Winner Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
Fleeing the shattered remains of her marriage and treachery by her sister, a Latina anthropologist named Claudia takes refuge in Neah Bay, a Native whaling village on the jagged Pacific coast. Claudia yearns to lose herself to the songs of the tribe and the secrets of a spirited hoarder named Maggie. Instead, she stumbles into Maggie’s prodigal son Peter, who, spurred by his mother’s failing memory, has returned seeking answers to his father’s murder. Claudia helps Peter’s family convey a legacy delayed for decades by that death, but her presence, echoing centuries of fraught contact with indigenous peoples, brings lasting change and real damage. Through the ardent collision of Peter and Claudia, Subduction portrays not only their strange allegiance after grievous losses but also their shared hope of finding solace and community on the Makah Indian Reservation. An intimate tale of stunning betrayals, Subduction bears witness to the power of stories to disrupt—and to heal.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
Tehran was well known to American businessman Jack Devlin until the day everything changed. When radical Islamic students stormed the US embassy on November 4, 1979, Jack narrowly escaped the revolutionary chaos, leaving behind 80 percent of his business and 100 percent of his heart. To get his beautiful girlfriend, Farideh, out of Iran, Jack accepts a devil's bargain with the CIA and MI6. He must slip back into Tehran, where the militant students are holding dozens of Americans hostage in their own embassy. His part of the bargain is to steal the coveted client ledger of the world's most powerful arms dealer, Mustafa Khaki, Farideh's father. Surprised by an additional assignment, Jack is also ordered to strip a KGB defector of details on Russian collusion with Iran and their plan to eliminate the American hostages while infiltrating the highest levels of Ayatollah Khomeini's government. From the damp cellars of KGB headquarters to the cold chill of British espionage to the blistering heat of the Kuwaiti desert, readers will learn, in an erroneous twist, that not all the turncoats are Russians.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
It took all of thirty seconds for two shots to bring the world of Margaret Tabaaha crashing down around her. After losing her husband in Afghanistan during the first year of Operation Enduring Freedom, her two sons were all she had left. Now they had been taken from her violently, deliberately, plunging her into a whiskey bottle and stripping away her reason for living.
When Arthur Nakai receives a call from his first love, Margaret, her voice pleading for his help, it comes as he is attending a wake for one of the men he considered a brother from his days in the Marines 6th LAR Wolf Pack Battalion. Feeling a deep and responsible obligation to help her, Arthur soon finds himself involved in the multi-billion-dollar world of the oil and gas industry and coming face-to-face with an old adversary, Elias Dayton. Their paths had crossed when Arthur was a member of the Shadow Wolves, an elite tactical unit within US Customs and Border Protection. Now Dayton runs Patriot Security, a Blackwater-type firm that keeps the oil rigs, gas wells, and man camps secure from the Water Protectors, protesters pushing to stop the fracking and poisoning of Native lands.
As Arthur works through the case from his end, Navajo police chief Jake Bilagody tackles it from another angle, looking into the strained relationship between the oil company and the Navajo people, all while searching for a missing Navajo man that may have become an unwilling piece on the reservation checkerboard. But when Arthur learns the identity of the boys' killer, he struggles to make sense of it. Because if the clues are right, he will be forced to make a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
Life is good for thirty-year-old Owen Sterling. But when tragedy strikes during his honeymoon in Thailand, the future he’d hoped for is shattered.After time with his family and friends in America does little to ease his pain, Owen returns to Asia to try to make peace with his past. A chance encounter unites him with Suchin, a young Thai woman battling her own demons. Inspired by their unexpected connection, the unlikely pair of traveling companions journeys to Nepal, soon embarking on an extraordinary trek through the Himalayas. Facing their own doubts, as well as everything from bandits to mudslides to illness, Owen and Suchin climb higher, their bond strengthening with each step.But the shadows of their pasts continue to loom large. And while both seek rebirth within a beautiful yet unforgiving land, neither knows if they will reach a legendary summit. The climb could break them—or save them.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
Heaven Hill Plantation, upriver from Georgetown, South Carolina, 1807: Sixteen-year-old Alexandra Degambia balances on a tightrope stretched between her parents' ambitions. Her father, a prosperous African American plantation owner, wants to preserve the heritage of his African ancestors. But her mother, who can pass for white, seeks to distance herself from her African roots and position herself in the elite society of wealthy free-women-of-color.
Alexandra longs to establish her own place in the world as an accomplished violinist. She assumes her talent and her family's wealth will pave her way to success-however, her life becomes a nightmare when her mother dies and her father is murdered by prejudiced officials eager to seize Heaven Hill for their own.
Alexandra and her little brother, heirs to Heaven Hill, have targets on their backs. They are forced to flee for their lives and for their freedom.
What the future holds is uncertain. Sometimes destiny has its own plans.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
In "The Paradise Table," a Kate Grace Mystery, an Amazon Best Seller, and Spencer's follow-up novel to her award-winning "Lady in the Window," a year after the tragic loss of her beloved mother, freelance lifestyle writer Kate Grace's life seems to be turning around when she marries her soul mate, Dr. Kai Stevens, in paradise: Hanalei Bay, Kauai. But when a violent act shatters the quiet serenity of her new life, a shocking series of events are set in motion that lead to the confrontation of a devastating, decades-held secret. Still grieving and rocked by recent events, Kate must tap into her intuition, dreams, and prayer to understand synchronicities sent from the beyond in the hopes of bringing peace and healing to her family, friends, community, and to herself.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural The 2020 Best Book Awards
The Adventure and Romance of America, her people, her spirit and the West.
Fourth novel of thirty-three books of the Threads West, An American Saga series--compared by reviewers, authors and readers to Lonesome Dove, Centennial, Louis L'Amour (with steam) and called by some the "Gone with the Wind of the West" and applauded by others as "rings true and poignant, as authentic and moving as Dances with Wolves". This multiple #1 bestselling series--winner of fifteen National Awards, (including Best Historical Fiction, Best Romance, and Best Western)--bursts with the adventure, romance and promise of historical America set in the West.
The epic saga of Threads West begins in 1854 with Book One. We meet the first of five richly-textured, complex generations of unforgettable characters. The separate lives of these driven men and independent women are drawn to a common destiny that beckons seductively from the wild and remote flanks of the American West.
