A LIGHT IN THE CANE FIELDS
by Enrico Antiporda
This coming-of-age story chronicling a Filipino boy's wrenching passage from son of privilege to guerilla fighter is a stylistic tour-de-force. From its first lines, the saga of Jando Flores seizes readers with the same chilling intensity as the cold water that wraps around Jando's chest as he hides in a river to escape a gang of pillaging cutthroats. Mountain bandits, sugar warlords, Peace Corps volunteers, dignitaries, and revolutionaries all jostle beneath "mango-colored" skies in this riveting epic of loss and transformation, but it is a masterful and delicate choreography--Publishers Weekly (Read excerpt)
enricolit.gather.com
enricoanti@yahoo.com

CHILD OF THE STARS
by Angela Baca
Carrie Stephens comes of age in this teen tale of moving to the Big Apple and watching her hopes and dreams fulfilled on Broadway. Alas, she also finds love in the cliche story of the handsome, but genuinely interesting, talent agent. Carrie also meets other people who change her life while she lives away from her nuclear family. (Read excerpt)
audrabianca@yahoo.com

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
by Michelle Berry
A Matter of Perspective is about the night before, and the month or so after, 9/11. It takes place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and revolves around 2 young couples and their lives, an older man who has lost his wife to cancer and a babysitter who has gone missing. The novel is structured like a Rubric's Cube in that everything in these characters' lives gets messed up before the solution is apparent. (Read excerpt)
mberry@aei.ca

DENA POWERS: SUPERHERO?
by Megan Bostic
Strange things begin to happen to Dena Powers on her thirteenth birthday. She writes it off as overtired delusions, but only until lunch time, when an incident at school leads her to believe that her bizarre day is due to more than just lack of sleep. Dena gets home to find out she has super human powers. Her father advises her to keep her them under wraps because of the overwhelming temptation to use them selfishly. However, Dena confides in her BFF's Mary and Rachel, who urge her to use her new gifts to better society. Dena begins a crusade against crime, while still dealing with homework, snobs, and boys, making her world go from confusing to downright chaotic. (Read excerpt)
www.myspace.com/meganthewriter
megan.bostic@yahoo.com

EVERYTHING WAS GOOD-BYE
by Gurjinder Bsran
It is the story of Meena, a young Indo Canadian woman who is struggling to assert herself amidst a strict Punjabi community that is bound by God and tradition. Barely existing beneath the weight of her father's death that left her mother alone to raise six daughters, Meena knows that her birth right holds little more than a breath. Growing up in a household wrought perpetual mourning, she knows the freedoms of her Canadian peers can never be hers. But unlike others, she is unwilling to submit to a life that is defined by a suitable marriage but is unable to break away from the traditions that hold her family together. She is paralyzed with contradictions until she meets free thinking Liam. Unlike any other person she has met, Liam seems to be the answer to all her questions. His voice makes way for hers, unclenching past hurts to give way to new possibilities. Though a tale set between race and culture, it is a story of love, loss and self acceptance amidst shifting ideals. (Read excerpt)
gb@dccnet.com

SISTER TO DRAGONS (Young Adult Fantasy)
by Scotti Cohn
In Sister to Dragons, 15-year-old Quillan RedMoon is transported to Oldrana, a magical realm that contains jewels representing the traditions of the peoples of her own world. She discovers that she has been chosen to be a Guardian of Oldrana, and that her first task is to stop Maksym, another Guardian, from destroying the jewels. In the process, Quillan faces her complex feelings about her parents, her world, and herself. She learns what it means to forgive, to heal, and to overcome -- and takes her place as a true Guardian of Oldrana.
www.scotticohn.com
sm_cohn@hotmail.com


THE FINAL GIFT
by Christine Conaway
Alexis has always believed in organ donation, but it had always been in theory only. Now Alexis must face the facts. Megan, her seven-year-old daughter is gone; machines are keeping her body alive while Alex tries to figure out what she should do. She never thought she would be making the decision for anyone other than herself, now she has to decide for Megan. With enough facts to crush her, she gives her consent.  
Now she must find a way to live with her decision.
imasoldiersmom_1952@msn.com

PRECARIOUS
by Hope Coulter
At a friend's urging, new widow Eliza Couvillion, starts writing an account of how she met her husband, years before, when she went to Arkansas on a legal case--trying to track down a child lost in the foster system. That child, now grown, is the one encouraging her to write the story.
Eliza's search led her through state bureaucracies and into poor sections of Little Rock that contrasted with the affluent suburbs where she was staying. She also sought out a college friend and began a relationship.
Marcus remembers his crack-addicted mother and a gamut of other caretakers and mishaps. His and Eliza's entwined history sheds light on her present-day struggle with loss and disconnection. (Read excerpt)
hopecoulter99@comcast.net

A LITTLE MENAGERIE
by Marjorie Carlson Davis
Signe Hansson has made one mistake after another-- wrong marriage, wrong career, and wrong student to befriend. After a student accuses her of sexual misconduct, Signe retreats with her son to a rural home where she surrounds herself with rescued animals; offers a dog obedience class; and forges friendships with the quirky dog owners. When a troubled neighbor threatens her, putting her animal and human friends at risk, Signe learns happiness doesn't come easily and isn't always what it seems. What will it take for Signe to finally make the right choices? A romance? Exposure of her past? A death?
marjoriecarlsondavis.com
mcarlsondavis@yahoo.com

PARADISE UNDONE
by Annie Dawid
PARADISE UNDONE tells the stories of four individuals involved in the Jonestown massacre -- one is Marceline Jones, wife of Jim, and another is based on the Guyanese ambassador to the United States. The other two are fictions, though composites of actual survivors. My novel follows these four people from long before Jonestown became a horrifying household name for us all -- the meeting of Jim and Marceline in 1949 -- to the present moment, when Watts Freeman, who escaped through the jungle, is being interviewed for a 30-year anniversary radio program. (Read excerpt)
www.anniedawid.com
annie@anniedawid.com

DESERT STORM
by Doron Deutsch
When Lee Thomas, a young American woman from Tampa, travels to Iraq to report on the war, she has no idea what she is getting herself into. Shortly after landing she finds herself behind enemy lines running for her life, in a place where Americans are the enemy and there is no respect for human life. Lee's escape route is set against the backdrop of the amazing Middle East, a place rich with history, loaded with religious landmarks, and packed with conspiracies. Desert Storm is a fast paced story filled with non-stop actions. Lee's adventure in the Middle East is original, relevant, and breathtaking. Her journey through the epicenter of todays largest military conflict is an eye opener as well as entertaining. (Read excerpt)
www.freewebs.com/ddoron/
desertadventure@gmail.com

SAVAGE GARDENS OF THE GODS
by Kay-Christine Fenton
An epic tale born out of the Klondike gold rush of 1897, where a nugget of gold could buy a woman or a life, there for the taking.
Apache Annie-Mary and Cavalryman George seek freedom and fortune amidst humanity in the raw. A rip-roaring trail of lost souls and misbegotten gold, leads to a freedom of uneasy grace in silent-picture era Hollywood.
Out of the ashes of those notorious old studios, long-buried secrets arise before their great-granddaughter, Cara. Twists of fate lead her and journalist Chay on their own trail of the lost souls and misbegotten gold of long ago. (Read excerpt)
Kaychristina@aol.com

SOMEBODY TO LOVE
by Stephanie Feuer
When the love affair between two nursing home residents is the subject of a newspaper expose in the tumultuous spring of 1968, 17 year-old Hannah Cooper, whose father runs the old age home, sets out to refute the story to save her father's reputation.
Aided by her friends from the old age home, including a legless former intelligence officer and the mother of a local mobster, and her activist boyfriend, Hannah exposes the many facets of love; the sweetness of the first, the depth of the father-daughter bond and the surprising lightness of one last fling. (Read excerpt)
stephfeuer at verizon.net

FOUR-BERTH COUCHETTE
by Carole Goldberg
Four Americans decide that an escape to Europe might be the antidote to their current misfortunes in the humorous Four-Berth Couchette. The travelers, ages twenties to thirties, include: Kirsten, a former L.A. supermodel; Max, a dropout from Harvard Medical School; Duncan, a sheepish financial controller in Silicon Valley; Robin, a beleaguered misfit from small- town Nebraska.
Kirsten, Max, Duncan, and Robin meet in a crammed four-berth couchette on the train from Paris to Nice. Soon they’re unloading problems on each other – fellow Americans who have no trouble dispensing comradely advice. Their individual plans are discarded in favor of traveling together.(Read excerpt)
Goldberg.Carole@gmail.com

RHYTHM
Robin Meloy Goldsby
Teenage drummer Jane Bowman lives in swanky Sewickley Heights with her father and two eccentric maids. She attends a private high school, practices the drums, and struggles to recover from her mother’s death, caused by a fire in a Manhattan nightclub. After graduation Jane moves to New York City, where she encounters the best and worst elements of the music business. RHYTHM reveals the tragic beauty of human resilience, the restorative power of love and laughter, and the way one girl's music—steady, solid, and courageous—helps to mend her shattered heart. (Read excerpt)
www.goldsby.de
robin@goldsby.de

QUITSA'S BANDS (Young Adult)
by Suzanne Goldsmith-Hirsch 
Thirteen-year-old Clementine Harper is spending a year alone with her mother on Martha’s Vineyard. Clem, a child of the late seventies, must often parent her own parents, who seem to be moving away from each other -- and from her. But when Clem finds a dead osprey on the beach, her attention turns to an orphaned boy named Daniel and the endangered birds he is trying to save. Together they await the ospreys’ return from winter migration. But when Daniel's grandfather dies and Daniel disappears, Clem must face her own harsh reality: her family, too, is about to change.
suzanne.goldsmith.hirsch.googlepages.com/home
 
HONOR'S GHOST
by Voula Grand
"House of the Spirits" meets "Brave New World" in this conversation between a spiritualist medium (Annie) from the past, her neuroscientist seventh generation descendent (Isabelle) from the future, and Honor, a psychiatrist, who lived in the present time. Meeting in dreams stimulated by a miracle psychiatric drug, Annie tells the story of her life to Isabelle, and we see the echoing similarities between their worries and pre-occupations, despite the very different times they live in. At the end, we see the surprising ways in which their stories are connected. (Read excerpt)
www.voulagrand.com
voula@voulagrand.com

BURNING VEILS
by Jean Grant
Burning Veils is a story of love and colliding cultures. Afer Sarah's boyfriend Ibrahim returns home to Saudi Arabia, he asks her to marry him and live with him there. Sarah doubts she could thrive in a land where women are kept secluded, but she's an idealist in love, so she goes. Ibrahim's brother, an Islamist hardliner, hates her as does his fierce jealous mother. Layla, his sister befriends Sarah and teaches her the price of sacrifice as both join in the struggle for women's rights. (Read excerpt)
jeanflies@sbcglobal.net

RENAISSANCE SEASON
by Rebecca Groff
Thirty-two year old Carlotta Jones’ life is held together by duct tape, literally and figuratively. Her daily routine seems locked in a pattern of co-existing with various pets, and working several jobs to maintain her independent lifestyle since the tragic death of her parents, the abandonment of her college studies and the unexplained desertion by her fiancé. But the arrival of a new neighbor, a tenacious Jamaican woman called Jerico Williams, turns Carlotta’s life upside down over the course of one hot Iowa summer, forcing her to confront the truth about realities and dreams too long forgotten. (Read excerpt)
bzgee21@aol.com

WAGNER AT MIDNIGHT
by Katherine Guckenberger
This breathtakingly brilliant novel follows the multi-generational fortunes, and misfortunes, of a German-American family in the Ohio River Valley.  The narrator, Bear Schlumber, is the son of a proud mattress-store owning patriarch whose family has far more skeletons than closet space.  Even a cursory list of their pathologies is cringe-making, from Bear's long-term affair with his mother-in-law, which even her Alzheimer's and confinement to a nursing home has barely cooled; to his aunt's suicide; to sexual abuse; to murder.  And yet to label the Schlumber family strictly in terms of its moral squalor is to negate it.   (Read excerpt)
kaki.kirk@gmail.com

GO, LUCY GO (comic novela)
by Patricia L. Herlevi
In this romantic comedy novela, Japanese exchange student Lucy Yakamoto grapples with her sexual identity.  Set in the Pacific NW do-it-yourself music scene, Lucy must choose between the sexy Latino Carlos Suave and the riot grrl lesbian librarian Belinda Chance.  But in a final showdown, Lucy chooses neither and instead follows her unconscious yearnings led by a sparkling blue Telecaster.

"Go, Lucy Go" celebrates youth and initiative while presenting a journalistic objectiveness and humor to the alternative music scene of the late 80s. (Read excerpt)
patriciacrowherlevi@gmail.com

ALL SAINTS' DAY (Supernatural Heroes)
by Patricia L. Herlevi
All Saint's Day features infamous saints in new guises. Jesus has returned as an African-American (cross between Jimi Hendrix and a Navajo medicine man). Magic Mary, (Magdalene), and The Virgin (Virgin Mary) run healing arts clinics. Saint Francesco of Assisi and Saint Jeanne D'Arc cannot consummate their marriage. Saint Catherine of Alexandria looks for a suitable immortal mate and The Teresas (Teresa of Lisieux and Teresa of Avila) made a grave error returning as Siamese cats. Now they're haunted by two snippety Jack Russell terriers that nip at their heels while testing the former nuns' levitation skills. (Read excerpt)
www.allsaintsnovel.blogspot.com
patriciacrowherlevi@gmail.com

GIRLS, GIRLS, OUT
by Lockie Hunter
Set on a barrier island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, Girls, Girls, Out examines the eccentric Slocum family. Told in rotating points of view between two strong but dissimilar sisters, this novel explores the tragedy of loss, the meaning of kinship and the cost of family secrets. Girls, Girls, Out showcases the Lowcountry and its inhabitants, from unconventional island doctors and libertine brothers to "leftover" family members and evangelistic grandmothers. The novel follows the twin sisters, as one struggles with physical adversity and the other deals with the startling complexities of personal salvation and self-discovery.
www.lockiehunter.com


CONTAINED AND ORDERLY LIVES
by Aaron Jacobs
The Merrills are convinced their life together can'€™t get much worse. That is, until their next door neighbors start a community watch group and target them as public enemies one and two. Edward has lost his job and his marriage to Mary-Elaine is in shambles, largely due to her infertility. When they refuse to join N.O. H.A.T.E., Neighbors Organized! Homeowners Against Terrorist Exploits, they find themselves pariahs in a town obsessed with its safety. They soon learn things can and do get worse. Can they put aside their problems to save themselves, or are they too far gone to prevent total destruction? (Read excerpt)
amjacobs@nyc.rr.com

UTOPIA CLOSES
by Fin Keegan
UTOPIA CLOSES is a black comedy about power, love, and fear set in a unified Ireland ruled by a vainglorious bully. After decades of abuse Marshal Trousers begins to dimly apprehend his own humanity: around him the knives of his lieutenants--and offspring--sharpen, but a resurgent imagination may be his biggest threat... Described by novelist Nicholas Christopher as a "wild stew of a book, with a beguiling and--to put it mildly--idiosyncratic set of characters. As with all good comic fiction, the underlying issues here are serious ones--politics, nationalism, passion, love." (Read excerpt)
www.finkeegan.com
fjk4@columbia.edu

SOFIA'S STORY
by R. E. Cluse
Sofia'’s Story, the tale of a woman of the Twentieth Century, portrays the life of Sofia Gunter, a poor girl raised in Berlin by staunchly religious, patriotic Germans, including a feisty matriarch, her grandmother, who gives her a quilt. Sofia feels the heirloom is the personification of her grandmother upon her death, developing an unusually close relationship to the quilt. She uses this attachment to deal with the historic events of the Times which impact her life. Sofia’s Story is one of tragedy, like many who lived in this era whose lives were changed by circumstances beyond their control. (Read excerpt)
mar_gal47@yahoo.com

BEING GOOD ABOUT IT
by Aimee Loiselle
After her first year at Brown University, Beth returns to Massachusetts for a summer job in a nursing home. Her plan is to do something good while making money for college. Despite her dark humor and self-deprecation, Beth must confront the realities of Liberty Home and make serious compromises to last through the summer. Her determination forces her to treat many patients with cold practicality and fuels an unwarranted desire for approval from Kiki, an African-American woman who questions Beth's legitimacy. Their antagonism erupts when each woman drops a patient and their tension becomes part of a corporate investigation. (Read excerpt)
www.aimeeloiselle.com
aimee@aimeeloiselle.com

THE SILENCE OF TREES
by Valya Dudycz Lupescu
Oblivious of the dangers that surround her in World War II Ukraine, sixteen-year-old Nadya sneaks out in the middle of the night to ask a fortuneteller about her lover. She never expects it to be the last time she sees her family alive. To escape the invading Russian army, she and her beloved flee West, but only Nadya survives, ending up in a Displaced Workers camp in Germany. There she meets Pavlo and chooses to leave the past behind. In Nadya's world, house spirits misplace sewing needles, a fortuneteller's cards predict the future, and the dead whisper secrets in the night. Nadya must somehow appease her dead, and in doing so finally find a way to start living. (Read excerpt)
www.thesilenceoftrees.com
Valya@thesilenceoftrees.com

ONLY BIRDS CAN FLY
by Carol Mayer
Beginning in 1892, Only Birds Can Fly spans 100 years and tells about women and their struggles to find happiness while adhering to the rules.  Using their own journals, as well as stories handed down from mothers and grandmothers, best friends Sarah Clayton and Amy Baxter begin to see through the lies that dictated their own paths in life.  For one, enlightenment comes too late.  For the other, there is hope.  Only Birds Can Fly is about women who give their power away, women who embrace their power and those who fall into the space between. (See author website for excerpt)
www.carolbilt.com
carolbilt@earthlink.net

SOLDIERS OF ORANGE
by Tom Maremaa
Soldiers of Orange is a powerful, heartbreaking novel about veterans of the Iraq war coming home and being treated for their wounds in a California hospital. The story is told by Jeremy Witherspoon, an ex-Marine who knows all the soldiers on the ward, a collection of oddball, yet heroic characters. Spoon, as he is called, witnessed a brutal crime of war in Ramadi, did nothing about it, and covered up the details. His fear is one of discovery. One day a private contractor named Skank shows up at the hospital, realizing Spoon's worst fear. Critics have hailed Soldiers of Orange as the Catch-22 of the Iraq war. (Read excerpt)
web.mac.com/tom_maremaa/iWeb/tommaremaa/Welcome.html
tom.maremaa@gmail.com

THE MISEDUCATION OF APRIL HILLSON
by Maureen McGowan
April couldn't legally drink when she married a billionaire, but was old enough to sign a prenuptial agreement, which twenty-two years later comes back to bite her -- hard. One mistake and she's evicted from her cocoon-like society world without the basic life-skills most adults take for granted. But with the help of a young Goth queen, a streetwise housewife and a lovelorn cop, she discovers it's never too late to grow up. Through a series of life lessons, a spoiled and vulnerable April transforms into a woman ready to make a place for herself in the world.
 www.maureenmcgowan.com

LINCOLN PARK
by Anne Moore
Lincoln Park is a smart, sexy comedy of manners set in downtown Chicago. Architect Philip Hamner has just won a top prize, sending him to Paris, with women falling all over him. Wife Sarah feels like she's being left behind with a glamorous but easy job and their three kids. His brother Marty can't help it, but is in love with Sarah. Colleague Anna openly pines for Philip. Young wanna-bees circle Philip and Sarah, making sad or hilarious mistakes. Philip's 40th birthday caps the story: will he stay or will he go? (Read excerpt)
amoore7@ameritech.net

THE AUTHOR AND THE HERO
by Indu Nair
Chinmay is shocked to find that he, Anu and Sabi were characters in a book. To make things worse, the author Sid has visualised them as depressed teenagers. Chinmay longs to be become cool and confident like Sid, who was writing the book as catharsis for a past depression. Sid promises to set things right for them and is about to do so when he has a relapse. Chinmay has no choice but to act on his own to save both their worlds, realising in the process what it meant to be the author and the hero of his life
areaderfromindia.blogspot.com
 

TO:GOD@HEAVEN.COM
by Veena Nagpal
'A bitter, crusty old woman in India. A young Indian girl in UK, trying to reach out to God in a moment of trouble. A chance connection. 
Set in India and UK, ‘To God @ Heaven.com’ is a growing up novel with a difference in that the person growing up is an old woman in her seventies.' (Read excerpt)
veena.nagpal@rediffmail.com


S.O.L.
by James Noll
Three troublemakers fleeing prep school find themselves at public high school where they join the beleaguered teachers in resisting the pressures of standardization. There, they try to fit into a stultifying schedule of classes and testing, which has already benumbed long-suffering teachers such as Mr. Frank and Mr. Glass. The teachers scramble to fulfill the assessment testing required of each department, which leaves little time for class preparation, let alone a life. The story comes to a climax on S.O.L. testing day, when an unexpected visitor from the boys' past arrives to take care of unfinished business. (Read excerpt)
www.slobfarm.com
jamesdnoll@hotmail.com

WHERE THE HEART IS
by Susanne O'Leary
A woman finds out who her late mother was through letters written thirty years earlier. It's a voyage of discovery and identity. (Read excerpt)
www.susanne-oleary.com
susanneoleary@eircom.net

THE MOON IT GIVES NO LIGHT
by Christina Pacosz 
Based on the unsolved murder of Nancy Morgan, VISTA volunteer in Madison County, North Carolina in June 1970, and the trial and acquittal fifteen years later of another VISTA charged with the crime, the story focuses on the life/times of the fictional main character, Mary Moran. Many current issues hidden from view more than a quarter century ago: child abuse, female passivity and sexuality, incest, domestic violence, and sadomasochism are explored. An excerpt,  "Out of Dodge", won a 1994 Achievement Award in Fiction from Now & Then. An earlier version was a 1995 semifinalist selected by the Heekin Foundation. (Read excerpt)
pacosz@earthlink.net 

A BODY AT REST
by Susan Petrone
Martha and Nina are underemployed, overeducated slackers who are self-admittedly wasting their late twenties serving drinks at a dive bar in Cleveland. Both women reach a turning point and realize that their lives are going nowhere. They quit their jobs and go on a road trip, searching for change. Through a series of semi-magical events, the two women change (in a very real sense) into the fictional characters with whom they most identify: Emma Woodhouse and Don Quixote. As they try to decide how to live out their lives as fictional characters, they explore the limits of friendship and femininity. (Read excerpt)
www.susanpetrone.com
TheInkCasino@adelphia.net

THE WOLVES OF PAVLAVA
by Adriana Renescu
On a fateful day in 1960, a Romanian nun, Mother Ierusalima of Pavlava, a mystic and prophet, is brutally murdered. Under orders, a young officer suppresses her funeral and destroys all evidence of her existence. For thirty years no one speaks of her, until an unlikely and powerful Devil'€™s Advocate arrives in Romania to gather evidence for her beatification. He carries with him long held secrets that doom those who have crossed the nun'€™s path, but also bring together atavistic enemies to form alliances that set in motion historical events of hope and deliverance. (Read excerpt)
arenescu@totgabooks.com

ATTICA - JOURNEY DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
by Timothy M. Shannon
Take a step into the infamous Attica Correctional Facility. This exciting story examines the impact the prison has on all who walk through it's massive iron gates. Told from the perspective of the inmates, the guards and the men and women employees who walk into the bizarre every day, the story immediately captures and and holds the reader's interest. A page turning must read!
web.mac.com/timshannon1
Timshannon1@mac.com

THREE DROP PENNIES
by Julie Ann Shapiro
In Three Drop Pennies two teenagers and life long friends, Tommy and Lori start a romance. But Tommy's increasingly dark psychic visions threaten to tear them apart. Lori seeks solace and collects pennies. Online she befriends Bo, another coin collector. Unbeknownst to Lori, Bo is a former mental patient. He struggles to make his way in the world and is tormented by his past, the evil impulses of Abe and a bewitching ghost. When Lori disappears and is seriously injured, Tommy must determine the nature of Bo's involvement; as he too is lured into the world of the mysterious penny man. (Read excerpt)
www.julieannshapiro.com

STEALING FIRE
by Susan Sloate
What happens when soulmates find each other but can't find a way to be together? Librettist/lyricist Beau Kellogg, 60, is aching for one last hit on Broadway, now dominated by glitzy high-tech productions, which are so different from his own previous shows. Amanda Harary, 25, dreams of becoming a Broadway singer, while working at a New York hotel. When older man and younger woman meet in a late-night phone conversation over the hotel's switchboard, it is the beginning of something each has dreamed of but never found -- miraculous joy, unbearable pain and the knowledge that they belong together forever. (Read excerpt)
www.susansloate.com
susan@susansloate.com
 
SHANTI BLOODY SHANTI
by Aaron Smith
A Jonathon Franzen version of The Big Chill. It's a colorful, wild, witty and interesting psychedelic Indian road story that updates much that 1970's generations experienced while away from home, on the road and going through the rites of passage that formed them. It explores the spiritual trail taken by many searching for a greater meaning of life in India. This is a narrative from an urbanite ex-punk rocker, ex-small time crook, ex-drug addict, 'X gener', who quite enjoyed doing yoga once a week at his local gym. There is murder, tragedy, terrorists, romance, western scepticism, a dash of eastern mysticism and even a revolution. It is based on the author's autobiographical experiences in India 2006. (Read excerpt)
shanti.bloody.shanti.googlepages.com
Shanti.bloody.shanti@gmail.com

SLEEPING WITH RACHEL
by David Stanley
After years touring the world's war zones as a photographer, Kieran Park is home to stay. Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he struggles with memories of conflict and of the most horrific childhood. His most haunting memory is the death of his elder sister Rachel in a car accident. Only Lisa, his twin sister, seems willing or able to understand him - but she has some unwelcome news. In a field opposite their childhood home, a developer has started to build a range of houses. A secret that the twins hoped would stay buried is about to be unearthed. (Read excerpt)
sleepingwithrachel.blogspot.com/
david@incahoots.co.uk

CALLING SHOTGUN
by AE Sullivan
Hired as a freelance writer for a cross country assignment, Aaron Shefley finds himself afloat in the emotional void that defines him. Coming to peace with his failures and discontent, Aaron decides to end his life once he completes the book and confronts, one way or another, his college love and new employer, Teddy. Told in vignettes as Aaron and the storyline move across the country, Calling Shotgun embraces with humor the nihilism and disillusionment prevalent in the modern world as Aaron tries to find the reasons or excuses not to commit suicide in those he meets on the road. (Read excerpt)
ae.sullivan1@gmail.com

THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE OR CAREENING TOWARD RETIREMENT
by Pat Tretout
In a breezy, yet thought provoking tale, fifty-something Kate Phillips’ golf-enamored husband wants to retire, against her wishes, in Florida.  When Kate, author of novel-in-progress, The Ambassador’s Wife, digs in her heels to thwart him, it will be her beautiful Russian protagonist, Eva Rosborden, who lives in the Eighteen Hundreds in an arranged marriage with a cigar-smoking Ambassador while still maintaining a scandalous liaison with her lover, who teaches Kate what all romance writers know: Love is ruled by the one who needs love the least.  But there's plenty of fight left in Kate and retirement is only the beginning, not the end. 
PTOUT@AOL.com

DIONYSUS, A woman, a man, and the god of wine
by Elizabeth Zahzam
During a summer blackout, Kristen, a frustrated actor meets DIONYSUS, god of theatre, and he promises to help her create a starring role in her own life. Enter Taylor O'Neal, Broadway star and recovering alcoholic. Empowered by Dionysus, Kristen pursues Taylor, only to learn the diabolical Dionysus is also the god of wine. In their menage a trios Kristen learns too late the passions that enflame life can also destroy it. (Read excerpt)
www.elizabethzahzam.com
nancy@elizabethzahzam.com