Originally released in October 2020, shortlisted for the 2021 UJ Literary Award and now available in paperback b-format.

Meet the Mafus, a close-knit, traditional family with three daughters. As leaders of their church, The Kingdom of God, Pastor Abraham and his wife Phumla are guiding the community of Bulawayo in faith, while trying to keep the different branches of their family intact. Independent and feisty Xoliswa returns home, after a hiatus abroad, hoping for a fresh start and a chance to steer the family business; rebellious Yandisa has met the love of her life and is finally getting her act together; while dutiful newlywed Zandile is slowly becoming disillusioned with her happily ever after.

The Mafus always present a united front, but as their personal lives unravel, devastating secrets are revealed that threaten to tear the family apart. For how long will they be able to hide behind the façade of a picture-perfect family?

Born in a small, impoverished town in northern Italy, Evo J. DeConcini enjoyed school and wanted nothing more than to further his education. He followed his older brothers to America in 1946, at the age of fourteen, eager to take advantage of the opportunities offered by this new world.

As he worked toward a bright future in America--learning English, going to graduate school, and eventually entering the political realm--he also strengthened his ties to the past by researching his family history. "A True Story" jumps backward and forward in time, detailing the lives of the DeConcinis in sixteenth-century Europe and turn-of-the-century America, returning to Evo J.'s life as he continued to pursue the American dream.

The novel Fermosa-Rosales is the saga of a family during three generations, beginning in the latter part of the 15th century. Fermosa was all of twenty-six when she left her beloved Toledo, Spain, with her two children. The year was 1492 when the edict of expulsion for Jews was published. The family traveled west on the Camino Real, the long road to Portugal, encountering hardships and dangers along the way. She finds love in Portugal with Fernando, whose support she greatly needs when her son dies. They leave after five years when the king orders all Jews converted or expelled. A ship takes them through the pirate-infested waters of the Mediterranean to Tlemcen, where they make their new home. Fermosa's daughter, Blanca, marries there. When the Spanish armada threatens to invade the town, they leave for Istanbul. Though their ship is wrecked in Crete, the family is able to journey to Venice. After being ordered to live in the city's newly built ghetto, the family leaves for Pinsk, Russia, where Fermosa dies. Her grandson, Benjamin, tells the family's one-hundred-year history that mainly comes from his grandmother's diary. He sees the family finally settled in Vilna, Poland. The amazing journey of one family seeking a home where they would not be persecuted is told in unflinching terms in Fermosa-Rosales: An Endless Road. Dr. Alex Bloch earned his Ph.D. in history and taught in this field after a career in engineering and management. His publications cover all these disciplines. During the past eight years he has written several novels. This is his fourth. Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/AlexBloch

For college student Emily Sheppard, the thought of spending a summer alone in New York is much more preferable than spending it in France with her parents. Just completing her freshman year at Callister University, Emily faces a quiet summer in the city slums, supporting herself by working at the campus library.

During one of her jogs through the nearby cemetery while visiting her brother Bill's grave, Emily witnesses a brutal killing-and then she blacks out. When Emily regains consciousness, she realizes she's been kidnapped by a young crime boss and his gang. She is hurled into a secret underworld, wondering why she is still alive and for how long.

Held captive in rural Vermont, she tries to make sense of her situation and what it means. While uncovering secrets about her brother and his untimely death, Emily falls in love with her very rich and very dangerous captor, twenty-six year- old Cameron. She understands it's a forbidden love and one that won't allow her to return to her previous life. But love may not be enough to save Emily when no one even knows she is missing.

For readers who have been moved and overwhelmed by Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, Emma Donoghue’s Room and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Sparrow tells the story of Jacob, son of no one, last survivor of an abandoned British Roman town. Raised in a brothel on the Spanish coast in the waning years of the Roman Empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, the herb-scented garden, then the loud and dangerous tavern, and finally the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ - prostitutes of every ethnic background from the far reaches of the empire - do their mysterious business. When not being told stories by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world.

Through meticulous research and bold imagination, Hynes brings the entirety of the Roman city of Carthago Nova - its markets, temples, taverns of the lowly and mansions of the rich - to vivid life. You will feel you have been to this place, and understand how a slave class - conquered people of every age, walk of life, or skin colour - made the brutal empire function.

Sparrow recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity, and introduces readers to one of the most powerfully affecting and memorable characters of recent fiction.

In 1939, a young Englishman rejects a diplomatic career and leaves England to become a tea planter in Darjeeling, India. He marries an illiterate tea picker of Nepali origin and they have a son. The book continues with the son s journey through life: the prejudices he faces as an Anglo-Indian in both countries; the events in Belize, Burma, Jamaica and Sri Lanka that affect him; the women in his life; all answering the question, what became of him? Jimmy Pyke is an Anglo-Indian who had a distinguished legal career in London for over 45 years. He has written law books, but The Tea Planter s Son is his debut novel at the age of seventy.

My desire is to cast off old clothes, rise like a belly dancer's navel in seduction against the tasseled gray but instead I write to console myself, highlighting what I chose. Each year teaches me how sand shifts, and widens craters overnight, reminds me of both its and life's frailty. My soul shouts words are whips, and wedge open the sky-colored flowers, permits the flayed stems to utter what the truth is.

A clock always ticks, voices take over my mind, I cannot make them leave, and they rasp the air. Old words sit on lush velvet grouped near marble, elevate upturned smile. Old eyes still wrinkle. What does it mean these voices hidden in poetry?

I speak and these words repeat my words, I raise my wet fist, and they raise theirs in retreat.

I'm a native Appalachian from North Carolina transplanted to South Carolina. My garb consists of aprons with watermelon pockets, blue ink is the blood that flows through my veins, and I'm double jointed. In addition a love of reading, embroidery work and quilting, which evolves from her native roots, are some of my many passions. My wishes are you will sincerely enjoy reading my books.

The first of the "Eddie Todd" trilogy which starts in the 1950's and continues to the present.

Book one follows the lives of three women who come from different backgrounds and cross paths with Eddie Todd.

Each has a story to tell. You will be intriqued from the first page to the last.

"Ravenwood" is a place where the emerald magic never ends and also where Topper, a black-and-white cat, is learning most of the important values in life. Topper once lived a comfortable existence with his human owner, but when she died in a car accident, Topper was forced to embark on a lonesome and dangerous journey through the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Now, as Topper creeps along the forest floor and forages for food, he realizes he has a lot to learn about survival.

It is not long before Topper makes friends with Sidekick, a Columbian black-tailed deer, who teaches him how to coexist peacefully with the other forest animals. As they embark on a journey that takes them from the mountains to the ocean and from forest fires to terrifying encounters with hunters, Topper faces many challenges that test his courage, capacity to love, and ability to move on after great loss. As his fortitude is tested over and over again, Topper matures into a wise animal who slowly learns to rely on himself.

In this uplifting story, a cat discovers that of all of his life lessons, the greatest gift he has ever been given is the ability to love.