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A Memoir of Love and Commitment
A page-turning, first-person story of a woman gripped by the sudden onset of bipolar disorder, the evolution of her marriage and how she eventually tames the beast of mental illness.
“I knew I needed a break. I didn’t realize I’d had one.”
With hard-earned wisdom and insight, she recalls the trial and error of various psychiatrists and the methods she discovers to alleviate the disorder on her own. Alternately funny and moving, this book depicts how mental illness sometimes affects lives right next door.
An inspiring, hopeful book about a regular mom facing extraordinary circumstances whose mission is to end the stigma surrounding healthcare for mental illness.
by Author Colleen Burns Durda
Click here to visit her website
River, Sing Out
Attempting to escape his abusive father and generations of cyclical poverty, young Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River — a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth — and embarks on a southern gothic odyssey through the East Texas river bottoms.
They are pursued by local drug kingpin, John Curtis, and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade, with whom River was romantically involved. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, as their relationship with the cartel controlling their meth supply begins to sour.
Keeping tabs on everyone is The Thin Man, a silent assassin who values consequence over mercy.
Each person is keeping secrets from the others — deadly secrets that will be exposed in savage fashion as their paths collide and all are forced to come to terms with their choices, their circumstances, and their own definition of God.
With a colorful cast of supporting characters and an unflinching violence juxtaposed against lyrical prose, River, Sing Out dives deep into a sinister and sanguinary world, where oppressive poverty is pitted against the need to believe in something greater than the self.
Kirkus Reviews called the novel “a haunting fable,” and a “cross between Cormac McCarthy and Deliverance.”
by Author James Wade
Click here to visit his website
The Sunny Side of Crazy
At five, a little Japanese girl was given away by her parents Too young to understand why, she struggled to adjust to a new name, mother, and culture. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she had a secret, one so devastating, she hid it from herself.
Hidden in plain sight, her secret showed itself in the form of five different personalities who accompanied her through her childhood. Each played a role in protecting and loving her throughout her childhood.
She needed them, depended on them, and as she reached adulthood. Her life begins to spin out of control.
And then, a miracle, one of many that have graced her life. This miracle comes in the form of a middle-aged therapist dubbed the wise old owl.
Familiar with Dissociative Identity Disorder, the owl offers her a path to normalcy. But it comes at a price. She must give up the personalities she has come to love and depends on.
Can Mikala find the courage and strength she needs to face an old secret and new life?
by Author Patricia Mikouchi
Click here to visit her website (Coming Soon)
Land Of The Giants
The story of a young woman that (unbeknownst to her) carries the DNA of the incredible creature called Sasquatch. They come get her and take her to where they live and she learns the history of their existence going back to the Bible days and throughout time.
There happens to be an FBI agent in the area when she disappears. He has been traveling the world for the government looking into sightings of the elusive Bigfoot for the government, so the agent and her lifelong best friend, who has always had a crush on her, follow clues to find her.
by Author M. E. Nevill
Click here to visit her website
Sugar Birds
WINNER: 2021 AMERICAN FICTION AWARDS in Literary Fiction, General Fiction, Cross Genre Fiction
SILVER MEDALIST: 2021 READER’S FAVORITE AWARD in Inspirational Fiction
“Bostrom’s prose is propulsive and detailed . . . a true page-turner all the way to the end. An engrossing tale of survival and redemption in the Pacific Northwest .”
Kirkus Reviews
NORTHWEST WASHINGTON STATE, 1985
For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods. So when her mother\’s depression worsens, Harris shows the girl how to find and sketch the nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Aggie is in a tree far overhead when her unpredictable mother spots her and forbids her to climb. Angry, the ten-year-old accidentally lights a tragic fire, then flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, where she hides among the trees and creatures she considers her only friends—determined to remain undiscovered.
A search party gathers by Aggie’s empty boat hours after Celia, fresh off the plane from Houston, arrives at her grandmother’s nearby farm. Hurting from her parents’ breakup, she also plans to run. But when she joins the hunt for Aggie, she meets two irresistible young men who compel her to stay. One is autistic; the other, dangerous.
Perfect for fans of The Scent Keeper, Where The Crawdads Sing, and The Great Alone, Sugar Birds immerses readers in a layered, evocative coming-of-age story set in the breathtaking natural world where characters encounter the mending power of forgiveness—for themselves and for those who have failed them.
by Author Cheryl Grey Bostrom
Click here to view the book on Amazon
Windows of the Heavens
When the heavens open on the small river town of Occoquan, Virginia, the streets flood and a candle shop is swept away. A Methodist pastor named Harley Camden witnesses the destructive deluge and then discovers, in the debris, a dead man with a crude carving of Satan’s claws in his back. Harley is drawn into the mystery of what caused the flood and who killed the man, while diving into questions of good and evil, body and spirit, humanity and the environment—especially questions about the change in climate that now threatens life around the globe. He discovers that there is a spiritual dimension to every social issue, whether it be the violence of Central American gangs or the racism that leads a black businessman to make a fateful choice. When the windows of the heavens open, surprising truths are revealed about how people can coexist in an interfaith, multicultural community, and how humans can establish a sustainable relationship with the natural world around them.
by Author Henry G. Brinton
Click here to visit his website
Monkey Business
When William Fox, a TV writer on location in Florida, is dragged by his show’s toxic producers to a “gentleman’s club” that’s just appeared outside town, he meets Nicole, a mysterious dancer who claims to be an anthropologist searching for signs of rational life on Earth.
Enchanted by her both playful and serious ideas exploring love, limerence, power, monkey behavior, paintball combat, creativity, and the dilemma of a rational mind compelled to serve an animal’s body by feeding it fantasies, Will falls in love – and his ever more troubled love-struck behavior and the acidly destructive battles among his producers and network executives during the production of his show soon begin to illustrate Nicole’s theories.
Nicole is charmingly romantic on a cruise up the Space Coast, but nothing about her seems authentic. After she warns she’ll soon leave, and his producers are humbled by an uncanny encounter with the police, Will begins to wonder, is Nicole staging real world events with him and the producers as her experimental subjects? And if so, can he discover her true identity, learn the lessons she’s trying to teach, and earn her love before he loses her forever?
by Author Carleton Eastlake
Click here to visit his website
Butterfly Awakens: A Memoir of Transformation Through Grief
Butterfly Awakens depicts the story of the extraordinary transformation of a forty-something Italian American attorney as she moves through unimaginable grief and sadness watching her beloved mother lose her battle to breast cancer. This tumultuous life experience shifts her world, causing her to question her life choices and opening her up to her soul’s calling. Nocero brings readers along on her journey through a dark night of the soul as she deals with the grieving process, a toxic work environment, and intense stress that results in depression, anxiety, and an acquired somatic nervous disorder called tinnitus. Through it all, she never gives up, instead looking for the help she needs to start to heal and find her light. In the end, like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, this story is a beautiful love letter that honors Nocero’s mother’s legacy while detailing the awakening of her own.
There are many stories about breast cancer and grief, but none are quite like this one. Throughout her tale, Nocero pulls the reader deep into her story through the intensity of her emotions; and in the end, after resigning from her career as a federal prosecutor due to a toxic administration, she searches for the lighthouse she saw in a vision when her mother died. Embarking on a spiritual pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain to get to the lighthouse at Cap Finisterre, she sets out to wake up and live again; the butterfly connection and stark honesty of her writing offers readers important lessons learned from moving through grief so that each person can shine their light again.
by Author Meg Nocero
Click here to view the book on Amazon
A Season in Lights
Passion, ambition and escape.
In the colorful artistic underworld off-Broadway, Cammie, a dancer in her mid-thirties, has just landed her first part in a show since coming to New York City. Yet the tug of familial obligation and the guilt of what she sacrificed to be there weigh down her dancing feet. Her lover, Tom, an older piano player, came to the city as a young man in the 1980s with a story eerily in tune with Cammie’s own. Through their triumphs and failures, both learn the fleeting nature of glory, the sweetness of new love, and how a dream come true isn’t cherished until it passes. The bright lights of the stage intoxicate, while degradation and despair lurk close behind the curtain. Their sagas are marred by two pandemics, AIDS in the 1980s and COVID-19 today, which ravaged the performing arts community, leaving a permanent scar on those who lived through them. The poignant intersection of their stories reveals a love affair unbound by time, reaching across decades through the notes of a piano’s remembered song.
by Author Gregory Erich Phillips
Click here to visit his website
Novel Women and Novel Women 2
A book written by a book club about a book club. The bonds of friendship and love in middle age when we need it the most.
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Energized by changes in careers and romances, the ladies of Novel Women book club transition from a tumultuous summer into autumn. But they soon discover that this new stage of life doesn’t come with instructions. Sandwiched between their parents and children, they rely on each other to navigate this confusing period.
As they face these new challenges, the six women buoy one another up with an abundance of wisdom, resilience, strength, and —yes, —love. After all, book club is so much more than just reading.
Bri – book club founder, finds returning to work after a twenty-year hiatus proves to be even more difficult than she feared.
Madeline – senses something isn’t quite right with her husband’s business associate and friend.
Ava– visits her mother in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and is attracted to a neighbor’s son.
Hanna –her controlling mother moves in with her when her sister is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
Charlotte– grapples with her boyfriend’s ex-wife’s looming presence and hostile children.
Staci –longs for her elusive Vermont farmer despite brutal attacks by his jealous longtime friend.
by Author Kim Sullivan Harwanko and Between Friends Book Club
Click here to visit their Book Club Website
The Hip Shot
When Skeeter Ellington doesn’t show up for happy hour one Friday afternoon, his drinking buddies fear something is wrong. Skeeter never misses Friday happy hour. Besides, there’s little else to do in Preston but drink beer, go fishing, grow pot, or play golf. His buddies Boot, Perch, and Mervin know they must do something.
Across town, Hazel Owens struggles to keep a music studio above water, and now her significant other, Dr. Carol Baxley, isn’t responding to texts or calls. When a murdered woman is found early one morning in a car at the Urgent Care where Carol works, Hazel’s worry turns into dread.
Sgt. Barbara Lowrie of the Preston police, a strong-willed Lumbee Indian who has overcome much to climb the ranks, throws herself into the case. She finds a tangled web of hatred, misogyny, and possible criminal collusion within the force. Is the murdered woman connected to Carol Baxley? Are the disappearances of Skeeter and Carol connected? And who is the threatening stranger in town she’s heard about? The Hip Shot pulls all these threads together, leading to one exciting conclusion.
by Author Michael L. Miller
Click here to view the book on Amazon
Year of the Onion: A Healing Journey with Cancer
More than a memoir, Year of the Onion: A Healing Journey with Cancer includes valuable information on how to wake up to all the guidance that surrounds us. Within the book are resources for how to work with your dreams, increase your intuition, learn to meditate, how to make whole brain decisions, questions to ask your doctor and how to walk the middle path of healing from a life-threatening illness. In 2018, Kathleen was alerted that something hard was coming her way that would halt the forward momentum of her life. It came in the form of an onion that predicted difficult times ahead. As she peeled back the layers of her life, Kathleen discovered the relationship between her mind, body, spirit – and her past. She hopes the reader will find in her book a new view of how inner and outer resources are guiding us every day. “Wake up,” she encourages, “the whole world is talking to us – even onions!”
by Author Kathleen Millat Johnson
Click here to visit her website
Fortune’s Child: A Novel of Empress Theodora
KIRKUS REVIEWS: “A meticulously researched historical account presented in the form of a thrilling political drama.”
GRAND PRIZE 2019 Best Book, Chanticleer International Book Awards
Theodora: actress, prostitute, mistress, feminist. And Byzantine Empress of the Roman world. Stephen: handsome Syrian boy, wizard’s apprentice, palace eunuch. And Secretary to the Empress. How does this unlikely pair become such allies that one day Empress Theodora asks Stephen to write her biography?
by Author James Conroyd Martin
Click here to visit his website
MAVERICK HEART
FROM HORSE SHOWING IN GEORGIA TO RIDING THE RANGE IN TEXAS – A TALE OF COURAGE AND FINDING FAITH.
Carli Jameson is used to being on her own – abandoned by her mother as an infant – all she’s ever wanted is to feel like she belongs. She has had no choice except to be strong and independent, but now, can she learn to trust God to be her partner? Georgia girl, Carli Jameson, inherits a Texas cattle ranch from grandparents she never knew. After much thought, she makes the courageous decision to pack up her life and move to Texas to run the ranch. She forges ahead into a new life filled with uncertainty and along the way discovers a ranching community that becomes the family she never had. Independent, ambitious and smart, Carli has always been careful with her heart, except for the one time she thought she had found her soul mate and true love. He proved her wrong, and she vowed never to jump into a romantic relationship that easily again. When Carli drives away from her life in Georgia, no looking back, she intends to stick with her vow and not fall into any sweet romances, especially with a Texas cowboy.
Can a fresh start erase the troubles of her past?
by Author Natalie Bright
Click here to visit her website
Buried Beneath
Camilo Canto has unfinished business.
As the newest member of the Bishop Security team, Cam has left the dark world of undercover work with the CIA and is starting a new life in South Carolina. Unfortunately, there is a haunting figure from his past with an agenda. The Conductor is a criminal mastermind who wants Cam eliminated along with the evidence Cam compiled while working undercover. A devious plot is in place to do just that. Cam is abducted and awakes on the island paradise of Mallorca, where crime, danger, and obsession are buried beneath the picture-perfect surface. In order to stop The Conductor, Cam must sift through layers of diversion, including an infatuated supermodel, a corrupt mine owner, and an obsessed treasure hunter. As he fits the puzzle together, Cam crosses paths with a beautiful archaeologist searching for answers to another mystery hidden in the caves beneath the island.
Evangeline Cole is a Ph.D. candidate in Mallorca with an archaeological team. When Evan stumbles upon a strange marker, she is compelled to follow the clues to solve a centuries-old mystery buried in the caves. When Evan\’s treasure hunt crosses paths with Cam\’s investigation, passion and danger ignite. Cam is forced to confront both the real and psychological demons from his years undercover to find the true treasure buried beneath.
Fans of Lori Foster, Sandra Brown, and Toni Anderson will love Buried Beneath.
Be advised: this story contains scenes of violence equivalent to an R-rated movie and explicit sexual situations.
by Author Debbie Baldwin
Click here to visit her website
Cradles of the Reich
Germany, 1939. The nation is on the brink of war and Hitler’s plan to create a “master race” of pure-blooded Aryan babies has been launched. The top-secret Lebensborn Nazi breeding program is brought to life in Jennifer Coburn’s historical novel Cradles of the Reich, the story of three German women who change the course of one another’s lives.
At the center of this novel is Gundi Schiller, an Aryan beauty and university student from Berlin who falls in love with Leo Solomon, a young Jewish bookseller. She finds her spiritual home with the Solomon family and is working in the resistance with Leo. Gundi finds herself pregnant, but the Solomons have vanished. Gundi is sent to a Lebensborn home where she must hide her baby’s Jewish parentage. There she meets Munich native Hilde Kramer, a true “Hitler Girl,” who is pregnant with the baby of a married SS officer. As cruel as she is pathetic, Hilde will stop at nothing to earn a place in the Third Reich. The young women are cared for by Irma Binz, a nurse who flees Frankfurt after a humiliating broken engagement and accepts an offer to work for the Nazi program. Irma finds deep satisfaction working at the Lebensborn home – until she discovers its dark secrets.
by Author Jennifer Coburn
Click here to visit her website
Truth and Other Lies
The Devil Wears Prada meets All the President’s Men
Three women’s careers hang in the balance: a famous journalist, a fledging politician, and the young reporter with ties to each who must navigate the tricky terrain between secrets and lies.
Megan Barnes’ life is in free fall. After losing both her job as a reporter and her boyfriend in the same day, she retreats to Chicago and moves in with Helen, her over-protective mother. Before long, the two are clashing over everything from pro-choice to #MeToo, not to mention Helen\’s run for US Congress which puts Megan’s career on hold until after the election.
Desperate to reboot her life, Megan gets her chance when an altercation at a campus rally brings her face to face with Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Jocelyn Jones, who offers her a job on her PR team. Before long, Megan is pulled into the heady world of fame and glamour her charismatic new mentor represents.
Until an anonymous tweet brings it all crashing down. To salvage Jocelyn’s reputation, Megan must locate the online troll and expose the lies. But when the trail leads to blackmail, and circles back to her own mother, Megan realizes if she pulls any harder on this thread, what should have been the scoop of her career could unravel into a tabloid nightmare.
Fan of Jodi Picoult’s topical plot twists and Liane Moriarty\’s character-driven novels will devour this fast-paced tale.
by Author Maggie Smith
Click here to visit her profile on Goodreads
Mist-chi-mas: A Novel of Captivity
In Mist-chi-mas, everyone is bound to something.
Jeannie Naughton never intended to run away from her troubles, but in 1860, a woman’s reputation is everything. A scandal not of her own making forces her to flee England for an island in the Pacific Northwest, a territory jointly occupied by British and American military forces. At English Camp, Jeannie meets American Jonas Breed. Breed was once a captive and slave — a mistchimas — of the Haida, and still retains close ties to the Coast Salish Indians.
But the inhabitants of the island mistrust Breed for his friendship with the tribes. When one of Breed’s friends is murdered, he is quickly accused of a gruesome retaliation. Jeannie knows he’s innocent, and plans to go away with him, legitimizing their passionate affair with a marriage. But when she receives word that Breed has been killed in a fight, Jeannie’s world falls apart. Although she carries Jonas Breed’s child, she feels she has no choice but to accept a proposal from another man.
Twenty years later, Jeannie finds reason to believe that Breed may still be alive. She must embark on a journey to uncover the truth, unaware that she is stirring up an old and dangerous struggle for power and revenge…
by Author J.L. Oakley
Click here to view the book on Amazon
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- Welcome to the December 2024 Cover Issue of the Pulpwood Newsletter! - December 1, 2024
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