HER PERFECT LIFE
By Hank Phillippi Ryan
Everyone knows Lily Atwood — and that may be her biggest problem. The beloved television reporter has it all — fame, fortune, Emmy awards, an adorable seven-year-old daughter, and the hashtag her loving fans created: #PerfectLily. To keep it, all she has to do is protect one life-changing secret.
Her own.
Lily has an anonymous source who feeds her story tips about others — but suddenly, the source begins telling Lily inside information about her own life! How does he — or she — know so much?
Lily understands that no one reveals a secret unless they have a reason. Now she’s terrified someone is determined to destroy her world — and with it, everyone and everything she holds dear. How much must she risk to keep her perfect life?
THE AUTHOR
Hank Phillippi Ryan is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV. She’s won 37 Emmys and dozens more journalism honors. The nationally bestselling author of 13 thrillers, Ryan’s also an award-winner in her second profession — with five Agathas, three Anthonys, two Macavitys, the Daphne, and for The Other Woman, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award.
Critics call her “a master of suspense” and “a superb and gifted storyteller,” and she is the only author to have won the Agatha in four different categories: Best First, Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Nonfiction. Ryan is a founder of MWA University and past president of National Sisters in Crime.
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KALAYLA
By Jeannie Nicholas
Race, sexuality, honesty, abuse, love and forgiveness are interwoven as characters in Kalayla. We meet three families, one Irish, one Italian and one Black, confronting the legacy of the past in 1999 Cambridge, MA.
Kalayla: a feisty bi-racial, 11-year-old loner whose world implodes when she discovers her parents belong in the Guinness Book of World Records for being “The World’s Biggest Liars” about her mother’s family.
Maureen: Kalayla’s mother cocoons herself in art projects, deflecting the pain of her parent’s rejection. Her husband’s sudden death catapults her into life as a single mother raising a rebellious, incomprehensible daughter.
Lena: their landlady, financially successful, 72 years old, wears only black and lives in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment. Lena is tormented by memories of the dead, her twin sons and husband, and the living, two sons from whom she is estranged.
Anyone who has experienced the angularities, rigid pockets and soft spots of family life can take hope from reading Kalayla, which shows that pathways for change do exist — and if we choose to, we can find them.
THE AUTHOR
Jeannie Nicholas is a Colorado native who loves animals, meditates daily and practices Tai Chi. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and animal friends. Kalayla is her first novel.
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SEARCHING FOR SPENSER
By Margaret Kramar
Winner of the National Indie Excellence Award.
What makes a good parent? What defines success? How do we face loneliness and despair? Kramar searches for the answers to these questions after her son Spenser is diagnosed with Soto syndrome. She is forced to look honestly at her life as a single parent of two sons — one who is disabled. As his most ardent cheerleader, Margaret encourages Spenser to transcend the arbitrary limits of his disability, and Spenser flourishes.
After his sudden death, Margaret questions whether she ever really knew her child. She searches for him in the memories of former teachers, relatives and friends, embarking on a journey that takes her beyond the grave, even to a psychic, while she finds support and solace in the monthly meetings of The Compassionate Friends. However, Spenser refuses to lie forgotten in his grave. Through the visions of others, Spenser communicates with Margaret so that she realizes she has not lost him after all.
Searching for Spenser examines the experience of loving and losing a child and reminds us that there is a way forward through the pain and suffering. The wounds, although soul-deep, do heal, allowing a way to live, love and laugh again.
THE AUTHOR
Margaret Rayburn Kramar is an educator who has taught English composition, drama and American literature. She received an M.A. in journalism from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and other print and digital publications. She and her family live on a small farm in Northeast Kansas.
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WHAT PASSES AS LOVE
By Trisha R. Thomas
A young woman pays a devastating price for freedom in this heartrending and breathtaking novel of the 19th-century South.
1850. I was six years old the day Lewis Holt came to take me away.
Born into slavery, Dahlia never knew her mother — or what happened to her. When Dahlia’s father, the owner of Vesterville plantation, takes her to work in his home as a servant, she’s desperately lonely. Forced to leave behind her best friend, Bo, she lives in a world between black and white, belonging to neither.
Ten years later, Dahlia meets Timothy Ross, an Englishman in need of a wife. Reinventing herself as Lily Dove, Dahlia allows Timothy to believe she’s white, with no family to speak of, and agrees to marry him. She knows the danger of being found out. She also knows she’ll never have this chance at freedom again.
Ensconced in the Ross mansion, Dahlia soon finds herself held captive in a different way — as the dutiful wife of a young man who has set his sights on a political future. But when Bo arrives on the estate in shackles, Dahlia decides to risk everything to save his life. With suspicions of her true identity growing and a bounty hunter not far behind, Dahlia must act fast or pay a devastating price.
THE AUTHORS
Trisha R. Thomas is an award-winning author of literary fiction honored with the Literary Lion Award and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Her novel Nappily Ever After is a Netflix Original feature film.
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SERPENT RISING
By Victor Acquista
Winner of the 2021 International Book Award for New Age Fiction.
Ever since her great aunt left her alone in a cave when she was ten, Serena Mendez has been haunted by the traumatic incident. Now she’s an unemployed, pill-popping 21-year-old suffering from nightmares and PTSD. When her psychiatrist suggests she visit her great aunt to get to the root cause of her ailment, she reluctantly agrees it’s time to confront her past.
Accompanied by her geeky friend Bryson, they travel to a Navajo Reservation to meet with her great aunt and return to the cave where it all began. But what she discovers points to an ancient conflict between the Illuminati and a Luminarian sect with origins to Atlantis — and she appears to be at the center of it all. With more questions than answers and only a handful of clues, Serena embarks on a mystical journey across six continents to learn more.
But sinister forces oppose her. Pursued by a powerful enemy, Serena must evade capture and fulfill her true destiny. Can she expose dark secrets and a hidden conspiracy? Or will those who wish to remain in the shadows find her first?
THE AUTHOR
Victor Acquista, M.D., has become a successful international author and speaker following careers as a primary care physician and medical executive. His nonfiction and workshops focus on personal growth and transformation, especially as pertains to health and wellness. His fiction includes social messaging intended to get the reader engaged in thought-provoking themes. He is the creator and narrator/host of a podcast series, Podfobler Productions. He is also a member of the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, the Florida Writers Association, Writers Co-op, and is a Knight of the Sci-Fi Roundtable. He lives with his wife in Florida.
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THE WORLD PLAYED CHESS
By Robert Dugoni
Bestselling author Robert Dugoni returns with an emotionally arresting follow-up to The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell.
In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So, he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime.
Now, 40 years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer — Vincent’s last taste of innocence and first taste of real life — dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life and seeking one’s own destiny.
THE AUTHOR
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, which has sold more than 6 million books worldwide. He is also the author of The Charles Jenkins espionage series and the David Sloane legal thriller series in addition to several stand-alone novels, including The 7th Canon and Damage Control. His literary novel The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell was Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award. Several of his novels have been optioned for movies and television series. His books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.
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SEX TALK
By Dr. Stephen A. Furlich
This book combines social science research with biological science research stemming from rigorous scientific research investigations. It precisely tracks how gender communication differences change as one’s biology and physiology changes and how these changes occur throughout different stages of life.
This text provides easy-to-understand scientific information for a better understanding of oneself and others. It teaches one how to strategically communicate more effectively and even to change the biological physiology of oneself and others through simple-to-understand recommendations.
This book can benefit all readers from teens to senior citizens in their personal lives as well as advancing their careers through strategic communication. A reader can start pursuing any chapter and gain valuable insight. Overwhelming scientific research evidence proves, with absolute 100 percent certainty, that biological sex influences gender communication differences!
THE AUTHOR
Stephen A. Furlich, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Communication Studies Program under the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce. His Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. are all from Texas Tech University. He researches and teaches in the area of Applied Communication Studies.
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