Just like everyone else in that small, remote and beautiful village, Mohammed was living a simple, happy and peaceful life with his wife and eight children. They had their own farmlands, goats and water for themselves and life was good. That was of course until a group of strangers suddenly appeared at the village and nothing remained the same again. With time, more outsiders arrived and before too long, they were almost everywhere. New settlements were built, new jobs were created and the villagers welcomed them with open arms as they were their own people. The outsiders were smart, educated and powerful people with higher connections. As they had come with well-thought-out plans and had no intention whatsoever of leaving soon, they were here to stay permanently. While the systematic schemes worked perfectly as planned, the simple and naive villagers hadn't even had the slightest clue about it, and by the time they had realized it, it was already too late. It was not only their farmlands, goats and water that were gone but also their freedom too and the next thing the villagers found themselves was being barricaded in a restricted place like caged animals. With time, the resentment, hatred and bitterness between the two sides grew in great deal and the fighting persisted on indefinitely. How the villagers fought with the superior enemy? What happened to their lands and water that were supposed to be a gift from the God? How Mohammed survived through the infighting? What happened to his goats, olive trees and family? And what happened to the hope, dream and future of those innocent villagers? What happened to their dignity? What happened to humanity? This is not only a work of fiction by itself, just take a look around yourself and you will find reality more closer than you can ever imagine! It's not only Mohammed's story anymore, it's our story!

TIM I GURUNG is an author working on 15th book based in Hong Kong, he writes on serious global and social issues, and he only writes for his charity - ISSLCARE.

Maggie Elizabeth Harrington is the story of a young woman in the 1890s, whose world is a remote northern Michigan mining town, where she tries to save a pack of young wolves from a bounty hunter. A terse historical love story of a young woman’s struggle with environmental and moral issues concerning the slaughter of wolves, and the church’s condemnation of her love for a young man, are as real in today’s global world as they were for young Maggie more than a century ago.

In 1866, Peter Baxter’s misfortune ends the day he leaves Badgerys Creek orphanage. Unsure of what to do next, Peter finds himself on a farm run by Mr. Brown. An aging man, Brown needs help and is happy to give Peter a place to live in exchange for his labor. Unbeknownst to Peter, Brown’s past is riddled with dark secrets tied to the same orphanage, which he has documented in a red folder.

During a chance encounter, Peter meets Rose. Peter cannot help but fall in love with her beauty, grace, and wit; however, he fears that his affection will go unrequited as a result of his crippling poverty. But fate changes when Peter joins the search for gold in Hill End, New South Wales. Striking it rich, he returns to Rose a wealthy man. Peter is changed by his new found affluence, heading towards the mire of greed. Will Rose regret her relationship with Peter?

Meanwhile, Rose has her own troubled history. One that is deeply entwined with Brown’s past and Peter’s future.

Set in a small town during the 1900's, The Gingerbread House is Historical Literary Fiction grounded in nostalgia, mirth, and true love. When a journalist comes home from Europe to take over the town newspaper from his sister, he becomes infatuated with the local people and their stories. From an orphaned young girl to a threatening politician to a mysterious and beautiful woman, each individual has a tale to tell in this anthology of brief yet captivating fictional vignettes, each of which rings all too familiar. The Gingerbread House is very much like gingerbread itself - just as tasty whether one delves into it a bit at a time or all at once

A lonely girl learns to play a discarded trombone.
An abused stallion learns to trust.
Together, they save their world.
Eleven-year-old Josey Miller knows two things: it’s her fault Mama left, and she will do anything to coax her back.
When Mrs. Casey, the new music teacher, starts a band at Bennett Springs Middle School, Josey sees it as her chance to finally belong to something and convince Mama to visit for her concerts. The only problem: there’s no money for a clarinet, what with Dad laid off and fighting to keep their farm.
But things start looking up when Grandpa Joe gives Josey an old trombone to play, and Mr. McInerny starts boarding his high-dollar Arabian stallion with Dad. Nobody can train horses like Josey’s father. And that’s good because Chief is dangerous.
When her father and the stallion go missing during a 50-mile endurance ride in the Ozark Mountains, can Josey bring them safely home?

‘Bobby Wayner was twelve when he watched his older brother, Eldon, die on the kitchen table from a shotgun wound.’ The opening of Fred Calvert’s lyrical novel “The Balladeer” sets the tone for this striking and poignant tale about the destruction of two families. During World War II in Kentucky, farm boys Bobby and Eldon Wayner are budding balladeers. They become intrigued with a recluse farmer, “Ol’ Weber,” a German immigrant. Rumors allege that he’s a Nazi and that he‘d even murdered his own family. The boys spy on him and discover that at night he plays a mesmerizing piano tune. To write a ballad about Ol’ Weber, Eldon takes a fatal risk. Many years later, after time served in California’s Folsom Prison for a barroom killing, Bobby travels back to Kentucky. On the way, his ballads and memories tell why he’d run away after Eldon died. When he reaches home, he discovers the past has been waiting like Judgment Day.

​An Adele concert held in Verona becomes the focus for an unhappy married couple, a divorced mother and a devoted lover from three different countries and cultures.
This is the story of three flawed but likeable people. First up is Elias, a Moroccan man living in Rome. He discovers that a black magic spell was cast upon him but starts to doubt whether it was the real cause of the break-up between him and his long-lost love Malika. He decides to search for her in the shadows of Marrakesh after eight years of separation.
Nadia, a single mother from Jordan, is battling her ex-husband in the courts and doing all she can to secure freedom for herself and her only son. Her dream is to take her son to see his idol, Adele, live.
Finally, Yaser, a married man living in Las Vegas, realizes that his marriage is crawling all over him like a slow, painful death, so he starts to rebel against his wife. While faith initially brought them together, it is now causing them to drift apart.
These three characters are on a journey to break free of everything that has haunted them, learning harsh truths about fate, religion, courage, desire and guilt along the way.

In this sweeping epic of the northernmost American frontier, James A. Michener guides us through Alaska’s fierce terrain and history, from the long-forgotten past to the bustling present. As his characters struggle for survival, Michener weaves together the exciting high points of Alaska’s story: its brutal origins; the American acquisition; the gold rush; the tremendous growth and exploitation of the salmon industry; the arduous construction of the Alcan Highway, undertaken to defend the territory during World War II. A spellbinding portrait of a human community fighting to establish its place in the world, Alaska traces a bold and majestic saga of the enduring spirit of a land and its people.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii.
 
Praise for Alaska
 
“Few will escape the allure of the land and people [Michener] describes. . . . Alaska takes the reader on a journey through one of the bleakest, richest, most foreboding, and highly inviting territories in our Republic, if not the world. . . . The characters that Michener creates are bigger than life.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“Always the master of exhaustive historical research, Michener tracks the settling of Alaska [in] vividly detailed scenes and well-developed characters.”—Boston Herald
 
“Michener is still, sentence for sentence, writing’s fastest attention grabber.”—The New York Times

Nude swimming is a collection of stories about love and romance in the lives of an eclectic group of individuals. From physicist Jack Joseph, caught in the space between his love for the beautiful Marilee and his famous General Theory of Non-Existence, to the manic Loonsfoot and his possessive love for Esther who has left him to be with a woman. These short romantic fictions explore relationships from the extreme peripheral to the  intimate inside of affairs of the heart.

The single thread that binds the stories together is our need for love, compassion and companionship in spite of our variances in ideas and ethics that separate us. I want the reader to experience why a young Maggie Harrington, on the eve of her wedding to one man, surrenders her virginity to another. Or what propels a self assured Rosemary to request her lover to  dominate her in a spanking episode. I am hoping, within the framework of these not so ordinary characters, to connect you as a reader to the not so ordinary conflicts that exist in your own relationships.

After devastating family events, Scott Trundel clings to the last remnant of his former family life: an unrelenting passion for baseball. With no real athletic skills, Scott eventually embarks on a career as a baseball reporter at the turn of the millennium, when newspapers are quickly becoming relics and the information age threatens to make journalists extinct. Scott must rise above the rest to survive in the dying medium he loves.
When Scott meets Cameron Dobson, he feels an inexplicable draw to the player most others now see as unremarkable. Cam was born with velocity in his arm and notoriety in his lineage. His skill is his one way out of his rural Pennsylvania hometown, where his last name is as dreaded as his fastball. To fully realize his talent Cam must overcome a lifetime of unfulfilled expectation .
Scott and Cam meet in the purgatory that is independent league baseball. Both looking for a shot at something bigger, they can only hope someone is taking notice of them and the new baseball team in blue collar Vineland, New Jersey.

Nalia finds herself trapped in a strange and inescapable lucid dream. Danger looms ahead for her friends. Pressured out of their homes in the Lost Winds, every step threatens them with persecution and death. 

Taking a daring route on a treacherous sea, they seek asylum in a new land. Will they make it to their destination? Will Nalia’s dream of finding peace in Draviland become the utopia that she desperately desires, or are the dangers of this new land even worse than her home? 

Set in a real time, stream-of-consciousness narrative, this story takes you on a sweeping literary journey.

Some very strange things are taking place at the New Pueblo Funeral Home…
War vet Ray Zook, a PTSD afflicted former grunt, is about to regret that he ever set foot in Tucson, Arizona.
All he wants is to gain the courage to face his inner-demons and somehow explain to the widow of his best friend what really happened to him during their stint in the military. But when Zook is mugged and takes a temporary job working the night-shift at a crematory run by a couple of unsavory employees, those plans get derailed.
After witnessing a series of disturbing incidents—like the shady “after hours” business taking place—that hurl him into an immoral world of grave robbing, coffin swapping, and even disappearing bodies, Zook finds himself caught in the middle of a twisted power-struggle to control ownership of the funeral home.
If Zook hopes to escape this utter mess with his sanity intact, he must rise above his fears and confront the dark deeds before he ends up back in the looney bin . . . for good this time.

Winner - New Apple Book Award - Visionary 2015

Finalist - Wishing Shelf Book Award - 2015

Winner - Literary Classics Seal of Approval

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Nichole, a young black woman, is caught in a tough position. She is juggling too many responsibilities as her world falls apart around her. When her mother turns up missing while performing an errand, Nichole is left picking up the pieces of her shattered life and taking care of her younger siblings. She isn’t sure where she can turn to for help, and she is facing a lot of harsh realities about how life works and how much prejudice can hold her back.

Richard is a lawyer who lost himself in corporate law. He wants to help Nichole through her heartbreaking situation, but he makes mistakes and loses her trust. He discovers that he’s been doing the right things for the wrong reasons for a long time. Everything begins to fall apart as he realizes he's swept problems under the rug for so long he might no longer be able to fix them. After meeting a young alcoholic who is struggling to take control of his life, Richard wakes up to just how far off-course his life has become and attempts to right it. He asks Nichole for a second chance to help her overcome her obstacles, and he hopes it isn't too late.

Can Nichole and Richard overcome their prejudices and get a Second Chance?

Second Chances is a contemporary novel set in Middle America that delves into Social Issues people deal with on a regular basis. It features a strong female protagonist standing up to the world and pushing back against commonplace wrongs. It tells a hopeful story about facing up to our own prejudices and coming to terms with who we are today, who we want to become, and what it will take to get there.

On New Year’s Day 1925 Ivy Rose Murphy awakes to find her world changed forever. Her irresponsible Da is dead. She is grief-stricken and alone – but for the first time in her life free to please herself.

After her mother deserted the family, Ivy became the sole provider for her da and three brothers. Pushing a pram around the well-to-do areas of Dublin every day, she begged for the discards of the wealthy which she then turned into items she could sell around Dublin’s markets.

As she visits the morgue to pay her respects to her Da, a chance meeting introduces Ivy to a new world of money and privilege, her mother's world. Ivy is suddenly a woman on a mission to improve herself and her lot in life.

Jem Ryan is the owner of a livery near Ivy’s tenement. When an accident occurs in one of his carriages, leaving a young girl homeless, it is Ivy he turns to. With Jem and the people she meets in her travels around Dublin, Ivy begins to break out of the property-ridden world that is all she has ever known.

Through Streets Broad and Narrow is a story of strength and determination in the unrelenting world that was Dublin tenement life.

The first book in Lauren Oliver’s New York Times bestselling trilogy about forbidden love, revolution, and the power to choose. Now with a brand-new cover and an exclusive-to-this-book sneak peek at her next novel for teens: the ambitious, wholly original masterwork Replica.

In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistake.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the Wilds who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?

Annie is a determined young woman who is left to run her family's property after the death of her parents. Managing fourteen summer cottages with only the help of a family friend, she struggles to survive on her own. When she meets Drew, a young college professor, Annie thinks she's finally found a love she can trust.

But years of conflict and pain destroy their bond and leave Annie alone again, unless she can find lasting peace and passion in the most unlikely arms.

In this family saga, love, loss and history twine together the people whose lives are changed by Annie's determination and

the magic of her knoll nestled along the head-waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

A provocative and hauntingly powerful debut novel reminiscent of Sliding Doors, The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her dreams.

Nothing is as permanent as it appears . . .

Denver, 1962: Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn’t quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.

Then the dreams begin.

Denver, 1963: Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life. They have beautiful children, an elegant home, and good friends. It’s everything Kitty Miller once believed she wanted—but it only exists when she sleeps.

Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes. Can she choose which life she wants? If so, what is the cost of staying Kitty, or becoming Katharyn?

As the lines between her worlds begin to blur, Kitty must figure out what is real and what is imagined. And how do we know where that boundary lies in our own lives?

Things that happen to you in the past can mold you into someone you’re not.

After recovering from the shock of her parents perishing in a tragic accident, Grace Lindroth discovers clues in their attic that cause her to believe the people she called Mom and Dad her whole life may not have been her real parents.

In her search for the truth, Grace encounters people whose actions cause her to be distrustful of just about everyone, making her mission that much more difficult but heightening her determination to uncover what she believes is essential for her to go on with her life.

Priscille Sibley’s The Promise of Stardust is a haunting and unforgettable debut novel about life and death and love, set against a moral dilemma that may leave you questioning your own beliefs.

Matt Beaulieu has loved Elle McClure since he was two years old. Now married and expecting their first child, Elle suffers a fatal accident. To keep the baby alive, Matt goes against his wife’s wishes and keeps his wife on life support. But Matt’s mother thinks that Elle should be euthanized, and she’s ready to fight for what she believes is the right thing.

A stunning, compassionate examination of one of the most intricate ethical issues of our time, The Promise of Stardust, will stay with you, long after the last page has been read.

Italy 1899: Fiery-tempered, seductive, medium Alessandra Poverelli levitates a table at a Spiritualist séance in Naples. A reporter photographs the miracle, and wealthy, skeptical, Jewish psychiatrist Camillo Lombardi arrives in Naples to investigate. When she materializes the ghost of his dead mother, he risks his reputation and fortune to finance a tour of the Continent, challenging the scientific and academic elite of Europe to test Alessandra’s mysterious powers. She will help him rewrite Science. His fee will help her escape her sadistic husband Pigotti and start a new life in Rome. Newspapers across Europe trumpet her Cinderella story and baffling successes, and the public demands to know – does the “Queen of Spirits” really have supernatural powers? Nigel Huxley is convinced she’s simply another vulgar, Italian trickster. The icy, aristocratic detective for England’s Society for the Investigation of Mediums launches a plot to trap and expose her. Meanwhile, the Vatican is quietly digging up her childhood secrets, desperate to discredit her supernatural powers; her abusive husband Pigotti is coming to kill her; and the tarot cards predict catastrophe. Inspired by the true-life story of controversial Italian medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918).