Books
False Fathers (Waxwood Series: Book 2): Tam May
Sometimes no father is better than a false father.
In 1898 California, Jake Alderdice comes of age as a shy and contemplative youth who is passionate about art.
On vacation in Waxwood, now a fashionable resort town, he meets Harland Stevens, who takes an interest in the young man’s artistic ambitions.
Stevens seizes upon the fatherless young man to counsel him toward a path to manhood inspired by Teddy Roosevelt and Thoreau. He introduces Jake to The Order of Actaeon, a secret society built upon Roosevelt’s ideals of masculine virility and virtue.
But the path to maturity is a complex thing in the Gilded Age. Will his journey free him from the Alderdice family illusions, half-truths, and lies that have kept him a child? Or will it lead him into the world of Actaeon, where the hunter becomes the hunted?
Lessons From My Mother’s Life by Tam May is also on Whizbuzz Books.
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The Shop on Peculiar Hill : Grimly Darkwood
A funny, scary, mysterious fantasy adventure for children aged about 8 to 12 plus any adults who don’t get frightened too easily. Book One in “The Vale of Strange” series. Warning: contains monsters!
When Peter’s parents are captured by pirates and eaten by tigers, he comes to live with his aunt and uncle at their shop on Peculiar Hill, but he finds that he has an awful lot to learn. What are bogeys and heeble-greebs and the other fierce creatures which live in the nearby Vale of Strange? Why is it so important to wear a hat and sturdy boots? And what is this stuff called strangeness which comes bubbling out of the ground?
When Peter discovers the dark secret which lurks at the heart of this strange new place, he finds his efforts to make things better do not go according to plan. He sets out to make amends with the aid of his new friend Amanda, but how can he know that requesting her help will prove to be such a very big mistake?
Reviewers have compared The Shop on Peculiar Hill to books by Lemony Snicket and Philip Ardagh, and even to Harry Potter. The rhythm of the language makes it great for reading aloud and parents often find they enjoy it as much as their children do. The second book in the series, Stranger Days on Peculiar Hill, is also available now.
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Lost Boy : Rawiri James
Overdue assignments. Overbearing parents. Overactive hormones.
Being sixteen sure does suck sometimes.
Yet Mike DeVelli Jr. knows he is destined for greatness. His mother always told him so – at least, until the unfortunate day an overdose took her to an early grave. As grief befalls the DeVelli house, Mike’s father retreats to the liquor bottle, while Mike throws himself obsessively into exercise. All this, while avoiding the pitying gazes of the students at school whom he always struggled to fit in with.
It’s not all bad, though. He has his best friend Joey, a loyal and quick-witted kid who’s raging libido brings its own troubles; and he has Nicole, his girlfriend of nearly two years. Sweet, strong Nicole. She knows Mike even better than he knows himself. Lately, he’s been acting different. Distant, weird, with an arrogance even his newly-formed six-pack doesn’t warrant. Nicole has noticed. And she’s not the only one.
Mike catches the eye of popular It Girl, Priya, at school. Flirtation spills over and they agree to meet, but she fails to show, and Mike feels rejected yet again. Priya is soon reported missing and Mike becomes a lead suspect in her disappearance. As the town of Flatbush searches desperately for Priya, the investigation mounts, with many residents under the magnifying glass of Inspector Peter McCall and Officer Espinoza. The evidence continues to point in Mike’s direction and with the help of Nicole and Joey, the three teenagers decide their only option is to uncover the identity of the real culprit.
Getting closer to the truth, he learns that his seemingly ordinary family tree has supernatural roots, and as he comes face to face with a hungry, evil enemy, he discovers a power inside himself that will create a wave of change in the world.
Touching on themes of addiction, loss and racial identity, Lost Boy is an engaging coming-of-age story, an entertaining superhero origin tale, and a suspenseful mystery thriller, all in one.
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Chakra Empowerment for Women : Lisa Erickson
Self-Guided Techniques for Healing Trauma, Owning Your Power & Finding Overall Wellness
Powerful Chakra Tools to Help You Heal, Achieve Balance, and Awaken to Your Greatness.
Learn to move past trauma, find strength, and thrive with twelve chakra tools that are based on the feminine energy body and life phases. These tools focus on challenges that women often face in owning our power, balancing work and family, and maintaining physical and emotional health.
Featuring an eight-page, full-color insert with clarifying chakra figures, this essential guide presents a no-nonsense, easy-to-use approach to the chakras that helps you manifest your highest potential. Includes a foreword by bestselling author Cyndi Dale.
Each chapter focuses on a new chakra tool, helping you explore how to use it within your daily life for long-term growth, overcoming blocks, healing sexual trauma, and more.
Chakra Empowerment for Women supports your journey in practical ways as you recover the energy of your empowered self. Suitable for those new to the chakras, with previously unpublished information on women’s energy bodies that will engage those already familiar with the chakras and energy teachings as well.
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Mollie’s Follies : Bonnie Mill Lemke
Novel Mollie’s Follies is the 1950’s to 1990’s era action-adventure of Mary Lynn Sharp, an abandoned youngster. A bitter childhood; teenage years focused on self-reliant survival; traveling America’s East Coast to West Coast Mainland and back again in search of compassion, love, and a place to call home, makes this beauty vulnerable to breakups and heartache.
This story is inspired by real-life events but fictionalized from the perspective of reunited kinfolk. All Mollie’s siblings were abandoned; father left home and never returned when she’s age nine; mother is always somewhere, entertaining strange men. Mollie mimics what she sees and none of it is good. Substance abuse and sick of being sick, eventually motivates mistreated Mollie to seek salvation.
How many marriages are too many? How much abuse can one person take? How many automobile accidents can you withstand? Mary Lynn Sharp is an example of grit, guts, and gumption.
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The Ortega Gambit : J. Palma
For unemployed Lucina D’Alessio, life in rural Italy is hopeless. When a mysterious opportunity comes her way, her future suddenly seems brighter. Offered a job as a nanny, she doesn’t hesitate at the chance – even though the job is in America, she’s never worked as a nanny before, and she hates kids.
In her new American home, Lucina is surrounded by luxury and wealth. But she soon uncovers an elaborate kidnapping plot targeting Charles, the child under her care.
As she learns the details of the plot, she’s stunned to find her employment was part of the ruse, devised in the darkest part of her homeland.
Her dislike for children is the least of her problems as she tries to find a way to survive in a strange new land while protecting Charles, whom she has grown to love.
A fast-paced thriller, The Ortega Gambit takes readers on a wild ride from Italian mafia clan wars to cutthroat power struggles of the super-rich. Beautiful and tough-as-nails, Lucina is a heroine worthy of her opponents. But are her innate street smarts enough to topple the powerful forces against her?
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Elisa’s Adventures : Inspire
Elisa Francois is a fiery young woman with high standards. She loves men, and she loves sex—but she won’t let a man into her heart without a fight. True, her professional life isn’t much to talk about, but her personal life is hot and steamy with a touch of drama.
Filled with humor, romance, conflict, and the accidental discovery of true love, this is a story of mixed up, messy romance as one strong woman navigates her way through sexy interludes on the twisted path to finding herself.
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World After Geezer: Year One : Penn Gates
Nix St Clair has been a Cleveland cop for 20 years, and she’s never seen anything like the chaos of Geezer Flu. It’s the same everywhere – or so says cable TV until the power starts going on and off like a caution light. Why she hasn’t died is a question Nix is too busy to answer, but she knows the authorities are fighting a losing battle.
Geezer is unstoppable, and it will get her, too, sooner or later. Before it does, she wants to reach her grandfather to say good-bye. Or to bury him if she’s too late. It’s a tough journey on foot, dragging along a small child she rescued from a very nasty situation. And at the end of the road is disappointment. Gramps isn’t as she remembered him – and neither is his farm.
Young George Shirk and his even younger siblings have moved in to help the old man, who’s suffered a stroke. While grateful, Nix finds the difference between their Mennonite world view and hers difficult – but the real clash of cultures begins with the arrival of four scared teens looking for sanctuary from a world gone mad.
She’s lived by the motto “To Protect and Serve” for a long time, but she can’t save all the orphans by herself. Surrounded by kids she needs to keep safe, she’s begun to think of herself as the world’s oldest woman with a gun. She’s reached her limit by the time one more kid shows up. But the “kid” is a combat veteran of 24, and what Nix can’t know is that Cash Hatfield will end up saving her.
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A is for… : Olivia Marcus
Barbara, Dawn and Jade, three good friends… content with life but bored in love… and a bold challenge they set each other, at a New Year’s Eve party.
26 new sensual experiences in a year?
Join each of the girls as they add a little spice to their lives, shake things up and see if they get a taste for variety.
Can they sail beyond their current horizons without sinking in the process, and what does the law of unintended consequences have to say about their plans?
New experiences bring love, laughter and quite a change for the better, along the way. Can having this much fun really be wrong?
Erotic, guilt-free, hot, sexy and naughty – in a good way.
If you’ve got an open mind and love sexy heroines in control, and the occasional bad guy getting his comeuppance, you’ll enjoy sharing the adventure with our three girls, as their libido is re-ignited.
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Inconvenient Memories : Anna Wang
A rare and truthful memoir of a young woman’s coming of age amid the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.
In 1989, Anna Wang was one of a lucky few who worked for a Japanese company, Canon. She traveled each day between her grandmother’s dilapidated commune-style apartment and an extravagant office just steps from Tiananmen Square. Her daily commute on Beijing’s impossibly crowded buses brought into view the full spectrum of China’s economic and social inequalities during the economic transition.
When Tiananmen Protests broke out, her Japanese boss was concerned whether the protests would obstruct Canon’s assembly plant in China, and she was sent to Tiananmen Square on a daily basis to take photos for her boss to analyze for evidence of turning tides.
From the perspective as a member of the emerging middle class, she observed firsthand that Tiananmen Protests stemmed from Chinese people’s longing for political freedom and their fear for the nascent market economy, an observation that readers have never come across from the various accounts of the historical events so far.
Wang’s personal experiences include interesting insights into China’s politics and its relationships with the outside world. Though mostly chronological, the book sometimes dips into the past to explain present events, like the trade war between America and China and the Hong Kong protests.
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