Young Jackie Riddick's journey is haunted by the premature death of his father, the horrific abuse by his stepfather in Baltimore, and a harrowing escape to a small New Jersey town. Jackie is a promising athlete striving for hard-earned recognition. Like so many fatherless boys, his search for identity, knowledge, and acceptance is hindered by the absence of a positive role model.

As Jackie develops into an outstanding athlete, his popularity soars-but he becomes confused as he begins the transition to manhood. He desperately seeks the life skills essential to his quest, finding a mentor in his baseball coach, Osa Martin, a former star in the Negro Leagues. Coach Martin recognizes the great potential in his gifted athlete but also understands the turbulence and unrest causing problems in Jackie's life. Jackie survives the turmoil of teenage life and the loss of his idol Buddy Holly, but adulthood brings a series of unexpected defeats and sorrows, overriding and crushing his youthful pleasures and joyfulness.

From the hardscrabble hills of Appalachia to the inner cities of the northeast, Magic and Loss captures the changing times in America in the latter half of the twentieth century, depicting the social, economic, and political turbulence through the lives of one family struggling against overwhelming odds. Author John David Wells crafts an absorbing coming-of-age novel that portrays the spirit, innocence, and magic of an American generation growing up in the 1950s.

" DIAMONDS OF AFFECTION" is a collection of short stories filled with a wild and eccentric cast of characters who are all, in some way, struggling to survive in the chaotic and disturbing world created by John David Wells. The reader will find a rock drummer, Todd Benjamin, who is schizophrenic, and thinks the images on MTV videos are originating from the Book of Revelation in the Bible; Donna Robinson, a former dancer on American Bandstand, who thinks she's a character in a song and when she's alone talks to Bob Dylan and Stevie Nicks; David Dickinson, a brilliant young man, who believes he is the "real Catcher in the Rye"; Byron, a wasted junkie, who would leave town if only he had some shoes to wear, and three college students who take a drug-filled, hallucinating road trip to Florida, turning their Range Rover into an Ecstasy orgy with shocking results. These are just a few of the lost "beautiful losers" who inhabit the pages of Dr. Wells' fascinating collection of stories. In the end, readers will find surprising emotional attachments to these flawed, but likable, characters who struggle to maintain their sanity and dignity in the face of an absurd and often unforgiving world.

"The Twilight of Romanticsm" is a fascinating account of the lives and literature of French Bohemian poets and writers of the Beat Generation in 1950's America.
Beginning in 19th century France, every youth generation has developed a group of rebel artists and literary outlaws who defied the middle class conventions of their time in an attempt to create new forms of literature. These artists were the first ones to experiment with all kinds of depravity including mind-expanding drugs, insanity, excessive drinking, sexual experimentation and a chronic inability to settle down to a normal life.
This book will appeal to those persons interested in the poetic visions of Bob Dylan, the sense-of-dread lyrics of Jim Morrison, the free form poetry of Allen Ginsberg, and the spontaneous prose of Jack Kerouac.
In addition, "Twilight" offers a unique insight into the conflict between the desires of self-expression, creative artists and the utilitarian demands of a consumer-ridden, money obsessed culture.

Dinner for Two is a feisty, irreverent novel about a fifty-something professor and his dinner dates with a female student. Jack Burns is currently dating Jessica Fontaine, an English major, who is mesmerized by the notorious professor's extraordinary tales of drunken debauchery, chronic drug addiction, crimes of robbery as the Speedy Bandit, and his wild adventures in exotic countries like searching for the opium-addled Flat Man in the heart of Mexico. Jessica finds out his sister thinks she is a character in a Bob Dylan song, and all the men in his family are alcoholic, and all the women are crazy. Jessica believes she's discovered a wealth of material to write her own short stories based on Jack's life. But things get complicated because Jack is holding back a deeply guarded secret that he dare not tell Jessica. Readers will be drawn into these two people's lives as each new dinner brings more disturbing surprises and new twists and turns in Jack and Jessica's relationship.

Set against the backdrop of a deeply troubled, psychotic female student infecting men with the AIDS virus and a fanatical board member taking over the college, "The Plague Year" is a Swiftian black satire of college life in the mid-nineties.

This haunting detective story echoes Daniel Defoe's "The Journal of the Plague Year" in its stunning depiction of the horrors and fears of a spreading disease.

"The Plague Year" is a searing indictment of modern college life and delves deeply into the self-absorbed, narcissistic lives of some contemporary college students.

When a favorite professor does not return for the school year, two students, Danny, a journalist for the school paper, and Emily, a philosophy major, join forces to find out why the professor did not return to teaching. Their findings are shocking and the whole school is thrown into turmoil.

In the end, readers will become strangely attracted to these college students, who yearn to escape the emptiness of their lives and find meaning in a chaotic and disturbing world.