Books
Beth’s Story: A Runaway Bride : Larry Nicholl
In 1955, Beth Dalton is a runaway bride. Her father, who owns a large ranch in the Texas Panhandle, in effect sells his daughter to keep the bank from foreclosing on his mortgage.
Mr. Dalton signs a contract with one of the wealthiest oil-and-gas tycoons of the region: his daughter for the mortgage. The forty-five-year-old widower will take the eighteen-year-old beauty in exchange for his paying off her father’s mortgage. Beth steals the tycoon’s 1932 Ford V-8 Roadster and runs away the night before the wedding.
She runs out of gas near Sedona in central Arizona. She ends up at the campsite of Silas McGuiness, a Korean War veteran, who is on his way home to the Texas Panhandle, after eight years in the U.S. Army.
Beth then devises her plan – the only way out of the arranged marriage is to entice the twenty-six-year-old veteran to marry her, before her father finds her. But it was not love at first sight. Silas finds her spoiled and over the top. He is from the working class and she is from wealth – they have nothing in common.
A retired Methodist minister and his wife are camping in the adjacent campsite and they convince the odd couple to date for five weeks, before considering marriage.
Will the runaway bride stop running and marry Silas, or will she run away again? Will class differences keep them apart? Will Silas be able to overcome his wartime nightmares-PTSD-and wed? Will Beth be able to give up her taste for an elite lifestyle and settle down to a simpler life? Find out by reading this third tale in the series, Once Upon a Time in the Texas Panhandle.
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Ruby Rain : Jim Brady
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Two women will find out just how wrong they both are.
One longs for freedom, the other just wants her loneliness to end.
But what will happen to them once those wishes come true and what lengths will they go to have these wishes granted?
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The Figurehead : Bill Kirton
The time? April 1840. The place? Aberdeen, Scotland.
The battered body of Jimmie Crombie, a local shipwright, is found on Aberdeen beach. It looks to be a simple drowning, but John Grant, a figurehead carver, sees evidence of foul play. Crombie had been building a new ship for city merchant William Anderson. Anderson has one child, Helen, an independent woman in a society dominated by men and commerce.
John is intrigued by Crombie’s death. He knows that Crombie has been swindling and blackmailing Anderson and many others.
Helen Anderson is as fascinated by the death as John. She becomes friends with Jessie, Crombie’s widow, despite their different social status.
John is to carve the figurehead for the new ship. It is to be named after Anderson’s wife, Elizabeth, but she prefers the idea of the figurehead being a likeness of Helen. John agrees to create an amalgam of mother and daughter. It’s the beginning of a relationship between him and Helen that develops through the book.
Helen also begs her father to let her become part of his world of commerce, despite the fact that he warns her that it is a world of deceit.
John’s investigation of the death uncovers various intrigues. Plenty of people have motives.
The Elizabeth Anderson is launched. Anderson invites John to join in a business venture. After the launch, Crombie’s widow asks John to come and see her and the real story of the death is revealed.
The final scene brings John and Helen together as they admire the figurehead on the bows of the Elizabeth Anderson. Neither is yet ready or able to express the feelings they have for one another but they part with a lover’s kiss and the unexpressed knowledge that, somehow or other, the future will bring them together.
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The Adventures of Tiny Tinsel Tinker the Third : Peter Revelman
It is the middle of the night, and mysteriously, Tiny Tinsel Tinker the Third finds himself sitting at the end of young Annastasia’s bed. He meets her brother Cornelius and their puppy Blackie.
The children are delighted to greet this little man but want to know where he came from. Tinsel points to the small drawstring bag he has looped about his neck. This seems most unlikely to the children and so Tinsel tells them his story.
He tells how he was washed over a bridge in a terrible storm and became separated from his parents and younger brother. Alone in the dark floating on a log, he heard a cry for help. A flash of lightning revealed a Blue rabbit in the dangerous waters and Tinsel was able to rescue him.
By way of thanks, Blue rabbit gives Tinsel a small, purple drawstring bag, which he says will help Tinsel find his family. Somehow Tinsel is able to climb inside the bag even though it is much smaller than he is. Once snug inside he falls asleep, not knowing where he will wake the next morning.
He delights his new-found friends to all sorts of surprises, invisible cookies, pots of brilliant flowers, a shower of stars, beautiful butterflies all from inside Purple.
Tinsel’s amazing journey to find his family continues taking him on new adventures. In the markets of Tralah, he buys a coat made of seaweed, he meets Franseca a brave sailor girl, the only person in the village brave enough to sail him over the Great Ocean. He climbs the North Mountain and catches a ride across to deep valley to the top of the South mountain on the back of a great Eagle. Tinsel climbs down the mountain on the ‘tingling steps’ and meets the Ben family in the Valley of dreams.
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My Friend Buttface: School Blues : Neil Logsdon
Ten-year-old Herbert Squiggly goes to Tinkleton Middle School, which isn’t easy for him. He’s smaller, weaker, and not as smart as most other kids, which is the main reason he gets made fun of a LOT! But even worse than that is the fact that three of the school’s biggest bullies, which most kids call the Brat Pack, are always trying to make Herbert’s life miserable.
As a result, Herbert spends most of his school days trying to figure out how to overcome his fears of everyday school life and defeat the Brat Pack while he’s at it.
Sadly, he figures the only way that could happen would be with the help of some good friends or if somehow he could turn himself into a superhero! But he doesn’t see that happening any time soon.
So unless a miracle happens all he can do is take the abuse and hope to make it to another school year…if he can SURVIVE!
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The Lost Super Bowls : Tom Danyluk
1961 to 1965 – A Fictional Scrapbook
The Lost Super Bowls is historical fiction – a scrapbook of fictional articles by imaginary sportswriters from make-believe newspapers, all dressed in archival photography and original color artwork.
It’s fantasy football wrapped in a history lesson, the buildup and recap of five AFL-NFL “World Championship” games – from 1961 to 1965 – that were never played. Only the names are real…legendary figures, like Lombardi and Stram, Alworth and Adderley, Ditka and Kemp. Historic venues like Green Bay’s City Field, the Dallas Cotton Bowl and Pasadena’s Rose Bowl.
It’s the winter of 1961. Joe Foss, commissioner of the wobbly American Football League, issues the first of his many telegrams and missives to the rival NFL, requesting that the two leagues create an annual “World Championship Football Game.” Foss’ gang is struggling and needs a boost.
The NFL, however, led by Pete Rozelle, scoffs at the invitation, thus triggering a war between the leagues that would carry deep into the spring of 1966. A merger was finally announced that June. The first Super Bowl game – Kansas City versus Green Bay – wouldn’t be played until January of ’67.
But what if, by some shocking stroke of prescience, the NFL had agreed to Foss’ initial proposal? Simply put, football’s Super Bowl era would have begun five years earlier – in January, 1962. There’d be five more title games now cemented in the record books. There’d be five more of those fine Sabol highlight reels in the archives of NFL Films. There’d be five more chapters of pro football history that author Tom Danyluk calls The Lost Super Bowls.
“Everything you can imagine is real,” says the artist, and The Lost Super Bowls presents football history in that very way, a time machine back to those early AFL-NFL battles that never were.
It’s George Blanda and the Houston Oilers trying to bomb their way past the ’61 Packers, Vince Lombardi’s first champion.
It’s Sid Gillman unleashing his lightning bolt strikes on the Monsters of the Midway.
It’s the mighty Jim Brown slamming horns with Sestak and Saimes and the rugged Bills’ defense of 1964.
It’s the sports pages of The Lost Super Bowls.
Sit back and read all about it!
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18th Winter : Stella J. Raasch
Fragments of legends can be found in the past, present & future. It is the responsibility of the elders to pass those legends on to each generation. But as time passes, some legends fade & are forgotten. Bloodlines may become lost, or even extinct. Perhaps that is for the best.
Nestled in the small town of Sun Valley, Idaho, lives a family with a dangerous secret, and a deadly past…
Collette’s ethereal features are the constant source of her discontentment and alienation from others. But on her tenth winter, her parents unexpectedly bring home two unusual puppies, whom she instantly feels an enigmatic, unbreakable bond with. Plus, she senses that her very existence, her mortal heart and soul, is intertwined with theirs in some way.
When Collette’s eighteenth winter is upon her, she learns of the curse that was placed upon her family’s tribe, the disgraced Cyokiana…the tribe of the beasts. Worse yet, her parents expect her to believe that she will become the creature of legend due to their transgressions against the Great Spirits of their people.
Despite the destiny that she supposedly faces, Collette becomes dangerously close to the ruggedly handsome Bryce Chatterton, whom she shares a love of the outdoors with. But when Bryce encounters a mysterious, old Indian woman making peculiar warnings, he suspects that something is terribly off about Collette’s family, and their beloved dogs – they are not what they appear to be…
On Christmas Eve, with the silver moonlight of the Great Spirits guiding her fate, the legend becomes reality. And her lust for vengeance cannot be quelled.
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Silent Whispers: What One Thinks is Crazy, Another Knows is True : Tami Urbanek
When Tami Urbanek began working with the public as a medium, she never envisioned how her path would change.
Moving beyond working with people’s spirit guides, deceased children began arriving to share their own shocking experiences. These children revealed the horrific torture and government scientific experiments that ultimately led to their death.
With a heavy heart, Tami listened to their stories and helped them to feel loved and safe in order to cross over to the other side.
Tami, along with two other women, began traveling to different locations, within the United States, to assist deceased children who were caught in a cycle of pain.
Little did they know they would eventually begin attracting the attention of extraterrestrials. It became obvious the ETs were also invested in the experiments and they would attempt to thwart the efforts of these three women.
Silent Whispers will challenge readers’ belief system and perhaps lead them to question the reality that surrounds them.
Silent Whispers: The Power Within by Tami Urbanek is also on Whizbuzz Books.
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Made of Shadows : Archi Ofmn
What should you do when you accidentally incite a war between a ruthless terrorist organization and a group of maniacal cultists?
According to Audrey, brimming with both hope and power, you should try to take both groups down to impress your heroes. Of course, the best-laid plans often fall apart, and when she crosses paths with Beta, a silver-haired and merciful lieutenant in the League, their lives come crashing down around them as they realize their idols aren’t so perfect after all.
As the war in Miami forces their lives onto darker and darker paths, Audrey must face the grim reality of her heritage and the duty that comes with it, while Beta must come to terms with the ramifications of his bloody crusade.
With opposing forces converging on Miami, all hellbent on total control of the city, the pair must decide what they truly stand for, and no one path seems to offer either of them a happy ending.
Made of Shadows is the first book in the “Wisp” series, following Audrey Umbra and her struggle against villains that seem to lurk in every corner.
Stories of the Mother Bear : Myrtle Brooks
In Jackson, Wyoming, 1977, a cache is discovered in the attic of a deceased man’s home containing letters and diaries spanning two centuries. The newspaper report of the unusual contents reaches a journalist and confirms a vision he experienced 23 years earlier as a 9-year-old boy on a camping trip in Grand Teton National Park.
Learning his memories of a mother grizzly bear who transforms the lives of the humans who cross her path were not imaginary after all, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Bill Larkin sets out in search of why he is among the chosen. Wrestling with his dread of the force driving him, Bill hears that same compelling voice caution him against turning back and losing his spiritual calling. As he pieces each story, letter and entry together, the common thread eludes him: until a Native-American elder counsels him to seek the rest of the answers within himself.
Stories of the Mother Bear is a literary fiction/fantasy memoir woven around historical events. It begins in Omaha, where Bill Larkin’s near-idyllic 1950s childhood is shattered by the Vietnam War era. As a college student journalist, his prized objectivity turns into a solid stance against the war, after the loss of twin sons belonging to a family in the long-ago Teton camping party.
Years later, married with four children, Bill returns to Jackson Hole. He learns the deceased, Rufus Headrick, and his family were black cowboys who ranched in the area after the Civil War. Rufus’ grandfather, Elias, a freed slave, kept a journal from his days as a Texas cattle hand through the family’s ever-westward travels to Teton before it became a national park.
Portrayed in Elias’ journal is a large, engraved brass key his son received from a Kiowa youth he met along the Chisholm Trail in exchange for his pocket watch. The key is yet to be found. Who is the estate’s rightful heir? And what connection does the Headrick Family have with the Mother Bear?
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