On the cusp of sixty, after a lifetime of supporting the aspirations of others, would-be artist Tina Gabler is feeling a sense of urgency to take her own ambitions seriously and put her creative talents to the test. Temporarily unattached, Tina takes a position with former prime-time news anchor, Peter Bright at his home in the Thousand Islands. Aging and frail, Peter is trying to finish a book about the decline of objectivity in photojournalism—a meticulously documented exposé of iconic but staged photographs that defined “reality” for an increasingly lazy and credulous public that, Peter believes, demands stories more than facts.

As Peter’s research assistant, Tina tracks down not just the provenance of his photos, but also the unidentified child in a Roman Vishniac photograph and Peter’s estranged daughter, a Cree girl he adopted during the notorious “Sixties Scoop” in Canada. But in trying to create happy endings for other people’s children, she must reexamine her relationship with her own father, and the quest for collective versus personal achievement that has brought her to this unsettled moment.

Funny, searching, and gorgeously written, Burning and Dodging entertains as it reveals how the stories we construct about others support the stories we tell about ourselves.

An Idaho farmer who earns a second chance at life finds that the past has a hard time letting him go. A young girl navigates funeral-goers, family, and the unusual circumstances of her grandmother’s death in Pennsylvania. A risk-averse young man must make a bold move after stumbling into a nightmarish government biohazard. An aging alcoholic vigilante is asked to find common ground with a teenager in a secret witness protection program.

These and six more short stories continue and intersect with 50 States, the debut anthology that surprised readers with 50 thought-provoking stories across different genres. Together, these new stories stand on their own and expand upon a growing body of work that takes place across the American landscape.

Ten Threads is a brisk 125-page companion to Richard R. Becker’s award-winning debut, 50 States. It is presented as a Kindle exclusive, a glimpse into his next anthology and future novel.

A Second Helping of Crazy

In A Second Helping of Crazy, author John D. Ottini has collected thirteen of his most memorable stories in one volume. Three stories were previously chosen as Finalists in the annual Royal Palm Literary Awards competition, and the rest are a selection of the author's personal favorites.


Stories included:


Tormented Heart: A husband discovers that fulfilling his departed wife’s final request is more than he ever bargained for. Life among the Fireflies: The simple and seemly idyllic farm life of elderly grandparents masks a dark and deadly secret. True Confession: A code of ethics which condones murder. Blame it on the Weather: A father’s revenge is bestowed upon an unlikely suspect. Killer Karma: What goes around will more than likely come around. Elevated Madness: A casual meeting in the elevator of a downtown office building turns into madness. One Shot to the Head: A romantic dinner on Valentine's Day becomes an evening that ends in humiliation. No Return Address: A retired postal worker’s past indiscretions come back to haunt him. Things We Can’t Control: Sometimes losing a bet, means losing a friend. Words to a Kill: When a wife’s post-accident behavior troubles her husband, his brother makes an unorthodox suggestion to help cure her problem. Hell to Pay: A couple of unruly youths discover that’s it’s never a good idea to pick on an elderly woman with nothing to lose. Remorse: A husband learns the hard way that murder is not something to be taken lightly. The Butcher: A butcher with an appetite for women and a fetish for collecting unusual objects.

In a split-second, Patrick was gone; that moment would haunt Alexander forever. "Parallel Lives" is an enthralling novel that tells the story of Alexander Eastgard and his best friend, Patrick Close. Alexander is an athlete and a scholar with an adventurous spirit and an intense fascination with the past. When Alexander's rival, Hector Gonzalez, causes Patrick's death, the tragedy torments Alexander for the rest of his life and sets in motion a chain of events that darkens the lives of those around him- Helen, a woman of great beauty and astonishingly poor judgment; Mark, her devoted son; Julia, the Harvard undergrad whose romance with Mark proves unexpectedly dangerous; and Giulietta, the prescient but lovelorn fortune-teller- across two generations. This is an unforgettable novel filled with compelling characters. It is the story of a passionate, illicit affair, the apprehension and imprisonment of a drug lord, the descent of his son into addiction, a suicide with no body, and a hidden gun that falls into the wrong hands.

RECOMMENDED by the US Review of Books
2022 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite

There are those who are born into loving families and then there are the less fortunate who must forge their own families through strong friendships.

At a local small library in New York City, one such family was born. And just like so many capricious happenstances in life, this family unit embraced newcomers and grew exponentially. But this clan was also charged with far more than spreading love and joy and a sense of belonging. This clan was formed by divine Providence to help save the planet.

Gabrielle Bernstein, the MC of Like a Lily Among the Thorns, is a woman in her twenties and has started her career as a librarian at a NYC public library. Abandoned by her father as a young girl and now orphaned by her deranged mother, Gabby longs for a family connection. Coincidentally, she finds this connection at the same time she inherits a B&B in Vermont from her estranged and now deceased father. This enchanted inn is under the watchful eye of goddesses of myth and legend who have been tasked to save mankind from destroying itself and this planet. These goddesses will use their powers to try and stall the onslaught of the effects of droughts, floods, and rising temperatures. But as a safety net they have collected human saviors all over the planet to erect safe havens at high altitudes away from flood waters and blistering temperatures.

Woven through this tale is Gabrielle’s inherent understanding that she must be grateful, mindful, and present in this journey called life.

"A vibrant, superbly written tale. It's a fast-paced, tightly knit, family drama with a female protagonist at the heart who, despite painful adolescence memories and present financial and personal hardship, has the courage and tenacity to confront her life's challenges head on." –Helen Trepelkov, author of Post Graduate Studies in Motherhood

"With its fast pace, well-developed characters and plot twists and turns, Reckonings is a story you won't soon forget." Gail Olmstead, author of Landscape of a Marriage

For all her adult life, Roxy suppressed the impact of two traumatic events—being abandoned by her mother at the age of twelve and being raped by her boyfriend, Spider, at eighteen. She never told anyone but her best friend about the rape. Though happily married to Carl, they both long to be out from under the thumb of Carl’s domineering father, for whom they both work. And she’s convinced that her first play—being staged at the community theater with her movie-star friend from high school in the lead role—is the ticket to that better life.

But now Spider is back, a successful land developer with a proposal to revitalize the town and solve the theater’s financial woes. When he takes an interest in Jewel, Roxy’s eldest daughter whose paternity she’s not entirely sure of, and engineers a big win for Carl in a private poker game, Roxy knows he’s up to his old tricks. She’s determined to expose him before he can harm her family or her beloved theater.

Karen E. Osborne traces the treacherous path between good intentions and poor decisions rooted in the shame of toxic secrets.

When his family is plunged into poverty during the Great Depression, Ben Taylor takes a job with the US Civilian Conservation Corps developing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A tragic accident puts him in a dilemma: does he let someone else take the fall for what he did so he can keep his position? The repercussions of his decision plague him all the way to the Battle of the Bulge in World War II where Ben is reunited with an old friend from his time with the Corps. Inspired by actual events and the people who once lived in the Smoky Mountains before it became a National Park, this saga explores how people use stories to hide uncomfortable truths and the lengths they’ll go to protect their home and family.

"Lovett’s prose is elegant and descriptive... the reading experience is a rich one filled with feelings of regret, grief, and longing. An engrossing, well-told tale of a father and daughter separated by decades." – Kirkus Review

When Reverend David Wilder gets a letter from the daughter he's never known, he realizes that an old promise is a debt he might not be able to repay. His quiet life in the mountains of Western North Carolina will never be the same again. What would happen to his parish?

Molly has always felt she never quite fit in with her family. Nobody will tell her what happened to her mother, and she suspects that Daddy is not her birth father.

She'll stop at nothing to find the answer.

A secret from a tragic past meets the longings of a lonely present.

In Desperation Kills, author John D. Ottini weaves together three standalone yet interconnected stories about the dangerous and sometimes deadly situations that people find themselves in when blinded by passion or pushed to the point of desperation.

Parting Words

Sitting by the bedside of her dying mother, Gwen is told a secret so startling that she can only hope that what she is hearing are simply the delusions of an over-medicated woman in her final hours of life. But in the weeks and months following the funeral, that hope crumbles as more pieces of evidence come to light, threatening everything Gwen holds dear. Then tragedy strikes once more.

Desperate to move on with her life, Gwen sets out to discover the truth—only to be confronted with a question that is far more difficult to answer: Are there some secrets that are best left alone?

Writer’s Remorse

Writer Jonathan Hardin and his wife Tess leave the hustle and bustle of New York City to live in a small, solitary farmhouse in Upstate New York. But the last thing they expect is to be involved in small-town gossip and scandal.

When the local librarian is found dead and Jon becomes the prime suspect, their lives are turned upside down. Tess is left to wonder if their marriage will survive the accusations and the ramifications of her husband’s legal turmoil. But most of all the question haunts her: Is Jon guilty?

Exorcising My Demon

Some events are so painful and frightening that you can’t share them with anyone. But even if you did, would anyone believe you? Faced with this dilemma, young Jonathan Hardin must take matters into his own hands in an effort to conquer his demon.


AUTHORS NOTE: The following stories were released in previous publications.

“Parting Words” was originally titled “Beneath the Roses”and published as a standalone novelette in2016
“Writer’s Remorse”was originally titled “She Loves Me Not” and published in, Deadly Revelations, 2016.
“Exorcising My Demon” was originally titled “Monsters Are Everywhere” and published in Monster Maelstrom: A Halloween Anthology, 2016

NOTE: “Parting Words” (formerly Beneath the Roses) has a fresh, new storyline and ending. “Writer’s Remorse” (formerly She Loves Me Not) was tweaked to include more details to enhance the story and to connect the characters to the common storyline in Parting Words. “Exorcising My Demon” (formerly Monsters Are Everywhere) only required minor changes to fit the common storyline.

1993. The war-torn Bosnian countryside. Jane Abbott, a seasoned English conflict zone photographer who is no longer easily surprised, is surprised. Stunned, in fact, to’ve come across the son of THE notorious Ingrid Heimlich—who, until her traceless disappearance twenty years ago, had been the world’s most infamous leftist terrorist. Ben Heimlich, the stranded German kid and wannabe reporter she has picked up by the roadside, is either fearless or incredibly naïve—though probably naïve—and were it not for the platoon of Serbian partisans who intercept them on their way, she’d pestered him incessantly with questions of his mother’s whereabouts.


1994. Still reeling from the horror he had seen in Bosnia—and, as ever, wondering where in the world his mother is—Ben Heimlich moves to the United States and settles in the sparkling local neighborhood and global allegory known as Hollywood. As he gets older and, eventually, more affluent, Ben realizes that, no matter how ostensibly successful he’s become, he can’t escape his lingering despair. When he meets Isabel, who’s left her own traumatic early life in Mexico behind to make a new beginning in Los Angeles, his life takes a dramatic upward turn.


Chapter after chapter, Ben and his mother’s backgrounds and personae are illuminated from a multitude of angles by, among others, a former student activist aboard a hijacked airplane on a dusty stretch of tarmac in the capital of Libya in 1971; an aging homeless actor in Los Angeles still waiting for his break in 1994; a young girl who stumbles through the smoldering ruins of Berlin in 1945; a US State Department operative who interferes with sovereign states all over South America; the involuntary teenage wife of an imperious Sinaloan drug lord who attempts to flee her gilded cage; and the ninety-something-year-old son of German immigrants who’d fought for the United States against his parents’ onetime countrymen in World War II.

She had big dreams. But will war, tragedy, and naïveté ruin her aspirations?

America, the 1940s. Margaret Rose longs to escape her family’s poverty. So against her domineering father’s wishes, the determined young woman elopes with an older man. But shortly after the US enters WWII, her grand ambitions sink when her husband’s ship is torpedoed.

Training to become a nurse to give herself a future, Margaret’s despair deepens when she discovers she’s pregnant and must quit to have the baby. And now without income to support a child, the desperate widow marries a man who takes her far from home… and into disaster.

Will Margaret rise above catastrophic misfortune and create the life she deserves?

Poignant and heartfelt, The Scent of Gardenias chronicles the struggle of a Twentieth-Century woman carving a place in a society stacked against her odds for success. Inspired by her mother’s true story, Lorraine Haas lays bare a brave and challenging journey of grit and self-discovery you won’t soon forget.

The Scent of Gardenias is a beautifully crafted women’s fiction novel. If you like raw emotional battles, family drama, and gut-wrenching dilemmas, then you’ll love Lorraine Haas’s tale of courage and tenacity.

Buy The Scent of Gardenias to unearth hope today!

You’ve matched with Jamie!

So begins the story of Taylor and Jamie, told entirely, one day at a time, through text messages, social media posts, dating profiles, emails, and journal entries. Their genders are left up to the reader.
This is the story of any of us trying to solve the oldest problem of all in a modern world—love.

Teymour Shahabi is the award-winning author of the novels The Secret Billionaire and Someone in the Walls. He lives in New York City.

"Intriguing, ambitious, and pretty damn delightful...written with passionate conviction and without compromise. 'Hugh' has the flavour of a queer Tom Jones or a queerer Tristram Shandy. This is a genuinely impressive accomplishment, as is the satirical tone, and the archness of dialogue.” – Alexis Hall, author of Boyfriend Material

This romp through 18th century England is like nothing told in the era of Tom Jones – a sparkling, humorous, and poetical coming-of-age 242 years in the making.

From an old family trunk comes a manuscript which never saw the light of day. Its pages tell of the life, times, and blackmail of a young queer aristocrat stepping into 1768 Society…

A time of wig powder and heeled slippers.
Duels and social climbers, when the most popular member of the government is declared an outlaw. Hugh Entwistle enters this world wealthy, witty, and well-connected. Everything to be a success – everything, except that thing stuck to the bottom of his heeled slipper.

Hugh’s is a story of secret encounters and significant looks. Hushed separations and sobriquets. But if he dares define Liberty, he might be asked to confront a blackmailer. Asked to confront a father. And before he can make a marriage proposal, follow his heart, and accept one.

Hugh is a rollicking tale of comic angst, and a celebration of the wit, beauty, and absurdities of a glorious age.

Praise for Hugh: A Hero without a Novel:

“...I found it absolutely fascinating…Sui generis, thoroughly interesting, fabulously vivid in place and time, and I’m glad I read it.”– K.J. Charles, author The Magpie Lord

“...a work of queer historical archiving that’s as admirable and remarkable as its hero.”– Kirkus Reviews

France, 1940.
An unexpected gift of an old motorcycle with a tragically romantic past hurls a young orphan into the thick of things as war breaks out and his life changes forever. Half-French/half-German Daniel must find a way to survive in a world that mercy seems to have abandoned. This book transports the reader to Nazi-occupied France, where Daniel unwittingly and unexpectedly finds himself working for the Resistance, and ultimately to the Russian Front in a twist of fate so startling that no one can see it coming. In turn quirky, heartwarming, beguiling and uncompromising, author Marc Sercomb weaves together many moods and colors to tell young Daniel’s story. Beyond engaging, Picasso’s Motorcycle has been hailed as a genuine “page-turner” by those who have so far encountered it.

If you like “The Book Thief” and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” you’ll love this book!

Loss, redemption, and love.
140 poems and the story 'Success.'


The Absurd Grit -
There was a day when I woke up
and knew I was leaving.
The absurd grit had gotten
behind my collar and into the works.
The sky was perpetually dirty,
like an industrial twilight of broken dreams.
People whom I had
tried to love and befriend
had become strange and cruel.
Nothing was right at home.
Even the coffee was bad.
So I left.
Highways became roads became trails.
And along the way there were
emerald lakes and silence.
Like this place I chanced upon.
I thought about calling you
to say that there were no more questions,
but I had lost your number,
and I wasn’t even sure
how to pronounce your name.
When I really tried to remember,
I realized that what I needed most
was to forget.
So I did.
And then the coffee,
and everything else,
started to become delicious again.

Nominated for the 2017 Small Press Association PUSHCART PRIZE for Best Novel

A racially charged novel about authority, loyalty, and the cost of morality.

Corporal William Buck is on leave in Memphis, visiting his mother, when Martin Luther King, Jr., is shot dead, and the city erupts in a race riot. Rather than leave his mother in the urban war zone, Corporal Buck chooses to become AWOL. When he eventually returns, he is willing to face discipline but refuses to tolerate the hateful taunts of a racist sergeant.

A novel charged with emotion and moral tensions, Non-Semper Fidelis is about a Marine attempting to survive the military code of the United States Marine Corps, while preserving a mind and morality of his own.

How much would you gamble for true love?

Jane Fairfax dreaded her future as a governess. But genteel solitude seemed her fate. Then handsome, charming, rich Frank Churchill asked to marry her – IF his rich aunt agreed. He just had to persuade her first.

What could possibly go wrong?

What kind of shadow does a family secret cast over the child?
Mark Aherne is a middle-aged, married man living in Chicago. He's estranged from his parents in Boston, his father having bullied and belittled him throughout his childhood.
One Sunday he receives a desperate phone call from his sister who has been caring for their parents for many years. She needs help: his parents are sick and have started drinking again. Mark soon finds himself back with his sister dealing with their parents' loss of independence.
While caring for his parents, he remembers the past when he dealt with his father's emotional effect on him and the family. His memories include many childhood events that filled him with guilt and a sense of separation.
As he slowly comes to understand his family's dysfunction, he discovers secrets in his parents' lives that led to their own unhappiness. With his mother's dementia and his father's stubborn isolation, Mark fears his own aging as he learns to lay to rest the experiences of his childhood.

It’s the summer of 1953. Calvin Jefferson Coolidge is thirteen years old when the ghost of Joseph Stalin appears to him in his Aunt Evelyn’s cluttered Cleveland attic and wants to dictate his memoirs to him.
“I want to tell my side of the story,” Uncle Joe tells him. “They’re giving me one year to set the record straight, so we need to get started right away.”
Calvin’s life is falling apart at the seams. He’s a misfit and loner whose only friends are famous dead people. He loves polka music and Westerns and sometimes wonders what it would be like to kiss a girl. His con man father is in Florida looking for his bipolar runaway mother. His cousin Buck is abducted and experimented on by aliens. The lady next door wants to coach him in the ways of love. His pastor thinks he’s headed straight for Hell. His English teacher thinks he’s a savant. The school psychologist wants to have him committed. His shrink thinks he’s just plain nuts. Sometimes, Calvin believes it too.
Everybody’s trying to figure out what makes Calvin tick in this quirky, fast-paced metaphysical romp through the heart and soul of 1950’s America.

When LA social worker Anabel Medina sees a heavily armed gunman open fire at a shopping mall in Malibu, she almost snickers at the cruelly ironic fact that, after everything she’s managed to survive throughout her violent childhood in El Salvador, she's now about to die. Here. In Malibu.

Soon thereafter, while being interviewed on live TV—and asked how she was able to subdue the shooter with such unfazed bravery, as has been seen by millions on a viral video—Anabel demurs. She doesn’t want to talk about how she had spent her adolescence fleeing from marauding death squads in the Salvadoran hinterlands, and how a childhood in such constant close proximity to death begets a kind of callousness that’s difficult to grasp for people from the North. The hero worship fluff piece she’s expected to partake in comes entirely undone when Anabel—instead of giving some redundant play-by-play of the ordeal, or leaving it at yet another feckless argument for stricter gun control—opts to speak about the deeper reasons for the ceaseless stream of violence in, and from, America while giving an articulate assessment of a western system rife with corporate greed, extreme iniquity, perpetual wars, and smoldering rage.

Days later, Chris Heller, a disenchanted war photographer who’s visiting his hometown of Los Angeles, meets a woman by the name of Anabel who, as it turns out, has recently made waves in Malibu. Two damaged souls begin to bond and for the first time in god-knows-how-long, feel close to someone else.

When Anabel faces calls to use the platform she's unwittingly achieved, Chris, afire with a newfound sense of purpose in her wake, encourages her to run for office as an independent candidate. What follows is an unrelenting media smear campaign against the former ‘Heroine of Malibu’ who, through her enormous popularity, rises to become a threat to the establishment.