the desert to the peace of a mountain refuge. It asks spiritual, social, and philosophical questions that will linger. How does the will to survive bring clarity to the human experience? What would you sacrifice to achieve social justice? How do we find meaning and purpose in a world dominated by technology?
