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It's Alive!

by Julian David Stone

In the summer of 1931, life was good for Junior Laemmle. Only twenty-three years old, he was the head of all movie production for Universal Pictures, and the studio was flourishing. So much so, he was being promoted to VP. What’s more, his father, Carl, and the studio’s founder, was returning to California for the first time in years to personally present the honor. Or so Junior thought. But instead of being grateful for transforming and catapulting the out-of-date studio into the future, Car... more

The House on Liberty Street

by Frances Rivetti

Notes from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Wee Folk

by George Harvey

Notes from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Wee Folk is a series of essays on Wee Folk of all sorts. It includes discussion of how they interact with human beings, their place in nature, and how they communicate with each other and with human beings. It also covers their cultures and societies, their art and music, and their theatrical works. Some of the discussion goes into specific details, with several essays on their music, the history of counterpoint and harmony, and th... more

Small Stories: A Perfectly Absurd Novel

by Rob Roy O'Keefe

Duncan and Maya Small have just moved to an out-of-the-way town filled with odd characters, quirky customs, and a power-obsessed local official who one day hopes to be declared emperor. Duncan is sharp enough to know something needs to change, and delusional enough to believe he's the one to make it happen. The only thing standing in his way are feral ponies, radical seniors, common sense, and Duncan's inability to do anything without a list.

Hands Down

by Tom Figel

Hands Down, a Vietnam era coming of age novel, follows ambitious Dennis Spuhn as he completes military service and goes after the success he has anticipated since adolescence. Hands down, as he leaves Davenport, IA for the US Marine Corps in 1964, Dennis Spuhn means to have it all: a millionaire by age 30, his own restaurant chain, house on the bluff, Jenny Adamski. Along the way, avoiding jealous Greg Benson, he is going to need the help of others: a wrestler turned holy man and a likable Louis... more

The Mysterious Composition of Tears

by Sharon Heath

After a series of climate calamities, physicist Fleur Robins takes off for deep space in a desperate attempt to save the species from extinction. During her mysteriously prolonged absence, the internet has crashed, fire and flood have devastated whole countries, and End of Times cults have proliferated. There have been some intriguingly hopeful changes, too—nanoparticle holograms have replaced electronic devices, young people are witnessing exquisitely colorful “Shimmers,” and the most gifted of... more

Transforming Souls

by R.D. Samsara

It's a short story collection with eight stories. Each narrative shows a character who is searching for ways to improve their state of mind.

Aiken in Check: A Spy Game Novel - The Aiken Trilogy, Book 3

by Michael Frost Beckner

Christmas Eve in Havana, and Aiken in Check finds ill-starred and afflicted Russell Aiken betraying America to save CIA officer Nina Estrada. But as Aiken’s treason exposes the CIA’s top spy in Castro’s regime, events in Cuba share a hidden connection to Bishop and Muir’s China past. Will Aiken lose all he loves, or will he assume Muir’s mantle to become grandmaster of the Spy Game? Bursting with Aiken's absurdist wit, Aiken in Check is a love-letter confession, wrapped in the hauntings of thre... more

Hidden Buddha

by Jim Ringel

In Hidden Buddha, Lama Rinzen is reborn into the Hungry Ghost Realm as a doctor at Humboldt Hospital on Colorado's eastern plain. She is here to face the hospital's ghosts so she might learn the realm's lesson while solving the mystery of why so many of Humboldt's patients are disappearing. Rinzen cannot see these ghosts, but nine-year-old patient Claudia tells her they are real and trying to trap Rinzen at Humboldt’s so that she will have to spend this and all future li... more

The Dawning: 31,000 BC

by Richard W. Wise

The Dawning tells an age-old story of deadly struggle, the heart-rending tale of young love-its aspirations, pain, disappointments and eventual triumph. Ejil and Lada, son and daughter of a Cro-Magnon tribe (on the verge of adulthood) have begun to explore their maturing feelings when an encounter with a clan of Neanderthal hunters tears their Ice Age world apart. Lada is lost and Ejil finds himself embarked on a desperate odyssey to find the mother tribe. The Neanderthals, a pale skinned ... more

HEARTBREAK EPIPHANIES AND JUSTIFIED LUST

by JOHN KRUXHAMMER

This novel is about stubborn ideals against grim realities as traumatic relationships also impact troubled identities, causing erratic behavior, desperate imagination, and temporary insanity. One young man suffers from a terrible obsession with his attractive therapist in Los Angeles. Another one struggles in Buffalo from a tumultuous marriage, with lots of beer, loud music, and zany humor along his many travels too. As years pass their narratives parallel and then intersect, for a conflicting c... more

Ellis River

by Nicki Ehrlich

The Civil War scattered her family and now, along with her beloved horse, a young woman must travel across a war-torn country to collect what’s left of her life. The only home she’s every known is destroyed as the last of the family’s horses are requisitioned. But one headstrong mare returns. Disguised as a boy, for safety and comfort, Ellis Cady rides off to find her twin brother. Though war refuses to fade, Ellis stumbles upon an unlikely group of rescuers who teach her family is more than blo... more

Escape Artists

by Dede Newman

A short story about a colorful cast of characters that breaks into an art museum, and the redemption and transformation they experience afterward. Laced with spirituality and humor.

Illyrian Fugue

by Scott Krieger

Illyrian Fugue is a literary novel set long ago and far away, but it's about here and now. Set in Napoleonic Europe, 1805-1813, Illyrian Fugue is a tale told in fragments by an unreliable narrator tumbling through a dissociative episode. This novel is achingly beautiful, with 15 years spent weaving it together and researching source materials to capture the innocence of the times, before Darwin when the nature of things was still up for grabs. Themes include war, heroism, politics, madness, iden... more

Before Dawn

by Laura F. Murphy

Feisty New Yorker, Max, falls for her mysterious coworker, Tommy, who is fourteen years her senior. Wanting to please him and meet his beauty standards she conflictingly conceals her natural hair from him and avoids tanning so her skin doesn’t get too dark. Max tightly holds onto their forbidden romance while trying to figure out who she is and her place in a world she doesn’t always fit in. Too caught up with her feelings she becomes oblivious to the consequences of her actions. As tragedy st... more

The Secret Life of Sunflowers

by Marta Molnar

When Hollywood auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds her famous grandmother's diary while cleaning out her New York brownstone, the pages are full of surprises. The first surprise is, the diary isn't her grandmother's. It belongs to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law. Johanna inherited Vincent van Gogh's paintings. They were all she had, and they weren't worth anything. She was a 28 year old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where sh... more

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