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"...a real page-turner, I couldn't put it down until the last page." - Alberta Writing for Youth Competition (anonymous judge)

When three friends go for their usual jaunt into the woods a gang war develops over territorial rights. Out-manned, out-sized, and out-smarted by a rival gang, they attempt to turn the tables and are shocked when Big Bill, their strongest and bravest, is captured and held for ransom by the imposing Fat Harold and his gang. Bill's two friends must rescue their friend to battle against great odds.  Smarts may just win the day.

AUTHOR SHOUT - Reader Ready Awards 2024 RECOMMENDED READ “Aaron Landers is in paradise - problem is, it’s going to get him killed.  Ever wondered what it would be like to have the Mexican mafia, police, and drug smugglers looking for you – and wanting you dead?.” – Jeff Buick, bestselling author.With plans to grow his Mayan Riviera dive tour business Aaron Landers falls hard for the alluring Maria Vasquez. When he rescues two children from a car accident, little does he know they are the sons of Commandant Luis Gutierrez, head of the Mexican state police. Aaron’s life begins a descent into crime as he is swept up by dangerous events and people. His obsession with Maria ...

Out with the fantasy/dystopia/magic and in with the real world.

Ricky the paperboy is relentlessly bullied along his route due to rumors stemming from a tragic boating accident in the Welland Canal where a popular teenager is killed by a Great Lakes freighter. He is forced into a dangerous contest of 'manhood' to end the hostilities with three bullies. What appears to be a mere swimming race to the far bank is complicated by the police, two rival gangs, a municipal swim ban, a newspaper reporter, and Leo, his competitor who is not to be trusted. Whatever happens in the water will change Ricky’s life.

Crime fans and first responders, you are gonna love this one because it's written by an AWARD WINNING author and retired fire rescue captain—the real deal.  Who needs yet another police/lawyer/private eye story?  

Ex-fire rescue captain Gerry Ormond from FIRE DREAM takes a fire chief position thinking he’ll cruise through his contract. The Russian Mafya, embezzlement, fire investigation, arson, extortion, and murder are rolled into one. Chief Ormond is being set up as a scapegoat for a corrupt administration. Nothing has prepared him for this. But the chief is no one’s fool and fights back with everything he has. Can he win a war by losing every battle?

The abolitionist Garretts and the Slaver McCunes are border state natives still haunted by the moral ghost of the Garrett patriarch, Valentine, and the evil machinations of the McCune patriarch, Jake. Together, or on their own, family members experience, Slaughter’s Mountain, an Indian uprising on the Plains, a German uprising in Texas, as well as the battles of Second Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.They enter common homes and glittering mansions. They interact with historical characters as well as fictional, and along their journey, they visit the capitals of Richmond and Washington, allowing you the reader to peer behind the curtain, to participate in historical decision-making.I...

In 1861, Lincoln’s election caused eleven Southern states to break with the Union. The peculiar institution of slavery, its continuation and spread into the Western Territories became the sticking point.The Garrett family resides in Western Maryland, a border state that lies between the warring parties. There, opinions are as divided as the country, and emotions run hot. Because of their abolitionist leanings, the Garretts have their homestead burned. They have lost their patriarch, Valentine. His brother, James, falls at Bull Run. Their friend and Mennonite neighbor, Aaron, is lost at Ball’s Bluff. In the midst of it all, Toby, a little slave girl is rescued and taken in by the family a...

The Garrett Family faces an alarming situation. War is declared and they’re in thethick of it. On the border between the Confederacy and the Union, Marylandfamilies live on both sides of their brand-new, disconcerting border. Friends andneighbors are forced to take sides.The reader witnesses unrest in California and conflict in Arizona. Back East, greensoldiers flock to their flags and tragedy strikes at the Union debacle, Ball’s Bluff.Soon after, we stand with Confederate militia to watch the Union beaten again inthe first Battle of Antietam.Burned out for ministering to runaways, the Garrets sell their land and move inwith relatives closer to the Mason-Dixon. Amid it all, a slave girl ...

The Garretts, their friends, and family tell our American story-the story we didn't hear about in school.In Fire-Eaters , the second book in the Snakebit series, John Poniske skillfully shows how our Dis-United States came to be on a war footing. The humor, the humanity, and the horror blend in a tightly woven tale, as historical as it is fictional.Geoffrey Garrett acts as his family's conscience. Geoff's dead father, Valentine, acts as Geoff's compass in a world gone snakebit-crazy. The Garret and McCune families introduced in book one Prelude to War live in Maryland, a border state torn between abolitionists to the North and slavers to the South. The McCunes are slavers, the Garretts are n...

The Western Maryland, Garret family, struggle to maintain their farm as their neighbors argue the slavery issue. They live in a border state where folks take both sides and emotions run hot. Their stoic matriarch, known only as "Mother" holds the family together in the absence of her dead husband. The deceased patriarch, Valentine, was a giant of a man both in stature and character. He acts as the family conscience and mentor throughout the novel. It is his admonition that people who get snakebit think and act crazy which is how he viewed the state of the country when he died. Gabe the eldest and an adventurer, has wandered off to Bleeding Kansas. This has left taciturn Geoffrey, the spittin...

The Western Maryland, Garret family, struggle to maintain their farm as their neighbors argue the slavery issue. They live in a border state where folks take both sides and emotions run hot. Their stoic matriarch, known only as "Mother" holds the family together in the absence of her dead husband. The deceased patriarch, Valentine, was a giant of a man both in stature and character. He acts as the family conscience and mentor throughout the novel. It is his admonition that people who get snakebit think and act crazy which is how he viewed the state of the country when he died. Gabe the eldest and an adventurer, has wandered off to Bleeding Kansas. This has left taciturn Geoffrey, the spittin...

Author: ret. fire rescue officer – the real deal“The tale has lots of twists and a reveal, that I didn’t see coming. This novel offers a fresh perspective into firefighting, arson and revenge.” - Caffeinated ReviewerA fresh angle in the crime/mystery genre. Not another police, lawyer, or PI story.Obsession, a deadly secret, hot romance, murder, revenge, and arson. Twenty years ago, Gerry Ormond, along with his two teenage fraternity buddies committed a horrendous crime, unsolved and paved over by layers of time. It’s why Gerry fled his hometown. It was a tragedy for all, a secret to some, buried and forgotten—almost—until now upon a visit to his ailing father. Now as a decorate...

CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA FINALIST. YA and up historical crime fiction.Canadians are only too happy to supply liquor to thirsty Americans during U.S. Prohibition. Running rum and whisky over to Pelee Island on Lake Erie has been a piece of cake - so far. Jarrod Hooker, seventeen-years-old, steps in for his injured, taking his spot on the boat. Jarrod is thrown in with rough men, many of them WW1 vets who resent the boy. Jarrod must swallow his fears and try to carve some self-respect for himself amid deadly efforts to undermine him. But ill winds begin to blow across Lake Erie: missing liquor money, the U.S.Coast Guard stepping up patrols, and an American gangster moves in. Jarrod's second run...

2026 AUTHOR SHOUT Recommended Read 2026 OUTSTANDING CREATOR AWARD nomineeTwo university students, Canadian Lucas Horne and the rich and beautiful Colombian Avalina Vargas, meet during a jungle trek to Colombia’s Lost City where they become infatuated with each other. After the trek, Avalina is abducted along with Lucas, taken to a remote jungle camp then sold to human traffickers. News of their abduction sets in motion a country-wide manhunt, and Lucas is sought as a collaborator. For Lucas, an escape into the wild rain forest will be even more dangerous than the sadistic kidnappers in the camp. Somehow, he struggles back to civilization but is arrested.Rescuing Avalina means fin...

"Zeelo's Mysterious World" is an exciting and magical story where three ordinary children, Sameera, Ayan, and Rahul, embark on an extraordinary journey.When they arrive at their grandparents' old villa and discover a mysterious library, they find a book that pulls them into a magical world. In this new world, mysteries, trials, and dangers await them at every step.They encounter Zeelo, an invisible magical companion, a helpful magical being named Orlin, and a clever crow named Zorin. But the greatest threat is a powerful and cunning sorcerer who has trapped the world with his dark magic.Will Sameera, Ayan, and Rahul be able to defeat the sorcerer with their unity, courage, and trust?Will the...

The sublimity of Muhammad's preaching in Mecca and the severity of his sermons in Medina make Islam a Janus-faced faith that forever bedevils the mind of the Musalmans.This thought-provoking work, besides dissecting the anatomy of Islam, steeped in the Quran, seeks to depict the psyche of the Musalmans, shaped by the proclivities of their prophet, vicissitudes of his life and the attitudes of his detractors, which the mechanism of their umma perpetuates. More to the point, aided by “I’m Ok – You’re Ok”, the path-breaking work of Thomas A. Harris and Roland E Miller’s “Muslim Friends–Their Faith and Feeling”, this book, for the first time ever, psycho-analyzes the imper...

 Bhagavad-Gita is the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue’ – William von Humboldt.  In this the beauty of the Sanskrit slokas is reflected in the rhythmic flow of the English verse of poetic proportions even as the attendant philosophy of the Gita is captured in contemporary idiom for easy comprehension.         Though it is a matter of consensus that Bhagvad-Gita in the present length of seven hundred slokas has many an interpolation to it, but no meaningful attempt has ever been made to delve into the nature and extent, not to speak of the effect of these on the Hindu society at lar...

Even as Detective Dhruva was enamored of Kavya, whom he rescues from her kidnapper, Radha, an alleged murderess on the run, gatecrashes into his life.But when Kavya too joins him after her man was poisoned there ensues the tussle of a love triangle, which gets unraveled in a poignant end, but not before a series of murders.So, then who could have poisoned Ranjit the realtor, Shakeel the Inspector, Pravar the criminal and Natya his accomplice?Well the needle of suspicion tilted towards Pravar that was till he perished with his mate, but then who was the one? Could it be Radha under the scanner for her role in the death of her husband Madhu and his mistress Mala, Pravar's sister?Or was it...

Lured by the pitch - All marriages are made in heaven but some are delayed on earth: We endeavor to hasten them all - Priya goes to Renuka Marriage Bureau.

Scanning the prospects, when she spotted Venu, whom she slighted long ago, she rushes to him to bring about a dramatic encounter.

What brought about Priya’s change of heart to seek her former suitor and how Venu responds to his old flame’s fresh overtures lend suspense to their romance in this novella.  

It's perilous penning this blurb.It's fine when man is modest about his work.It even affords him the aura of an invisible crown!But what about his work?Were it an art or craft, it is there for all to see.What of a literary work of an unheralded author?Well, lauding the same might raise one's eyebrows.Failing to praise wouldn't make a 'jewel-less crown' either!Why not see, if this is the great Indian novel.This is the story of the rise and fall of an ambitious man, the decline, and the decay of his conniving wife, the trials, and tribulations of their wayward son as well as the grit and gall of a spirited woman, who enters into his life.This depiction of their life and times not only pictures...

In a stream of consciousness mode, Glaring Shadow is the self-account of the life and times of a man, who liquidates his immense wealth only to consign it to the flames.

The agony and ecstasy of his life as he makes it big in our materialistic world and the way he loses his soul in the bargain, only to regain it when tragedy strikes him makes one ponder over the meaning of success in life.

This philosophical ‘novel of a memoir’ is a compelling read that is conducive to contemplate about the nature and scope of human relationships.

 

 Biblical concept wrapped in an endearing story to help children deal with strong emotions
 

Sunny is an easy-going seahorse who roams the ocean with his friends. His kind-hearted nature makes him want to help when he sees a problem. What does he do about a friend who doesn't want his help? Sunny finds Shrimp trying to put up his seaweed curtains. He is too small, and his friends offer to assist. However, his rudeness drives his friends away. Will they help him when he needs them most? Sunny must convince Shrimp that being small does not mean he is not valuable to God and to his friends.

    Join Henry, the adorable little bear with a case of the hiccups, on a charming adventure that will tickle your child's funny bone and warm your heart in Henry Has The Hiccups. When Henry's hiccups cause uproarious chaos at home, he embarks on a mission to find a cure, leading to a series of hilariously inventive attempts by his family. From spoonfuls of sugar to unexpected surprises, this endearing tale is a delightful reminder that sometimes the most ordinary moments can turn into extraordinary adventures. Share in the laughter and love as Henry's hiccups teach us all about the joy of embracing life's quirks. Perfect for children and parents to enjoy together, Henry's Has The ...

Are looking for a novel that will transport you back to the good ole days….when rock music was new and exciting and the musicians who made that music were raw but real…….

‘The Hang-Up’ is such a novel…..BONUS: All the tracks written within the story have been recorded and available to you…..So you can not only read why/when/where the songs were written but actually hear those songs @http://djmcmusic.com

‘The Hang-Up’ is a truly original art-form combining literature with music….

When Lady Marianne Bentley arrives in town to find out that her close friend has disappeared without an apparent trace, she is stunned to find no one seems to be doing anything about it. She visits the girl's parents and finds them less than enthusiastic about an all out investigation. She decides that she will find her friend in spite of them.She is surprised to find out that the last person to see her was her neighbor the Marquis (Thomas), with whom she has never been cordial. In the hope of solving the mystery, she decides to become better acquainted with him.However, her plan falters when she becomes beguiled by his charm. Will she discover that he had a hand in her friend's abduction, o...

If passing through youth was like crossing the mirage of life for Chandra and Nithya, it proved to be chasing the mirage of love for Sathya and Prema though for plain Vasavi, Chandra's pitiable sibling, it was the end of the road.As life brings Chandra, who suffers from an inferiority complex for his perceived ugliness, and Nithya, who was bogged down being jilted by Vasu, together, they script their fate of fulfillment.And as poetic justice would have it, Sathya, who caused Prema's heartburn, himself was led down the garden path by Kala, doing a Sathya on Sathya.Just not that, life has in store just deserts for Vasu owing to Nithya's retribution as he tries to stalk her.Besides, after many ...

Kent notices she young woman sitting alone in the diner, and he’s immediately struck by a desire to comfort her. Though she possesses undeniable attractiveness, he senses that something must have gone terribly wrong in her world. Fueled by a determination to help, he asks if he may join her.

 As fate weaves their stories together, Andrea suggests a daring plan. What if they pretend to be in a fake relationship? Kent is on board, agreeing to use his training as a psychologist to help her work on her social skills. But this arrangement sets off a whirlwind of unexpected emotions, pushing them both to confront their deepest doubts and insecurities. 

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