First Reads

[close] “Why am I such a freak?”

Kristin Faraday feels trapped, worried she’ll spend the rest of her life in the small and suffocating town of Winterhaven. She also worries because she’s different from her family and friends. She knows other people’s secrets because she can tell, with certainty, when they’re lying to her.

She doesn’t realize this ability is a “gift" from Mrs. Norton, the woman who murdered her father. When Mrs. Norton and her family return to Winterhaven, Kristin discovers she’s the only one who can see them for what they truly are. The family isn’t human. They feed on humans.

Mrs. Norton is aware that Kristin is the one person who can stop them – if she only knew how. But that’s a secret Kristin Faraday hasn’t learned… [close]

[close] As an industry, interactive is different. While the work entails elements of software development, marketing, and advertising, it's neither purely technical nor traditional "agency" work. Because the industry is relatively new, the gap in understanding between the clients buying the work and the teams building it is often wide, and the methods of delivery vary.

Enter the Geek Girls Guide. Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker don't just tell you how to deliver digital work, they demonstrate how to think about it. Interactive Project Management helps clients, agencies, and industry professionals better understand the critical role of the interactive project manager, and presents a collaborative, people-focused approach to delivering high-quality digital work. This concise volume helps build understanding across all stakeholders in interactive work, and most importantly, it won't put you to sleep. [close]

[close] 'Pushups in the Prayer Room' is a wild, gritty, sexy, dangerous, and hilarious account of a year spent backpacking around the world. It's not for the feint of heart, but if you like Sedaris, Bukowski, and Kerouac you'll love the tone of this book.

SEND ME AN EMAIL AT hi@NormSchriever.com, and even if you don't win I'll email you a FREE EBOOK once the giveaway ends.

Check it out at www.NormSchriever.com

In the spring of 1999, Norm Schriever leaves his old life behind and backpacks around the world for a year, not returning to the US until the spring of 2000. Throughout his journeys he touches down in more than 20 countries in 6 continents, spanning 70,000 miles total, or the equivalent of almost three times around the equator.

There is never a dull moment on this wild and irreverent adventure, whether Norm is evading armed carjackers in a high-speed chase in the barrios of Venezuela, exploring ancient wonders of the world like the pyramids, the Great Wall, and Machu Picchu, almost landing in Bolivian jail for mistakenly being accused of cocaine trafficking, or witnessing the holiest sites on earth in Jerusalem. Along the way, Norm encounters a broad spectrum of human existence and experiences a blossoming of consciousness and spiritual growth that he never anticipated. What started out as a wild, raucous party trip evolves into a man's quest for his life's purpose in the world.

Pushups in the Prayer Room: A Year Backpacking around the World is an honest, no-holds-barred account of that year-long odyssey around the globe. Norm's writing, which is enlightening, gritty, filled with self-deprecating humor, yet always authentic, picks you up and carries you along on that crazy journey. [close]

[close] To celebrate the forthcoming publication of Flux in paperpack there are seven signed copies up for grabs.

Flux is the debut novel from British Horror writer Mark R Faulkner and following its publication on the Kindle format, has received excellent reviews. I do think however that you should judge for yourself and then tell all your friends.

Here's the blurb:
Iain is looking forward to the weekend when a number nineteen bus shatters his body, but broken bones are the least of his worries.

In this disturbing yet darkly funny novel, Iain’s near death experience is not a vision of exquisite godliness with light at the end of a tunnel. Instead he experiences a place of darkness and heat, inhabited by foul creatures, the sounds of suffering and a beast.

During a long recovery Iain becomes plagued by nightmares and premonitions, shadowy apparitions, a magpie, and a vile old man. They all have a message, that something wants Iain and it won't give up easily.

Iain’s friends do their best to cheer him up in the best ways they know how, until the unexpected events of one sunny afternoon mean that he is on his own, caught up in the age old battle of good versus evil.

The book is currently available in Kindle format https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006SPDFGC
or the paperback is currently available here - http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-r-faulk... and will be appearing on Amazon shortly. [close]

[close] Victorine Ellsworth knows something about the death of the vicar's wife...but what? Is she the killer? Or the next victim?
Visit my blog at http://acaseofreadinginsomnia.blogspo... for more information :) [close]

[close] Celebrating the special rerelease of CELIA'S JOURNEY, 10 winners will each receive a signed paperback copy.

The Strane family has it all figured out. They have a life they love in a world they have created for themselves that is filled with harmony and happiness and a touch of chaos too. Then a tragic accident stops their world on a dime. Peace is shattered. Everything is torn asunder as a child is lost—a son and brother—and those left behind are thrust into the darkness of grief and guilt.

Celia’s Journey takes the Stranes from the pit of despair through the tentative steps toward healing—testing the strength of their love, searching the depths of their pain, and finding the triumph of their spirit.
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[close] A dazzlingly inventive novel about modern family, from the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The set up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. All eight arrive with low expectations for a pleasant holiday.

But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt.

The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner--a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. [close]

[close] We’ve all seen the commercials – a pretty pop star promises your skin will be clear if you just . . . For fifteen-year-old Kaylin Bidwell, it doesn’t matter what they say. She knows the truth. Those products won't clear up her acne. She even proved it for a science fair project, hoping to win a spot at science camp with the guy she’s had a crush on for 20% of her life. But the only kind of spot she may end up with this summer are the ones on her face. Kaylin is determined to find a solution, even if it means interning for a company that makes acne products that never work. Could Kaylin help make something better? What she really wants is something better than better – a cure. Ages 12 and up. [close]

[close] Award-winning author Stephen M. Irwin returns with a thrilling, supernatural crime novel built around an intriguing question: What happens when every single person is haunted by a ghost only they can see?

Without warning, a boy in the middle of a city intersection sends Detective Oscar Mariani's car careening into a busy sidewalk. The scene is bedlam as every person becomes visited by something no one else can see. We are all haunted. Usually, the apparition is someone known: a lost relative, a lover, an enemy. But not always. For Oscar Mariani, the only secret that matters is the unknown ghost who now shares his every waking moment . . . and why.

The worldwide aftershock of what becomes known as "Gray Wednesday" is immediate and catastrophic, leaving governments barely functioning and economies devastated . . . but some things don't change. When Detective Mariani discovers the grisly remains of an anonymous murder victim in the city sewage system, his investigation will pit him against a corrupt police department and a murky cabal conspiring for power in the new world order.

Stephen M. Irwin has created an unforgettable crime novel and an intense, textured vision of the near-future. The Broken Ones is the riveting search for hope in the darkest corners of the imagination. [close]

[close] “I hope we’re as good friends when you finish your book as we are now,” Ben Bradlee, the legendary former executive editor of The Washington Post, told Jeff Himmelman in March 2010. “But I don’t give a [expletive deleted] what you write about me.”

So begins Yours in Truth, an intimate portrait of a fixture on the American scene for nearly half a century—a close friend to John F. Kennedy; the center of D.C. social life; and a crusty, charismatic editor whose decisions at the helm of the Post during Watergate changed the course of history. Granted unprecedented access to Bradlee and his colleagues, friends, and private files, Himmelman draws on never-before-seen internal Post memos, correspondence, personal photographs, and private interviews to trace the full arc of Bradlee’s forty-five-year career—from his early days as a press attaché in postwar Paris through the Pentagon Papers, Richard Nixon’s resignation, the Janet Cooke fabrication scandal, and beyond. Along the way, Himmelman also unearths a series of surprises—about Watergate, and about Bradlee’s private relationships with Post owner Katharine Graham and President Kennedy and his wife, Jackie.

“Don’t feel that you have to protect me,” Bradlee told Himmelman whenever the reporting started to strike close to home. “Follow your nose.” Those instructions, familiar to any Post reporter, have resulted in this thoughtfully constructed and beautifully written account of a magnetic man whose career has come to define the golden age of newspapers in America, when the press battled for its freedom—and won. [close]

[close] An ordinary woman. An extraordinary adventure.
Alice Woodstock has been running away.

Well, not literally. She spends most of her time glued to her desk, writing about grommets and model aeroplanes. No, Alice is avoiding the real world because there’s something—someone—in her past that she’s desperate to forget. So when she’s commissioned to write about life in stately home Eversley Hall, she jumps at the chance to escape into Regency England, even if it does mean swapping her comfy T-shirt for an itchy corset. Perhaps she’ll meet her own Mr Darcy…

But when her past resurfaces in the shape of Leo Allingham, Alice is brought down to earth with a bump. Reckless, unpredictable Leo reminds Alice of the painful price of following her heart. And the new Alice doesn’t live dangerously.

Or does she?

Shortlisted for the National Readers' Choice Award.
"A rich feast." —Jo Beverley [close]

[close] Beneath Lausanne Cathedral, in Switzerland, there is a secret buried before time began, something unknown to angels and men, until now...

[close] An entertaining debut novel that explores the lives of an extended Pakistani family—all with a gently humorous touch and fond but wry eye.

[close] E. Van Lowe & White Whisker Books is hosting a giveaway of an *autographed* copy of Amazon Best Seller, Earth Angel.

In E.Van Lowe's romantic and thrilling sequel to Boyfriend From Hell, Megan Barnett finds herself in a life and death battle to save herself, the angel she loves and all of mankind from unspeakable evil.

Kate from I Just Want To Sit Here And Read gave it 5 out of 5 stars.
"I loved BFH so much I was a bit hesitant about EA. Most series have the dreaded second-book syndrome where there is not much action and more of a set-up for Book 3. But I am pleased to report that this book was just as action-filled as the first. EA continued the few leftovers from BFH and included more characters and a massive cliffhanger!"
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[close] Enter to win one (1) of two (2) SIGNED paperbacks of newly released "Eligere," the sequel to the MG historical fantasy "Seranfyll". Open to the US, Canada, and UK.

(Ages 10+)

Rain. Is. Bored.

With Coal at university and Domrey away on a constant string of assignments from the Royal City, she and her sister Snow are stuck at Seranfyll Manor with their tutor Professor Digory, who has to be the dullest teacher on the face of the earth. She craves a break from the monotony or, even better, an adventure like the ones she only gets to read about in books.

A voyage to the jungles of Amyrania should do the trick. When Domrey agrees to do a favor for the king, Rain and the others get to set sail with him on what sounds like an exciting but relatively simple assignment. However, despite its tourist-friendly facade, Amyrania is called the "Untamed Isle" for good reason, and this adventure will prove to be more than any of them had bargained for.

Join Rain, Coal, Domrey, and a host of old and new friends (and enemies) in this exciting sequel to "Seranfyll"! [close]

[close] "A massive brain trauma robbed fashionable young Louise of the shallow currency she'd banked on all her life, and the resulting struggle is a page-turner in which a person's very soul deepens before your eyes. Louise: Amended rewards a reader's time--a must read."—Mary Karr

"This story of shattered hope, gigantic challenge, unlikely courage, slow revelation will have you gripping the pages and rooting from the sidelines. Louise reinvents the memoir, makes it bolder, stronger, stranger, more honest, and—-in every possible way—-wildly inspiring."—Deb Olin Unferth [close]

[close] It's June 15th, the night of Nantucket High School graduation. Four juniors are driving home from a party when something goes horribly wrong and there is a crash. The driver of the car, Penny Alistair, is killed, and her twin brother, Hobby Alistair, is left in a coma. Penny's boyfriend, Jake Randolph, and Penny's friend Demeter Castle are unhurt--but suffer tremendous emotional damage. Jake and his family move to the other side of the globe--to the west coast of Australia--in order to escape the horrors of the accident. Demeter falls prey to alcohol abuse and other self-destructive behaviors that nearly lead to her destroying her own life.

SUMMERLAND delves into the circumstances surrounding this accident, the roots of which lie deep in the past, with the first interactions between these four friends and their parents. It's a novel about how tragedy affects individuals, families, and the island community as a whole, and how healing can happen, in even the most devastating circumstances. [close]

[close] From the co-author of the two-million copy mega-bestseller The Rule of Four comes a riveting thriller with a brilliant premise based on the 2012 apocalypse phenomenon—perfect for readers of Steve Berry, Preston and Child, and Dan Brown.

For decades, December 21, 2012, has been a touchstone for doomsayers worldwide. It is the date, they claim, when the ancient Maya calendar predicts the world will end.

In Los Angeles, two weeks before, all is calm. Dr. Gabriel Stanton takes his usual morning bike ride, drops off the dog with his ex-wife, and heads to the lab where he studies incurable prion diseases for the CDC. His first phone call is from a hospital resident who has an urgent case she thinks he needs to see. Meanwhile, Chel Manu, a Guatemalan American researcher at the Getty Museum, is interrupted by a desperate, unwelcome visitor from the black market antiquities trade who thrusts a duffel bag into her hands.

By the end of the day, Stanton, the foremost expert on some of the rarest infections in the world, is grappling with a patient whose every symptom confounds and terrifies him. And Chel, the brightest young star in the field of Maya studies, has possession of an illegal artifact that has miraculously survived the centuries intact: a priceless codex from a lost city of her ancestors. This extraordinary record, written in secret by a royal scribe, seems to hold the answer to her life’s work and to one of history’s great riddles: why the Maya kingdoms vanished overnight. Suddenly it seems that our own civilization might suffer this same fate.

With only days remaining until December 21, 2012, Stanton and Chel must join forces before time runs out. [close]

[close] New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, very old one.

Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero (in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He’s not mentally ill, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can’t quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he’s visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic who’s been on the ward for decades and knows all its secrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately to send alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who acts as the group’s enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, they try to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die?

The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle’s radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that, it’s a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love, and the courage to slay our own demons. [close]

[close] From the highly acclaimed author of The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories, a resonant novel of entwined lives and a woman with an unsettling ability to broach the innermost dynamics of the people around her.

“A skillful storyteller . . . attractively quick-witted and wry.” —J. M. Coetzee

“Ohlin has a great eye, a great ear, and all the other equipment auguring a very successful future.”—Jay McInerney

“Expect to hear her spoken of in the same reverent breath as Lorrie Moore and Joy Williams.” —Heidi Julavits


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[close] Everyone can make a conscious decision to take action now to create a peaceful and loving world. We can come together as an Earth-wide community and consciously create a shift of planetary healing. This book offers a method for self-examination with the goal of improving your own life – which in turn heals the planet. It’s time now to focus on a new way of living. It’s time for a new beginning on Earth. [close]

[close] When Petey suffers a broken heart and starts losing his feathers, Mrs. Chairbottom decides to retrieve his one true love from the island of Mongo Tongo.

Book Two of the Babysitter Out of Control! Series of Early Chapter Books
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[close] A debut novel full of heart, in which love, friendship, and charity teach a young woman to live a bigger life.

When Madeline Stone walks away from Chicago and moves five hundred miles north to the coast of Lake Superior, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, she isn't prepared for how much her life will change.

Charged with caring for an aging family friend, Madeline finds herself in the middle of beautiful nowhere with Gladys and Arbutus, two octogenarian sisters-one sharp and stubborn, the other sweeter than sunshine. As Madeline begins to experience the ways of the small, tight-knit town, she is drawn into the lives and dramas of its residents. It's a place where times are tough and debts run deep, but friendship, community, and compassion run deeper. As the story hurtles along-featuring a lost child, a dashed love, a car accident, a wedding, a fire, and a romantic reunion-Gladys, Arbutus, and the rest of the town teach Madeline more about life, love, and goodwill than she's learned in a lifetime. [close]

[close] In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges. [close]

[close] A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. While brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting. As the twelve days that comprise the novel's framework yield to the final day and Hurricane Katrina, the unforgettable family at the novel's heart--motherless children sacrificing for each other as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce--pulls itself up to struggle for another day. A wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bone is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real. [close]

[close] The thrilling sequel to Black Hole Sun, which Suzanne Collins called “imaginative and action-packed.” Teenage Durango’s gone from being Mars’s most notorious mercenary to its most notorious outlaw—and that’s just the beginning. [close]

[close] This giveaway is to celebrate 'National Flash Fiction Day 2012' which is taking place on 16 May. Included in this giveaway will be official cards from NFFD.


From the heat of the African plain to the chilled winter air in rural England, this book will take you on a journey via a collection of emotive short stories.

Birth, death, and some of the challenges that arise in between are covered in this selection of fiction for adult readers. [close]

[close] Who cares if he’s just not that into you? You’ve got a gaggle.
It’s easy to feel like your love life is nonexistent. You know you’re great, so why haven’t you been on a classic dinner-and-a-movie date since . . . well, forever? Because as it turns out, you are now living in a post-dating world, where the old rules for sex and relationships no longer apply. Suddenly, everything and nothing is a date. But this means that you have much more going on in your love life than you realize.

Think about all the ambiguous interactions you have with guys: from a brainstorming session with a coworker, to a drink with an old friend, to a late night Skype session with an ex who’s still in your life. Once you open your eyes, you’ll see that you’re already exploring all sorts of connections with the men in your life via these non-dates. And who are all these guys you’re non-dating?

Say hello to your gaggle.

The gaggle is the group of guys in your life who play different roles, fulfill different needs, and help you figure out who you are, what you want, and what kind of relationship you ultimately desire. Though no two gaggles are alike, there are ten types of men a gaggle might include, such as the Ego Booster, the Hot Sex Prospect, and the Boyfriend Prospect. Romance, excitement, self-discovery, love . . . all this will be yours, once you stop stressing about dates, labels, and expectations and start thinking of each man you know and meet as a potential guy in your gaggle.

In this clever and groundbreaking debut, based on interviews with women and men across the country, Jessica Massa reveals the ways in which the potential for love is all around you. The Gaggle is the ultimate guide to figuring out what you want—and finding your match—in a world that has left traditional dating behind. [close]

[close] The author of Dirt and Oak brings to life this quickest, most sustaining, most communicative element of the earth.

Air sustains the living. Every creature breathes to live, exchanging and changing the atmosphere. Water and dust spin and rise, make clouds and fall again, fertilizing the dirt. Twenty thousand fungal spores and half a million bacteria travel in a square foot of summer air. The chemical sense of aphids, the ultraviolet sight of swifts, a newborn’s awareness of its mother’s breast—all take place in the medium of air.

Ignorance of the air is costly. The artist Eva Hesse died of inhaling her fiberglass medium. Thousands were sickened after 9/11 by supposedly “safe” air. The African Sahel suffers drought in part because we fill the air with industrial dusts. With the passionate narrative style and wide-ranging erudition that have made William Bryant Logan’s work a touchstone for nature lovers and environmentalists, Air is—like the contents of a bag of seaborne dust that Darwin collected aboard the Beagle—a treasure trove of discovery. [close]

[close] For fans of Fifty Shades of Grey comes the raw and resonant story of a middle-aged wife and mother who attempts to reclaim her lost sense of self by exploring the memory of an old love affair, the consequences of which have remained unresolved for years.

From bestselling author Nikki Gemmell, With My Body is a unique and captivating novel. Poetic and boldly, unabashedly sensual, this instant classic bears a modern insight into present-day sexuality.


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[close] Direct sequel to the New York Times and USA Today bestselling A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

Buddy is a good dog.

After searching for his purpose through several eventful lives, Buddy is sure that he has found and fulfilled it. Yet as he watches curious baby Clarity get into dangerous mischief, he is certain that this little girl is very much in need of a dog of her own.

When Buddy is reborn, he realizes that he has a new destiny. He's overjoyed when he is adopted by Clarity, now a vibrant but troubled teenager. When they are suddenly separated, Buddy despairs—who will take care of his girl?

A charming and heartwarming story of hope, love, and unending devotion, A Dog's Journey asks the question: Do we really take care of our pets, or do they take care of us? More than just another endearing dog tale, A Dog's Journey is the moving story of unwavering loyalty and a love that crosses all barriers. [close]

[close] WIN A BRAND NEW BOOK BY DON REID!

Legendary singer/songwriter Don Reid
(The Statler Brothers) is a storyteller at heart. His compositions
were regular material for the quartet during its 40-year career.
Many might have thought Reid’s stories were through when the
group members retired in 2002. Fortunately for lovers of fiction,
that is not the case. Don Reid has written several books, and the
latest is The Mulligans of Mt. Jefferson. Modeled on Reid’s real
hometown of Staunton, Va., Mt. Jefferson was also the setting of
Reid’s first novel, O Little Town, the number-one Kindle download
the first week of December 2011. [close]

[close] What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? And what does it mean to be an American women within Judaism?
For five years Diana Bletter and Lori Grinker criss-crossed America to find fresh answers to these questions. From Louisiana to Montana, from Texas to Vermont, they investigated how Jewish women view themselves in relations to their heritage, to other Jews, and to the society in which they live.
The result is a collection of intimate portraits that explode the stereotypes of "Jewish mother" and "Jewish American Princess."
“Author and photographer have collaborated to bring an extraordinarily diverse group of voices into print, evoking images that lift away traditional stereotypes of Jewish-American women.” — Judy Chicurel, The New York Times [close]

[close] A Fantastic Gift for any Home Owner -
Our Homes is a journal in which you keep a treasured record of your family's homes, all in the one journal.

It's a journal you take with you from home to home, enabling you over the years to build a wonderful record of the homes you have lived in for your family to remember.

The journal contains chapters for each home. They contain space for:

The homes address,
The dates you moved in and out,
Why you moved here,
Improvements or changes you made to the house and garden,
The thing you liked best about living here,
Best memories and memorable events,
Why you are leaving the house,
Where you are moving to,
Plenty of blank pages for photographs and keepsakes. [close]

[close] The journal belongs to the home. The current owners have custodianship of it and the pleasure of completing one chapter. When they leave the journal is left as a gift to the new owners.
The journal's purpose is to provide a tangible link between the current owners and those who have previously made the house their home--giving a peek into its history, and a glimpse into the stories of those who have loved the house in their turn.

The journal contains chapters for each owner to complete. They contain space for:

Your family name
The dates you moved in and out
Why you moved here
Improvements or changes you made to the house and garden
The thing you liked best about living here
Best memories and memorable events
Why you are leaving the house
Where you are moving to
Plenty of blank pages for photographs and keepsakes.

The journal is a perfect gift for house warmings and weddings, and would be equally appreciated as a birthday or Christmas present--for someone else or yourself.

Team it with its companion journal Our Homes --the journal that stays with you as you move from house to house, allowing you to build a history of your own family properties. (Also available on Amazon). [close]

[close] Signed New Release.

This is the story of a shipbuilder who designed the greatest ocean liner ever imagined, of a captain on the final voyage of his long and distinguished career, of a crew dedicated to the safety and well-being of all passengers, of an unsinkable woman who stood up when everyone told her to sit down.

Oh, and there’s an infection that turns hundreds of passengers into violent, flesh-eating ghouls.

That’s right. This ain’t no love story.

This is the story of the Titanic with ZOMBIES.

All aboard. It’s about to go down!
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[close] Another Broken Wizard is the story of Jim Monaghan, who didn’t want to go back to Worcester. But unemployment and his father’s open-heart surgery forced his hand. Tending to his father and embarking on an ICU romance in the day, Jim seeks out his childhood best friend, Joe Rousseau. But Joe has problems with a local gang, and his plan to resolve the matter only makes things worse. Jim follows his friend into Worcester nights defined by drugs, guns and fistfights. And as the danger escalates, he makes a painful choice to try to save Joe. And then he has to live with the consequences.

A book about straddling childhood and adulthood, straddling a fading industrial home town and the information-economy world of our attenuated aspirations, straddling the love for a friend and the urge toward self preservation, Another Broken Wizard is a portrait of Worcester, Massachusetts—its place in the 21st century and its past.

“Dodds gets Worcester and shows it in all of its glories and cracks…He runs through the streets of the city and nearby towns and takes the reader with him…Dodds is a master of writing the town life and capturing all of the said and unsaid. His characters are so full of waiting, of pain, and of hope that never reaches past the next day.”
-Worcester Pulse Magazine

“Masterfully written with all the grit and grisly humor of returning to one’s dingy blue collar hometown, Another Broken Wizard is the compelling, tightly-woven story of a couple of 30-year old boyhood chums who don't grow up until it's too late.”
-Boston Literary Magazine

“It kept me nostalgic for something that isn't my story, isn't my town, and I got really emotionally involved. I may have shed a tear at the beautifully foreshadowed climax, and I do not cry easily! Seriously. Give it a read.”
- Illiterarty.com

“Another Broken Wizard is a terrific coming-of-age tale that rings utterly true. Dodds has a gift for conveying the sounds of his people and their world. He can make highway hypnosis as fascinating as a gang brawl. And he has a natural radar for locating the perfect detail to evoke the sense of what it feels like to be caught between the past and the future, between loyalty and logic, and between the security of the known and the impulse to evolve. Though I came of age in the primordial mists, it somehow felt like he was giving me a tour of my own past. Another Broken Wizard is compulsively readable. I’ll be giving this book to some of my friends.”
- Jack O’Connell, author of The Resurrectionist, and Box Nine


“Dodds has written a fine novel. He has a voice wholly his own, and he captures the elemental good and bad in the American male. Joe’s recklessness and gang feud creates a looming peril that keeps the reader on edge.”
-Kevin Kosar, author of Whiskey: A Global History
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[close] Born in Havana in the 1940s, Juan and Alberto Ramos grow up in a wealthy, yet less than ideal family. Their boyhood yearnings and adventures coincide with Cuba’s revolutionary upheaval of the late fifties. With instability on the island escalating, the Ramos family makes a heartrending decision. Juan and Alberto’s father chooses to stay in Cuba while the brothers, their nanny, and their mother move to Miami to start new lives. Over the course of their youth, the brothers’ frequent encounters and unique connections with Fidel Castro in Cuba and then with John F. Kennedy in America leave them enamored with the larger-than-life images of these two brilliant, yet flawed leaders. Ultimately, Juan and Alberto trust in their bond of brotherly love as the guiding force to fulfilling their hopes and dreams. Spanning over twenty years in the lives of the brothers and covering nearly a half-century of the lives of their extended family, The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy weaves together an intimate coming-of-age tale with a multi-generational family saga. This is the epic story of two courageous boys as they endure hardship and tragedy to become extraordinary young men during one of the most pivotal eras of the 20th Century. [close]

[close] Cassidy Christensen is running.
Running from the mercenaries who killed her parents.
Running from a scheming redhead intent on making her life miserable.
Running from painful memories that sabotage her dreams of happiness.
With two very tempting men competing for her attention, she hopes she'll finally have someone to run to, but can she trust either of them? When secrets from her past threaten her family, Cassidy decides to stop running and fight for her future.

“Dead Running was everything I was hoping it would be, captivating, invigorating, and a page turner that I could not, would not, put down! Cami Checketts writes books that will make you think, and make you feel. She captivated me with The Sister Pact, and doesn't lose speed with her newest "must read", Dead Running.”
Sheila DeChantal
Book Reviewer - Book Journey
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[close] “If style defines the woman, and shoes a woman’s style, then ooh la la, here’s the definitive history and guide—everything from Chinese bound feet to Ferragamo, from Hollywood favorites to running up one’s credit card on the sine qua non of fashion.” —Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don’t Get Fat

Rachelle Bergstein brings readers along on a unique and delightful romp through the history of shoes, the women who wear them, and the profound impact they have on our lives. Women from the Ankle Down includes interviews and cameos with influential figures ranging from Lisa Mayock of Vena Cava to Oscar-winning costume designer Patrizia van Brandenstein, from Doc Martens historian Martin Roach to FIT museum director Valerie Steele; from Marilyn Monroe and Jane Fonda to Salvador Ferragamo and Christian Dior; from Judy Garland to Wonder Woman. [close]