An aging star. Four Los Angeles misfits. And the Marilyn Monroe you only thought you knew.
Del Corwyn is an aging relic. An actor who advanced from errand boy to Academy Award nominee, Del kept company with the elite of Hollywood's golden era and shared a close friendship with Marilyn Monroe. Today, however, he faces bankruptcy.
Humiliated, Del is forced to downgrade his lifestyle, sell the home he's long cherished, and fade into a history of forgotten legends--unless he can revive his career. All he needs is one last chance. While searching through memorabilia from his beloved past, Del rediscovers a mysterious envelope, dated 1962, containing an original screenplay by Marilyn Monroe--and proof that she named him its legal guardian.
Del surges to the top of Hollywood's A-list overnight. But the opportunity to reclaim his fame and fortune brings a choice: Is Del willing to sacrifice newfound love, self-respect and his most cherished friendship to achieve his greatest dream?
A story of warmth, humor and honesty, Beautiful Mess follows one man's journey toward love and relevance where he least expects it--and proves coming-of-age isn't just for the young.
Welcome to Primrose Street, where neighbours share close interactions but know very little of each other. Only the maple trees that have lined the road for decades know their decisions, indiscretions, secrets, joys, and pains. From fifty-year residents Charlie and Cora and their grandson Ronald, to newcomer Sofia and her son Nicolas, to best friends Tabitha and Dayna, the residents of Primrose Street go about their daily lives--shopping, attending school, meeting at cafés, smiling as they pass on the sidewalk--all the while remaining invisible to one another.
Only when an invitation arrives in their mailboxes must the residents of Primrose Street decide whether to allow authenticity into their lives and neighbourhood or remain limited in their relationships and thereby to themselves.Drawing comparisons to Maeve Binchy and Elizabeth Strout for its clear-eyed characterizations of everyday people, Marina L. Reed's writing sheds light on questions that haunt us and exposes the poison of secrets. Primrose Street is everyone's street, where the ebb and flow of daily experiences can bring people together and miracles are still possible.
The earth is threatened with a catastrophic political event which could result in international warfare and destroy all life on the planet. In heaven, a divine council decides that extraordinary measures are essential. They call for an intervention that involves two souls returning to earth. The chosen two sign a contract that they will work to avert the disaster.
Brad Channing, a Navy SEAL, and Sarah O'Brien, a teacher, become heaven's representatives on earth. The story follows them as they individually and then together face overwhelming obstacles and eventually end up on a strategic Air Force base in California. It is there that they discover a conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States. The terrorists have a plan for global dominance and they are determined to complete their mission. Although military leadership appears to have the President's best interests at heart, it is not clear who can be trusted and who should be feared. The action is rough and tumble as Brad and Sarah try to figure out the culprits for the plot that will turn into a worldwide conflagration unless stopped.
If you enjoy thrillers, this is one with enough twists and adventure to keep you riveted and guessing. If you like your thriller along with a good romance, Brad and Sarah's initial attraction and eventual love will sustain you as they live out their heavenly and earthly desires. A Great summer read.
Trapped in the orbit of the buttes and a black obsidian Clovis, Hanna is sure there’s nothing romantic about her hot and dusty job as an archeologist in the cultural and real desert. As she negotiates the misogyny of this no-woman’s-land, she’s on the move to evade physical and spiritual abuse at the hands of oil-field boys, and guard the damaged and angelic Paul. A vegetarian in a fast food wasteland, Hanna can’t quite catch the wave of nothingness. Her clan of fellow archeologists tries to keep her from harm, but everything she truly needs lies outside the aegis of their reach.
The former superhero Miss Nucleus wants to kill herself, but that's impossible - she's invincible. When the teenager's city of Burlington suddenly lurches toward annihilation, she's forced into action to save her precious city. Depressed, drunk, and full of self-loathing, but advancing into the growing chaos nonetheless.
Revisit the romantic and whimsical world of Charles & Victoria as they share their love across Londons.
After returning to London in 2014, Charles Stratford finds himself in need of a job - and answers to questions he'd rather not ask. Spurred by Victoria's irrepressible spirit, Charles agrees to go in search of another hidden treasure, the Firestorm Amber of Brighton.
Guided by clues from his father's journal, Charles and Tori are confronted by old foes and new friends when they travel to 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London. But their most loyal protector may turn out to be the one man Charles cannot forgive.
From present-day London to eighteenth-century Westminster, The Best-Left Questions continues the romantic adventures of Charles Stratford and Victoria Smith. It is the second book in the Love Across Londons series which should be read in order.
It's been almost forty years since Cubby James and the group of close friends graduated from high school, left the small town where they grew up, and went in search of success and happiness. For the most part, they've achieved their goals, and are beginning to think about slowing down a little. All except Cubby. The life he dreamed about simply has eluded him. As he contemplates changes he hopes will bring happiness, he receives news that his best friend has been involved in a serious auto accident, and he's needed at home. Over the next seven days the close-knit group rallies to support each other while they deal with old acquaintances and the changes that have occurred with time. And to complicate matters, when an old girlfriend shows up, Cubby has to figure out how to deal with feelings he's tried to deny. As they look closer into the accident that brought them home, they learn that things are not always as they first appear, and they take on the task of finding answers to the puzzle. WAITING FOR YOU completes the story of a group of life-long friends that began in WHEN FOREVER'S OVER and continued in AFTER ALL, as they face the realities of life. It is a story of friendship, of loss, and after waiting a lifetime, of finding the key to happiness. WAITING FOR YOU is the story of us all as we begin the end of our journey.
It’s the 1930s in Texas when Charlie Bader comes of age with urges he has struggled with since childhood and does not understand. After his new bride finds him wearing her own sexy lingerie and leaves him in disgust, he tries to move on. His efforts lead him to Chicago, where he stumbles on a community of cross-dressers and begins to attend their secret soirees. When Pearl Harbor is bombed, he volunteers for the army, serving as a dentist and trying once again to leave his obsession with soft clothes behind. Instead, his wartime experiences combined with the army's faulty record-keeping lead to his reappearance in the small town of Heaven, Indiana, as Charlene. There, Charlene opens a beauty shop where Heaven’s women safely share their stories and secrets as she shampoos, clips, curls, and combs their hair. Charlene deftly manages to keep her own story hidden and her sexual desires quiet until she falls in love with a female customer and her life begins to change.
Dedicated immigration attorney, Victoria Barròn’s new client, Khara, claims to be an Egyptian princess from 2181 B.C. When the young woman finally convinces Victoria she’s telling the truth, the unlikely pair searches for a way to return Egypt's royal daughter to her pivotal place in history. Pursued by a disgraced historian who recognizes that Khara’s coronation bracelets represent the find of a lifetime, the pair flees. Soon they enter the Land of Enchantment and turn to the legends of the Anasazi as their last hope to preserve history as we know it. Misplaced takes a glimmer of historical fact and weaves a story of conviction, unlikely friendships and mysterious forces at work in the Southwest.
“S.L. Hulen’s book swells with the mysticism of ancient Egypt. A story filled with intrigue and suspense, it’s absolutely magical.” —Reader’s Favorites
“An imaginative tale sprinkled with a bit of magic and leaving enough unanswered questions to keep readers pondering the possible consequence long after the last page has been turned.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Misplaced is a story you will be sorry to see end.” —Reader’s Favorites
“Hulen makes an impressive debut with this enjoyable time travel fantasy.” —Kirkus Reviews
Miraculum Monstrum is an epic hybrid narrative about Tristia Vogel, a female artist who experiences a radical physical transformation, beginning with the excrescence of apparent wings. Though she is possibly an anomalous mutation resulting from worldwide ecological upheaval, the bird/woman is co-opted by a religious cult that claims to have prophesied her experience; she is thus written as the central figure of their scriptural text. The fragmentary poem that is Miraculum Monstrum, which bears the same name as the fictitious codex quoted throughout, is presented within a catalog for an exhibit of visual artifacts and writings that chronicle this speculative history. The exhibition curator persona performs a duel function as narrative voice within the poem and critical commentator on the exhibit.
Emily Addams, foodie professor of women’s studies at Arbor State, a land grant university in Northern California, finds herself an unlikely suspect in the poisoning of a man she barely knows: Professor Peter Elliott of Plant Biology, the hotshot developer of a new genetically modified corn.
How did her cornbread end up in his hand as he lay in the smelly muck of a pig’s pen?
As Emily and her colleagues try to identify who and what has poisoned Peter, they also struggle to keep a new and corporate-minded administration from defunding the women’s and ethnic studies programs.
In the process of solving the mystery, Emily and her network deepen their ties to each other and uncover some of the dark secrets of a university whose traditionally communal values are being polluted by a wave of profit-fueled ideals.
Josephine Reilly is a typical young mother, striving to do what is best for her family in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota. Declan, her ambitious and talented husband, has a thriving career as a corporate lawyer. On the surface, life could not appear more perfect. Yet, Josie has an unrealized gift, one that has haunted her since the drowning death of a childhood friend. Josie is a messenger, as were her mother and grandmother before her, carrying messages from the dead to the living through dreams, visions and telepathy. For years, Josie suppresses her gift but when her mother dies, she is unable to ignore it any longer. Upon exploring her ability, she finds she has underestimated the dangers in channeling the dead when those she loves become targets of an invisible evil. Her sanity comes into question and she is at risk of losing everything she holds dear. Then fate places Dr. Andrew Chase in Josie's path, a healer of supernatural capabilities. Only he hasn't come to prevent her fall..."The Uncommitted" is a compelling tale of the spiritual struggle within us and of the realities beyond our physical sight.
If it moves away from you, it's food; if it moves toward you, you're food. The 1957 murder of an undercover cop in a New York City housing project has unexpected ties to the unsolved disappearance of a young father walking home in those same projects with his son, Angelo, on Christmas Eve six years before. The only witness to the cop killing is Angelo, now 13, while on his way to seek his own revenge in the early morning hours. The killers know he saw them. A series of gripping events forge a union between a priest, a Mafia boss, a police detective, and Angelo, a gang member. In the end, Weepers shows us that the courage of the underdog despite fear and moral ambiguity will conquer intimidation.
Ben Oris, a pragmatic med student from Philadelphia, gets cut by an old bone while touring the Paris catacombs. His companion Laurette, a public health student from Haiti, senses danger and worries an evil curse now runs through him.
Ben scoffs at the idea--he simply has a wound that won't heal--and back home he returns to his stressful clerkship at the hospital. But when people close to him succumb to a grisly illness and a dark priest pursues him, his skepticism wavers. Could a bone from an 18th century skeleton with a frightening history really cause modern-day disease?
With the help of Laurette, he scrambles to find a cure through Vodou before more of his loved ones die. But first, he must battle the mysterious priest who's bent on vengeance and determined to have Ben's blood as his own.
The Bone Curse, though a standalone, is the first in a series about a man of science who gets caught up in otherworldly situations.
Can it be true that soulmates can share a love so deep that it can transcend more than one lifetime? That is what James tell his loving wife Kathleen before they suddenly die in a tragic car accident that snuffs out their lives and perhaps their love. Will they be able to find each other in the next life to rekindle the love they share, and who will believe them if they do?
Joseph, only six years old, is haunted in his dreams by a woman and scenes he doesn't initially recognize. Sweating heavily while twisting and turning in his bed, he sees flashes of the mountains, the beach and a beautiful young woman. He awakens suddenly, hearing himself scream, “Kathleen(!).” He is drenched and dazed, not realizing that his dream is a replay of the final scene of his past life as James with his wife, Kathleen. A few years later as his dreams continue, he recalls more clearly Kathleen’s soulful singing, bubbly personality and sweet smile as well as his deep love for both photography and her.
As a teenager, Joseph loves to watch singing competitions on TV shows, especially when teenage girls are singing. One day he sees and hears Kimberly singing on one of these shows and his heart skips a beat. He does not know why, but her singing consumes him. Kimberly grew up a sad little girl. She knows that something is missing in her life, but for the life of her, she cannot identify what it is. Only singing lifts her spirits, even if just for a little while. Joseph is drawn to her immediately. He has to meet her.
What happens when Joseph meets Kimberly? You can find out by reading Richard Sieg’s novel, Love After Life.
FATHER DIVINE’S BIKES exposes the dark underbelly of 1945 Newark, New Jersey; a city that boomed during World War II but finds itself unable to cope with the peace that brings joblessness, despair and crime. As deeply-entrenched white enclaves are squeezed by the mass migration of blacks, escape routes for poor ethnic whites rapidly close. Two Catholic altar boys living in a world ripe for grifters, like Father Divine, soon learn that his promise of heaven on earth has hellish consequences. In the autumn of 1945, a battle erupts when the city’s competing mobs end their truce. When it gets bloody, other criminal forces poise to move in. Black bookies, using Father Divine’s controversial International Peace Mission Movement as a front, recruit Joey Bancik and Richie Maxwell to run numbers under the guise of newspaper routes. The boys' families welcome the few bucks they can put on the table. Meanwhile, their parish priest and two homicide detectives fear the numbers racket will entrap the boys in a world of crime. Turf wars, murders, and a corrupt police department in bed with the mob form a dark and gritty backdrop against a story of post-war Newark and the violence that permeated it.
When Ben Ava, a struggling medical student facing insurmountable financial worries, receives a scholarship offer for a Medical Center in Memphis, he thinks that his tenuous future is finally secure. But Ben's past will not leave him alone. His fellow scholarship winner is his old friend Brenda--a young medical student with extraordinary talent whose troubled past has made her self-destructive and dangerous. In Memphis, their lives become increasingly tangled as Ben is pulled into Brenda's orbit. Soon, he finds himself risking his medical education, his new romance, and his entire future in the hopes of steering himself and Brenda through the tumult of their shared loneliness and trauma.
Tears Before Exaltation is a literary drama about coping with the past, surviving the present, and the blurred lines between courage and insanity, hate and love.
Agent Alex Travis returns to Cache Valley in search of an escaped prisoner, who bears a striking resemblance to one of the gang members Jack killed in the shootout in Green Canyon four years earlier. His instincts are leading him in the right direction, but he continues to be one step behind the man seeking revenge on Jack & Kate, and their young daughter, Emma. By not telling the whole truth of the missing bank money at the time of the recovery, Agent Travis has put them all in jeopardy. He must now decide if he can solve this case on this own, in time to save his friends, or if he risks asking for help from the Bureau and ruining his career in the process, a possibility that could land him in jail as well.
In a race to see who finds who first, the search shifts to nearby Logan Canyon, where Agent Travis will be tested by his own conscience as much as by the man he’s hunting.
In this thriller about love, betrayal, and the price of revenge, Marta comes of age in Croatia shortly before the fall of communism in Europe. After the atrocious war in her homeland destroys her innocence and her hometown of Vukovar falls to the enemy, she is forced to flee. Left only with haunting memories and difficult questions, Marta tries to rebuild her shattered life in New York, but the unforgiving metropolis holds challenges far greater than she could have foreseen. There she finds the man she once loved and lost, and has to confront the ghastly events from her past.
Trapped in a labyrinth of secrets and lies, Marta struggles to find a way out and return to the light.
Esteemed California music professor David Whealy is drawn to the other side of the country to investigate the circumstances behind his unexpected inheritance. As David probes deeper into the secrets of his benefactor, James Burton West, he finds more than just a wealth of unpublished music on the order of the great composers.
David's benefactor knew precious little about his own estate that had been in continuous family hands since 1724. He knew nothing about his colonial ancestor, a Thomas of historic import, nor the origins of that ancient iron key which held a secret even West knew nothing about.
A secret which may well have redrawn the map of the United States.
A group of ancient Egyptian priests uncover an evil alien and Anunnaki plot to enslave the souls of mankind for all eternity. Unable to defeat the enemy in the past, Tumaini and the rest reincarnate in the present to do battle with the reptilians, the Illuminati, and the New World Order. They must race against the clock to remember who they are, restore their powers, and decipher the many clues they had left behind if there is to be any hope for humanity’s freedom.
Psychiatrist Rachel Julian has what many dream of--a booming career, an enviable relationship, a joy-filled life--until a bloody premonition warns her that she is in danger. As terrifying threats unfold, her perfect life tailspins out of control. Armed with nothing but her intuition and determination to stay alive, Dr. Julian steps into unknown realms and meets a succession of otherworldly teachers who tell her that beyond the human threats, she has been lured into a spiritual war. To survive, Rachel must fight an enemy she can't even see in a reality many wish did not exist.
