Told by a tart-tongued young woman with a love of Bruce Springsteen, Lies in Bone is at once a mystery and coming-of-age tale fueled by dark secrets involving love, murder, and the truths worth lying for.
On Halloween 1963, eleven-year-old Chuck Coolidge and his brother Danny are lost in a toxic smog covering the steel town of Slippery Elm, Pennsylvania. When the smog lifts, half the town is sick and twenty people are dead. And Danny is missing.
Now, over twenty years later, Chuck's teenage daughter Frank plots escape from this "busted and disgusted" town. When a murdered child is found in the river, investigators link the crime to the disappearance of Danny in '63, and Frank's life is turned upside down. In the face of her worst fears, she must uncover her family's dark past if she wants to keep her sister Boots from the hands of The State. Led to discover the unimaginable truth about Danny's disappearance, Lies in Bone culminates in a shocking eleventh-hour reveal and an emotionally charged finale.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Even the most painful paths can be guided to divine destinations...
A single father and former Army Ranger, Ken Holbrook struggles to reconcile his resolute faith with immense grief. When Stacey James, a skittish but alluring newcomer, crosses Ken’s path and immediately bonds with Ginny, his young daughter, his world tilts further off balance. Slowly, Ken softens to Stacey as he realizes her poise in the face of hidden atrocity and the ease he feels in her presence. Stacey’s trust doesn’t come easily though, even if she is drawn to Ken’s peaceful, observant nature.
As their lives overlap and they come to need one another in unsettling ways, Ken and Stacey must face the demons of their past. With unwavering support from the Holbrook family, the two discover their roads, though jarring, have been directed to the same destination: each other. While many tout the phrase “everything happens for a reason,” Ken and Stacey make deeper meaning within their choices and circumstances.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Inspired by True Current Events.
Dolores, Ernesto, and Emilio Sanchez are on a quest to America to find work and to save their family, who has been devastated by their father's accident and the drought in their home country of Honduras. But making their way to America would be too expensive for a family stricken by poverty. With only their faith in God to see them through, the teenaged siblings set off for their new home, despite the threat from the cartel, corrupt police officers, starvation, and death.
Meanwhile, Eva Jordan is determined to start a new life on the American side of the Mexican border, hoping to shake off the scars from a horrible marriage. Despite her mother's concern for her daughter living so close to the border, Eva decides to take a vacation to the other side to sharpen up her Spanish and relax before her new job begins. She is struck by the beautiful towns of Mexico, but slowly, her eyes are opened to the dangers that are knocking at her front door.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Inspired by a shocking incident in eighteenth century America, Chateau Laux is the story of Lawrence Kraymer, a young entrepreneur from a youthful Philadelphia, who chances upon a French aristocrat and his family living on the edge of the frontier.
Born to an unwed mother and raised by a disapproving and judgmental grandfather, Lawrence is drawn to the close-knit family. As part of his courtship of one of the patriarch's daughters, he builds a château, igniting memories of a past that should have been left alone and setting in motion a course of devastating events he could not have anticipated.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
A man dreams through the eyes of a woman he's never met, setting out to find love that might be a figment of his imagination.
Joe Riley has a successful, by-design life in the world of finance. He loves order, discipline, the tangible, the measurable. In pursuit of success he's spurned attachment, keeping romantic entanglements "on an island" while leaving his life and heart invulnerable. When he begins to dream of a woman half a world away he's never encountered, his notions of practicality and planning are called into question.
In a search that variously brings him to the psychologist's office, a medium's table, and from the Rocky Mountains to the streets of London, England, Joe begins to fall for the woman of his dreams. In the process, he's beset by innumerable questions: Is he going mad? Might she actually exist? If so, why does he see through her eyes? Why is he party to visions that are either the greatest privacy invasion of all time, or a possible cosmic match in the making?
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Parsons, Kansas Winter - 1968
A brutal murder has taken place. The God-fearing citizens of the sleepy midwestern town are convinced evil has taken root.
A young married couple, Charlie and Delia Mull are left to pick up the pieces of shattered lives after the unspeakable tragedy.
Townsfolk whisper from church pews that pretty Delia Mull has brought the misfortune upon herself - a cursed family legacy. Others believe the horrific crime is merely another sign of a violent and godless age.
A mysterious woman has rented the house six doors down. Betty Malcomb is the new teacher hired at the high school. Locals are suspicious of the reclusive outsider. Why has she traveled to their peeling little town? What reasons would make her stay?
Located in the remote Kansas prairie sits the state penitentiary. Imprisoned in a concrete cell, a lone madman silently awaits his opportunity to complete his unholy calling.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Northwest Washington State, 1985
For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods. So when her mother's depression worsens, Harris shows the girl how to find and sketch the nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Aggie is in a tree far overhead when her unpredictable mother spots her and forbids her to climb. Angry, the ten-year-old accidentally lights a tragic fire, then flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, where she hides among the trees and creatures she considers her only friends—determined to remain undiscovered.
A search party gathers by Aggie’s empty boat hours after Celia, fresh off the plane from Houston, arrives at her grandmother’s nearby farm. Hurting from her parents’ breakup, she also plans to run. But when she joins the hunt for Aggie, she meets two irresistible young men who compel her to stay. One is autistic; the other, dangerous.
"What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams." - Werner Herzog
The opening ribbon has just been cut at the CRI, a state-of-the-art facility off the Southern Californian coast. Designed as a refuge for retired whales and dolphins from zoos and aquariums, the CRI boasts enormous enclosures, animal enrichment programs, and ultramodern veterinary care. Visitors from the mainland can occupy their time observing the animals or exploring the on-site museum and hotel. When a maintenance diver is discovered floating lifeless in one of the sea pens, new Head of Cetacean Behavior Lee Ingram can’t shake the feeling that one of his animals may be responsible.
Set in 1884, Hell on the Border tells the story of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves at the peak of his historic career. Famous for being a crack shot as well as for his nonviolent tendencies, Reeves uses his African American race to his strategic advantage. Along with a tramp or cowboy disguise, Reeves appears so nonthreatening that he often positions himself close enough to the outlaws he is pursuing to arrest them without bloodshed.
After a series of heroic feats of capturing and killing infamous outlaws--most notably Jim Webb--and an introduction to Belle Starr, Reeves finds himself in the Fort Smith jail, charged with murder. This second book in the Bass Reeves Trilogy investigates what really happened when Reeves made the greatest mistake of his life on the heels of his greatest achievements.
A missing girl. A world of secrecy. A quest to expose the truth.
Jayne knows they're gone, but no one else will acknowledge what's happening.
One by one, they're systematically erased from existence. No explanations. No missing person's reports. No search parties.
Something sinister is afoot. Jayne can feel it in her bones. But uncovering the truth will prove difficult, especially when she discovers who and what is behind the devious plot.
As she searches for answers, she grapples with the lingering effects of a head injury, an unexpected forbidden romance, and a strange new reality that changes everything.
Will she uncover the truth, or will she be the next innocent victim?
Adversity means nothing in the face of his tenacity.
People consider Diego Herrera different. Not only is he the son of undocumented Mexican immigrants, but he was also born with deaf mutism. Diego has fought all his life to find his path in the world and to change the world's opinion about him, but he is not alone in his journey. Diego has the help of his supportive mom, his little brother, and his best friend, Fernando, who are always cheering him on.
Diego’s greatest passion in life is soccer, and he seeks to prove he is just as capable as anyone else of reaching his goals. However, he must struggle to do so, as he is beset by naysayers he must prove wrong. Diego is not going to give up on his goals, and it finally seems like he has a chance to reach them.
But will Diego be able to achieve his dream, or will the world’s negativity drag him down?
It's 2020. COVID is rapidly spreading around the world. Racism and exclusionist politics are exploding. An exceptional immunologist develops a vaccine that has a shockingly simple delivery system, but causes color blindness. The world must confront a complex question: is being color blinded the right solution to racism and COVID?
An amusing young romance intersects with an underground freedom movement in a Soviet-style system that promised egalitarian utopia but devolved into a police state.
Izzy, an attractive college senior, belongs to an underground freedom movement organizing against a repressive, yet poorly run, Marxist regime. She is challenged by the idea of recruiting Tom, an unlikely choice as a rising young star in the Party. But Izzy heard Tom may have hidden depths and could get inside information as an underground mole. He’s also nice looking.
Will their amusing and cautious interactions and gradual revelations develop into a deeper relationship of shared beliefs? Will increasing friction between the two marginally competent Party leaders finally provide an opportunity for the underground to take action? Will Tom be reunited with his capitalist parents whom he denounced as a child, and who are in a massive Gulag prison camp?
Respected Crown Attorney, Christine Montgomery is accused of murdering her lying, cheating, ex-husband when he dies in a fire on their own property. Her life is shattered as she endures an emotional journey through invasive media and suspicious colleagues. When her childhood friend, local firefighter Jake Anderson, attempts to help Christine prove her innocence, an unexpected romance ignites. Dodging a killer, Jake and Christine struggle to avoid media who suggest they were already lovers and planned the murder as a way out of her failed marriage. Will Christine avoid doing time with criminals she's put behind bars? Is Jake all he seems? Who is the real killer and what is the connection to Christine?
Morrigan Bloodchild's life has always been a series of emergencies. She is in deep financial straits, getting evicted from her apartment, and to irritate matters, her on-again, off-again relationship with her boyfriend, Jack, is reaching its point of no return. However, always the punk rocker, she barrels through, until she loses her grandmother, causing a crisis of conflicting faiths, and erupting nightmares.
Desperately attempting to maintain sanity, she clutches her music and band, Mystic, that includes her "brother from another mother" Max more than ever. Eventually, however, she catches a break; the universe eases up on the hits, or so it seems. Morrigan's dream of starting her own record label is shattered when a previously secured SBA loan suddenly falls through.
A fast-paced psychological thriller that finds John Hart needing to join forces with his most powerful friend Mr. Black. As they begin John wonders: Even with Black’s help can they find a way to protect their most important resource when Hell comes to take it. John and the members of the Hart Group understand it will take every one of them functioning at their professional best to survive what is coming for them. Most members of the group never spent much time thinking about what lives in the valleys of the earth…soon they will be thinking of nothing else.Lou Berthelson presses the suspense and mystery as he continues the fast-paced action. This great storyteller grabs the reader and creates moments in Black’s Spot that takes the reader by surprise.
Gabriel reminisces about his genesis while standing side-by-side with his big brother, Lucifer, and the other 13 archangels, as their Father creates the universe around them. They explore the seven distinct levels of Heaven and encounter the extraordinary, yet sometimes dangerous, beast that resides within them. They learn about their unique abilities, which they use to build structures or in friendly sport against each other. They honor their Father, and life is perfect... in the beginning.
When their Father mentions a four-letter name, Gabriel sees the hatred and jealousy build within Lucifer. Soon, angels face a difficult choice, one that will split Heaven in two.
Not all gifts are blessings…Sixteen-summer-old Mirana Pinal is one of the few to have ever possessed all three magical powers of the Aspects. She has terrifying visions, however, that if she wields her powers, her homeland of Kinderra will be destroyed—through her. Desperate to keep her dark fate from unfolding, she tells no one about her destructive destiny but her beloved Teague Beltran, a young apprentice herbsman born without powers.When Mirana receives alarming premonitions of an enemy attack on Kinderra, she is forced to reveal to her people that she is a Trine to warn them of the impending assault. As the Kinderrans fight to hold armies of a cunning and ruthless enemy warlord at bay, Mirana must decide if using her powers will aid her people—or will bring them more peril.
As the Dark Trine’s noose tightens around Kinderra, young Trine Mirana Pinal and her mentor, the Trine hero Tetric Garis, embark on a quest to learn how the enigmatic watchtower of Jasal’s Keep once saved the land. Teague Beltran, Mirana’s beloved and an Unaspected herbsman’s apprentice, wants nothing more than to kill the Dark Trine himself. As one born without magical powers, however, he is forbidden to take up arms in battle. His confrontation with the Dark Trine’s forces may force him to sacrifice his healing oath. Mirana fears using her Aspects with the Light from Within will not be enough to save her people. The strength of her Aspects through the Power from Without, however, will lead her down a path she must not follow. Both must answer their true calling but each choice may leave them—and Kinderra—without hope.
